“The debate about the parentage of the bastard Jon Snow has been one of the biggest concerning the series. In SSM #159, George R. R. Martin admitted that Jon’s parents will eventually be revealed in later volumes of the series. Thus, the reader can assume that the secret of his parentage will play some important point in the plot, and that there has been some sort of foreshadowing leading up to this. Currently, there are three pairs of parents that seem likely.“
With the first book under my belt, I’m now fighting a losing war to stick to my original plan of not getting ahead of the TV show before Season 2. And, while A Clash of Kings remains unbought so far, I did read this extensively-evidenced and seemingly definitive essay on the parentage of Jon Snow. (It draws on the first three books, but mostly on Game of Thrones.) After reading this, I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t the truth of it.
“All you lazy people out there who want to get maximum effect from minimum work, I want you to meet the arch-idler of all time, Terry “Python” Gilliam!” Via the Twitter machine, Terry Gilliam, circa 1974, explains the craft of cut-out animation. “The problem when you’re doing cutouts is to be totally aware of the limitations…I’m always accused of doing violent things, well, it’s because of the nature of cut-outs.“
Hello all. So, yes, it’s been quiet again, and the movie reviews I’m behind on are piling up (I’m three back now, going on five.) In the excuse department, work has been even busier than usual, of late, and, obviously, the political scene has been depressing. So there’s that.
Anyway, in partial recompense, here’s my first entry of a fun meme I saw at Cryptonaut-in-Exile a few weeks ago: “100 Things I Love About My Favorite Movies. The rest will follow in a leisurely fashion at some future point.
Here’s the rules: “Rather than posting your 100 favorite films (which has been done and overdone), you simply post your favorite things about movies…[I]nstead of obsessing over whether the films you put on a list are ‘objectively good enough’ to put on said list, you simply jot down 100 moments/lines/visuals that have made a lasting impression on you or sneak their way into running gags between you and your friends.“
And, so, without further ado and in no particular order:
1. Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest: I’m starting off with this one because I’m borrowing it from Jonathan Hardesty, from where cdogzilla saw this meme. Sam Rockwell is pretty consistently the best thing about a lot of so-so movies (most recent case-in-point, Cowboys and Aliens), but here he has the distinction of shining bright in a very funny movie regardless.
2. Out of Sight — Timeout at the Bar: “By that time I had been thinking about you a lot, and just wondering what it would be like if we met, if we could take a time-out.” This was on Cryptonaut‘s list, and for good reason. One of the sultriest seduction scenes ever filmed.
3. He Got Game — Opening Homage to Basketball: The last scene of The 25th Hour might well make it into one of the other 80 slots. But for now, I really love this Aaron Copeland-scored opening montage to He Got Game, which makes the case for basketball being the real Great American Pastime.
4. Citizen Kane — News on the March! — “Then, suddenly, less than one week before election, defeat. Shameful, ignominious. Defeat that set back for 20 years the cause of reform in the US!” Like Casablanca, Citizen Kane is one of those movies I originally put in to study up on film history, and left amazed at how powerful it remained. This movie still feels like it could’ve been made yesterday.
5. Big Trouble in Little China – Elevator Scene: “‘I feel pretty good! I’m not scared at all! I feel kind of invincible.’ ‘Me too! I’ve got a very positive attitude about all this!‘” Sure, this is a goofy movie regardless. But I dig how Big Trouble just takes a break for a few moments here to lets its characters get their chill on.
6. Annie Hall — Final scene: “After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was, and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I thought of that old joke, y’know…” The Marshall McLuhan scene is a keeper too, obviously, but this funny and poignant close is Woody’s relationship movies condensed into 30 seconds. (Fun film fact: The scene right before this, where Alvy runs into Annie at The Sorrow and the Pity is Sigourney Weaver’s first movie appearance.)
7. The Shining — The Twins: “Come play with us, Danny. Forever and ever and ever.” I talked about this scene here. Nowadays, when I watch The Shining, I’m frightened by the Gods-eye-view in the opening moments, the shower scene, and Jack Torrance’s insanity-inducing writer’s block. But, when I was a kid, it was the twins. Definitely the twins.
