Category: Fanboy

Krypton, Kumar, Halo, & Che.

Quite a bit of movie news lately: Bryan Singer’s next Superman achieves liftoff, as does Harold & Kumar II. (I didn’t think much of Superman Returns, but am willing to give Singer another shot, particularly given how much better X2 was over X-Men. As for H & K…yeah, I’ll see it.) Meanwhile, the Peter Jackson-produced Halo is off for now…probably not a great loss, I suspect. And, finally, Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro’s Che is now two films: The Argentine and Guerrilla, to be shot back-to-back.

Magic Most Sinister.

Are you watching closely? I’m having a harder time than usual thinking of what to say about Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, not only because I think it’s a film best seen cold, with as little information going in as possible, but also because, having read the book by Christopher Priest, my experience with the film was very different from that of most folks. As Michael Caine’s ingenieur Cutter notes at one point, successful magic is all about confusion and misdirection — if you know how it’s done, even a complex and fantastic magic trick can seem blatantly obvious from the get-go. So my time with The Prestige was roughly akin to seeing The Sixth Sense and knowing Bruce Willis is a ghost from the first reel. That being said, while I can’t vouch for how well Nolan conceals his own prestiges from the audience here, I found the movie a dark, clever, and elegant contraption, one that suggests razor-sharp clockwork gears and threatening pulses of electrical current, all impressively encased in burnished Victorian-era mahogany. If you’re a fan of Nolan’s previous work, or of sinister mind-benders in general, The Prestige is a must-see film. Either way, it’s among the top offerings of 2006 thus far.

So, what’s the pledge? Slumming aristocrat Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and working-class upstart Alfred Borden (Christian Bale, particularly good) both serve as magician’s assistants to a by-the-numbers prestidigitator (Ricky Jay) — they’re audience plants — and both harbor aspirations of taking their own act on the road. But after an on-stage tragedy involving Angier’s escapist wife (Piper Perabo), a wedge is driven between these two would-be men of magick, fomenting a lifelong rivalry that turns increasingly brutal and obsessive. This becomes particularly so after Borden, the more talented illusionist, comes up with a nifty trick — The Transported Man — that Angier, the more impressive showman, can’t seem to match, even with the aid of his longtime ingenieur, Cutter (Caine). Eventually, Angier is compelled to travel to faraway Colorado Springs to pay visit to a wizard of a different order, Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), and perhaps enlist him (and his Igor-by-way-of-Brooklyn assistant, (Andy Serkis)) in unraveling Borden’s secret. (As apparently required by law this year, Scarlett Johansson also factors in the tale as Olivia, a lovely magician’s assistant bandied back and forth by the two rivals, but it’s a smaller part than you might expect, and newcomer Rebecca Hall makes more of an impression as Borden’s long-suffering wife, Sarah.)

In keeping with Nolan’s usual m.o., The Prestige is not told linearly, but in narrative fragments spurred by memory, sadness, or anger. In fact, the film begins near the end, with Borden first witnessing and then on trial for the apparent murder of Angier. (Well, that is, after a striking title shot of top hats piled up bizarrely in a forest bed, a shot which makes more sense as the story progresses — I’ll admit to being a sucker for films that start off thus.) And, while the film takes a few jags away from Priest’s book (including omitting both the framing device — good choice — and the very last sequence, which I thought was deliriously creepy and somewhat missed here), it nevertheless keeps the basic story arcs of the novel intact. (In other words, and while remaining as oblique as possible, mystery purists may feel somewhat cheated by the Tesla turn the story takes ninety minutes in, but it’s central to the source material, and had to be there.) Also like the book, Nolan’s final hole card is a deeply disturbing one that’ll linger in the senses well after this trick is complete. In sum, along with Memento and Batman Begins, this jagged tale of illusion and obsession should only add to Chris Nolan’s burgeoning prestige: Bring on The Dark Knight.

Sauron, Saruman, Santorum.

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else…It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.” Agh! File this one in the Tom DeLay loves NASA department: Right-wing freakshow and self-proclaimed Tolkien fan Rick Santorum invokes Lord of the Rings to justify Iraq. Sorry, Senator…you can’t Wormtongue your way out of this one.

Time Check.

“1985’s a problem for people. The Cold War’s a problem for people. But these are things I’ve been trying to [tell people] would be cool. I like that Richard Nixon is the president in it. I think that’s important. Those kinds of things tell you exactly what kind of movie this is – it’s not Fantastic Four, you know.” 300 director Zack Snyder offers a brief update on the current state of CWatchmen.

Terry le Heros.

