DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE

TYPICAL REVIEW

"It is with great surprise that a movie with such an exploitative name... would manage to emerge from the pack as one of the best examples of the kind of thought provoking little horror film Hammer once produced with ease." - DVDVerdict.Com

THE PLOT

There's a mysterious killer stalking the back alleys of White Chapel ripping up prostitutes. His name isn't Jack, though, it's Henry, as in Dr. Henry Jekyll. In this extremely loose adaptation of the Stevenson novel, the not-so-good doctor is harvesting organs for his experiments. It seems the female hormones the organs contain are the key to an elixir which will drastically retard the aging process, perhaps indefinitely. But just when he is on the verge of success, Jekyll's supply of fresh female corpses runs out and he's forced to go out and acquire new ones himself. Upon taking the first dose of his concoction, Jekyll does indeed feel different, just not quite in the way he hoped. It seems the high concentration of female hormones has turned Dr. Jekyll into Ms. Hyde. (In less than a minute and with no messy surgery involved.) At first, this impromptu sex change is a boon to Jekyll, as he can remain above suspicion while his "sister" continues collecting specimens. Unfortunately for the doctor, Hyde begins to develop her own distinct personality, and decides she would like to give Jekyll the boot from their shared body. With the police closing in, Dr. Jekyll must race to complete his research before he loses his mind to Hyde or his life to the hangman's noose.

THE POINT

Beginning in the mid 1950s with the excellent Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer Studios became synonymous with high quality horror films featuring new interpretations of classic movie monsters. But as the 1970s ushered in a new era of permissive censorship, Hammer found its audience drifting away to grittier fare. So, in an effort to prop up its declining ticket sales, Hammer began to amp up the exploitation elements in its own productions. Take this movie as an example. Legend has it that screenwriter Brian Clemens was having a few lunchtime drinks with the head of Hammer Studios Jimmy Carreras and jokingly suggested to him the title Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. In a move that would make Roger Corman proud, Carreras had a poster and advertising campaign in place two days later, without so much as a single line of the script committed to paper. The trailers which eventually preceded the release of the film promised sleaze aplenty, including the sexual transformation of a man into a woman right before your very eyes!

The problem for the cheap thrill seekers is that the movie never really delivers on any of those promises. There are only a couple of quick shots of gratuitous nudity, less blood than most prime-time television shows, and absolutely NO sexual transformation right before your very eyes. Instead, what you do get with Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde is a pretty enjoyable thriller in the classic Hammer style. The Victorian sets and costuming are authentic and lush looking. Director Roy Ward Baker provides an atmosphere which is appropriately foggy and claustrophobic. And best of all, the acting is solid, particularly from the two leads.

Ralph Bates was a Hammer staple in the early 70s and is in top mad scientist form here as Dr. Jekyll. He's coldly detached, obsessively focused on his work, and evasive of the romantic advances of his neighbor. And in a departure from the source material, Bates' Jekyll is already a killer before he ever takes a sip of his formula. His argument is basically that of the Utilitarianist, that his actions will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. What's a few murdered prostitutes in exchange for longer lives for everyone else? Two-time Bond girl Martine Beswick (whom we just saw as the satanic puppy breeder in Devil Dog: Hound Of Hell) is equally good as Sister Hyde, giving her an unique personality rather than simply playing her as Jekyll in a skirt. Even her reasons for killing are different from the doctor's. Where Jekyll has ostensibly "good" reasons for murder, Hyde is just doing it to survive; better them than her, you know. And since the actors do such a credible job of establishing their individual personalities, the subsequent struggle for dominance comes off as believable.

Of course, regardless of the quality of the other parts of the production, the whole movie revolves around the sex change gimmick. And it starts off just like you think it would. Upon first transforming, but before Hyde's personality develops, Jekyll does what (ashamedly) most men probably would given the circumstance; he takes of his (her) shirt and stares in the mirror for a loooong time. And then he stares some more. Really he just keeps standing there staring until somebody bangs on the door demanding entry. But as Hyde's persona develops, so does the strangeness. Notably weird are the scenes which involve the doctor being caught mid-transformation where we are treated to images of Ms. Hyde with man-hands and Dr. Jekyll trussed up in a corset. But the most bizarre thing has to be the love rectangle which develops over the course of the film. Susan, the nice girl next door, loves Jekyll. Jekyll is equally fond of Susan but is too mired in his work to bother with her. Howard, Susan's brother and Jekyll's best friend, takes a liking (okay, lusting) to Hyde. Hyde, in turn, becomes attracted to Howard. And then Hyde and Howard start kissing and groping one another, at which point you start yelling, "Wait a minute! Ain't that dude making out with his best friend?"

Hey, it's an honest question, and the answer revolves around just who exactly Hyde is supposed to be in this movie. In the original Robert Louis Stevenson novella, and most of the subsequent movie adaptations, Mr. Hyde was Jekyll's repressed darker nature set free. Jekyll and Hyde were separate personalities, but still the same person. It was Stevenson's simple but effective way to explore the struggle between the impulses for good and evil inside each of us. But since this movie starts out with Jekyll as a murderer himself, the notion that Ms. Hyde is somehow his Jungian shadow self is immediately chucked out the window. The next obvious guess as to what Hyde represents is kind of Jungian too, the idea that she somehow represents Jekyll's repressed feminine side (his anima) brought to the surface. But that doesn't really work here either, because if "anima" refers to "the sum total of all those parts of the man's psyche that are considered in some way female and which are therefore repressed", then what exactly does Hyde indicate about what Jekyll believes of women? That they're all murderous sociopaths? No, in that case, he wouldn't have feelings for the innocent Susan and struggle so hard to save her near the end of the film. Some reviewers have tried to see a homosexual allegory, but Jekyll's attraction to Susan probably does away with that idea also.

Really, once you dispense with all the pop-psych theories, the best explanation for Ms. Hyde is that she is in fact a completely separate person from Jekyll, a true sister if you will. And this makes sense from a scientific perspective for the simple reason that men and women are (wait for it) different. Take for instance the 2005 study from The University of Alberta in Canada which showed that men and women use different areas of the brain even while working on the same task. Or the 2006 article in the NeuroImage journal which indicates that the sexes are hardwired to process emotional stress differently. There's tons more out there, but you get the idea. Down to the DNA, men and women are biologically different, and it's all written in stone at the moment a human egg is fertilized with either an X or Y chromosome. From the scientific standpoint, for a man to truly change into a woman would require more than cosmetic surgery, it would actually require the man to become a different person all the way down to his genes.

But even if you accept the inevitability of the physiological differences, couldn't Jekyll and Hyde still be the same person on a spiritual level. Isn't the soul supposed to be androgynous or gender-neutral? Well, from the Catholic viewpoint, no, not really. The Church holds to Aquinas' hylomorphic view of the innate oneness of the body and soul. You can't view one or the other as disposable because a person needs both in order to actually be a person. Why else would we even bother saying every Sunday in the Nicene Creed that "we look for the resurrection of the dead" if our bodies weren't an integral part of our identity? The body and soul were created as a psychosomatic union and, after the resurrection, they'll be a unity again. And since this union is complete and eternal then it stands to reason, as philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it, "no pervasive feature of either body or soul is insulated from the other; every sound in the soul echoes in the body, and every sound in the body echoes in the soul." If the body is a woman, the soul is a woman, and vice versa. In short, souls have genders.

All of which is a long way to go just to find an answer to the simple but bizarre question on whether it was Dr. Jekyll or Sister Hyde who was playing kissy face with poor Howard. And truthfully, as the dying Jekyll transforms back and forth between himself and Hyde, it's hard to imagine that Howard was reflecting on old quotes from Thomas Aquinas. He was probably thinking, "Wait a minute! Dude, was I just making out with my best friend?"