8. In the Loop — Malcom visits the White House: “I’m sorry, I don’t… This situation here is… Is this it? No offence, son, but you look like you should still be at school with your head down a f**ing toilet…Don’t get sarcastic with me, son. We burned this tight-arsed city to the ground in 1814. And I’m all for doing it again, starting with you, you frat f**k.” Arguably the funniest scene in a very funny film, although it’s always hard to pick a favorite moment from this comedy classic. And doesn’t it seem like the WH is really like this these days?
9. Batman Begins — Batman gets the drop: “WHERE ARE YOU?!” “Here.”” The bat-man that preys on the wicked — This is the Dark Knight in a nutshell.
10. Tom Reagan in Miller’s Crossing: This along, with Brazil and the next film in this list, have been my three favorite movies for awhile now. I was looking for the scene where Tom drunkenly crashes the powder room at Leo’s club (“Close your eyes, ladies! I’m coming through!“) to chat with Verna. (“I bet you think you raised Hell.” “When I’ve raised Hell, sister, you’ll know it.“) But it’s not online, and since I love the whole film anyway, here’s the trailer instead.
11. Amadeus — Don Giovanni. “And now…the madness began in me. The madness of the man splitting in half…As I stood there understanding how that bitter old man was still possessing his poor son even from beyond the grave. I began to see a way, a terrible way, I could finally triumph…over God.” A lot of great scenes here too. Here, the patron saint of mediocrity conjures up his master plan.
12. The Fellowship of the Ring — Frodo and Sam first look upon Mordor: “Mordor…I hope the others find a safer route…I don’t suppose we’ll ever see them again.” “We may yet, Mr. Frodo. We may.” Obviously, it’s hard to pick one scene from the trilogy, but the closing seconds of FotR, when Frodo and Sam look out at Mordor from afar just before entering the Emyn Muil, is high up there. It’s the entire journey, distilled in one perfect moment.
13. Menace II Society — Interrogation Scene: “So you bought the bottle of beer — definitely at 12:15? Now you see something, you done f**ked up, you know that, right?” The Hughes brothers’ breakout movie is underappreciated, imho, and also eminently quotable. (“Snaps for the petrol!“) This is where it seems like the jaws are snapping shut on Caine — They should use this technique on Take the Money and Run…then it might be watchable.
14. Blade — Opening Rave With all due respect to Guillermo del Toro’s Aliens-style Blade 2, the Blade franchise peaked in the first ten minutes of the first film, when a fratty B&T’er finds himself in the wrong club in the meat-packing district. Special bonus for the pulse-pounding Pump Panel remix of New Order’s “Confusion.”
15. I’m Not There — Riddle and “Going to Acapulco”: Another film that’s hard to pick one scene from, but this is one of the loveliest musical numbers in the movie, in a town that literally recreates, per Greil Marcus, Dylan’s “Invisible Republic.”
16. The Charlie story in High Fidelity: “Charlie, you f**king b**ch! Let’s work it out!” A lot of funny, painfully-on-point scenes in this movie, and Rob’s scenes with ex-girlfriends #2 and #4 (Lili Taylor) are equally memorable. Still, great self-deprecating cameo by Catherine Zeta-Jones here, and this film is definitely Cusack’s post-teenage peak.
17. X2 — Nightcrawler at the White House: Bamf! As I said in my original review, it’s really a toss-up between this and Magneto’s escape for the best scene in Bryan Singer’s second X-flick. But this moment, kicking off the movie as it does, illustrates how much more fun the second film in comic-book franchises can be, once all the origin-story throat-clearing is out of the way.
18. Carter Burwell’s score for Being John Malkovich: Burwell has done a lot of great work for the Coen brothers over the years, but this is one of his best. It’s hard to imagine the film’s out-of-left-field conceit working as well without the low-key, yearning sadness of the score.
