Category: Fanboy

Deep-Sithed?

Uh oh…I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Some new Episode III footage (that doesn’t involve massive spoilers) shows up on the Offical Site in the form of two new TV spots. I’ve been letting my hopes rise for this final installment, but the dialogue and delivery in the “Tragedy” one in particular brought back some of that Clones fear and loathing.

Reveling in Sin.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…and, whatsmore, I liked it. Without a shred of redeeming social value, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City is a film very noir. It’s a sick, depraved, and smutty ride into a crime-ridden hellhole of a metropolis, exactly as it should be. Trust me — Mos Eisley ain’t got nothing on this wretched hive of scum and villainy. The alleys of Sin City are infested with sadistic, blood-smeared torturers, psychopathic, half-naked prostitutes, and trigger-happy, two-timing murderers…and those are the good guys.

As I said of the trailer, I was worried going in that the unique comic book style Rodriguez was attempting here would fall flat (no pun intended), and all that greenscreen work would mean Attack of the Clones-itis or Sky Captain redux: otherwise-good actors looking lost and bored in a muddy CGI-mess. Well, I’m pleased to announce that my concerns were unfounded — Sin City turned out to be a visual marvel and easily Rodriguez’ best film since El Mariachi (for which Frank Miller probably deserves much of the credit — virtually every shot in the film was storyboarded in his graphic novels.) And, a few hiccups notwithstanding (I’m looking at you, Michael Madsen), the wide-ranging and talented cast are all vibrant and alive here (even, as in the case of Benicio Del Toro, when they’re not.)

In fact, in a sinful sea of memorable performances, particularly Del Toro and Clive Owen (who have a great repartee in the Tarantino sequence), Nick Stahl as That Yellow Bastard, and Elijah Wood (continuing the post-Frodo deterioration he began in Eternal Sunshine) as Kevin the ninja-quick cannibal (no relation), the surprising standout of Sin City is a back-from-the-dead himself Mickey Rourke as Marv — even behind a putty nose, a swath of Band-Aids, and a continually applied sheen of blood and viscera, Rourke succeeds in making a (literally) hard-nosed and ultra-violent character compassionate. (There’s also great cameo work by, among others, Powers Boothe, Rutger Hauer, and Nicky Katt, the latter of whom may well be reprising his role from Full Frontal.)

If I have any qualm, it’s that the best stories came first, and the film may have run a little long. There’s really not much to the Bruce Willis-Jessica Alba tale that closes the film, although I don’t think it wears out its welcome. Speaking of which, I might well have preferred it if Alba and Brittany Murphy could’ve taken a page from a fearless Carla Gugino…But, see, that’s the sin talking. A few hours in this vile, shameless, beastly sinkhole and you too’ll become infected with it, and I mean that in the best way possible.

In short, despite all the odds (and be warned — despite a grotesquely debauched moral economy that some people may never get over), Sin City is easily the best movie of 2005 so far, and a welcome omen for other outside-the-box comic adaptations such as The Watchmen. (Graphic Novel-to-Film comparison link via LinkMachineGo and Neilalien.)

Ring-ewww.

When you die, you see the ring. When you’re bored, you see The Ring Two. I thought the first American installment was truly frightening at start and finish, but suffered from an expository middle hour that brought the film to a standstill. I said then that “what everybody involved seems to have missed is that the movie would’ve been much scarier, at least to my mind, if some portions of the tape had just been left unexplained.” And it is with that caveat in mind that I went in to Part Two, hoping just to see this devious little ghost in the machine inflict carnage on more unsuspecting viewers. Oops, my bad. As it turns out, The Ring Two does not explain every little detail that comes up — In fact, it doesn’t explain anything, and the result, after another creepy prologue, is an incoherent, sprawling mess that follows absolutely no rules at all — it’s Thunderdome, Jerry!

The upshot is this: Apparently, Samara now has something of a crush on Naomi Watts, and she wants out of the well and into the body of her son (David Dorfman) for good. To accomplish this nefarious deed, she manifests all kinds of strange and awesome powers that have nothing to do with a videotape, seven days, a well, or anything else that’s come before. Instead, she turns into a cross between Damien from the Omen movies and Freddy Krueger before the wisecracking, dispatching anyone who gets in her way whether or not they still own a VCR (including Elizabeth Perkins, in a brief but welcome sighting as a doubting shrink.)

As it drags on, the film makes less and less sense (unless you can recall the very similar bathtub scene from Constantine), and plot holes emerge that you could throw a larger child than Samara through. How did the studly reporter guy end up back in his truck? The “Dead Don’t Sleep” but they eat PB&J’s? For what it’s worth, Naomi Watts gives this cut rate material as much as she can, but, even with expectations set very low, The Ring Two turns out to be a considerable disappointment. Still, hopefully this burgeoning Scream Queen might soon find the Great Ape on Skull Island a bit more scream-worthy.

Squashed like a bug.

What the? I haven’t been keeping up with comics very well for the past decade or so, but I do have a fanboy’s protective fondness for my own Golden Age, which dates to the mid-to-late ’80’s…right around John Romita Jr. on X-Men, John Byrne’s FF and Alpha Flight, Squadron Supreme, and Secret Wars on the Marvel side and to the heyday of the Teen Titans, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Alan Moore on Swamp Thing on the DC end. So it is with some dismay that I received the news from my brother yesterday that, in a fit of Chris Claremont-like revisionism, the new, best-selling, and apparently very dark Countdown to Infinite Crisis (another one?), DC’s follow-up to last year’s gritty Identity Crisis, not only turned relatively congenial corporate shark and JLI head Maxwell Lord (of the classic Giffen-DeMatteis-Maguire run) into an long-simmering evil genius, they had him off the Blue Beetle!

What’s that about? For one, they’re screwing with my childhood here, and that’s not cool. For another, they took out a character with a 60-year history (although admittedly we’re talking about two different Beetles, Dan Garret and Ted Kord.) I mean, they could’ve waxed Booster Gold (who apparently doesn’t fare very well in this issue either) and nobody would’ve batted an eye. Or, if they really wanted to up the body count, DC could have set pretty much all of Justice League Detroit and Batman’s Outsiders on fire, and it’d have been no harm, no foul. But the Blue Beetle? That’s just not kosher. Grr…when the “culture-of-life” protestors come-a-knockin’ in force, DC, you’ll know who sent ’em.