THE STINGER

Pope John Paul II wrote that "the body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial, and thus to be a sign of it". Gender is important because God made it so. Like all of His creation, it's meant help us see certain truths about Him. One of the most poetic notions in Christian cosmology is the image of the universe as a woman which God, like a man, enters into and impregnates with life. In that same sense, all of us are "feminine" in our union with God. He enters, we receive. That's one of the main reasons the Church continues to use feminine terms to describe itself and puts forth Mary as its highest model as she exclaims, "Let it be done to me".

This kind of understanding of gender in the Scriptures is likely why The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger required a proposed inclusive-language English translation of the Catechism to be retranslated and rescinded the approval of the inclusive-language translations of the NRSV and RNAB Bibles which had been in use for two years in the United States. As Peter Kreeft notes, it is likely that "something as deliberate and distinctive and as all-pervasive in Scripture as God's he-ness is no mere accident." It's probably a good idea to try and fully understand why the gender exclusive language is there before we go mucking around with it.

REVIEW: Pirates of The Carribean: At World's End

NOTE: Minor Possible Spoilers.

The first thing you need to know before going to see the third and (for now) final "Pirates of the Carribean" installment is that if you weren't geeking-out over the first two films' surprisingly rich internal-mythology, attention-rewarding multi-plotting and laundry-list of talismans, curses, monster-species and competing character factions but instead just sort of let all the detail wash over you while you grooved on the eye-candy spectacle and Johnny Depp's gonzo turn as Captain Jack Sparrow... Well, then you should probably watch them AGAIN with both ears on the names/allegiances/locales/backstories "fanboy" details before heading out to #3, or there's fair odds you're going to feel a little lost this time around.

Indeed, "At World's End" quickly reveals itself as a quintessential creature of the ongoing Geek Age of Cinema: It's all about expanding-on, playing-out and ultimately paying-off plot threads, countdowns and mysteries that've been building since the original film, the cinematic equivalent of an individual comic book (or installment of a serialized novel, for that matter) which draws it's power not only from it's own singular events and merits but because it's also the moment where a certain background-story or lingering detail from so-and-so many issues ago FINALLY gets it's payoff. All of which is a more analytical way of saying, before anything else, that "Pirates 3" works to the extent that it's the final part of a whole, and while it has it's own story-points and character-arcs to work with it gets it's REAL "oomph" from what has been carried over from the earlier films. Traditionally, this has been THE damning criticism of any sequel or outside-influenced film in general: That it doesn't fully work without the "backup" of it's external material.

But now, I wonder... given the "age of cross-platforming and multimedia" we've entered, if it really still ought to be. Canceled TV shows continuing their "official" continuity in post-cancellation movies and comic books, film websites offering "webisodes" expanding on pre-movie character mythology, animated short-subject "prequels" or "in-betweenquels" coming out on DVD between Blockbuster installments... these are all commonplace, mainstream movie-culture goings on now. Yes, fine, those of us in the "Geek Community" are pre-acclimated, most of us having spent decent time pouring through comic-book continuity where huge reveals came with yellow editorial boxes instructing us on which back-issue of a completely different book to track down in order to fully "get" what was happening. But in a time when "Lost" is a mega-hit network TV show and the third "Lord of The Rings" chapter is a Best Picture winner, is it really proper to damn the third "Pirates of the Carribean" for operating under the presumption that it's intended audience has already seen, and was paying attention during, the first two - especially when they're two of the highest-grossing movies of all time?

Make of that whatever you will, but the plain fact is that I DID see the first two, I WAS paying attention and as such, "PoTC: AWE" worked for me. Worked like hell, in fact. 2 hours and 45 minutes of elaborately-staged action, terrifically imagined monsters and dizzyingly-dense exploration of franchise mythology. It's a massive, preposterously entertaining winner.

Fully recapping the plot, as it would also require recapping the other two movies as well, would spoil a lot of the fun, but suffice it to say that it eventually boils down to a series of big-stakes shell-games being played by dozens of characters with several dozens of magic tokens, items/persons of interest and valuable information amid a full-blown naval war between the world's Pirates and the British Navy - which has been hijacked by Lord Beckett, the evil mastermind of the East India Trading Company (cute.) As of movie #2, Beckett has turned demonic sea-scourge Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his crew of human/fish hybrid monsters into his own personal warrior/slaves by capturing the Dead Man's Chest containing Jones' disembodied heart. He's using Jones and his submersible demon-ship, the Flying Dutchman, as a weapon to enforce total control of the sea trade. Facing extermination, the world's remaining "Pirate Lords" have been called to a battle-planning session - part of which requires that undead Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush,) possibly-tragic lovers Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and their crew to cross-over into the Land of the Dead to fetch recently-deceased Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davy Jones' Locker. And that's just for starters.

What makes the labrynthine mythos of this series work so well and move so briskly is that the writers openly embrace the inherent "shiftiness" that comes from most of the characters being, well, PIRATES. As such, everyone has their own set of agendas and the double-crosses, backstabs and treachery flies fast and loose all over the place: Everyone is trying to get-over on everyone else, and their all expecting it to one degree or another. Will is still trying to save his father from Jones' captivity, Elizabeth wants revenge on Beckett (and she's wracked with guilt after murdering Jack to save her and her friends at the end of the last movie,) Jack is getting worse and worse at pretending he doesn't care about anyone but himself but seems clueless what to do about it, Jones wants his heart back, Chinese pirate Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) wants to stay on the winning side of history, Barbosa is hoping for the Pirate Lords' help in freeing the magically-imprisoned sea goddess Calypso to hopefully even the odds against Beckett/Jones, and at one point or another every one of them sets about trying to sell out all the others in order to accomplish their chosen ends.

swimming around in all that plot is an overarching story that's unquestionably the darkest and richest of the trilogy - it's a rare film that can turn the absurd image of a "beached" Godzilla-sized squid into an exchange that gives two of the previously most "surface-y" characters untold depths.. and then does the same thing for the entire bloody series reaching back. In the broad strokes, the film's buccaneers-versus-beaurocrats setup plays out less like a battle between Colonial-era law and open-seas anarchy than as a last stand of mythic maritime fantasy against enroaching reality: Magic compasses and octopus-faced sea monsters fighting for survival against gunpowder and trade-stamps. Frequently, this undercurrent of subtext bubbles up so fiercely that the film begins to resemble those of Terry Gilliam; who was making "absurdity-as-a-virtue" epic fantasies decades before "Pirates" made it a blockbuster template (irony-of-ironies: Gilliam's most-infamous recent troubled project to die in infancy: An offbeat fantasy/adventure starring Johnny Depp. OUCH.)

Amazingly, even though it STILL feels overstuffed with fish-men, giants, betrayals, twists, magic crabs, dimension-skipping and ships sailing on sand despite a nearly three-hour running time; it finds time and room to achieve an impressive number of non-visual goals: Explaining the function and origin of Davy Jones, offering a visual peak at just HOW manic Jack Sparrow's perception of the world around him seems to be, give Keira Knightley room and reason to do what she does best - i.e. swell her screen presence up to MASSIVE heights despite her dainty frame by sheer force of those amazingly expressive eyes and her incongruous gift for belting out rally-cry speeches like the "300" Spartans, and even set Orlando Bloom's Will Turner firmly back into his place as the principle HERO of the series (a feat which seemed implausible given how cheerfully #2 allowed co-star Depp to overtake the story.)

What else can you say about an action movie that can be summed up entirely by it's climactic setpeice battle: Two massive sail-ships, one of "good" Pirates and the other of evil fish-man monsters, firing cannon volleys at one another while circling a giant supernatural whirlpool? It has it's issues, it's silly as all get-out... but this is the kind of entertainment the movies were made for, the kind that justify the spectacle in the word "spectacular."

FINAL RATING: 8/10

COMING ATTRACTIONS: DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE

Working Class Hero

Yes, yes, covering "Plastic Ono"-era John Lennon for a Save Darfur album is just about the definition of "not punk rock." Y'know what else is "not punk rock?" Going around saying stuff is "not punk rock." At this point, it shouldn't come as any surprise that GreenDay can put together a metal-tinged mini-epic - but for some reason you still kinda say "This is who? Seriously? Wow."

