CUTAWAYS

Don’t watch this If you’ve never seen Chinese Super Ninjas, because it will spoil the end. Also, don’t watch this if you don’t like seeing blood. No, really. I’m talking about fire-hose-spraying, whale-blowhole-spouting geysers of blood. It’s fakey looking, but still, you’ve been warned.

Now, some of you may be asking just what the heck I was thinking posting that clip? But it wasn’t what I was thinking (as I’m rarely accused of doing THAT), it’s what I was reading. Namely, the Bible. As you might recall, I’m still making my way through Holy Scripture using The Coming Home Network’s guide to reading the Bible and the Catechism in a year, and I was reminded of this scene when I happened to run across this tidbit from 2 Maccabees 14.

A certain Razis, one of the elders of Jerusalem, was denounced to Nicanor as a man who loved his fellow citizens and was very well thought of and for his good will was called father of the Jews. For in former times, when there was no mingling with the Gentiles, he had been accused of Judaism, and for Judaism he had with all zeal risked body and life. Nicanor, wishing to exhibit the enmity which he had for the Jews, sent more than five hundred soldiers to arrest him; for he thought that by arresting him he would do them an injury. When the troops were about to capture the tower and were forcing the door of the courtyard, they ordered that fire be brought and the doors burned. Being surrounded, Razis fell upon his own sword, preferring to die nobly rather than to fall into the hands of sinners and suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth. But in the heat of the struggle he did not hit exactly, and the crowd was now rushing in through the doors. He bravely ran up on the wall, and manfully threw himself down into the crowd. But as they quickly drew back, a space opened and he fell in the middle of the empty space. Still alive and aflame with anger, he rose, and though his blood gushed forth and his wounds were severe he ran through the crowd; and standing upon a steep rock, with his blood now completely drained from him, he tore out his entrails, took them with both hands and hurled them at the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again. This was the manner of his death.

So, let me get this straight. To avoid capture, our hero first stabs himself, then throws himself off a building into an angry mob, and finally rips out his own guts and flings them at his enemies…

That. Is. So. COOL!!! I’d totally pay to see a movie with that scene in it. Those guys from 300 look like such total weenies in comparison to this Razis fellow. Still, much like our super ninjas in the above clip, we’re stuck asking the question of Razis, “Why did you do it?” After all, even though the author of 2 Maccabees, in his rah-rah enthusiasm for the Jewish revolt, clearly sees Razis as a martyr, there’s no getting around the notion that his actions ultimately represent a suicide, which as we all know was a big no-no in Judaism. St. Thomas Aquinas certainly doesn’t buy wholly into the martyr idea when he writes in the Summa, “It belongs to fortitude that a man does not shrink from being slain by another, for the sake of the good of virtue, and that he may avoid sin. But that a man take his own life in order to avoid penal evils has indeed an appearance of fortitude (for which reason some, among whom was Razias, have killed themselves thinking to act from fortitude), yet it is not true fortitude, but rather a weakness of soul unable to bear penal evils, as the Philosopher (Ethic. iii, 7) and Augustine (De Civ. Dei 22,23) declare. (Summa Th II-II Qu.64 a.5)”

Now a number of protestant scholars have pointed to the story of Razis as one of the reasons 2 Maccabees shouldn’t be included in the canon of Scripture, insisting that because the human author doesn’t explicitly condemn the suicidal nature of Razis’ actions, it somehow implies God’s approval of suicide. But if that’s the case, then other books would have to go also. (The story of Samson comes to mind.) So, what we have to do is look for some other reason this particular story is noteworthy in the Biblical narrative to see if there’s a good reason for including it in the canon.

And sure enough, there is one, at least according to C. D. Elledge in his book Life After Death in Early Judaism. “One of the many odd, but important, contributions that 2 Maccabees has made to the history of ideas is the notion of a graphically physical resurrection from the dead. This is not simply an assumption of the work, but a deliberate emphasis of at least two different episodes of the narrative. The episode of Razis expresses this in the clearest and most economical terms. This Jewish older, when persecuted for devotion to the law, attempts to end his own life by jumping off a building. When this fails, he eventually takes his own entrails in his hands and casts them out of his body at his persecutors, "invoking the master of life and spirit to return these things to him again' (14:46). In this case, Razis dies with prayers that the very entrails that he loses in death will be returned to him by the One who has supreme power over life and death.”

So, maybe it’s just me, but it would seem having a book in the Old Testament which nails down a pre-Jesus expectation for a bodily resurrection is just a wee bit more important than haggling over whether or not the author let Razis off too easy for his decision. But then again, what do I know? I’m the guy who thought it was a good idea to put Chinese Super Ninjas on his religious blog.

PRAYER REQUEST

A friend collapsed while vacationing in the Netherlands and is having a bypass tonight at 1:00 AM EST. Any prayers you could send his way would be much appreciated. His name is Keith.

Fighting (2009)

"Fighting's" comically on-the-nose title is the only remotely interesting thing about it. It's a completely predictable story, acted-out with stock characters, uninterestingly shot and punctuated by boring action scenes. It's a case study in why similarly low-rent films of the past tended to crank ONE element (usually the violence, the sex or a hot-button "hook" theme) up to eleven for saleability, earning the moniker of "exploitation films."

