Movie Moment: Hey! It's --- Ian Holm

And Belated Purpose Statement: “Hey! It’s…:”

I am a fan of actors and actresses who are very versatile, and who often get second-billing in the credits. They are the ones who may not notice in the “talk about them on the way home from the theater” way the first or second or third time you see them in a movie, but sooner or later you start saying “Hey it’s…” Folks like Gary Oldman, and our former “hey it’s” guy, Sean Bean.

In this case, hey it’s…Ian Holm! Like Mr. Bean (heh heh) his most famous role was in Lord of the Rings, as Bilbo Baggins. (Whose name I always like to say like Gandalf says it when he’s chewing him out). But the man has been in a ton of movies! Some of them I did not remember him in – had to look up pictures to remind myself what he looked like in the role – dang chameleons!

The movies I have seen Ian Holm in:
Alien – the android Ash
Chariots of Fire – Sam Mussabini
Hamlet – Polonius (this was the one with Mel Gibson)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – Baron Frankenstein (the dad)
The Madness of King George – Dr. Wills
The Fifth Element – Father Vito Cornelius (he’s a good comedian!)
The Day After Tomorrow – Frozen scientist
Garden State – Zach Braff’s dad
The Aviator – Professor Fitz
Ratatouille – Skinner (the evil French chef! – comedy again!)

Movies I would like to see Ian Holm in:
Brazil
From Hell – the Jack the Ripper movie with Johnny Depp
eXistenZ
Lord of War

Watch out for Ian Holm – you never know where he’ll turn up!

Movie Moment: "Conservative" Movies?

I came across an item yesterday that I couldn’t pass by without commenting on. It’s the National Review Online’s reader suggested, editor ranked list of the "25 best conservative movies of the past 25 years."

I’ll lay my cards out on the table right here at the beginning. If you pinned me down and made me declare a political position, I’d tell you “moderate.” I’m not a moderate because I can’t make up my mind, however. I’m a moderate because my standard for what would make good public policy cuts across Republican, Democrat, and other party lines. I won’t go into the details here, but my goal, for reasons of faith, is to let the Bible inform how I vote on issues. And no current or past political party has created what I would call an ideal platform.

So, I try not talk about politics much. But I do talk about movies a lot. And some of the interpretations of the movies in this list are…odd. This is not intended to be a post about bashing conservatives. I am one on some issues, after all. It is intended to be about something else, which I will reveal at the end. I will restrict my comments to movies I have seen, and to reviewer comments (each entry is by a different reviewer) that struck me as strange. Some of the reviews are actual reviews, while others appear to be manifestos disguised as reviews. Of those, I think they say a lot more about the reviewer than about the movie.

Starting at the beginning, the introduction states: “We do not claim that the writers, directors, producers, gaffers, and key grips involved with these films are conservative. We certainly make no such assertion about the actors. Yet the results are indisputable…”
This is spectacular. The guys who hold the microphones, the actors, the directors, and the writers may have accidentally made conservative movies. This sentence alone was worth the price of admission. It also provides an important clue…

“Conservatives enjoy these films because they are great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more.” This is an honest question: does this sentence insinuate that people who do not classify themselves as conservative dislike freedom, families, patriotism, and traditions, or movies about the same? We’ll come back to this…

Now starting at the bottom:

“Also-Rans” – Thank You For Smoking – Really? If you consider yourself a conservative, and you liked this movie, can you tell me why?

Amazing Grace - Abolitionists, whether here or in England, were without a doubt considered dangerous liberals in their day.

25. Gran Torino (2008) – “Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War. Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family. Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants.”

This movie is too recent for me to explain why this review may have missed something extremely important about this movie. And it is a great movie, primarily as a direct result of what this reviewer missed. I guess you can email me if you want to know what I think that thing is.

24. Team America: World Police (2004) – If you are offended by anything, DO NOT see this movie. It made the list because of its scathing take on politically active Hollywood types. It also apparently made the list because the reviewer didn’t realize that half the jokes in the movie, including the title, were about conservatives.

20. Gattaca (1997)– “The movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically correct world — the road to which is paved by the abortion of Down babies, research into human cloning, and “transhumanist” dreams of fabricating a “post-human species.”

That sentence is correct up until the dash, at which point, I’m not sure we saw the same movie. The movie I saw was about people being excluded because of genetics like near-sightedness and the propensity for heart disease. I’m not saying the things listed are not deplorable – but I don’t think you can just start listing things you hate into a movie review if the movie isn’t at all about those things. Speaking of which…

17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)– This review just made me sad. I won’t even quote it. I will say it mentions hating Santa Claus, compares the White Witch to Kim Jong Il, criticizes land-for-peace swaps, and mentions the redemptive death of Jesus primarily as an excuse to criticize “leftists,” all in four sentences. Would this reviewer have been pleased to see Edmund and Mr. Tumnus imprisoned or killed as traitors? I suspect C.S. Lewis and the filmmakers were going for more.