Anyway; great song, great cover, great cause, great job. It being no secret that there is something really, really wrong with my wiring, however; the first time I heard it the idea immediately popped into my head to make an I'm-mostly-kidding-but-also-maybe-kinda-serious hagiographic music video tribute to the Super Mario Bros. Because they're blue-collar plumbers, see.. and also heroes. And because I grew up in the 80s and have a profoundly skewed way of mentally sorting-out the world around me.

So I did. Enjoy!

DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL

TYPICAL REVIEW

"It could be pretty creepy ... if it weren't so darn stupid." - Scott Weinberg, DVDTALK.COM

THE PLOT

A coven of satanists devise a scheme to cross breed a German Shepherd with Lucifer resulting in the birth of a litter of devil dogs. (That's as logical as it's gonna get, folks.) One of the evil pups is adopted off to the Barry family, who can't seem to understand why everyone but themselves finds the little nipper so darn creepy. It's not long before the Devil Puppy unleashes the dread power of its glowing green eyes on the family's devout Catholic maid, whose subsequent death is considered an accident by the Barrys. These kinds of "accidents" continue 0ver the next year or so as the dog slowly seduces mom and the kids over to the dark side. Dad, however, ever so slowly grows suspicious of the family pet, especially after the Devil Dog tries to convince him to put his own hand into the lawn mower. Not knowing where else to turn in order to defeat Satan, the beleaguered father cries out to God to... no wait, that's not what he does. The father flies to Ecuador so a tribal shaman can tattoo his palm. (Take that Satan!) With the Evil One's doom in hand, literally, Dad lures the Devil Dog into a final confrontation.

THE POINT

I have to admit I had high expectations for Devil Dog as the movie has, for lack of a better way of putting it, something of a pedigree. The director, Curtis Harrington, was a genre veteran who helmed such dubious achievements as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, Ruby, and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? Better yet, Devil Dog was written by The Karpfs, the same team who scripted Gargoyles (hands down one of the best made-for-TV horror films of the 70s) and A Cry In The Wilderness (hands down THE best man-bitten-by-a-rabid-skunk movie ever filmed.) The acting credits were also solid with Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, and Martine Beswick, all beloved genre stars. Heck, you even had Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards (Tony & Tia from Disney's Witch Mountain movies) once again playing brother and sister. And even if it didn't have all of that, it's still a movie about a DOG FROM HELL, which you think would guarantee a little cinematic fun.

But it doesn't, at least not enough. First off there's the not-so-special effects. It's not just that they're sub-par (that's often part of the fun of these movies, i.e. Robot Monster), it's that there shouldn't be any to begin with. If you think back on all of the effective devil-type movies, the horror is almost always in the suggestion of the evil rather than in the showing. Rosemary's Baby gives you only one blurry close-up of some devil-eyes and a claw. The Omen has the weirdest kid ever, but no monster. Night Of The Demon doesn't have one shot of the creature until the very last scene, and even then it might be a hallucination. Even The Exorcist, which does go full blown with the makeup and pea soup near the finale, spends most of its time in an excruciating build-up. It's frustrating, because the creepiest scenes in Devil Dog are exactly the ones that show the hound doing nothing but standing there watching, studying, plotting. (One of my cats does this a lot. Between that and the hairballs I'm beginning to question its origins.) Rather than stick with what works, however, the filmmakers decided what Devil Dog really needed was lime green glowing eyes, which appear whenever he's exerting his will. It's a real mood killer. And the less said about the dog's transformation at the end, the better. Let's just say that if a dog in a fright wig and plastic horns is the best Satan can do, he's been seriously overrated all these years. (And he probably really wears that red spandex body suit too.)

The effects would probably be more bearable if the story made a bit more sense. The script really feels like a rushed first draft, like an initial run through just to get the basic ideas on paper. Episodes are strung together piecemeal, with awkward transitions that jolt you right out of the story. The scene in which the family discovers the charred body of their maid is immediately followed by a scene of the family getting out of the car laughing and carrying on like nothing just happened. You spend a couple of minutes thinking what cold hearted cretins these people are before you learn that a year has passed for the characters. Occasions where the father discovers terrible things are happening in his household (the kids are caught scrawling images of demons on the walls, his loving wife informs him she's now the town tramp, his family reacts to the neighbor's death with scorn and laughter) are followed by moments of startling blandness. Where most movies try to escalate the tension as they speed to a conclusion, Devil Dog stumbles and lurches, never gaining any momentum.

And that's a shame, because Devil Dog actually has a good central idea, one not even touched on in it's big budget predecessors like The Exorcist or The Omen. In those films, Satan is pretty much in your face, trying to accomplish his goals by a show of power. But as Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (His business card must be the size of a postcard.) pointed out on the release of the New Rite of Exorcism in 1999, "Diabolical obsession is not the most frequent way the spirit of darkness exerts his influence...the harmful influence of the Devil and his evil spirits is normally exercised through deception, falsehoods, lies, and confusion."

In Devil Dog, the corruption and disintegration of the family takes place over a couple of years as the dog helps them gain the world, but lose their souls. Through the introduction of something as seemingly innocent as a puppy, the typical suburban family is eventually brought to the point where the father has no authority, the mother is a whore, and the children accept any means necessary to get the material things they want. (You know, this devil dog thing is starting to sound frighteningly plausible.) Really, if you ditch the whole third act nonsense involving the South American witch doctor and the glowing body art, Devil Dog shows (in a similar vein to Lewis' Screwtape Letters) that "the gentle, sliding slope of habitual small sins is better" than any big display of evil in achieving the Devil's goals.

Unfortunately, with all that cool subtext, the makers of Devil Dog went for the big action finale. (Well, if standing in front of a blue-screen while the projected image of a giant dog in a Halloween costume barks at you counts as big.) And why shouldn't they? Let's face it, levitating beds and 360 degree spinning heads are crowd pleasers. Thanks to the movies, even most Catholics think of exorcism in terms of the big formal ritual. But the Church recognizes the need to combat spirtual attacks at all times, not just those requiring the "Rituale Romanum". That's why the sacrament of baptism actually contains a prayer of exorcism as part of the ceremony, as do a number of ceremonies involving catechumens. Pope Leo XIII published a simple prayer of exorcism for use by all Catholics in their daily mediatations. Even the mass itself used to include a small prayer of exorcism, though that has slowly disappeared since Vatican II. (Feel free to read that however you want to.) As St. Augustine noted, this doesn’t imply that we’re all "possessed". It’s just a recognition of the daily battle against temptation and the daily obsessions we all have that interfere with our spiritual advancement. Because, if we take the time to look, it's likely we all have a Devil Dog lurking around somewhere, panting sweet nothings into our ears.

THE STINGER

The Church readily admits that a good number of the cases in history blamed on demonic possession were probably due to pathological mental conditions unrecognized by the medicine of the time. That’s why the Catholic Church doesn’t just jump straight into an exorcism. As the Catechism points out, "Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church. Illness, especially psychological illness, is a very different matter; treating this is the concern of medical science. Therefore, before an exorcism is performed, it is important to ascertain that one is dealing with the presence of the Evil One, and not an illness." Only when all other explanations have been exhausted is demonic possession considered a likely cause and the ritual of exorcism given the go-ahead, and even then "the priest must proceed with prudence, strictly observing the rules established by the Church."

But inherent in all of this is the belief that these things actually exist, that imperceivable "somethings" actually influence our lives on a daily basis. That's a hard sell these days. But there's hope. Emerging scientific concepts like String Theory are beginning to put forth the notion that empirically unmeasurable forces actually coexist and interact with our perceived reality. And while that absolutely in no way proves the existence of anything "spiritual", it does seem to be a baby step in the right direction. Who knows, given a few more generations, science might advance to the point where it once again recognizes something everybody else seems to already have known.