The good guy is Channing Tatum (still well-ensconsed in his niche as the "teen hearthrob for girls who men who look like, well, men") as a homeless(?) Southern dude selling bootlegs in NYC and getting into impromptu street fights with the other riff-raff. Said fights are observed by a pro-hustler (Terrance Howard) who scoops the kid up and introduces him to the world of bare-knuckle street-fighting for cash. You will be unsurprised to learn that the film follows them through a series of fights in various colorful (and escalatingly-wealthy) neighborhoods against area-appropriate opponents (a Japanese hotel/brothel's champion is... A KARATE MASTER!!! Wow! What an angle...) You will be similarly unsurprised when, early on, Our Hero meets the circuit's reigning champ and - whod'a'thunk it? - he turns out to be an Old Rival from his past who recognizes him and taunts him with vauge allusions to the Dark Secrets of where and how he picked up his prodigious punching powers. There's also A Girl, who in accordance with The Ancient Laws of such things possesses The Heart of Gold, The Career of Dubiousness, The Child of Illegitimacy and, yes, even The Grandma of Ethnic Humorousness. This is the kind of plotting that'd make Joseph Campbell eat a bullet.

Now, better movies have been made from worse elements - usually by the aforementioned "eleven-ing" of some tangential attribute - usually the action scenes but occasionally the acting. "The Karate Kid" is novelly-characterized enough to make you forget your just watching "Rocky" again, "Ong Bak's" lead guy can jump nine feet in the air and knee a guy in the forehead, you get the idea. "Fighting," unfortunately, has delusions of serious drama, so it elects not to show off either.

The fight scenes are uniformly bland, the result of going for a semblance of absolute realism: Most of the fights quickly descend into improvised wrestling on the floor, hits to the face usually end things, etc. This worked out fine in "Redbelt" where the "fights" were quick, brutal punctuation marks for interesting drama. Here? You're slogging through knee-deep cliches to get to the fights, and then they're just as dull.

As for the acting... the seemingly upscale casting doesn't end up doing it any favors. Tatum's character is basically Lil' Abner - a stuttering "aw shucks" hillbilly with fists of steel - while Howard is stuck doing his "world-weary-dude-always-on-the-verge-of-bawling" bit; which means that MOST of the film's big dialogue scenes happen between two characters who mumble and half-start through 90% of their lines. It's like watching a pair of stroke victims compete in a Brando impersonating contest.

Gossip Girl - Season 2

Thanks Mike

Obsessed (2009)

It's the Plot Outline that Would Not Die: Hotshot young newly-married businessman draws the attention of an Office Hottie, Office Hottie turns out to be crazy stalker, marital problems arise, stalker goes even CRAZIER. This neatly summarizes a baffling number of films, almost all uniformly lousy, descending in an unbroken line from an insanely-overrated 80s potboiler called "Fatal Attraction." "Obsessed" doesn't do a damn thing to change up the gameplan, and it doesn't even have the balls for any murdered pets of even actual infidelity. OH! Except for one thing: Our good-guy married couple (Idris Elba and Beyonce Knowles) happen to be black, and stalker gal (Ali Larter) happens to be white. And leggy. And blonde. Yeah. Well, if nothing else, I've gotta hand it to whoever in the production had the solid exploitation-flick sense to get that this seemingly simple wrinkle would be all it'd take to turn an otherwise unremarkable "Attraction"-rip into potential of-the-moment blockbuster: It's "Oh No She Di'int! - The Movie."

Too bad it sucks regardless, huh?

Aside from the respectably unexpected note that no one IN the film makes any reference to (or seems otherwise aware of) the racial-tension "hook" at play, there's not a single new idea or noteworthy moment to be had in what finally adds up to 2 hours of filler in between an "Oooooh...." setup and the innevitable "take THAT, bitch!!!" finale. I'm at least compelled to salute the film for, if nothing else, offering up a rare unironic portrayal of an upscale black couple... even if the "hook" means that they still ultimately give the only interesting role to the white girl. Ah, well.

Structurally, it's something of a mess suggesting heavy post-production tinkering: The P.O.V. belongs to Elba's hapless husband character for the entire first two acts, relegating Knowles to a one note second-fiddle for almost the whole story... which, of course, serves to make the third act - where Elba suddenly turns innefectual and is hustled quickly offscreen so that the two ladies can slug it out after Beyonce's out-of-nowhere metamorphosis into the Avenging Angel of Wronged Black Womanhood ("You think you crazy? I'll SHOW ya' CRAAAAZY!" she headbounce-and-spits into the phone) - seem abrupt and out of sync.

No need to bother, really.

SHORT FEATURE: MONKEY-ED MOVIE – THE LOST WORLD

You want to know how things work around here? My job slows down just enough to let me devote some time to writing the review of Warrior of the Lost World, but I get distracted because the title reminds me of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which naturally calls to mind Spielberg’s The Lost World, which leads me to… oh, never mind my free association nightmare, just enjoy the short. (Everybody likes monkeys!) You know, despite my preference for low budget fare, I actually enjoy the Jurassic Park films (mostly for the pure pleasure of seeing dinosaurs tear stuff up; hey, the monkeys should have been a clue you ain’t on a fine arts blog). But as the above short highlights, the treatment of Jeff Goldblum’s character in the Lost World is kind of annoying. Without Michael Crichton’s input on the script, the second movie seems to find his Chaos Theory shtick (complex systems, for the most part, cannot be controlled) too difficult to explain and just replaces the whole thing with Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong). That’s not scientific theorizing, that’s just plain old fashioned pessimism.