16. Master and Commander (2003) – This review I actually agree with. I also liked this movie a lot.

13. Braveheart (1995) – “Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland. Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson’s message resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a ‘constructive dialogue.’”

I'm going to try and tread very carefully here. I don’t think this review is saying that Braveheart directly inspired soldiers to volunteer after 9/11, though it could be construed that way. I think it is saying that movie Braveheart embodies the spirit of those who volunteered. However, I think that trivializes the volunteers by boiling their motivation to fight for their country down to one sentence in a movie review.

On a separate note, a friend of mine proposed another “American” interpretation of this film – a native people, seen by their neighbors as barbarians, are betrayed, slaughtered, and oppressed. In other words, the American hero most like William Wallace might be Crazy Horse.

Here’s a favorite line from another Mel Gibson movie, Maverick. “Oh, I hate Indians. I try to kill at least one a day. I figure it’s their fault for being on our land before we got here.”

Now, I’m not saying Braveheart is about Native Americans. I’m saying metaphors are tricky.

12. The Dark Knight (2008) - "This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public."

Wow, just, wow. Where to start? Batman is an anti-death-penalty activist, as well as a strict enforcer of gun control laws. (Batman and I go way back.)

The best scene in the movie, to me, was when the Joker offered two ferry-boats the chance to blow the other up – one filled with criminals, one with normal folks. A healthy debate ensues. Perhaps you remember how it turned out – Batman tells the Joker, “Not everyone is like you.”

Batman agrees to use his super-surveillance just once, provided it is used by the most trustworthy man in the movie, after which it is destroyed forever, because it is “too much power for one man.”

This movie as a whole is about escalation, as set up in the last three minutes of Batman Begins. It is about how fighting evil draws one perilously close to the edge of evil, and how much personal cost is involved even in a righteous battle. Not just the cost to one's reputation, but to one's loved ones.

11. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) - Author J. R. R. Tolkien was deeply conservative, so it’s no surprise that the trilogy of movies based on his masterwork is as well.

I can only assume the anti-industrialization and anti-deforestation message of the books and the films slipped past this reviewer.

When Frodo sighs, “I wish none of this had happened,” Gandalf’s response speaks to us, too: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

That is a great dialogue, and I agree with the reviewer that it speaks to us. So does the one about two minutes before that, when Frodo says, “It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him [Gollum] when he had the chance.” To which Gandalf replies, “Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. There are many who live who deserve death, and many who die who deserve life. Can you give it them? Do not be so quick to deal out death and judgment.”

7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) - Gardner never succumbs to self-pity, even when he and his young son take refuge in a homeless shelter. They’re black, but there’s no racial undertone or subtext.

Again, this is an honest question: It’s ok for the actors to be black, but if they talk about it, and how it affects others’ perceptions of them or their perception of themselves, that’s not ok?

4. Forrest Gump (1994) - "Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s."

Like racism. He is a Congressional Medal earning veteran, and the keynote speaker at an anti-Vietnam War rally. I think you could make a good case that this film’s take on American history allows for some moral ambiguity.

But this is the one that really got me:

1. The Lives of Others (2007) – I saw this movie this weekend, and it is a truly remarkable film.

"It chronicles life under a totalitarian regime as the Stasi [East Germany’s secret police] secretly monitors the activities of a playwright who is suspected of harboring doubts about Communism."

Oh, but it’s about so much more. You need to see this movie.

The thing that absolutely floored me about this movie’s inclusion in this list, and at the #1 spot no less, is that apparently nobody realized that one of the things this movie is about is the effect things like domestic wire-tapping, inhumane interrogation techniques, widespread paranoia, imprisonment without trial, and a culture of suspicion toward one’s neighbors and co-workers have on the people living in such a system.

So, the number one pick is a good example of what this post is really about – people often see what they want to see in art, and movies apparently are no exception. In fact, I think truly great art, and truly great movies, allow for a variety of interpretations. And everyone goes to the movies with their lens preset, so to speak. I tend to watch movies primarily through the filter of my faith. I see meaning when someone dies in a cruciform posture (which happens a lot in movies). My supposition is that good filmmakers include things like that on purpose. Others appear to primarily watch movies through the filter of a specific political agenda, and may assume that elements which fit that filter are there by accident. I don’t think any of the filmmakers involved with the films in this list accidentally made conservative movies. I do suspect that some people may have accidentally watched them as conservative movies. Or put another way, some people took values which are embodied in these movies in an “indisputable” way, values which were probably intended to be portrayed as universal – values like freedom, family, patriotism, tradition - and put a label of “conservatism” on those values, and thus on the movies.

Movie Moment: Belated Valentine’s Day Thought – The Movies and Married Love

I am little late getting on the Valentine’s Day bandwagon, but that is actually appropriate for the content of this post. Here’s a question to scratch your head over: what is your favorite movie that portrays love in the context of marriage?