Finally, something not-awful looking from "Transformers"

"Transformers" finally has it's round of "real" trailers hitting theatres and TV, and wouldn't you know it the streak of me being either underwhelmed or utterly horrified by every single solitary promotional image, teaser or "leaked" image from the film is more-or-less over. It's a good trailer, well cut with lots of action and buildup. Looks like every other Michael Bay movie, yeah, but you were expecting that - and every other Michael Bay movie had a great trailer, too. Michael Bay, after all, basically makes feature-length trailers.

See it here:
http://movies.yahoo.com/summer-movies/Transformers/1808716430/trailers/31

The bad news is, well... the Transformers themselves still look like ass. I'm aware that I may as well not even bring that up anymore, because no matter what people will jump to the immediate conclusion that it's just "fanboy" complaining that they don't look exactly like their cartoon counterparts, but I just can't ignore it: From a purely asthetic standpoint, the majority of these guys strike me as some of the most un-cool looking movie robots since "Saturn 3." I can appreciate the intricacy of all the little wheels and parts flipping around in the transforming animations, and there's certainly a cohesive "theme" going on - but, I'm sorry.. yuck. They all end up looking like generic H.R. Geiger knockoff "aliens" with car parts glued to them.

Oh, and what little dialogue/acting we're shown also sucks... but, again, it's Michael Bay. You were expecting that... though I'm surprised even Bay would serve up a trailer who's big slugline is "BRING IT!!!!" Sheesh...

In any case, Hollywood is expecting a pretty decent hit from this, so a mini-boom of mid-1980s toy/toon franchise movies is currently being greenlit. Most recent to the table: "Masters of The Universe," here reported on by CHUD's Devin Faraci...
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=10315

...who is really waaaaaaay too grumpy about this sort of thing for a guy reporting for a film geek news site named after a 1980s Daniel Stern sewer-monster movie. I mean, I like Devin, but lately... gah! it's like he's auditioning to become Jeffery Wells:
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=10039

REVIEW: Shrek the Third

Let's be perfectly honest: There was really no reason to make a 3rd "Shrek" movie. The most interesting part of the story was already told in the original, all the necessary loose-ends and character arcs were tied up in the second, etc. Aside from the garaunteed boxoffice paydirt set to be innevitably scored by financially-wobbly Dreamworks, there was really no pressing "need" to revisit this particular franchise.

Fortunately, unnecessary isn't always the companion of "bad."

The original "Shrek" got most of it's early buzz from it's much-touted spoofing of the Disney brand, but it became a gigantic hit on the strength of it's refreshingly small, character-focused story. True, it was wedged in among a lot of pop-culture jokery and broad satire, but there was a genuinely moving and engaging central narrative at work and audiences responded to it. The law of diminishing returns kicked in a bit with "Shrek 2," but it was an overall worthwhile entry from the "bigger and wackier" school of sequel-making.

"Shrek the Third" wisely dials the scale back a bit from #2's epic size, offering up what amounts to a "here we go again" mini-adventure (or two, really) that feels at points more like the third act to a longer cut of the second film than a seperate entity in it's own right: Just as Shrek (Mike Meyers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) are gearing up to leave Far Far Away and head back to their cozy swamp cottage, King Harold (Fiona's dad, voice of John Cleese) passes away - leaving Shrek next in line for the throne. Shrek is acutely aware that he's not at all cut out for the job, and he's already wrestling with his angst over Fiona's just-announced pregnancy, so when he learns another heir exists in the person of Fiona's dorky cousin Arthur (Justin Timberlake) he jumps at the chance to set out on yet another quick quest with Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss N' Boots (Antonio Banderas) to go and fetch him. Meanwhile, evil Prince Charming, (Rupert Everett,) still smarting from his defeat at the end of the last film, seizes on a temporarily Shrek-less kingdom as the ideal opportunity to stage an invasion of Far Far Away with help from an assembled army of fairytale villians.

It's more than a little dissapointing that, after the clever upending of Disney-fied fairytale iconography in the original film, this installment can't seem to find much material to mine in it's broad satire of Arthurian fables once Timberlake's "Artie" enters the picture. The basic gag is to relocate Camelot to a sitcom High School (Lancelot= jock, Merlin= hippie teacher, and so on) which is cute, but also a bit... stale. The story also suffers noticably from the lack of a great antagonist. Everett has fun with Charming, but the sole and sufficient joke to the character ("THE Prince Charming is the bad guy, the ogre is the good guy!") was played-out by the end of #2 - where he was a supporting villian for a reason. And while the "bad guy army" is a fun idea, it's mostly a collection of gags we already saw in the other two movies.

Basically, there's a distinct sense of half-effort coloring a lot of the broader story strokes, but the consolation prize to that is the rest of the film being similarly light and unpretentious: the gags fly fast and loose, and it seldom feels the need to pile on the "this is IMPORTANT!!!" pathos - it plays like an above-average episode of a weekly sitcom, and in this case it's a solid choice. And there's a lot of fun to be had in the subplot of Fiona's all-Princess baby shower teaming up to fight Charming.

What still works the best, and helps make the film not entirely disposable, is Shrek himself. It was quite a revelation, coming to the original film informed only by the slapstick-heavy trailers, that the titular grumpy ogre turned out to be that rare children's film hero who was actually characterized by a certain intelligence: Shrek isn't a "lovable oaf," he's a clever and fairly shrewd character - which made perfect sense given the solitary existance we're told he'd been living most of his life, and gave an added poignance to his "outcast by choice" situation in the original film: It wasn't that he "didn't know any better," we could tell he had chosen his path based on genuine pain and a more-than-complete understanding of how the world regarded him.

This continues here in the subplot of Shrek's unease at impending fatherhood: Usually when a franchise takes this road, the go-to angle is that of an immature guy leery of being forced to definatively "grow-up" as a father. Shrek, on the other hand, is already a grown-up, and he has a grown-up reason for his worry: Not only does he fear not being able to handle the responsibility, he's really worried that his overall nature will make him a less-than-ideal parent: "Wait till you meet my Dad, he's a real OGRE," he sighs, noting that no one's ever uttered that phrase in a positive context. When we get the obligatory "nightmare" sequence as Shrek imagine's himself in a deluge of babies, the theme of the "fear" is that he's barely able to keep them from injuring themselves. To the degree it can in a cartoon about an ogre, this feels real. This feels relatable.

It's probably time to call it quits on the series at this point, and the movie itself isn't in any way essential, but it's likable and inoffensive. In a Summer season that's going to deliver both a Michael Bay movie and a "Resident Evil" threequel, there are worse things to be.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

REVIEW: 28 Weeks Later

The original "28 Days Later" was, initially, one of those movies that the target audience was already in love with before any of them had seen it. For months leading up to it's release, film geeks of the horror-phile set gorged on a steady diet of legend and hype about the film's myriad fresh, new qualities: It's shaky-cam verite (not yet done to irritating death by the "Bourne" movies,) it's bleak vision of apocalypse and, most importantly of all: It was a NEW ZOMBIE MOVIE! Hard to remember, but pre-"28DL," zombie movies were, you'll pardon the pun, a dead genre. And though the featured creatures of Danny Boyle's mini-epic weren't technically "zombies," they operated under most of the same basic rules and the tone, setup and style drew clear and unashamed influence from all things Romero and Fulci; and it can be easily argued that this was the point-of-origin for the Zombie Renaissance. We can also BLAME it for introducing the loathsome concept of "super-speed zombies," but you know what they say about omletes...

And yet, there's still no zombies in this new sequel from newbie "Intacto" helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Well, c'est la vie. Instead, we're once again up against "The Infected" (priority one for "28 MONTHS Later": give the monsters a better name,) aka ordinary humans who've contracted "Rage," a kind of jacked-up rabbies that near-instantaneously turns infectees into psychotic, feral flesh-eaters. As mentioned, "The Infected" play by zombie rules despite their functioning nervous systems and Barry Allen legwork - a bite or blood-contact will turn you into one of "them" instantly, they travel in packs and vary in intelligence depending on what will cause maximum tension from scene to scene.