Still, I suppose I should sympathize with the character of Ian just a little. What with our constant harping on the state of things today, we Christians are always getting tagged as pessimists ourselves. Even Pope Benedict XVI was labeled as such when in 1995 he suggested that “perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world — that let God in.” As you can imagine, that kind of talk didn’t go over too well with the “name it and claim it” crowd. As the Pope related in God & The World, “When I said that, I was reproached from all sides for pessimism. And nowadays nothing seems less tolerated than what people call pessimism - and which is often in fact just realism.”

But even if you don’t buy that reasoning, and still think the Pontiff is being a little pessimistic, that’s actually okay because, believe it or not, Christians aren’t always expected to play the optimist. Christians are expected to strive to be something much more significant; they’re expected to be hopeful. As Peter Kreeft points out, “Hope is not the same as optimism; some of the great hopers are pessimists by temperament, like Evelyn Waugh. Hope's opposite is despair, which is a deadly sin, not pessimism, which is a psychological trait.” (If you’re dying for a lengthy explanation on what the good doctor means by that, you might enjoy The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Pessimism.) In fact, Kreeft goes so far as to dismiss simple optimism as Hope devoid of Faith, as mere wishful thinking (Rain rain go away, come again some other day, as Barney the Dinosaur might sing), or worse, as “the power of positive thinking”. (I think he’s talking to you, Oprah.)

So, for those of you Christians out there whose temperament is so inclined as to expect in certain cases that anything that can go wrong will go wrong; you go right ahead. Just don’t forget, as the Catechism reminds us, that “in every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere "to the end" and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ.” That’s not optimism, that’s just plain old fashioned Faith.

(Oh, and look. Just as I’m finishing this, here comes another email from work that’s bound to take hours to deal with. I was kind of expecting something crappy like that to happen.)

LMFAO

Wow. Y'know, I love "Penny Arcade" as a general rule, but I can't remember the last time I literally laughed out loud at one of their strips the way I just did at this most-recent one:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/22/

Elementarteilchen

Miss California

So... this happened: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30322005/

Short version: Someone evidently thought it'd be high comedy (they were right!) to ask the beaming plasticene f*ck-dolls at the Miss USA pageant questions about complex issues of political policy, which led to gossip-blogging irritant Perez Hilton - acting as a judge in this case - ask Miss California Carrie Prejean about gay marriage, which led the robotically-sexy young lady to give the crowd her best Anita Bryant impression. In any case, she didn't win, and now someone has decided this is the Culture War Skirmish of the week.

Egh... Perez Hilton versus a plausibly-homophobic beauty pageant contestant. It's likr the "Destroy All Monsters" of utterly worthless human flotsam. The big "to do" has come down to the issue of whether or not holding this particular opinion "cost" her the crown, something thats become somewhat difficult to deny since Hilton keeps saying (and then un-saying) that, in fact, it did. Oh, dear...

Me? I'd have voted her down, too. Here's the thing: Last time I checked, the overriding point of this is to pick the best-looking woman in America, yes? Well, to me, answer like that makes her less hot. Plain and simple. Oh, she's GORGEOUS, don't get me wrong... there's no bigger buzzkill in the world than a smokin' hot chick who turns out to be uptight about sex - it's always either a tease or a trap. When you hear that kinda "square"-ness coming out of a face that pretty, it means your wasting your time: Woman like that usually gives the best handjob in five counties, sure, but if your looking for anything MORE than that it's gonna cost you a big-ass diamond and one HELL of a lopsided pre-nup.

Or maybe I just don't like her for forcing me to even KIND OF "side" with Perez Hilton. Either one works...

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

Yes, my friends, the time has come once again to pick the brains of my fellow bloggers for interesting tidbits regarding the intersection of film and religion. Let’s see what’s going on out there.

First up, if you haven’t found it on your own, let me point you to AZ Catholic, a fine blog written by Kim a.k.a. The Papist MSTie. Someone want to tell me how a blog with the statement “We can find important theological lessons while watching MST3k” on it got started and I just noticed it? Anyway, according to Kim, she’s “just your average Roman Catholic who is from Arizona, and is one of the half million or so in this great state that is of Irish descent. Who is currently attending college to get an AAS in Culinary Arts, and has a border line obsession with old and/or bad movies, but especially comedies and Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Be sure to drop by and tell her hello.

After that, you might want to head over to The Art of Apologetics, but only if you haven’t seen (or have no plans to see) last year’s most critically acclaimed horror movie, Let The Right One In. Austin has watched it and taken note of some rather disturbing subtexts in the film, themes which I feel have been overlooked by most of the mainstream reviews, but which are starting to get tossed around on various movie forums. Be sure to stick around for the comments section where I make a rambling butthead of myself.

Speaking of rambling buttheads, by now you’re probably already aware of Ron Howard’s impassioned “my movie's not anti-Catholic” defense of the upcoming Angels & Demons. As expected, the Catholic blogosphere isn’t buying it. Carl Olson, over at Insight Scoop, does a fairly comprehensive Catholic fisking of Mr. Howard’s article, but if you’d also like a secular perspective on Ron’s Dan Brown movies (and your eyes don’t mind the obligatory four letter words), be sure to check out Chud.com’s reaction to a possible Da Vinci trilogy.