My premise is that most movies that portray “love” are primarily concerned with the pursuit of love – love’s starting point. The overwhelming majority of romantic movies are concerned with “boy meets girl.” Very few movies follow up on “boy marries girl, has three children, etc.” Think about your favorite romantic movies (or for guys, your wife’s favorites). I’ll bet you a dollar that the movie ends with 1) a wedding, or the very likely prospect of one, or less often, 2) the death of one or both of the leads.

There are probably two main reasons for this. One is the necessity of movie plot mechanics. You need three acts in a typical romantic movie (or any movie). Act One: Boy Meets Girl. Act Two: Complication – Boy and Girl Separated. Act Three: Resolution, happy or otherwise. Think about your favorites (or your significant others’.) This applies to all of them. I think it’s easier for screenwriters to portray “the pursuit,” or courtship, or “falling in love,” or what have you, in the span of two hours than it is to portray “married love” in the same span, and with the same kind of plot structure.

The other reason I think movies primarily deal with courtship is because of a more general societal definition of love. When we think of romantic love, whether we are trying to or not, we usually think of the feelings involved in “falling in love.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with falling in love! Falling in love is great! But – what does that say about our definition of love if the popular portrayal of love “ends” with marriage. We see a wedding in a movie and this is movie shorthand for “and they lived happily ever after.” But that feeds into the belief that all love always feels like falling in love. And anybody who’s been married for more than a month or two will tell you that isn’t always what love feels like.

For more on this idea I recommend with my most heart-felt recommendation “Sacred Marriage” by Gary Thomas. The subtitle of the book is “What if God designed marriage to make us holy, more than to make us happy?” A counselor friend of mine suggests that the key to a successful marriage is that it requires both parties to become more mature people. Thomas says in the first chapter, appropriately titled “The Greatest Challenge in the World:”

“Romantic love has no elasticity to it. It can never be stretched; it simply shatters. Mature love, the kind demanded of a good marriage, must stretch…Any mature spiritually sensitive view of marriage must be built on the foundation of mature love rather than romanticism. But this immediately casts us into a countercultural pursuit.”

I don’t think that it is the fault of movies that our general perception of love is limited to the romantic, “falling in love” sort of love – but I do think movies perpetuate this idea. So, what are some “countercultural” movies? Which ones show a different side of love than the pursuit? I thought of these:

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed. Gets me every time…I am always surprised at how many people haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen all of it. You need to see all of it.

The Family Man (2000) – A sort of reverse “It’s A Wonderful Life.” In fact, I’m sure that’s how it was pitched to the producers. Still a good movie, though.

The Bishop’s Wife(1947) Cary Grant/The Preacher’s Wife – The original, and the 1996 remake with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston.

The Notebook (2004) – Not my favorite, but I will admit that it portrays married love beautifully – the bulk of the movie, though, is flashbacks to “the pursuit.”

The Quiet Man (1952) – A great movie! John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Guys, if you’re patient, you get to see one of the longest fist-fights in movie history.

Jerry Maguire (1996)– Maybe you’ve heard of this one.

A lot of these movies are centered around Christmas – interesting.

All of these follow the same three-act structure mentioned above – but in all of these films the major conflict for love comes after the marriage. These movies require their characters to do more than “fall in love.” They are required to stay in love – which is quite a different kettle of fish - a different set of emotions, a different kind of commitment, than the emotions and commitments that come with falling in love.

So, back to the original question. What’s your favorite movie that portrays love in the context of marriage?

Movie Moment: Violence 2 - The Revenge!!

I have mentioned before that when Jeni is out of town, I like to watch movies that I know she has little or no interest in seeing. This past Monday she was out of pocket, so I bought some of those cheap Totino’s pizzas which I have an unaccountable love for and went over to the video store.

I returned with four gems, which I watched in the order I suspected I would enjoy them in. They were:

Pathfinder


I first saw this for sale at Wal-Mart, and it looked so Awesomely Bad that I knew I had to see it. As you can see from the cover, that's a big ol' Viking with an axe taking on a Native American - with a sword.

This is an Awesomely Bad idea. If you aren’t familiar with this category, let me fill you in. I first heard it from VH1 (the Awesomely Bad “Music Video” channel). There are 3 categories: Awesome, Bad, and Awesomely Bad. Awesome things are what we traditionally call “Good,” as they are entertaining. Bad things are things you should avoid, as they are not entertaining. “Awesomely Bad” things are so bad that they become good, by virtue of being entertainingly bad.

Now, you might think that Native Americans vs. Vikings would be the kind of film set-up that would guarantee an Awesomely Bad rating. You would be incorrect. This movie was Bad. The idea is Awesomely Bad - the movie itself is just Bad.

It stars Karl Urban (most familiar as Eomer from Lord of the Rings) who as a child was the sole survivor of a failed Viking raid on North America, raised by Native Americans as part of the tribe, who must now defend his adopted people against the Vikings when they return in force. An Awesomely Bad set-up that fails in the execution.

