jeff eaton

Caught I Am Legend with Nate, and was definitely a lot more solid than I expected. Will Smith manages to pull off the last-man-on-earth cliche with appropriate bleakness, and when a couple of telegraphed moments finally arrive they still manage to punch. While it's not as 'deep' as Children of Men, it's definitely in the same class: bleak, well-acted, and emotionally intense.

It's been way too long since I posted a review. I fell out of the habit for a while, mostly due to my usual "Must Craft The Perfect Blogging UI For Reviews" stuff. But, talk is silver and content is gold. I've been reading more and stumbled across this one on a random cruise through Borders, so it's time for a review!

Books about superheros are tricky. The pulpy ones tend to be terribly serious and way too immersed in the genre-conventions to recognize when they turn silly. The few well-written ones tend to stake out a smirky, pomo wink-at-the-audience style that turns the whole genre into a joke. They're more concerned with deconstructing the superhero genre than working within it. It's fun sometimes, but not terribly satisfying for someone who really does enjoy the traditions. Is it too much to ask that someone take the genre seriously, but recognize how... well... cliche the cliches are?

Apparently not. Soon I Will Be Invincible is well-written and fun. When the supervillain mutters about the difficulties of building his first underground base (in the carefully shielded basement of a suburban bungalow), it's funny but not a punchline. Doctor Impossible is a real guy, a genius, an outsider who wouldn't mind being on The Winning Team once in a while, but who's trapped in the no-escape rut of attempted world conquest. Why keep trying when the super-teams keep beating him? It's just what you do.

The story itself is pretty standard genre material -- the most powerful superhero alive has gone missing, and a new recruit is asked to join The Champions, just in time to stop Doctor Impossible's latest scheme, etc. etc. Rather than bending over backwards to reinvent the genre, author Austin Grossman treats those cliches as the everyday background noise of the superhero trade. The real story is inside the heads of the heroes and villains, in the way they see the world and the way they see each other.

In the current climate, it's almost inconceivable that someone would write a near-future cyberpunk novel set in the heart of an Islamic caliphate without making it a harrowing story of terrorism and fascist world conquest. A Fire in the Sun, thankfully, was written in 1989. It was possible, then, to speculate about the future of the Islamic world without being blinded by the headline-du-jour.

The result is an interesting pulp/noir detective vibe transplanted into a curiously different culture. Its characters are shaped by an Islamic culture in the same ways that the characters in The Godfather are shaped by Catholicism -- some devout, some not, but all focused primarily on their own self-interest in the way that humans tend to be.

The plot centers on Marid, a made man under the protection of the freakishly powerful and influential Friedlander Bey. He's a cop, too -- a sort of liaison between the police force and the Arabian godfather who keeps him protected. There's the usual cyberpunky trappings: memory ROMs jacked into neural shunts, esoteric weapons, and gritty murder mysteries. The story doesn't stand out so much as the setting does, but it's definitely worth a read.

Years ago, after watching the painfully bad trip that was The Knockaround Guys, Jason and I shook our heads sadly. Earlier, we'd put our metaphorical money on the chome-domed, gravelly-voiced Vin Diesel as the next breakout movie guy. He'd never be Robert Redford, but he had more snap, more zing than the cardboard-thin Action Hero actors who inhabited his genre at the time. He had the chops to play an actual dramatic role or two.

We started speculating. He'd need to crank out a few more action flicks to stay in the spotlight -- Pitch Black and Riddick were winners. But he'd need to branch off into something light, a comedy where his action-hero vibe was played for laughs, before transitioning to a straight comedy or two, then trying his chops at pure drama. Clearly, The Knockaround Guys was a blown opportunity that set The Plan back. But soon, The Pacifier hit theaters and the theory Jason and I had kicked around started looking almost plausable.

Having watched Find Me Guilty, I'm more convinced as ever that we were right about Vin's master plan. It's snappy and farsical, but there's real emotional drama to the character he plays in this story by the directory of Twelve Angry Men. Based on the actual Longest Jury Trial in American History, the film has Vin playing a mid-level mob guy in the trial that almost brought down New Jersey's biggest crime families. Twenty defendents, dozens of charges, and this guy -- with a sixth grade education -- decided he'd act as his own lawyer rather than turn state's witness. Chaos ensues, horses are frightened, prosecutors fume, etc etc.

It's a weird sort of movie, all the moreso because it's based on real events. Unlike, say, My Cousin Vinnie, there's the uncomfortable knowledge that these guys really, y'know, were mobsters who did all kinds of nasty stuff. But Diesel does a good job, playing a flawed wise guy who can't believe what's going on and can't help performing a little for everyone. Even a jury.