For something a little less jocular, pop over to the Chicago Sun-Times where Roger Ebert has posted a rather serious essay on how he believes in God. (Combined with some of his other recent posts, I’m beginning to suspect the man is either preparing an autobiography or believes he is dying. I hope for the former.) Like so many these days, Mr. Ebert finds himself too intelligent to trust in the dogmas of organized religion, but unlike too many, he’s surprisingly complimentary about many aspects of Catholicism and his own religious upbringing. Anyway, despite the fact that I obviously disagree with some of his conclusions, I’m inclined to be charitable to Roger as he’s one of the people whose work taught me to take film seriously. Plus, maybe it’s wishful thinking, but there’s something about the article that feels like he’s still seeking, and you know what Scripture says about that. AND, he mentions that his wife has a strong faith (of some sort). The prayers of a wife and mother are pretty irresistible forces Rog, just ask St. Augustine.

And if after all that you’ve got room for a little bit more, Gabriel McKee over at SF Gospel takes a quick look at a favorite of ours around here, The Day of The Triffids and finds that heroes can be real jerks sometimes.

So don’t just hang around here, start clicking, pick some brains and gain some knowledge.

Trust The Man

Crank 2: High Voltage

Here's the easiest, most trite-yet-true call any critic will make this year: If you liked (or, at least, "appreciated") "Crank," you will feel largely the same was about it's sequel. It's as simple as that. The only mandatory note of caution is that, since the first film's impact (such as it was) had a lot to do with the way it arrived as a bolt from the blue with no real warning as to just how insane and yet alarmingly well-made it was, the sequel is almost by-design going to be ever so slightly less mind-blowing because... well, this time you kinda of know what to expect. Give it credit, at least, for swinging for the fences in it's attempts to one-up it's predecessor.

For catchup's sake: "Crank" was a one-part celebration, one-part satiric deconstruction, one-part adrenaline-injection of yer basic "boy vs. the world" macho action epics; specifically the type in which it's star - British character actor turned surprise B-movie action god Jason Statham - was/is currently making his bones. It related the purported "final day" of one Chev Chelios, your basic unstoppable one-man-army hitman antihero who awoke to find himself injected with a lethal poison that will kill him unless he kept his adrenaline constantly ramped up - requiring him to use everything from pain, drugs, caffeine, sex and whatever else you could imagine to keep himself alive long enough to take revenge on his "killers." The story climaxed with what appeared to be Chelios' spectacular "death," but you know how action heroes are...

The first film had energy and style to spare, but whether or not it was meant to be anything other than "awesome" is largely in doubt. If you WERE to go looking for a sense of presentation theory, I suppose a good way to describe it would be that the film seems to imagine a theoretical "ideal audience member" for itself in the form of a mad-at-the-world teenaged boy and views itself through "his" eyes: Chelios wreaks bloody havoc through a "people and things who piss me off in L.A." obstacle course in which everyone and everything has it's worst foot forward practically begging to be throttled, and our view of it is a multimedia blitz of pounding music, gratuitous sleaze, dehumanizing caricatures of every race, gender and lifestyle to be found and a smattering of video game sound effects.

In the sequel, Chelios is "saved" from his death by a gang of Chinese Triad organ-thieves who want to steal his demonstrably-unkillable heart for mysterious purposes. Outfitted with an artificial heart that requires constant replenishment of electricity, Chev is once again off-and-running across the City of Angels to punch his way to retrieving his "property," stopping only long enough to electrocute himself in whatever oddball way can be found to keep on kicking. Along with the Triads and a rival Latino gang with it's own agenda to fight and Bai Ling as what is either the most offensive Asian female character in modern film history OR a bloody-brilliant satire of stereotypical Asian female roles in Hollywood movies, just about every minor character who survived the first film (and some who didn't) are back for another round as well.

It's not really a complicated thing, guys: Either you WANT to see likable action lead "Double Dragon" his way through nightmare visions of the day-to-day annoyances of sharing urbania with the rest of humanity with an almost Troma-level disregard for basic decency visualized in a manner so impressionistic it borders on the outright surreality one might expect from a Michel Gondry or Jan Svankmajer piece (at least one fight scene briefly morphs into a 100% different genre and visual style that's destined to make it a "no, really!" classic) or you DON'T.

One thing I CAN offer in it's favor is that, for all it's "fuck-everyone-and-everything" bluster it's consistently hard to figure which targets filmmakers Neveldine and Taylor aim to skewer and which they aim to (in their own way) celebrate: At one point, a big-bossomed stripper participating (topless) in a gun battle takes a nonlethal bullet to the chest and, rather than blood, we're treated to the sight (and sound) of liquid silicon erupting from her punctured implants... on the other hand, Chelios' eventual backup is an army of musclebound, leather-clad African American gay/S&M bikers who arrive on-scene in a thunderingly-heroic manner usual reserved for literal cavalry. If nothing else, it's a genuinely peculiar blend of screw-the-world misanthropy and quasi-progressive caricature-subversion. There's certainly nothing else quite like it out there right now.

Let's Watch the "Wolverine" trailer...

"The Escapist" has seen fit to give me another spot, this time going through the "Wolverine" trailer a'la the Zapruder Film. Enjoy!



After watching, check out the ACTUAL site too:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/684-MovieBob-Reviews-Wolverine-Trailer

OUTTAKES #028

 

Further proof there’s something seriously wrong with me, but what can I say, the scene fit perfectly. And despite the tedious political trappings, I believe this topic falls well within the range of catechesis. You know, they probably don’t want my help after this, but if you feel inclined to, go check out NDResponse and Notre Dame Scandal anyway. Prayers would be most helpful.