As the sequel opens, we learn that The Rage never spread beyond it's original British outbreak site due to England being an island; and that by evacuating and sealing-off the entire country The Infected have been effectively starved into extinction. 28 Weeks Later (hence the title) a U.S. led NATO force has begun the task of re-introducing humanity into a small secure "green zone" (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) on the Isle of Dogs. Early focus falls on a civilian official (Robert Carlyle) who's just been re-united with his out-of-the-country-during-this-whole-thing children... and who has a bit of explaining to do about what exactly happened to Mum. The military personel seem to have a decent handle on the situation, though there's concern as to how soon is "too soon" to begin reconstruction. And, of course, should The Rage turn out to not be quite as wiped-out as we thought...

To be honest, it wouldn't be fair to go any further than that, as 28WL manages to pack a startling number of "whoa!" surprises into it's plot before the first act is even up, but suffice it to say that the shit does, in fact, hit the fan and pretty soon everyone is knee-deep in Infected again - leaving the NATO team in a difficult position: Keep fighting and hope it's winnable, or accept that you can't always save the world and bust out the Napalm in the name of the greater good.

"Zombie" movies, by nature, lend themselves easily to social commentary - featuring as they do antagonists who exist as grotesque parodies of "normal" life. So it's tempting (and at this point kind of unavoidable) to want to see these installments as a kind of political metaphor. But the original film defied simplistic political analysis: It's big (human) baddies were a squad of nasty BSAF recruits perhaps a little TOO welcoming of Armageddon, yes... but it also set up that this localized-apocalypse came about because of overzealous animal rights activists.

This sequel remains equally defiant of simple "red vs. blue" filtration: It's easy to read a form of Iraq analogy into the overall situation of soldiers trying to introduce civilization to a population with a nasty habit of turning into bloodthirsty subhumanoids out of the blue (Infectees= Iraqis? The Rage= religious fundamentalism?) but the film doesn't seem to take a "side" as to what should be done - it sympathizes equally with the soldiers and their terribly limited options AND with the innocent people who're likely to get the short end either way.

This is one HELL of a great horror film, an equal to it's predecessor and a genuinely good ride. I reccomend it.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

INTERMISSION

It happens sometimes. You're sitting comfortably in your theater seat, a ginormous tub of artificial buttery-flavored popcorn in your lap, a drum of cola in the cup holder, all is well with the world.... and then the phone/pager/whatever goes off. So it's back out to the lobby to see who's calling.

Turns out it's D. G. D. Davidson over at The Sci-Fi Catholic passing along a meme he inherited from Thursday Night Gumbo. It's my first meme and my initial reaction is to feel flattered. I've only been blogging a short time and from what I can tell, the meme is kind of the blogosphere's way of saying, "Gooble Gobble, Gooble Gobble, we accept you, one of us!" But then I realize I'm supposed to respond to it and write something. No big deal right? We're bloggers, we write.

Well, the meme is the latest Booked By Three where you list three books everyone should read, three authors everyone should read, and three books nobody should read. Books? What are these things which you call "books"? I'm the guy who watches movies all the time! You mean I'm supposed to read something other than subtitles? Oh well, I'll give it my best shot. But looking around at some of the other responses to the meme it's easy to see that most of the big guys have already been mentioned. Lewis, Augustine, Chesterton, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Hemingway, The Bible, Tolstoy, they've all gotten their due. And I could go that route. The Hobbit really was a life changing book for me in the fifth grade and I've been known to crack open the Bible on occasion. But I've got a shtick to uphold so I think I'll approach the meme the same way I do my movies. Following are some books you might not normally go to for high-brow literary merit, but I feel might reveal something worthwhile if you just dig deep enough. Or in the case of the last three, books that try to reveal something worthwhile but end up falling a bit short. (I'll also follow D. G. D. Davidson's lead and separate the first category into non-fiction and fiction.)

THREE NON-FICTION BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD READ (PROBABLY)

1. Any good Art History survey book, especially if it is Contextualist in it's approach. Wait, don't nod off! With a good art history survey you can learn all the stuff you can in regular history AND you get pictures! Plus, developing visual literacy is probably a good idea in a multi-media culture. If nothing else, you'll be able to explain in important sounding words why most modern Christian church buildings are hideous and psychologically detrimental to a religion which believes in the Incarnation.

2. If Chins Could Kill - Bruce Campbell's autobiography on how he got his start in B-Movies. This tome is representative of why B-Movie and character actors often deserve more respect than their mega-star counterparts. At the end of the day, no matter how much you love your craft, it's still just a job and isn't the most important thing in the world. (If you're not a Campbell fan, you can replace this with How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime by Roger Corman.)

3. Holiness For Beginners - a really short, but brilliant, book by Benedictine monk Dom Hubert Van Zeller that guarantees holiness! Of course, he spent 60 years in a monastery, so there's a bit of a commitment factor involved for best results.

THREE FICTION BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD READ (MAYBE)

1. The Haunting of Hill House - One of the best written stories ever, regardless of genre.

2. The Stand - Critic Harold Bloom dismisses Stephen King as a writer of Penny Dreadfuls. G. K. Chesterton writes in "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" that "one of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued is the example of popular literature, the vast mass of which we contentedly describe as vulgar." At the age of twelve you couldn't pay me to read Moby Dick, but I read this book in a few days. And it has some themes I still appreciate all these years later; a near-apocalyptic struggle fought on physical and spiritual planes, characters who may be gray but must choose sides that are clearly drawn in black and white, and a climatic battle which is won not through a mighty battle but by a small sacrifice.

3. Tropic Of Cancer - I would be dishonest if I didn't include this, having read it three or four times during my "I don't need no stinkin' organized religion" days. Big chunks of the book are offensive to the Christian worldview (or even a moralistic Atheist view for that matter), but when the book isn't venturing into borderline pornography, the prose has a quality irritatingly missing in many modern Christian friendly works; the sheer beauty and joy of living, even (and sometimes especially) when suffering or living in squalor. "It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."

THREE AUTHORS EVERYONE SHOULD READ (POSSIBLY)

1. Lewis Carroll - Because a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men, and even more so by goofs like me.

2. St. John of the Cross - In these days of the Buddy Christ it's okay to remember Christianity can occasionally be tough, miserable, and lonely.

3. E. E. Cummings - All the joy of Henry Miller with 99% less pornography!

THREE BOOKS NOBODY SHOULD READ (UNTIL PROPERLY WARNED)

1. American Psycho - This is meant to be some kind of indictment of 1980s decadence and an American society which creates monsters like the protagonist by continuously championing banality in all of its forms. For my tastes, it's really just a steaming pile of pretentious dog squeeze.

2. The Fountainhead - I'm sure this is arguable and just lost me the respect of a number of people, but for me this wasn't literature, it was pontification glossed over with a plot that stretches suspension of disbelief thinner than any sci-fi/fantasy novel I've ever read.

3. A Separate Peace - Okay, not really. But they forced me to read this in high school rather than Of Mice And Men. I've held it against the book ever since. And it is pretty boring, so there.

Well, that was a lot more long winded than necessary (as usual) but I muddled my way through. I can hear Devil Dog starting up now, so I'd best get back to my seat. Oh, I almost forgot, I'm supposed to pass the meme along to someone else. Hmmm, I've only traded a couple of comments with Ian Stewart over at Upper Fort Stewart, but he has a thing for books, so this should be a little easier for him than it was for me. Just in case he's not a regular visitor here, someone might want to let him know he's been memed.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL

You can view the trailer here.