It is pointless to say that the (very little) dialogue in the movie is terrible. This is a movie about Native Americans fighting Vikings. No one expects it win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. What is important is the fighting. And therein lies the problem.

Amazingly, this movie manages to be politically correct and incorrect at the same time – the Native Americans are good-hearted and peaceful, the Vikings bloodthirsty and evil. But the Natives are also completely helpless, and Karl Urban (the sole European good guy) seems to be the only person that can do anything in a fight with a Viking besides die quickly.

About halfway through this movie, I realized the importance of setting up the landscape for an action scene. If you have no idea how big the swamp, cave, or forest is in which the fight is occurring, or the layout of of these battlefields, it is very hard to tell what in the world is going on. Also, you have to give some idea of how many enemies you are fighting. If in some scenes there appear to be thirty or so Vikings, and yet their number never seems to diminish, at some point you stop caring about how many Karl Urban has dispatched, because there's no way to tell if his odds are improving.

I will give the movie points for reaching new levels of entertainment in villain plummeting. (Hint to other heroes – when traversing a narrow mountain pass with your enemies, try to get them to tie themselves together.) If you take the climactic mountain battle scene by itself, we can declare success in achieving Awesomely Bad. For example, in a normal movie, if you knew that Vikings landed on the East Coast of the North America, but the mountains they are crossing appear to be the Canadian Rockies, you would cry “Improbable!” But in a movie like this, you see Vikings crossing the Canadian Rockies, and you think “Awesome!”

I find that I have gone on a long time about a movie I didn’t really like very much. Hmmm. I’ll come back later and tell you about the other movies I saw last week that were actually good.

Trivia: This is a remake of an Oscar-nominated 1987 film, also about Vikings and a native people, in this case the Sami of Norway. I’ll have to see if I track that one down.


P.S. Go see Gran Turino, with Clint Eastwood – it’s Awesome.

Movie Moment - French for Christmas

I highly recommend to you the 2005 film “Joyeux Noel.” Based on the spontaneous Christmas Eve and Christmas truce that occurred in the trenches of World War I - in this case between French, Scottish, and German soldiers - it stars a bunch of people I had never heard of, and this guy:


Gary Lewis, who was the dad in "Billy Elliot," and boxed Leonardo DiCaprio in “Gangs of New York.”

It’s a fantastic movie – great story, well acted, beautifully shot.

I particularly enjoyed the tension shown in the movie between the ability of religion (Christianity, in this case) to be a bridge to peace, or a tool of propaganda. (For an example, the bishop’s little homily at the end is real – it was given at Westminster Abbey in 1915.)

So, if you’ve gone through your collection of Christmas movies already this year, maybe it’s time to add a new one! Merry Christmas!

Movie Moment: Hey! It's --- Sean Bean

The other day I wrote about villain plummeting, and mentioned the James Bond movie "GoldenEye" as one example. At the time I couldn’t remember the name of the villain, or who played him.

Then, this weekend, I happened to catch the end of "GoldenEye" on Telemundo.

Yeah, Telemundo. This weekend they’re showing "Braveheart." En espanol.

Anyway, there was "GoldenEye," and upon seeing the bad guy, I said, “Hey! It’s Sean Bean!”

I like that Sean Bean. He is a very versatile actor, and like Gary Oldman, was on the verge of becoming known solely for portraying villains before branching out into other things.

My Sean Bean favorites:

Villains:
“Patriot Games” – He has a scar above his eye from where Harrison Ford hit him with a boat hook. Awesome.
“GoldenEye”
“Ronin”
“National Treasure” – Not my favorite movie, but he sells it!
“The Island”

Non-villains:
“The Lord of the Rings” – His most famous role, Boromir. I teared up at his death scene. You did, too, admit it. It’s ok, we’re all friends here.
“North Country” – This is a great movie. You should watch it.

Ones I Haven’t Seen Yet But Would Like To:
“Troy” – He plays Odysseus. I heard the movie itself was ok, but I think he’d make a great Odysseus.
“Flightplan” – The Jodi Foster airplane thriller.

Be on the lookout for Sean Bean! You never know where he’ll turn up.

Movie Moment: Villain Plummeting

You know something that happens a lot in movies? Villains plummet to their deaths.

Think about it. In any movie that has a villain – generally in the genres of action, adventure, or horror* – there tend to be fairly standard ways for villains, both the henchman and boss variety, to come to their ignominious end. And one of those ways is plummeting.

This makes sense, I suppose. If you have a conflict-based story, the audience needs an act of great dramatic finality to signal the end of the conflict. And falling from a great height certainly fits that bill.

Here’s a partial list of movies that feature plummeting as the means of dispatching the bad guy, and the villain who falls. These are often combination deaths – featuring some sort of wound and plummet. The only one on here that I think is recent enough to be a spoiler is “The Dark Knight” - so skip that one if you haven't seen it.