Dragonball: Evolution

Wow, what a dud. Badly-acted, inanely-scripted, edited into oblivion and heavily reliant on special effects that wouldn't pass muster in the kind of 2nd tier Hong Kong (or Bollywood, for that matter) cash-in in otherwise best resembles; this would be a shoo-in for a lot of year-end "worst" lists save for the fact that no one but hardcore "Dragonball" fans will take much notice of it now OR remember it a week from now. It's not just a bad movie - it's a dull, lifeless one.

Let's be clear, though: There's ABSOLUTELY no reason for anyone to see this unless they're already a devotee of Akira Toriyama's seminal manga/anime franchise... and even then it can only possibly be of interest as a curiousity item for fans who feel like watching the unwieldy result of trying to rework Toriyama's offbeat scifi-fantasy spoof of Chinese mythology and martial-arts manga into the framework of an American superhero movie - primarily "Spider-Man."

The original "Dragonball" applied a gonzo sheen to the ancient Classical Chinese novel "Journey to the West." Taking place in a vaugely futuristic world of magic, monsters and kung-fu; it followed the friends and associates of gadget-girl Bulma and Goku - a hyperactive feral child with superhuman fighting skills, mysterious powers and a dubious origin - on their quest to collect seven lost "Dragonballs" with which one can summon a dragon and make a wish. The new film keeps that basic outline but moves the premise to a world dissapointingly closer to our own, reimagines Goku as a power-concealing undercover nerd in High School a'la Peter Parker and bumps eventual-baddie Piccolo to the forefront early on.

The "international" cast does what it can in what amounts to another fundamentally-empty Fox cheapie hoping to cash-in on a name brand. James Marsters comes off the best under heavy makeup as Piccolo, while Chow Yun Fat (seriously?) looks like he's having fun as lecherous martial arts teacher Master Roshi and Emmy Rossum deftly approximates anime sex-appeal in a ridiculous hairdo. Justin Chatwin as Goku is very nearly the least interesting male lead since Robert Pattinson in "Twilight."

Skip it.

Le Prix A Payer

La Personne Aux Deux Personnes

Observe & Report

Let me join the choir of broken records on this one: DON'T read this or any other review, just go see it before the "secret" gets out. If there's any justice in the world, this film is about to leave theaters full of people who showed up for a second go at "Paul Blart" (which really isn't bad and doesn't deserve the slagging it's getting in comparison to this superior but largely unrelated film) shell-shocked and rattled like nothing they've experienced in recent memory. Don't you wanna be there for that?

...

....

.....

For those of you who either ignored the above advice or took it and just came back, here we go:

In the broadest sense, O&R is a grim subversion of the current most-reliable comedy trend: Movies about socially-inept, comically-derranged man-children living in their own deluded world where their meager job or position is of huge importance - even though they're largely incompetent at it - but who are basically harmless and thus likable in their wackiness (see: 95% of Adam Sandler movies). O&R changes-up the game with a diabolically-simple swap - removing the "incompetent" part. And the "harmless" part.

Seth Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt is an overzealous mall security guard who envisions himself as the Dirty Harry (or is it Maniac Cop?) of commercial-district suburbia, and up to a point that's about as funny as you'd expect... except that he's NOT inept or incapable: He's FREAKISHLY "good" at what he thinks his job is. He's a crack shot with his beloved gun collection, he's in surprisingly spry shape for his, er.. "shape," he's got a creepy talent for earning fealty from other small-time malcontents and - most importantly - he's a very REAL physical threat to those who cross him. This is no endearingly-disconnected goofball, this is a bona-fide psychopath BARELY kept in check by bipolar meds. That's the gag: The other characters don't know everything "we" know, so they keep treating him like an over-imaginative dork while the audience knows the frightening truth that Ronnie really IS the tormented lethal-weapon he thinks he is... in fact, he's even worse than that: Ronnie thinks he's Harry Callahan, but he's REALLY Travis Bickle.

Events conspire to push Ronnie's hero fantasies over the edge: A trenchcoat-clad "flasher" is tormenting girls at the mall, including his longtime crush Brandi (Anna Faris as possibly the best "unlikable" female lead in a decade or more.) Ronnie elects himself chosen by providence the bring the "case" to a close, leading him to butt heads with the real police (Ray Liotta), make his move on Brandi and go off his meds. None of these things are good, but the bigger problem is that their consequences can't STOP him: Ronnie is NOT a guy who self-destructs - his psychopathy explodes outward, anhilating those around him but leaving him relatively unscathed and oblivious.

The film itself is somewhat imperfect. It sometimes seems to drop off-tempo jokes into scenes just so there can BE a joke, and it's ending possibly goes on one or two beats too long (you may be too shocked to care at first glance, however.) But it's made brilliant by it's fearless sensibilities, it's rather "Watchmen"-like examination of the kind of lunatic that actually takes to vigilantism and its performances - including a scene-stealing a possibly career-changing comic turn from Michael Pena.

Honestly, I'm actually a bit disturbed at how "relatable" Ronnie is at some moments. By the time the film wraps up we know he's lethally-unstable, a stalker, a racist, potentially a date rapist... but there's a certain real "vengence of the underdog" angle to his delusions that from certain angles you (or, at least I) could halfway sympathize with. At one point he and Pena team up to lay a horrifically-violent beating on a gaggle of grade school aged skateboard-punks and, well... on the one hand I "understand" that this is meant as a further clue as to how far-gone Ronnie is, but on OTHER hand I have worked in a mall and damned if I didn't get a MASSIVE vicarious thrill watching him break a board over one of the little brats skulls. I think this is part of why the film works, though - this ISN'T a fantasy of a crazy guy, this is a crazy guy who exists by the thousands all over the place and maybe to a degree inside more people than would like to admit it.