19. Hudson in Aliens: “Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, man!” Ah, Hudson. This all-time action film, with a great slow-burn first act, is obviously another very quotable movie, and Bill Paxton has more gems than anybody. “Maybe we’ve got ’em demoralized!“
20. 28 Weeks Later: Robert Carlyle runs like hell: Another great and memorable opening scene that quickly establishes the grim moral economy at work in this surprisingly good sequel. Some folks think of Trainspotting‘s Begbie when they see Carlyle — I always think of this.
Gwyneth Paltrow has more than just a few Coldplay albums to answer for in the scary-impressive trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, also with Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Enrico Colantoni, Bryan Cranston, Sanaa Lathan, John Hawkes, and Elliot Gould. This goes right next to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as one of my most-anticipated films of the fall.
Taylor Kitsch braves the deserts of Mars, Peter Gabriel by way of Arcade Fire, and some of the earliest fanboys going in the teaser for Andrew Stanton’s John Carter (formerly of Mars), with Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, with Thomas Haden Church and Willem Dafoe. That’s a great cast, and I like the period look on Earth, if nothing else.
Real-life couple Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz discover their new family home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the trailer for Jim Sheridan’s Dream House, also with Naomi Watts. With such an A-list director and cast, this film probably deserved a trailer that didn’t give away a key plot point — I suggest not clicking through here if you’re one to avoid spoilage.
Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law reunite for a second installment of Holmesian shenanigans in the trailer for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, with Noomi Rapace tagging in for Rachel McAdams and Jared Harris as Professor Moriarty. This looks…pretty bad, but the first one turned out better than expected, so who knows?
Jude Law also takes time to disappear, and thus set up a grand adventure of magic and self-discovery for his son, in the the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, with Asa Butterfield, Chloe Moretz, Sasha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Michael Stuhlbarg, Christopher Lee, Richard Griffiths, Frances De La Tour, Helen McCrory, and Emily Mortimer. Like Dream House, I’m more interested in the pedigree than this trailer. But we’ll see.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead really never should have gotten involved in this particular Norwegian research project in the trailer for Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing, also with Joel Edgerton, Jonathan Lloyd Walker, Ulrich Thomsen, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Unlike most fan-folk, I’m perfectly fine with a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film, just because it’s one of the scarier horror premises going. Let’s hope van Heijningen makes the most of his shot.
As I said when the poster dropped, it’s hard to imagine this one topping TDK, and I could do without all the “every journey comes to an end” marketing pablum here. Still, the moment with Bats in trouble and backpedaling suggests Nolan may be maximizing Bane’s potential here.
Along with the recent pics in Entertainment Weekly, above, also out just before Comic-Con is our first look at Marc Webb’s reboot of The Amazing Spiderman, with Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, and Campbell Scott (as Pa Parker? That’s a new twist.) The jumping around at the end is very Mirror’s Edge, and the tone feels a bit too dark and Nolan-y to me for our friendly neighborhood webhead. Still, I’ll see it.
Another catch-up review: As I alluded to in my post on Thor a few months ago, it was always likely that the Summer of the Comic Book B-list was going to have a clunker in there somewhere. So, when Branagh’s Thor turned out surprisingly ok and and Matthew Vaughn conjured a quality entertainment in X-Men: First Class, that put the statistical pressure on Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern and Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger.
Well, at least for now, Cap can breathe a little easier, because Green Lantern, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, is a bit of a dud. It’s not nearly as terrible as some of the reviews make it out to be, and I still think there’s potential here for a quality franchise. (Let’s remember, Sam Raimi’s first Spiderman had serious pacing problems and some majorly poor decisions therein as well — I’m looking at you, Willem DeFoe’s static faceplate.) But this Green Lantern is too often a rote, by-the-numbers origin story. It never establishes much of a rhythm, and too often feels like a film made by a committee. In short, a missed opportunity.
The first red flag happens in the opening moments, as Geoffrey Rush tells us in a leaden voiceover about the Green Lantern Corps — a legion of intergalactic cops, organized and headed by the Guardians of Oa, who are dispatched to guard all the sectors of the universe through judicious use of their willpower-driven rings. This sort of stage-setting exposition dump can be done well — most obviously by Cate Blanchett in Fellowship — but here it feels perfunctory and tacked-on, like somebody rushed it to the beginning of the film after a test screening or two.