“King Kong” – King Kong (Maybe the First Movie Plummet, and the one by which all others must be judged – also, combo! – shot by bi-planes – but really, ‘twas beauty killed the beast)
“Snow White and Seven Dwarves” – The Evil Queen (combo! – hit by lightning, crushed by boulder!)
“Sleeping Beauty” – Maleficent (combo! – stabbed with sword)
“The Land Before Time” – Sharptooth (the T-Rex – combo! Then the cute dinosaurs push a rock on him!)
“Return of the Jedi” – Emperor Palpatine (Darth Maul doesn’t count – he was already cut in half)
“Cliffhanger” – John Lithgow (combo! – helicopter he’s in blows up!)
“Die Hard” – Hans Gruber (combo – shot!)
“Masters of the Universe” – Skeletor (the live action one – oh yes, I went there)
“Batman” (1989 – Tim Burton) – The Joker
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” – Mola Rom (combo! – eaten by crocodiles!)
“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” – that blonde lady
“Last of the Mohicans” – Magua (combo! – repeatedly stabbed by Chingachgook)
“Beauty and the Beast” – Gaston
"The Mask of Zorro" - Both bad guys plummet (the cart one is tangled on actually falls on the other one, and then they both fall some more)
“James Bond: Goldeneye” – The Main Bad Guy (combo! – crushed by falling antenna!)
“The Dark Knight” – Two-Face

And if you consider being sucked into the eternal void of space “plummeting,” there are several more, most notably the Aliens in “Alien” and “Aliens.”

Sub-genre: Plummeting Into Lava/Molten Metal
"Godzilla" (1985) - Godzilla
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” – T1000
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” – Frollo
“Alien 3” – Baby Alien (and Ripley, sniff)
“Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” – Gollum

(Frollo and Gollum's demise are straight out of the books.)

This is in no way a complete list, of course. Feel free to share your favorite plummet that I may have forgotten.

As you can tell from the list, Disney villains have a great habit of plummeting, which, as this site points out, is useful because you don’t have to show the body, and it removes the hero from being the person who actually kills the villain.

Other common ways for villains to die are being consumed by cosmic forces, blown to smithereens, electrocuted, crushed to death, or some combination of those. And as much as Disney has used falling, they have also come up with some truly horrifying final fates (thanks Alex!), like being stabbed by a boat (Ursula in “The Little Mermaid”), and being eaten by hyenas after surviving a plummet (Uncle Scar in “The Lion King”). As we said above, these kind of endings provide great dramatic finality, and put the villain – who usually spends the movie trying to exert power over others - up against forces over which they have no control. Plummeting certainly fits that bill, as the force the villain comes face to face with is, well, gravity.

*Interestingly, westerns tend to avoid this kind of thing. Let’s chalk it up to thematic need for one man (or woman) to triumph over another (or several).

Movie Moment - The Other Comic Book Movies

The recent death of Paul Newman made me start thinking back on great movies I had seen him in (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting), and ones I haven’t seen and really need to (Cool Hand Luke). I also remembered the last movie I saw him in was the excellent Road to Perdition, with Tom Hanks and Jude Law. And that led to the recollection that Road to Perdition was originally a comic book.

I have resisted writing about comic books in the past because, well, most people think comic books are dumb. Guys tend to have a more nostalgic attachment to them due to things like Halloween costumes, Underoos, and the Superfriends cartoon which translates into a mild to medium appreciation as adults. But most girls tend to think comic books are dumb. At least, the girl I am married to does.

I’ll probably attempt to explain why I like comic books later, in a very long post in which I will reveal waaaaay too much about myself. Hollywood, at least, is very much in a comic book mood lately – with the highest grossing blockbusters this summer being based directly on comic book characters or on conventions found in them (Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hancock). But Hollywood has also realized something for a while now that the general population has not – there are more kinds of comic books than superhero comics. It’s just that in general when we think comic books, we think Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, but since the beginning of comic books they have encompassed multiple genres, from Westerns to horror to romance to biography.

So, in the interest of broadening horizons and deepening knowledge – some notable movies based on comic books, arranged by genre, with brief commentary.

The Supernatural:
30 Days of Night – vampires in Alaska!
Constantine – Theology, horror, and superheroes meet at last!
The Crow

More Traditional, But Not As Famous, Super-Heroics:
The Mask – A fine film!
Men In Black
Mystery Men
The Rocketeer – An underrated film, I feel.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Timecop – Van Damme! at the top of his game.

Crime Drama:
Art School Confidential – Art school murder mystery.
From Hell – Johnny Depp, Jack the Ripper, and based on the comic book by Alan Moore, who may be the best comic book writer ever.
A History of Violence – Viggo Mortensen. Be warned – we were expecting the violence – it’s in the title. We weren’t expecting all the sex.
Road to Perdition
Sin City
Wanted – In the original work (which features way too much of – well, everything – the characters are supervillain assassins – you know, with powers and stuff).