BLOODSPORT

TYPICAL REVIEW

"Proudly plotless in a way that other low-budget actioners ought to emulate more often." - Luke Y. Thompson, NEW YORK TIMES

THE PLOT

When Frank Dux learns his sensei Tanaka is dying, he goes AWOL in order to honor Tanaka in the only way possible; by traveling to China to participate in an unsanctioned full-contact martial arts tournament and beat the living spit out of every man there. Once in China, Frank must rely on help from his new best friend, fellow fighter Ray Jackson (Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds), in order to dodge the two military officers sent to bring him home. As the contest proceeds, it seems inevitable that whoever makes it to the final round will have to face reigning champion Chong Li, a sociopath who already killed one man in the previous tournament. Can Frank achieve ultimate victory and bring honor to the house of Tanaka, or will he fall to the mat like so many others?

THE POINT

Back in January, The People's Choice Award for favorite male action star went to Johnny Depp. Read those words again before going any further; male...ACTION...star. Welcome to the new millennium I suppose. I mean, he's a good actor, he's in good physical shape, he can swing a mean sword, but in the end, he just doesn't scream action to me. Maybe it's because once the cameras stop rolling and the special effects are turned off, he looks like someone you could hold your own against in a fight. Sylvester Stallone recently said, "When an individual can step into a latex suit bulging with muscles and Velcro himself into an action star body, we knew the times they were a-changing." The "times" he was referring to was, of course, the late 1980s. Back then, there was a breed of "actor" who could walk off the set and STILL look like he could punch a hole through your skull.

Welcome to Bloodsport, the low budget 1988 hit that launched the career of one such living action figure, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Bloodsport! Where the acting is atrocious (Including one of the military officers who is inexplicably played by Forest never-remind-me-I-did-this Whitaker.), the script is pre-pubescent in its simplicity ("You broke my record, now I'll break you!"), and the 80s fashions are downright frightening (Van Damme wears sweatpants, a snakeskin jacket, and lipstick[!] through most of the movie). You could go on ad naseum about this movie's faults. And yet you would still have a hard time finding someone who actually hates it. It's just too goofy to take its shortcomings seriously. For instance...

When Frank arrives in China, he immediately bonds with the enormous Ray, not by sparring or discussing martial arts philosophy, but by winning at the video game Karate Champ. This bond is so strong that a mere three days later the men embrace in a tearful farewell, boldly declaring their undying man-love for each other. In contrast, Frank's lady friend for the weekend gets nothing more than a formal bow as he boards the plane for home.

Also, just like in a video game, each of the invited combatants has a special style of fighting. There's a sumo, a kick-boxer, a good old-fashioned street brawler (the big ugly American, of course), practitioners of judo, karate, tae kwon do, etc. There's even, unbelievably, an acrobatic black guy who bounces around on all fours and acts like a monkey. (I know, I almost feel like I'm insulting everyone in creation just writing that, but it's in the movie. He even makes it to the top eight.)

And just look at the main bad guy! When Chong Li takes off his shirt he looks like 5 feet of chest (in all directions) with little muscular appendages glued to it. I'd be afraid to let this guy give me a friendly pat on the back for fear my lungs would shoot out of my mouth. And he's EEEEEEVIL! First he dishonors the competition by purposely killing a helpless opponent. (Bizarrely, the officials do not remove Chong from the tournament, they just turn their backs on him.) Then he enrages Frank more by nearly doing the same thing to Frank's new hetero-lifemate Ray. (He even steals Ray's Harley Davidson bandana, the fiend!) And when Chong finally starts to lose, he cheats by throwing powder in Frank's eyes. Frank's expression becomes so twisted with rage at this point it makes that whole Richard Gere "I got nowhere else to go!" scene look like a Hallmark moment in comparison.

One thing I really appreciate about Bloodsport is the fact that anger never becomes a real factor for Frank until the very end of the film. It's atypical in this genre for the impetus of the drama to be anything other than revenge for a dead relative, a kidnapped lover, or some such similar device. In Bloodsport, however, Frank is primarily acting on his desire to fulfill the dying wish of his teacher, a wish that has no bloodlust or vengeance attached to it. Frank's distaste for Chong doesn't cross the line into anger until the villain clearly steps outside the acceptable parameters of the Kumite. (Incredibly loosely defined parameters I might add, but apparently they are there.) In a weird way, Frank comes really close to being the model for the proper Christian approach to anger.

Father Joseph F, Delaney writes in The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia that anger "is rather a praiseworthy thing and justifiable with a proper zeal. It becomes sinful when it is [1] sought to wreak vengeance upon one who has not deserved it, [2] or to a greater extent than it has been deserved, [3] or in conflict with the dispositions of law, [4] or from an improper motive." Being an EEEEEEVIL sociopath, Chong pretty much deserves what he gets and since his crimes include murder, it's kind of hard to punish him disproportionately. Frank doesn't kill him though, he merely forces him to "cry uncle", which is in keeping with the "law" of the competition. (This is another welcome departure for the genre. Any other movie would have had Chong suddenly leap back to his feet, forcing Frank to rip out his esophagus or shatter his heart or something.)

It's only on the last point, motivation, that Frank comes up a little short at first. As noted, anger can be praiseworthy, but only in the sense that it is a spark intended to move us to action and then let go. St. Augustine wrote that "anger habitually cherished against any one becomes hatred, since the sweetness which is mingled with what appears to be righteous anger makes us detain it longer than we ought in the vessel, until the whole is soured, and the vessel itself is spoiled." You get the feeling that Frank comes into the final day of the Kumite holding a bit of a grudge over Ray's injury. And though one day might seem like a short time to believe Frank has "habitually cherished" his anger, you have to remember it only took two days for Frank to develop a deep (manly) love for Ray. And doesn't it seem like Frank is in an awful hurry to get that bandana back?

Still, in the end, Frank handles his anger well, even when Chong temporarily blinds him. Oh, he goes bonkers for a minute, makes one of the most hideously contorted faces in film history, and nearly loses the final match. But like St. Thomas Aquinas suggests, Frank never allows his anger to become so strong that he loses the ability to reason. Recalling the lessons of his old teacher Tanaka, Frank releases the anger through a brief meditation and moves on to actually addressing the situation at hand. All in all, he scores about a 3 1/2 out of 4 on the Christian anger management scale. We should all do so well.

THE STINGER

Oswald Sobrino over at Catholic Analysis suggests that "when a religious person begins speaking doctrine, even if we agree fully with the doctrine being proclaimed, he is not persuasive if he is angry or on the attack... Angry apologetics or tirades do not make for conversion of those who are normal and retain their common sense and good human sensibilities. If you have Christ, you have Peace. Our words, our ways of speaking, our tones, our gestures, and our faces will give us away, regardless of the theological accuracy of our content."

"Joshua" trailer

I might be behind the curve on this, but I haven't seen it actually posted in many places. Even IMDB doesn't have an official trailer link yet. I'd heard of it, but only just saw the trailer today in front of "Civic Duty" (which is kinda "meh," for the record.)

Y'remember that movie "The Good Son?" "Godsend?" That horrendous recent remake of "The Omen?" "Joshua" kinda looks like what those would look like... if they didn't suck:



Gah. I can't remember having been that freaked out by just a trailer.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: BLOODSPORT

It's time to take a short break from the creature features and head over to the next auditorium for some low budget 80s action hero cheese!

REVIEW: Spider-Man 3

The bad news is, what you've heard is technically true: "Spider-Man 3" is, when all is said and done, just a bit overstuffed.

The good news - the very, very good news - is that it's not overstuffed for the reason most were worried about, i.e. "too many villains." If anything, this is the least "bad guy centered" "Spidey" entry yet. Whereas the prior films featured singular antagonists (Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus) with character-arcs detailed enough to take up a full half of their respective films, the three heavies this time around are a bit more on the dramatically-streamlined side: Two of them have pretty basic ambitions and straightforward, uncomplicated agendas, while the third (James Franco's Harry "Goblin Jr." Osborn) already did his "turning into a bad guy" arc in the backdrop of the prior installments - he arrives here as a full-fledged nemesis ready to go from (literally) the first act on.