The good news, tho’, is we’re in space, and here the movie actually shows some early hints of promise. We watch some alien space marines, shipwrecked on a rocky planet, accidentally awaken an trapped malevolence — the former Oan now known as Parallax. Parallax enjoys the Cheneyesque ability of growing stronger by feeding on fear, and he soon escapes this Rura Penthe to exact his revenge on the Green Lantern Corps, and especially the Lantern who put him under — Abin-Sur of Sector 2814. (This, by the way, is exactly the let-your-freak-flag-fly sort of cosmic craziness that should have animated the whole film. But it’s a tease. We ultimately spend far too much time earthbound.)
So Parallax is loose, and he soon manages to fatally wound his old nemesis Abin-Sur, who then has to find a replacement ringbearer as soon as possible. Enter Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a hotshot Air Force pilot who doesn’t play by the rules!™, but whose swagger and bravado conceals lingering doubts about his abilities™ resulting from the untimely death of his father™. (I know, I know: Green Lantern’s origin is Green Lantern’s origin, but the film doesn’t do its source material much credit by playing it so bland.) Does Hal have it in him to take the ring, face down his fears, and defeat the yellow-tinged forces of Parallax? I dunno…let’s watch him mope for forty-five minutes or so to find out!
In the reviews, Ryan Reynolds has been avoiding most of the blame for what’s wrong with Green Lantern, and I think that’s fair. He’s a likable actor with, as least as far as I can tell, not much range — but, since cocky-but-endearing is his wheelhouse, he ends up being a decent-enough fit for Hal Jordan. Blake Lively, on the other hand, has seen a lot of Haterade thrown her way for this flm. But, while she made more of an impression in The Town, she’s perfectly competent here — The problems with Green Lantern aren’t her fault either. Nor are they really Martin Campbell’s — the film feels well-made throughout.
No, the problem here is pretty clearly with the writing — which probably isn’t surprising given that Green Lantern has all of four credited screenwriters (Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldberg — I hope they saved money on the monogramming.) Most obviously, much more of this adventure should have happened in space. The film only really has a pulse when on Oa or somewhere off-planet, but instead we spend far too much time watching Hal Jordan sulk on Earth. So that was a bad decision. But, even beyond that, the film is just all over the place.
For example, we spend several minutes in the early going being introduced to the Young Nephew Who Idolizes Hal™ — and then he never shows up again. Or to take a problem in the opposite direction, for all the Basil Exposition voiceovering going on, I don’t remember the film ever explaining that the Lanterns’ rings don’t actually work against the color yellow, which is a pretty big plot point to save for a sequel. For that matter, you don’t get the sense that Hal ever uses the ring for anything more than making planes and guns in this flick. Either his or his writers’ imagination seems severely limited.
To take just one instance of the lazy writing here, consider the hamhanded way that the demise of the Big Bad is telegraphed in the middle of the film, when Hal is [spoiler]randomly instructed by a fellow Corps member about the power of gravity. Since we’ve already established that Hal is a hotshot pilot unconcerned with his own safety, why not just have him, in a fit of ring-induced euphoria, fly too close to the sun during training and have to be bailed out by Kilowogg et al? Bam, you have instant foreshadowing and character development, and an Icarus metaphor to boot. This is basically a no-brainer.
So, why do I still hold hope for a Green Lantern sequel, even amid all the general blandness here? Well, for one, the origin story is out of the way, and that’s usually what kills these sorts of movies. For another, Green Lantern is much more fun when it’s in space, so perhaps a sequel could fly in that heady direction instead. And then there’s Mark Strong’s turn as Sinestro, the (wink, wink) ostensible head of the Corps. Peter Sarsgaard is pretty solid here as weaselly dweeb Dr. Hector Hammond (tho’, here’s a game for ya: drink every time he screams like he’s in a Lynch and/or Cronenberg film), but Strong is far and away the best thing about the picture. A space-faring adventure that uses him more could be very fun indeed.