What's next? An indie film or two, maybe? Something quirky and dramatic, definitely not science fiction. Just remember -- once, Clint Eastwood was just a guy from some westerns.

Marie Antoinette got mixed reviews when it was released, and most of those who didn't like it seemed to object to the tone, the airy breezy style it kept as it panned through life in pre-Revolution France. Maybe Catherine and I were biased -- we'd just watched a few fascinating documentaries on Marie Antoinette's life before seeing it. The movie seemed to capture the disconnected-from-reality quality that was ultimately Louis and Marie's downfall; there was no profound statement, just the story of two teenagers scheduled to be king and queen in the bizarro-world of the royal court's final days.

The decision to cut the film off before the truly, profoundly grim trial and execution was a good one, I think. The final scenes are slow, panning sweeps through the palace that served as the backdrop for the movie's crazy parties and feasts. Gutted by looters, it feels like a weird return to normalcy.

Or, y'know, maybe we're both just suckers for an 80s soundtrack. I'm not going to pretend it's not true, mind you. I'm just saying it's not the only reason the movie rocks.

I picked up a copy for Catherine on Valentines' Day and we got to watch it with a friend yesterday. Midway through one of the wild 'parade of riches' scenes, he shouted, "Converse!" and we assured him that he was mistaken. No, that line of shoes did not include a pair of lace-up sneakers. He insisted, though, and we stepped back through frame by frame. Lo and behold...

See? This movie is cool.

Fun Home is a polished autobiographical piece that follows a daughter's memories of her obsessive, little-understood father. Alison Bechdel is also behind the long-running Dykes to Watch Out For, and sexual identity is a big theme in this story.

It's cool to see graphic novels maturing; the story itself would feel at home in any Gen-X autobiography on the shelf at Borders. After finishing it, though, I'd be hard pressed to imagine it in any other medium. The visual presentation gives it a lot of intensity, and Bechdel's writing voice is articulate and wry. She uses the combination of images and text as a real strength rather than twisting everything into an indie-film storyboard; words and images play against each other, with idle comments by her faceless narrator telling one story while the pen-and-ink illustrations tell another.

It's a bit of a depressing read, given the heavy themes. But it's also an example of the graphic novel at its best. I'll probably keep it on my 'must read' list for anyone wanting to dig into the genre.

When I saw the initial trailers for Lord of War, I was pretty convinced it was my kind of film. Black as black can be humor, a post-national Leggy Starlitz vibe, and some 80s music in the background. It'd be grim, but so was Grosse Point Blank, and it's on my favorites list.

I took a break from some code this evening, watched it on a whim, (thanks, Comcast On Demand!) and I can say a couple of things off the top of my head. First, Lord of War is a weak film story-wise. They weren't exactly going for super-spy thriller material, but most of the plot was telegraphed so far in advance that waiting for shoes to drop felt like a chore, not anticipation. And Nicholas Cage just plays... well... Nicholas Cage again. I suppose I can buy him as a Ukranian arms dealer from New York; if Clark Kent's glasses hide Superman, I guess Nicholas Cage doesn't have to bother faking an accent for this film.

Billed as a 'black comedy,' it was just black; nobody expects Keystone Kops from a movie about arms dealers, but what possibilities for brain-twisting irony and weirdness in a business like that seemed to be overlooked. Maybe I'm just war-inured after reading about military tech, international mercenery corporations, insurgency, and... well. Yeah. That.

That brings me to the second thought about this film. I can't help but think after watching that director Andrew Niccol had no real intention of making a black comedy. Lord of War, at its heart, is a dead-baby-photo thrust in the face of the viewer. There's some gore, but it's not really just about the violence that arms dealers facilitate. It's about the deadening of the human soul that goes with the territory of selling death.

Make no mistake about it: this movie is depressing in every sense of the word. Love is lost, lives are lost, souls are lost -- Nicholas Cage is invincible, unstoppable, but only in the most technical sense. By the time the film is over, he's won and he's no longer really human. He knows it, and even though he lies to everyone around him, no one is fooled -- not him, not them.

Perhaps it's not really, truly possible to enjoy a movie about people killing people without lying to yourself in one way or another. If I had, I'm not sure if I'd want to look in the mirror. I didn't enjoy Lord of War, and to be honest I think that's what the director intended.