Instead, "Spider-Man 3" is bursting at the seams with story. Director/co-writer Sam Raimi has a lot of plot threads left to tie up from his previous two movies to begin with, and on top of that he's piled surprising reversals, character-twists and unexpected new directions and revelations - and then some. There's enough going on here in the living, breathing universe this cast and crew have built for themselves over the last eight years to fill three more movies - and, save for some irritatingly-noticable contrivances here and there, it seems almost churlish to take a summer blockbuster that could easily have coasted on residual narrative-fumes and perfunctory action scenes to task for wanting to have "too much" story, character-development and narrative gotchas.

In the big-picture sense, Raimi demonstrates once-again his unquestioned "getting" of the key Spider-Man themes; framing this third go-round as a rude-awakening "oh yeah?" rebuke of "Spider-Man 2's" fairytale ending. Turns out, wouldn't you know it, grand romantic gestures like Mary-Jane (Kirsten Dunst) dashing out of her wedding and turning up on Peter Parker's (Tobey Maguire) doorstep aren't quite 'grand' enough to stave of harsher realities forever. In the time between that ending and this beginning, things have started to go wrong. And, for a change, not "supervillain-assisted" wrong... just "that's life" wrong. In fact, it would seem the two of them have managed to "swap" issues: As New York begins to overwhelmingly embrace Spider-Man as it's resident champion, Peter is letting fame and acceptance go to his head a bit - he's almost too distracted to notice the MJ's Broadway "star" has already started to wane, and that she's picking up the 'sad sack' right where he left it off. Also on the list of things Peter should be paying closer attention to: Harry still knows Spider-Man's secret identity, he's still convinced that Spidey murdered his father, and he's still got an attic full of dad's old anti-Spidey weaponry to play with.

The choice of new villainy also demonstrates a tremendously-appealing confidence on Raimi's part - both in his own skill and in the strength of the original material he's adapting. Other lesser genre entries like "Fantastic Four," "Daredevil" or (from the looks of things) the upcoming "Transformers" movie tend to flee in mortal terror from the more "out-there" concepts of their ancestors. Raimi and his film, on the other hand, fearlessly drop into an already well-stocked narrative a pair of supporting supervillains who each constitute the franchise's headlong-leap into the realm of full-blown pulp science fiction: Sandman, aka Flint Marko, (Thomas Hayden Church,) is a small-time escaped convict who, after an accident of science, has a body made of sentient, shape-shifting SAND; while Venom is, literally, a Monster From Outer Space.

Technically speaking, Sandman isn't so much a "supervillain" as he is a hard-luck crook with his own agenda who's aquisition of super-powers is more distraction and hindrance than benefit: He turns up on Spidey's radar mainly because of a "maybe": Marko, it turns out, was the accomplice of the robber who murdered Uncle Ben Parker - and may have been the one who pulled the trigger. On top of all this, Peter has an unethical rival at work in the personage of Eddie Brock (Topher Grace,) his ongoing Harry troubles, MJ's emotional distance AND jealousy over his in-costume flirtation with freshly-rescued blonde bombshell Gwen Stacy (an almost-criminally gorgeous Bryce Dallas Howard); a whirl of stress and dissonance that makes him perfect prey for Venom - a liquid-goo alien "symbiote" that slithers out of a crashed meteor and morphs itself into a sleek new black Spidey-suit that cranks up Peter's powers... but also leads him to indulge his dark side.

It's with this "symbiote" subplot that Raimi and company tip their most devious hand - turning Spider-Man/Peter Parker into the prinicipal villain of his own movie. Most of the time, the "good guy goes bad" routine underwhelms in films like this, because the "evil" version of the hero turns out to be exponentially more-compelling and watchable than the "good" one (looking at YOU, Anakin Skywalker.) But, through guts and willpower, the same fate doesn't befall "Spider-Man 3." 'Bad Peter' is 'dark,' yes... and you can tell Maguire had fun (literally) letting his hair down and playing against-type. But Raimi's camera and story-structure make the difference, lingering on the bewildered/disgusted reactions of women Peter shoots winks and leers at as he struts down the street utterly convinced of his own coolness, and building an almost unspeakably crass display in a "dance sequence" to a genuinely shocking "line-crossing" level. 'Bad Peter' is a sleazy, unlikable jerk; and even though most of the audience won't be TOO worried about him not snapping back to normal by the end credits, it's still brave of the film none the less to ask them to follow him down this particular road.

Unfortunately, all this good comes with a few notable "issues" that keep it just shy of the near-perfection that was "Spider-Man 2." Most of the missteps are structure and pace-related, i.e. the two and a half hour run-time isn't quite expansive enough to contain all the movie it needs to. As a result, some elements arise in questionable, artificial-seeming ways. This becomes especially apparent, though not disasterously-so, in the third act where the innevitable Bad Guy Team-Up seems to come almost-completely out of left-field, and the "things we really should've told someone BEFORE right now" revelations start to stack up. This is more than a bit forgivable, though, when one takes into account that it leads into an action sequence that could easily be the best "guys with super-powers" brawl since "Superman 2."

Other problems have "followed" from the previous movies: Kirsten Dunst is STILL the weak link of the series, it's three movies in and she still alternates between looking bored, stoned or eager to get on to something "better." And Raimi still hasn't lost his strange penchant for having Spidey lose all or most of his mask midway through nearly every action scene.

It does seem as though the writing is on the wall as to this being the "last" Spidey installment for this full group of castmates and filmmakers. If so, they leave behind quite a legacy: A true epic-in-three-parts superhero story, one of the only one's not to stumble in the third entry. Whatever comes next has some big boots to fill.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Miyamoto makes it! (UPDATED!)

"Time" has closed-down the online-voting portion of it's "Time 100" list, and Shigeru Miyamoto makes it into the top-ten at the wire! http://tinyurl.com/23xeeb


The democratically-named 92nd Most Influential Person in The World, with his most famous

creations, his creation's friends and a sampling of his greatest accomplishments.

Now, I'm reasonably certain that "Time" doesn't correlate the "online vote" list and the "final list" exactly, but this is the first year Miyamoto was even nominated and placing in the top-10 in reader-votes is impressive as hell... so I'd say it's likely that he'll turn up on the "real" list, too. Either way, this is quite a showing a fan-support for a guy who's been overdue for it for far too long. Kick-ass.

UPDATE!!! Shigeru Miyamoto has made the final list!

For this year's list, "Time" divided the full-100 into five subcategories, with spots 82 through 100 reserved for "Builders & Titans." Miyamoto is placed at #92, meaning that he not only places on the list but lands comfortably in the TOP TEN of his field!

Shigeru Miyamoto. Creator of Mario. Savior of video-games. One of the 100 Most Influential People on Earth. He's earned it.

How To Not Suck: A Simple Primer

Michael Bay, Tim Story, Brett Ratner, et al., please pay close attention to the following:

Pictured below, to the left: Marvel Comics superhero "Iron Man" as he is generally remembered during his more popular eras of publication. To the immediate right: "Iron Man," as he currently appears in the 'main' Marvel Universe, including the traditional (and, please note, still immediately-recognizable) armor re-worked to greater detail and "realism" by artist Adi Granov.



Picture below: "Iron Man," as he will appear in the upcoming live-action feature film of the same name starring Academy Award Nominee Robert Downey Jr., Academy Award Nominee Terrence Howard and Academy Award Winner Gwyneth Paltrow.



This concludes "How To Not Suck." Please stay tuned for our next, slightly more-difficult lessons; including "How Not To Fall Down The Stairs," "Remedial Breathing" and "Remembering Not To Cast Jessica Alba In Roles Requiring Speaking And/Or Recognizable Human Emotion."

GODZILLA (GOJIRA)

TYPICAL REVIEWS

“[This film] might well trump the art films Hiroshima Mon Amour and Dr. Strangelove as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the mind-melting horror of atomic warfare.” – The Village Voice

“[This film] can now be appreciated not just as a minor classic of tragic destruction, but also as a somber exploration of conflicted postwar emotions.” – L.A. Weekly

“There's a surprisingly powerful thrust to this film. And it's instructive to recall the political era in which the movie was made.” – The Washington Post

THE PLOT

Just in case you've been in suspended animation for the last 53 years...