Final Rating: 9/10

Busy busy busy...

Yikes, looks like I missed some days. Ah, well, here we go...

FAST & FURIOUS:
God, but I hate this franchise even as I like most of the people in it. This new fourth installment acts as though #2 never happened (while a brief character-cameo in the first scenes establishes that #3 has YET to happen) reuniting the main cast from the first for what turns out to be a pretty generic smuggling caper. The most interesting part is ruminating on how much has changed since the original, when Paul Walker was a blandly-irritating youth icon in the Tiger Beat mold, Michelle Rodriguez was still riding the wave of post-"Girlfight" hype and Vin Diesel was a new star just starting to emerge into "name status." Now, eight years later, Walker is cementing status as a "grown" star with offbeat projects like "Running Scared," Rodriguez has spent the recent past better known as a tabloid fixture for arrests and bisexual adventurism than as an actress, while Diesel is still trying to pick up the pieces of a career that followed bad advice into "next big thing" action heroism and ran smack into a wall. Sadly, Jordana Brewster (also back) remains a criminally unappreciated actress.

ADVENTURELAND
It's a story about a rich (but not rich enough, it turns out) high-minded college grad who's forced by financial circumstance to spend a summer working at a creaky amusement park in his hometown. There, he meets (can ya guess?) an interesting crop of quirky but endearing characters and falls hard for a girl who (betcha can't guess!) is as hard-bitten and experienced as he is naive (aww, how'd ya guess?) but is hiding a secret pain. Okay, so originality isn't it's strong suit, but it's the details that count: What at first looks to be the umpteenth knockoff of Caddyshack gets it's mileage from making it's stock characters just real enough to feel surprising even though all the beats you're expecting are there. Kristen Stewart is the standout as the female lead - she's so good in this it makes me even sadder to think about what appearing in the awful "Twilight" series is potentially going to do to her career.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD

I have to admit I’ve never read a Dan Brown novel nor watched the movie based on his work. I mean, when you’ve had an atheist tell you to avoid them because the man’s books are poorly written and his research is laughable and easily discredited, why bother? But I’m beginning to suspect there just might be a real Catholic conspiracy going on after all. I think my fellow Catholic bloggers are out to get me. First came the request to review Spellcaster, and now from our esteemed friend  Miguel Cuthbert comes an entreaty to see us take on Warrior Of The Lost World. Without the MST3K commentary I might add. Oh yeah. They’re out to get me.

Once again, no trailer for this beauty is available online, but some kind soul has posted the opening scroll on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Do your best to digest it all, there may be a pop quiz later.

Just Business

Told you so

So, evidently Jackie Earl Haley is Platinum Dune's new Freddy Krueger.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002124.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562

Called it!
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2009/03/guess-what-i-just-got-back-from.html

This is big, BIG news for Haley - a few years ago he was a beyond-forgotten former child star (from the original "Bad News Bears") only to re-emerge back onto the scene with extraordinary roles in "All The Kings Men" and "Little Children;" and now in 2009 he's the unquestioned breakout star of "Watchmen" and set to take the lead role in a major studio franchise film. The guy's a terrific actor, and he deserves all this success and more.

EVERY "spooky guy" actor in the business was on the short-list for Krueger, so it's a pretty big coup for him... but I'm thinking it's actually Platinum Dunes "lucking out" in this case: "Watchmen" has turned Haley into a GOD in the eyes of the buzz-controlling Film Geek audience that would otherwise have been bound to raise an entire production-runup's worth of negative noise at the idea of anyone other than Robert Englund playing Freddy.

In any case, I'm REALLY happy for the guy. It's just, y'know, a shame that the movie is still going to suck ;)

Oh, and hey: Here's the newest OverThinker piece - Part I of a Sonic The Hedgehog overview:
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2009/04/episode-twenty-one-sonic-in-crisis-part.html

SPELLCASTER

THE TAGLINE

“His magic is evil… His spell is deadly… His power… complete.”

THE PLOT

Jackie, a poor waitress stuck in a go-nowhere life, is overjoyed to find herself one of the few lucky winners of an R-TV (Rock Television) reality-TV style contest, the goal of which is to search for a one million dollar check hidden in the castle of the reclusive Senor Diablo. Joining Jackie on the hunt are her brother Tom (who amazingly also won a spot despite there being millions of entrants), the drunken, fading rock star Cassandra Castle, and 5 other detestable human beings not worth naming here. Unfortunately, at least for the publicity hungry Cassandra, R-TV’s massive production crew of two people is killed in a mysterious car explosion, so the televised portion of the proceedings never get under way. However, unaware of the accident, and in dire need of cash, the gamesters begin the quest for the check anyway, oblivious to the fact that they are being watched by an unseen figure via crystal ball. One by one the hapless explorers are dispatched by supernatural means until only Jackie, Tom, and Cassandra are left to confront Adam Ant, the evil Spellcaster behind everything. Only then do they learn the true reason they have been brought to this castle of death and what the prize they’ve been competing for truly is.