Miscellaneous:
300 – Pectoral muscles feature much less strongly in the source material. Both this and Sin City were by Frank Miller, whose "Batman:Year One" was a major influence on Batman Begins.
American Splendor
Ghost World – Scarlett Johanson and Steve Buscemi. Suburban teenage drama.
Persepolis - Academy-award nominated animated movie of the autobiography of an Iranian immigrant.
V for Vendetta – Jeni really liked this one – another Alan Moore piece.

Ones to Look Out For In ’09:
Whiteout – Antarctic murder mystery.
Watchmen – Maybe the best work by the best comic book writer. We’ll see how the movie matches up.

Of course, these are only the English-language movies. There is a whole world of Japanese and European comic books, and comic book movies, that is too vast for me to even try to comprehend. These are also only the movies based on comic books, as opposed to comic strips - like The Addams Family (snap, snap).

Movie Moment: Stranger Than Fiction

I heartily recommend to you the movie "Stranger Than Fiction." Perhaps you remember the trailer from a few years back (2006). Written by Zach Helm, the story is about IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), who hears a voice in his head - it is the narrator (Emma Thompson) describing his life as it goes on around him. Things get a little more dire when she says, "Little did he know that this seemingly innocuous event would mean his imminent death." This leads eventually to the office of Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), and the following conversation in which Dr. Hilbert attempts to better understand Harold's problem, and which is one of my new favorite scenes from any movie ever:

Dr. Jules Hilbert: I've devised a test. How exciting is that? Composed of 23 questions which I think might help uncover more truths about this narrator. Now Howard...
Harold: Harold!
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold - these may seem silly but your candor is paramount.
Harold: Ok.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: So. We know it's a woman's voice. The story involves your death. It's modern. It's in English and I'm assuming the author has a cursory knowledge of the city.
Harold: Sure.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: O.k. good. Question one. Has anyone recently left any gifts outside your home? Anything. Gum, money, a large wooden horse.
Harold: I'm sorry?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Just answer the question.
Harold: No.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Do you find yourself inclined to solve murder mysteries in large luxurious homes to which you...
Harold: No.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Let me finish. - To which you may or may not have been invited?
Harold: No, no, no.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Alright. On a scale of one to ten, what would you consider the likelihood you might be assassinated?
Harold: Assassinated?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: One being very unlikely, ten being expecting it around every corner.
Harold: I have no idea.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: O.k. let me rephrase.
[takes a deep breath]
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Are you the king of anything?
Harold: Like what?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Anything. King of the lanes at the local bowling alley.
Harold: King of the lanes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: King of the lanes, king of the trolls…
Harold: King of the Trolls?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Yes, uh - a clandestine land found underneath your floor boards.
Harold: No.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hmm?
Harold: No. That's ridiculous.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Agreed. Let's start with ridiculous and move backwards. Now, was any part of you at one time part of something else?
Harold: Like, do I have someone else's arms?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Well is it possible at one time that you were made of stone, wood, lye, varied corpse parts? Or, earth made holy by rabbinical elders?
Harold: No. Look, look. I'm sorry, but what do these questions have to do with anything?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Nothing. The only way to find out what story you're in is to determine what stories you're not in. Odd as it may seem, I've just ruled out half of Greek literature, seven fairy tales, ten Chinese fables, and determined conclusively that you are not King Hamlet, Scout Finch, Miss Marple, Frankenstein's Monster, or a golem. Hmm? Aren't you relieved to know you're not a golem?
Harold: [Trying to be patient] Yes. I am relieved to know that I am not a golem.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Good. [pause] Do you have magical powers?

End Scene

Movie Moment: Violence!

My wife occasionally goes out of town for a weekend at a conference, or retreat of some kind. When she does, I like to buy some of those really cheap oven pizzas, and rent a bunch of movies that I want to see, but she doesn't. The consistent theme in such films is that they feature people committing acts of violence against each other. Now, Jeni is not against violence in movies per se. She liked "V for Vendetta" and all the "Lord of the Rings." I watched "The Departed", and even though it featured three of Jeni's top ten Least Favorite Things to see in Movies (1.horrible violence, 2.flagrant swearing, 3.an unhappy ending - the others are 4.gratuitous sex, 5.Japanese animation, 6.animals being hurt, 7.a heavy metal soundtrack, 8.a gratuitous hip hop soundtrack, 9.gratuitous vampires, and 10.Nicholas Cage as an action hero), I made her watch it because I knew she would think it was good. And even after seeing multiple shootings, arm breakings, face smashings, and one man dropped off a building, she agreed that it was a great film. In contrast, we started watching "Kung Fu Hustle," and one guy gets his leg chopped off with an axe and she refused to watch any more. So when it comes to violence, I have to pick and choose carefully.

Here are the movies I watched during my last bachelor weekend, and my favorite elements of each:

"Iron Monkey"
Hong Kong action. A teenage boy battling adults with an umbrella. An evil Shaolin monk with telescoping sleeves which could punch through walls. A climactic battle between three men balanced atop ten foot wooden posts - which were on fire.