As longtime readers might know (or might’ve adduced from some of the site banners above), I’ve always been a big Terry Gilliam fan, and will pony up for films considerably worse than The Brothers Grimm to repay the man for making Time Bandits, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and one my all-time favorite movies, Brazil. (In fact, “Ghost in the Machine” is the name of this site partly for the Brazil reference.) So it was a real treat yesterday when I and a friend from high school got to see Terry Gilliam live in the flesh last night at the IFC Center on 4th St. After making the rounds in front of The Daily Show yesterday afternoon, Gilliam showed up as part of IFC’s Movie Night series, in which a director of some repute screens one of his favorite films. (In fact, he showed up with the sign he’d been lugging around outside all day: “STUDIOLESS DIRECTOR — FAMILY TO SUPPORT — WILL DIRECT FOR FOOD”) Apparently, Gilliam had wanted to show One-Eyed Jacks, the 1961 western directed by Marlon Brando, but the Brando estate wouldn’t deliver a print or somesuch.

So, the film we got instead was Jaco von Dormael’s Toto le Heros (Toto the Hero), a bizarre Belgian concoction of 1991 that’s part Prince and the Pauper, part Singing Detective, part Citizen Kane and very Gilliamesque. A movie that’s hard-to-explain but that’s definitely worth renting, Toto follows the story of one Thomas van Haserbroeck (Don’t call him van Chickensoup), an imaginative young boy unsettlingly in love with his sister, a lonely man contemplating an affair with a mystery woman, and a deeply depressed senior citizen looking to exact revenge for a life-long grievance. Y’see, Thomas (or Toto, as he’s called in his dream life, where he’s a film noir gumshoe) insists he remembers being switched with another baby — his wealthy next-door neighbor, Albert Kant — during a fire at the hospital, and therein, in his mind, lies the source of most of his troubles. As the story switches back and forth in time, Toto and Albert’s lives keep butting against each other in strange doppelganger fashion, while old-Thomas enacts a plan to reclaim his stolen life…

After the movie, Gilliam returned to the front for a wide-ranging Q&A session, which involved questions both probing (“Did you borrow from Toto in 12 Monkeys?” [No, don’t think so.]) and peculiar (“Where’d you buy your shoes? Where’s the worst place you ever spent the night?” [Birkenstocks, some backwater hut in India]) Along the way, Gilliam told tales of first meeting the Python guys, photographing Frank Zappa in 1967, choosing his various directors of photography, and, the battle of Brazil notwithstanding, generally enjoying the constraints of studio heads and limited budgets. (They focus him.) Speaking of which, he also said Good Omens still seems to be moving forward, and Quixote may still happen someday. (He also mentioned The Defective Detective briefly, but it seemed in the past tense.) And these days he’s digging the new Dylan album, as well The Arcade Fire’s Funeral and The Flaming Lips’ At War with the Mystics.

At one point, he also said he was considering suing Bush, Cheney, et al for making an unauthorized remake of Brazil. With that in mind, I asked him whether his views on Brazil had changed at all now that we’re kinda living it. (I mean, what with Cheney playing Mr. Helpmann, Canadian citizens getting Buttled, and the Dubya team now fully sanctioning Jack Lints, what’s a good Sam Lowry to do, other than await his turn in the chair or on the waterboard?) He noted that, obviously, Brazil-type stuff was going on around the world at the time (in the Soviet bloc, Argentina, etc.) but that he watched the film the other day (to check out the new Criterion HD-DVD version) and was amazed at both how prescient and topical it was.

Throughout, Gilliam was amazingly friendly and personable, and came across a remarkably humble and down-to-earth guy. He kept taking questions well after the IFC-suit tried to close down the affair, and hung around the nearby cafe afterwards to sign various items. I ended up being the second guy in line, and got him to sign the Brazil still above (one of five I have framed in my hallway.) When he asked me my name for the signature, he lit up, “Kevin! Time Bandits Kevin!” I told him I was right around that age when I first saw Time Bandits, and he’s definitely got a lot to answer for.

Forth the 300.

Ok, it’s still basically just a lot of flexing and screaming. Nevertheless, the new trailer for Zach Snyder’s 300 is out, and it’s an adrenaline shot…one of the more effective previews I’ve seen in awhile. (And “Tonight we dine in Hell!” seems like it might be an apt catchphrase for all kinds of situations.)

Ten Doctors, Twelve Cylons.

Season 2 of BBC’s Doctor Who revival premieres tonight on Sci-Fi, with — as most of y’all know — David Tennant (a.k.a. Barty Crouch, Jr. of Goblet of Fire) filling in for Christopher Eccleston as the second/tenth Doc. Meanwhile, season 3 of Battlestar Galactica doesn’t begin until October 6, so you still have a week to catch up on the Vichy/Resistance webisodes online.