THE POINT

How this blog made it to its third year without managing to review a single Charles Band movie is beyond me. Whether it be as director, writer, or producer, the man has been cranking out nickel and dime goodies (over 230 and counting) since the early 1970s. If you’ve trolled through a video outlet even once, then there’s no way you’ve escaped Band’s oeuvre. Laserblast, Ghoulies, Trancers, Puppet Master, Subspecies, and on and on, right up to the recently released The Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust, they just keep filling the shelves. (And if you read this, then you know I didn’t make that last title up.) Yet despite his prodigious output, it wasn’t really until the mid-to-late 80s, when he was running first Empire Studios, then Full Moon Entertainment, that his movies began to have a distinctive Charles Band feel about them and a fan base developed based solely on his brand. Released in 1992, Spellcaster showed up right around the tip end of that golden age (Trancers III & Puppet Master 4 were already in production, so the newness was wearing off), but it still has certain elements which mark it as a Charles Band production from that era.

To start with there’s the location. During this period exchange rates were fairly low, so lots of production companies actually found it cheaper to fly their actors over to various European countries rather than film in The States. Shot almost entirely on location at the 600+ year old Castello Orsini-Odescalchi in Bracciano, Italy, Spellcaster has a ready made authentic old world set design that these kinds of movies could never afford otherwise. It’s just hard to go wrong with a place which has hosted the likes of Pope Sixtus IV, Charles VIII of France, AND the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, (okay, maybe you can go a bit wrong with that last one) and Spellcaster makes the most of it.

Along with a good setting, you could almost always count on the effects in one of Band’s movies from this time period. Now obviously you’re not going to find stuff on the level of ILM or WETA, but what you do get is often above average and imaginative. That’s because Band apparently works under the philosophy that if you have to choose between having good actors and having good monsters, it’s better to skimp on the on-screen talent. (And trust me, he does.) This may sound like it would make Spellcaster a bit tortuous to watch, but with an 83 minute running time, you don’t have to suffer through too much “acting” before the next creepy crawler shows up. And in Spellcaster they show up in surprising numbers. Among other things you get a groping zombie attack, a hand carved chair that eats the people who sit in it, a minotaur, a neon electric snake, some unidentified Ghoulies leftovers, and a were-pig. Yes, you read that right, a were-pig. Discussing the kinds of special effects he prefers, Band once explained that “it's all in the realm of fantasy. There's no slasher, there's nothing hopefully that reminds people too much of what horrible things are going on in the world today that you can catch on the news every night."

Man-eating chairs and were-pigs aside, though, the movie is missing some things. Director Rafal Zielinski, who spent the 80s helming formulaic sex comedies like Screwballs, Loose Screws, & Screwball Hotel (notice a pattern?), doesn’t really seem to know what to do with a creature feature. Horror can live with a light heart, but it needs atmosphere flowing through its veins, and Spellcaster is pumping pretty dry in that department. In retrospect, Teen Wolf can challenge Spellcaster when it comes to atmosphere. (Maybe if the movie had been named Screwcaster, Zielinski would have put some effort into it.) But what’s missing even more than the atmosphere is Adam Ant. Given that he has top billing and is the only person to appear on the video cover, you’d think the 80s icon would have been given more screen time than the three or four minutes he’s in. Now hiring a recognizable name, paying them just enough to be on set for a few days, and then using them to promote the movie is an old B-movie trick, but Spellcaster takes it just about as far as it can go. Unless you count the near endless times you see his hands hovering over a crystal ball, Ant is in the movie for only one scene. One scene! And he’s the most enjoyable actor in the film!

Unfortunately, that’s not saying much, as it’s really pretty easy to be the most enjoyable actor in Spellcaster. Now, in fairness to the cast, it’s not necessarily their fault this time around. Most of them, Gail O’Grady in particular, would go on to do solid TV work after Spellcaster. But their parts as written aren’t so much people as they are walking talking character flaws who take stereotyping to an insulting international level. There’s Teri the all-American 24 hour tease. She’s so good she even manages to tease that segment of the audience  who rents these things looking for nudity by miraculously keeping everything covered through numerous showers and an attempted rape. Speaking of which, let’s not forget Tony the Italian guy, who radiates both perpetual horniness and perpetual greasiness in equal measures. His opposite is Myrna the insufferable gun toting, tweed breek wearing British snob. And, of course, there’s Yvette, the French girl. That’s it. Apparently the movie sees being French as a character flaw. But the worst of them all has to be Harlan the fat guy. Harlan is the kind of obese character you only find in movies, the kind who cleans his plate, then the plate of the person next to him, and then goes off in search of more plates. It’s pretty bad.

But that’s probably done on purpose too. In keeping with Band’s lighthearted approach to things, most of his movies find it better to have the body count consist of repulsive a-holes rather than people you might really care about. And in the case of Spellcaster, just to make sure you know it’s only the bad people who are dying, the movie has most of them knocked off in some way related to their particular character flaw. The tease is trapped in a painting in which she will be forcefully assaulted by the minotaur for eternity. The Brit is shot with her own guns. The French girl I can’t remember, I guess she’s forced to stay French. And as for the fat guy, yep, you guessed it. Were-pig. The characters are such paper thin, over the top obnoxious sinners that by the time the devilish Adam Ant starts wiggling his fingers over the crystal ball and taking them out, you’re almost tempted to cheer him on. And why not? If Psalm 136 can hurl invectives at God’s enemies like “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”, then why shouldn’t we be able to celebrate when Spellcaster’s sleazy misogynistic Goombah gets tossed off a balcony to his rather squishy sounding death? Heck, some would even say it’s our Christian duty to desire for bad things to happen to bad people.