"Once Upon a Time in the West"
Sergio Leone's very....slow....camera....moves (Westerns are about space). Henry Fonda as the bad guy. Henry Fonda's line, "Suspenders and a belt? You can't trust a man that can't trust his own pants." After which he shoots the man twice in the chest and once in the gut, severing his suspenders and belt, and making the dying man's pants fall down.

"Leon: The Professional"
Jean Reno as a hitman who apparently subsists entirely on milk. Gary Oldman as crazy bad guy. 12-year old Natalie Portman using a sniper rifle.

"Spirited Away"
Miyazaki masterpiece. Utterly bizarre and ultimately touching story about a haunted bathhouse, growing up, a boy who is also a dragon who is also a river(?!), living soot balls, a monster named "No-Face," and frog people. One the most original and engaging imaginary worlds I have ever seen.

My list of violent movies (or anime, or both) to see is quite long - so you'll probably see one of these again...

P.S. Guess who learned to use the link button! Thanks, Dani!

Movie Moment - Morgan Freeman and My First Date With My Wife

The year was 1998. It was Christmas break after my freshman year of college, and this nice girl I had become friends with had made the trek down to Palestine, Tx to visit my family. I needed a date - something good. But we were in Palestine, so we settled for the movies. I don't remember what else was on, but based on the list of releases from January 1998, and what I know about Palestine's six screen theater, our choices were - Wag the Dog, Half Baked, Spice World, Fallen, Titanic (still out), and Hard Rain. We had both seen Titanic, I don't like scary movies, so Spice World and Fallen were out, so that narrowed the field a bit. I decided to trust Morgan Freeman.

It's not hard to see why. At the time I had only seen Driving Miss Daisy, Glory, The Shawshank Redemption, and Se7en. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and Unforgiven were also in his recent past. I had not seen them yet, but I heard good things. So we went to see Hard Rain.

It was...not great. It turns out Morgan Freeman can't carry an entire movie by himself. But that's really the only bad thing you can say about the man.

Since then, I've been a little more careful in my Morgan Freeman selections, and tried to weed out the shows like Hard Rain and Deep Impact, that are trying to buy a little credibility with a casting coup (I'm looking at you High Crimes and Sum of All Fears!). Since then, it's been Million Dollar Baby, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, March of the Penguins, Bruce Almighty, and Lucky Number Slevin (in no particular order). Not bad, I think.

Morgan Freeman movies I haven't seen yet and would like to: Feast of Love, Gone Baby Gone, Amistad, and maybe The Bonfire of the Vanities and Nurse Betty. Prolific, isn't he?

Oh, despite the so-so movie (with a particularly horrible end - the end credits rolled to: "Flood" by Jars of Clay), Jeni and had our first kiss later that evening. Thank you, Morgan Freeman, and I'm glad you're feeling better.

Movie Moment - The Three Best Lines From Lord of the Rings

I will present them in order of awesomeness.

#3 - Return of the King
"We will burn, burn like the heathen kings of old!" - Denethor

#2 - Fellowship of the Ring
"It must taken to Mount Doom and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came!" - Elrond

#1 - The Two Towers
"I fought my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside." - Gandalf

My favorite piece of Lord of the Rings trivia is that Tolkien was asked by his publisher to write a sequel to The Hobbit. He turned in The Lord of the Rings as a one volume work, with a three-hundred page appendix.

Belated Purpose Statement: Movie Moment

I love movies.

They are the twentieth century art form - a fantastic blend of all the arts of drama, stagecraft, music, art, and photography. A collaborative effort of (usually) hundreds of people to create a lasting work. They can be ridiculous or sublime.

Basically, I really love movies, and like talking about them. This seems like a good place...

And as long as we're here, did you know Gary Oldman was in "The Scarlet Letter?" The 1995 one with Demi Moore and Robert Duvall? The one that was really, really, bad? The one that completely changed the ending of the book, and I'm not saying the end of the book was good, because it wasn't, and I'm still not sure what exactly happens in it, but still, it wasn't what happened in the movie.

I hadn't thought about that movie for years (thank God), but I was looking at Oldman's filmography after being impressed by him again in "The Dark Knight" and lo and behold, there's the "Scarlet Letter." I remember the one redeeming part of that terrible, terrible film being the guy who played the minister, and there's the reason - because it was Gary Oldman.

Other Gary Oldman favorites: "Batman Begins" (of course), "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (make sure to include Gary in your 'people who have played werewolves' list), "The Contender", "The Fifth Element", "Lost in Space" (shut up - I liked it!), "Air Force One", and "Leon: The Professional."

Can't Believe I Haven't Seen These: "Immortal Beloved" (Beethoven!), "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (Dracula!), and "JFK" (Lee Harvey Oswald!)

Movie Moment: The Not-So Dark Knight

Another day, another Batman movie. No, just kidding, I am very, very excited about the Dark Knight.