When ships start disappearing at sea around the same time villagers on nearby islands begin reporting the return of an ancient sea god, the Japanese government sends an investigative team to determine the truth. They find more than they could have imagined when up from the depths, thirty stories high, breathing fire, his head in the sky, Godzilla makes his appearance. It seems he's a little peeved from having a few hydrogen bombs dropped on him while he was sleeping and is looking for some payback. From the island, Godzilla makes his way to Tokyo, where he easily lays waste to half the city. With the government and the military helpless, Japan's last hope appears to be Dr. Serizawa, inventor of a secret weapon that could save the world...or destroy it.

THE POINT

In April of 2004 Godzilla (Gojira in his native tongue) celebrated his 50th anniversary with a fully restored worldwide re-release. The reviews above are a fair sampling of the critical reaction that appeared in major news outlets. That’s right, major critics the world over were heaping a bucket load of serious praise on a film featuring a guy in a rubber monster suit stomping on cardboard cities. Not all of them, of course. Roger Ebert didn't like the original Godzilla, and thought the restored Gojira was still a bad film, but he did at least admit he found it to be a much better bad film than the version available in America for all those decades. Why the big deal about the re-release though? I mean, we've all seen Godzilla haven't we? Well, as it turns out, we hadn't.

Now I've been a true fan of the big G for as long as I can remember, going so far as to copy word for word an entire book on him I found in my elementary school library. So, even as a child, the fact that the first Godzilla movie was altered for viewing outside of Japan was no big secret. Like a lot of people, though, I assumed the cuts weren't that relevant to the story. So they took out some scenes involving a Japanese reporter and inserted scenes with an American reporter; no big deal. Some scenes were dropped to shorten the movie by 15 minutes to a more acceptable drive-in runtime of 80 minutes; unfortunate, but television has done worse to make room for commercials. And even though some of the overt references to Hiroshima were left out, the no-nukes tone of the film is still there. Regardless of any changes, the Americanized Godzilla, King of the Monsters is still a good monster movie.

But Gojira is better. Now don't get me wrong, it's still a guy dressed as a big freaking lizard slapping at toy planes hanging from strings. So if your suspension of disbelief ends at that kind of thing, then there's probably nothing I can say to convince you to watch Godzilla again, especially in Japanese with subtitles. But if you can get past the "special" effects, then there is something of real substance here. And I think the key to it all is a brief aside made in the audio commentary on the recently released DVD regarding the beginning of the film.

The American version opens with a view of the aftermath of Godzilla's rampage through Tokyo and then proceeds to tell the story in flashback. It's effective enough, although you could make the argument that it robs any suspense as to whether or not our American reporter survives. In contrast, the Japanese version opens with a more mundane scene of a fishing boat destroyed by a bright flashing light of unknown origin. The few sailors who are recovered from the wreckage appear to be suffering from severe radiation burns. For all intents, it's a standard introductory scene, with little purpose other than to introduce a mystery and get the ball rolling... unless you happened to be Japanese.

As the commentary points out, on March 1, 1954 (the same year this movie was made) a Japanese fishing boat named the Lucky Dragon was caught in the fallout caused by a US thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Island. All of the crew members came down with radiation sickness and one man died. Within two weeks hysteria swept through Japan as the populace feared contamination of the fish supply. Even the Emperor swore off sushi for awhile. To the Japanese, the U. S. response to the incident appeared a bit lackluster, amounting to "Hey, we told you these things would be going off every now and then." Enraged is probably not a strong enough word to describe Japan's national temperament during this period.

With that in mind, we can go back and take a second look at those two opening sequences. For Americans in the cold war era, the threat of nuclear destruction was always an open possibility, and the multitude of radioactive mutants wandering across movie screens reflected this fear. Godzilla's opening images of a smoldering ruined city must certainly have resonated with American audiences, especially the children who were going through weekly duck-and-cover drills at school.

But for Japan, the reality of nuclear destruction had already come to pass. Initially the Japanese citizenry appeared to have accepted the atomic bombings as a cost of the war. Father John A. Siemes, a Catholic priest living in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, noted that "None of us in those days heard a single outburst against the Americans on the part of the Japanese, nor was there any evidence of a vengeful spirit." But as survivors began to be subjected to regular check ups by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, fears about the lasting effects of exposure to radiation began to surface and resentment started to build. And just when you would hope that time might heal old wounds, along comes the Lucky Dragon incident. By opening with the fishing boat scene and then following with images reminiscent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gojira was the first film to openly address the fact that for the Japanese the nuclear issue was not a fading memory or potential threat, but a decade long continuing nightmare. The Japanese audiences recognized immediately the anger and sorrow and feeling of helplessness portrayed in the movie. It's almost as if Gojira represented some form of primal therapy for the entire nation, resonating so strongly that it actually received a Japanese Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. For those of us raised on the American cut of the movie that all sounds a little crazy, I know, but once you understand some of the cultural references in the original film, Godzilla really does take on new dimensions and becomes something deeper and more satisfying than you could have thought possible. You get emotional depth AND a big monster stomping on things, what more can a B-Movie fan ask for?

I was recently reminded how this same kind of cultural recognition can deepen our own understanding of Catholicism. My home parish was visited by a priest who had been born to a Jewish mother and he spent some time talking on Passover and the Eucharist. In June of 1985, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews released a document with the no-nonsense title of Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church. (And you thought the title Snakes On A Plane was direct and to the point.) The document noted that "Jesus was and always remained a Jew" and was "fully a man of his time, and of his environment - the Jewish Palestinian one of the first century, the anxieties and hopes of which he shared." To this end "He wished to achieve the supreme act of the gift of himself in the setting of the domestic liturgy of the Passover, or at least of the paschal festivity (Mk 14:1,12; Jn. 18:28)." It would seem then, to fully understand the Eucharist, a Catholic should have some understanding of the Jewish Passover celebration.

Most of us know that, for the Jews, the Passover is a celebration of the Exodus, of God’s actions on their behalf to free them from oppression in Egypt. But the feast is more than just a simple remembrance. As part of the ritual, the Book of Exodus instructs the Jewish father to explain the meaning of Passover using these specific words “On this day you shall explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the Lord did for ME when I came out of Egypt’” With this simple wording, Passover is celebrated as though every Jew throughout history had been alive and present at the time of the Exodus. They aren't just remembering it, they're experiencing it.

Jesus incorporated this same meaning into the Last Supper, and by extension The Eucharist, when he says the words "Do this in memory of me". The celebration of Holy Communion is not just remembering Christ and his last days, but actually experiencing this event that occurred both once and for all time. This doesn't mean all of the other teachings on the meaning of the Eucharist are wrong. Such ideas as "agape feasts" and "table fellowship" are important to the Eucharist and should be discussed. But it's this simple Jewish understanding of the concept of "memorial" which points us towards what is most profound in the ritual. Father Lawrence E. Mick writes "That’s the deepest meaning of both Passover and Eucharist. Just as God acted in the past, God continues to act in the present and will act in the future to save us." You ignore or edit out that understanding of the Eucharist and you end up with a mass that's the equivalent of the Americanized Godzilla; still good, but not the best.

THE STINGER

Dr. Frederick J. Parrella writes that "people today are bored at mass because they are celebrating a transcendence that is vague .... They are celebrating the most serious element of their human lives in forms that trivialize the mystery....Without a sense of the Holy, we cannot pray, ask forgiveness, worship, be filled with gratitude before God's grace or, most significantly, know each other as brother and sister ....The church must have the courage not to reduce the liturgy to what people think they want .... but to make of it what they really want at the deepest levels of their being.... " It sure sounds like he believes we're getting the edited version of liturgy these days, sanitized of the difficult content and reassembled to make it more entertaining. But the 50th anniversary of Vatican II is approaching. Is it possible that like Gojira, the liturgy is due for a restored re-release, if not in form, then at least in content?