Way, way back in our review of Student Bodies, we discussed how Christians should avoid seeking to do harm to, or have revenge on, their enemies. But what about asking God to do it? Vengeance is His, sayeth Him, right? And, as evidenced by the above Psalm, the Bible is chock full of imprecatory petitions. Found mostly in the Psalms, but also scattered throughout the Old & New Testaments, imprecatory prayers, as defined by Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, are those in which the petitioner “pronounces a curse over the enemies of God and God's people, as when David prays, "May no one be left to show him kindness, may no one look after his orphans, may his family die out, its name disappear in one generation" (Psalm 109:12-13).” Sure, it’s strong stuff, especially considering society’s modern day aversion to “meaness”, but since it seems to have been okay for King David and St. Paul and those guys to pray to God this way, shouldn’t it be for us as well?

Maybe. But the first thing to consider before we casually imprecate (sounds a bit dirty doesn’t it?) is that there seems to be little to no consensus on just what’s going on in these kinds of prayers. St. Augustine prefers to see them somewhat symbolically. Regarding Psalm 136, he asks, “What are the little ones of Babylon? Evil desires at their birth. For there are, who have to fight with inveterate lusts. When lust is born, before evil habit gives it strength against you, when lust is little, by no means let it gain the strength of evil habit; when it is little, dash it. But you fear, lest though dashed it die not; "Dash it against the Rock; and that Rock is Christ." 1 Corinthians 10:4” Modern theologians such as Erich Zenger and Linda M. Maloney take Augustine one step further. In their book A God of Vengeance?, the authors see the imprecatory psalms as poetic renderings in which “God in person confronts us with the fact that there are situations of suffering in this world of ours in which such psalms are the last thing left to suffering human beings.” Basically, they’re lamentations which act as sticky notes to remind us of social injustice. 

Now both of those theories are workable, but they don’t quite address what we’re trying to find out. One interpretation that gets us a little closer lies within the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the imprecatory Psalms. It puts forth the idea that they “are national anthems; they express a nation's wrath, not an individual's. Humility and meekness and forgiveness of foe are virtues in an individual; not necessarily so of a nation; by no means so of the Chosen Nation of Jahweh, the people who knew by revelation that Jahweh willed they should be a great nation and should put out their enemies from the land which he gave them.” While this nationalistic, bug picture approach is good, and works well with later imprecatory verses like those in the Book of Revelation, it still doesn’t give us a final answer as to whether or not its okay to pray to God to punish a specific individual because of some wrong we’ve seen them do. (And I really want the answer, because, you know, I’ve got a list.) But the introduction of the virtue of humility into the equation just might.

Humility, as the Catechism reminds us, “is the foundation of prayer.” In order to stress this truth, Saint Benedict dedicated an entire chapter of the Rule he penned in order to aid in the establishing of religious communities to the attainment of that particular virtue. In it, he puts forth 12 steps one must go through in order to become truly humble. Now don’t worry, I know this review is overlong already, so we’re only going to take a quick look at step seven. But that isn’t necessarily something to be relieved over. According to Columba Stewart, OSB, in his book Prayer And Community: The Benedictine Tradition, it is Benedict’s seventh step of humility which “is the most wrenching for modern readers: ‘that one not only claims with the tongue to be inferior and worse than everyone else, but actually believes it with deep feeling of heart’ The kick comes in the succeeding words, borrowed from Psalm 22: ‘humbling oneself and saying with the prophet, “I am a worm and not a human being, cursed by others and rejected by people.”’… The key, as so often in the Rule, lies in tracking the biblical quotations which follow; “I was exalted but now am humbled and confused’ (Ps. 88:16, Latin) and ‘it is good that you have humbled me, so that I could learn you commandments’ (Ps. 119:71).”

You see the catch, of course. If we’re truly humble, especially by St. Benedict’s definition, then the first person we have to ask God to lay the smackdown on is the one and only person we know for certain is a dirty wretch… ourselves. And, as the Psalms point out, if by chance He does dash us against the rocks, then by all means we should be joyful about it, because we’ll know He did it so we could grow in wisdom and understanding. All in all, until we’ve got all our own kinks worked out (which should take a while considering what worms we are), it’s probably best to leave it up to God decide at what point the hammer should fall on others. He’s been around awhile, He’ll know when its time. Until then, it’s probably safer for our prayers for others to take the charitable route. Oddly enough, Spellcaster actually kind of ends on just this note. The newly sober Cassandra, who had arranged for the fate of all the nasty folk in the first place, has a change of heart, adopts a more humble non-rock star lifestyle, and strikes a new deal with Senor Diablo which frees all of the victims from their punishments. While this may not be as immediately satisfying as seeing someone turned into a were-pig for their sins, it at least leaves open the door for their possible redemption down the road. Except for the girl who’s French, I don’t know how she’s going to fix that.

THE STINGER

Senor Diablo, being a nasty guy, doesn’t just let everyone off the hook without getting something in return. So what’s his payoff? In the final scene we learn that Cassandra introduces Diablo to R-TV who gives him his own reality show in which he offers to let people compete on live TV for the chance to become a star with a recording contract… at a price, of course. In other words, the movie ends with Satan creating American Idol. I freakin’ knew it!