The rule of thumb for what makes fantasy/science fiction/superhero films and stories good is that the audience is asked to suspend their disbelief for one or two fantastic elements, and as long as everything else around the fantastic elements follows naturally, the story can be considered a good story. So, for instance, in Christopher Nolan's Gotham city, police, criminals, assistant district attorneys, and faithful butlers react as you might expect them to when confronted with a man dressed as a bat.

And then there's the movie pictured above. Which goes in....a bit of a different direction.

Let me be clear here. I love the 1960s "Batman" show. When I was a kid, we lived in the boonies and got three or so channels. When we went to Ft. Worth to visit grandparents, we were flabbergasted by over ten channels! Ten! And on one of those channels, in the afternoons they would show reruns of "ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-Batman!" I can count on one hand how many times I saw both parts of a two part adventure, but that was a minor quibble. There he was, on screen, driving the Batmobile, flinging Bat-a-rangs, and answering the phone from Commissioner Gordon. It was (intentionally) comic books come to life.

It catches a lot of grief these days from people who prefer their Batman to be a grim avenger. But this show came out during the heavily censored era of comic books, when Batman and Superman were best buddies, and when he had a dog named Ace, the Bat-Hound. The next big media adaptation of the "Dark Knight" would be on Superfriends. It wasn't until the '80s that a certain Frank Miller brought Batman wholly back to his pulp era roots (though others had helped take the first steps). Until "Batman Begins" everyone else has tried for a mish-mash approach, blending the camp of the early days with the grit of the present (and the very, very early days, when Batman would occasionally push people out of windows) with varying degrees of success. But there is no mish-mash to 1960s-era "Batman."

As a kid, I loved this show. And one day my dad came home with "Batman" - the movie! The first feature length Batman film, it was originally released in 1966, after the first season of the TV show. But for me, it was brand new. It had the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, and Catwoman - all together! They team up with a gadget that dehydrates humans into dust, and they decide to hold the "World Security Council" for ransom. (Not a bad plan, actually.) It features a whole lot of Bam! Pow! Zap! action, a Navy surplus submarine, a very funny scene where Batman is trying desperately to get rid of a bomb and keeps running into nuns, women with baby carriages, puppies, etc., and the infamous "Bat-shark-repellent." I got to see the whole adventure - no "to-be continued" no "same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." It was the greatest thing since Batman and Robin teamed up with Scooby Doo and Shaggy. It was completely ridiculous - and it was great.

I could read at the time, and had some 80's era Batman comics, including part of Miller's "Year One." They were quite different from the televised Batman. But in my childlike innocence I could more clearly see and celebrate the similarities (Batman - on screen!) than criticize the differences.

So, here's to the Batman in all his varieties - whether driving a Tumbler or a sweet red and black number with tailfins, whether "old chum" or "dark knight." Long may your Bat-Signal shine!

P.S. My sister reminded me of the denouement of the "Batman with a lit bomb scene" - the priceless line, "Sometimes you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

Movie Moment - The Summer of Kevin Peter Hall

Earlier this year I did something I have wanted to do for a long time. I watched "Predator." The 1987 original, mind you. I had seen the end on TBS or something a long time ago, and now, in its full unfettered glory, I saw Arnold, Jesse Ventura, and Carl Weathers in their prime, kind of.

21 Years Too Late Spoiler Alert: The best moment is still when Arnold realizes the Predator only kills people it considers a threat, and encourages the movie's token woman not to pick up the gun, but "Get to the Choppa!!" (That's "chopper" for those who don't speak heavily Austrian-accented English.)

I did a little wiki-research on "Predator" (film), and discovered that none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the Predator. Depending on whose story you believe, he left because 1) he didn't like that you couldn't see his face, and that he couldn't see at all in the monster make-up, or 2) the producers realized the 5'8'' Van Damme against the 6'2'' Schwarzenegger looked a little mis-matched.

Anyway, in steps the 7'2'' Kevin Peter Hall, fresh off his turn filling the Bigfeet in "Harry and the Hendersons." Sasquatch and Predator in the same summer.

But it gets better.


My friend Matt is a youth minister in town, we get together on a regular basis for prayer and mutual encouragement. One day we were encouraging each other by talking about how awesome "Predator" was, and he told me this story:

His dad was going to take the kid out to the movies, and really wanted to see "Predator." Matt's mom did not want 9-year old Matt to see "Predator." So Matt's dad took him to a different, PG rated movie...and then stayed in the same seat and watched the next movie, which was "Predator."

The best part - the PG movie they actually paid to see was
- "Harry and the Hendersons."

Young Matt, though he did not know it at the time, got a double feature of Kevin Peter Hall.

Young Matt was not too traumatized by "Predator." He remembers liking it better than "Harry and the Hendersons."

Sadly, Hall died in 1991 at the age of 35, after contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion.

But through the wonderful medium of film, you can still see Hall really freak out on John Lithgow, flash-fry Jesse Ventura, arm wrestle Carl Weathers, and beat the tar out of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Well done, Kevin. Well done.