There's a scene from the movie Three Kings that has always stuck with me. In it, a CNN reporter is touring Iraq in the days following the '91 gulf war. The Humvee she's riding in breaks down and she's stranded at a shattered petroleum facility, overlooking a flock of birds covered in oil. They flap, dying, squawking piteously. She stares, and sinks to the ground, overcome. "It's... It's all so goddamn horrible," she breathes.

That's what watching the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice feels like. It is the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of Jane Austen adaptations. It's a painful abomination. My soul weeps, and yours should, too.

Before going any further, I want to establish my credibility as someone who actually enjoys Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility was one of my favorite films growing up -- that, and Remains of the Day. I was an odd kid. When I finally saw the BBC miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, I was really blown away. Great acting, awesome script, an all-around class act. Colin Firth set the bar very, very high for future Mister Darcys. I've watched and enjoyed Clueless and Bride And Prejudice, too, so you can't say that I'm averse to creative reinterperetations of the source material. I even saw the low budget Bollywood zany-fest, I Have Found It, with its deep veins of inexplicable cultural context and baffling metaphor.

At the most superficial level, the makers of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice have obviously lavished attention on the sets, on the costumes, on capturing certain curious and cool nuances of architecture and decor and fashion. A few scenes -- Mister Bingley obsessing to Mister Darcy over his proposal to Jane -- are cute. It hits all the key plot points, and the scenery is quite pretty when it's not wrapped in an inexplicable Sleepy Hollow Fog.

In almost every other way, though, the story has been sucked dry by bad acting, a bad script, and just plain bad casting. Kiera Knightly, for example, makes a fine soccer-playing tomboy in Bend it Like Beckham. In Jane Austen's day, though, her skinny physique would be cause for immediate medical intervention and open pity, not a cover shoot for Elle.

That's unfortunate but forgivable -- unlike the film's constant mangling of characters. The absurd, fawning Mister Collins of the book is a stiff, vaguely creepy weirdo. Mister Bennet's a hust of himself here, shuffling from scene to scene with a stricken look, muttering his lines and looking like he'd much rather be Gandalf. His isn't the fretting mother hen from the book. Instead. She's a genuinely panicked woman lost in her world of matchmaking. Mister Bingley? A fish-eyed weirdo. Perhaps I wouldn't have noticed, but the role was played so well in the BBC version. There, Bingley was a good-humored extrovert, not a staring oggler. It made sense that Jane would enjoy his company, not just the promise of his fortune. The common thread in all of these bad bits of acting is their weighty seriousness. Jane Austen wrote snappy, witty stuff. Her characters were funny -- not because they cracked jokes but because they were comical charicatures. That's gone from this film, replaced by heavy gothic seriousness.

Talk of characters, naturally, brings us to Mister Darcy. Colin Firth's job was incredible in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. He had a tough job -- play a proud, arrogant man who dislikes interacting with others, but make us like him. He captured the vibe of an upper-crust guy who's still uncomfortable in his own skin, annoyed by social demands, and distant -- even antagonistic -- with strangers. When we saw him in a new context -- on his own turf, riding around his home or taking care of his sister -- the differences felt natural, they made sense. The New And Improved Darcy is just a stony-faced cipher, blank outside and empty inside. When his 'transformation' comes, it's an inexplicable shift from stiff-to-jovial. It's as if the entire film is populated by actors incapable of capturing more than one emotion at a time. The cast is not thread-safe.

Key conversations are rendered baffling by backported 20th-century worldviews, like Charlotte's angry defensiveness when Lizzie protests her loveless marriage to Mister Collins. "Don't judge me," she hisses. "Don't you dare judge me!" Er. Okay? The book's Charlotte was no romantic, and she told Lizzie as much, but the conversation was about reassuring Lizzie she would be happy, not asserting some personal moral independence. Often, the film tries to bludgeon the viewer with over-wrought class-and-manners moments. Extreme closeups on disapproving looks from rich neighbors with loooooooong stretches of silence to remind us Just How Scandalous some random gaffe is. Moments later, though, an upper-class man walks into a woman's bedchamber just to say "Hi" and no one thinks anything of it. Hello, inappropriate.

The film's sins keep piling up. I could go on and on, but I'll just leave it at this: The 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice is a humorless ride through drama-ville. Stick with the BBC version. It's longer, but more than worth it: it captures the wit and humor of Austen's writing, not just the plot points.

For quite a few years, I wasn't interested in real-time strategy games. Sure, Command and Conquer was cool, but eventually everything started to look like variations on a theme. Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth was what brought me back to the fold. It discarded certain inappropriate conventions of the genre and twisted the entire gaming experience towards a single goal: achieving awesome cinematic moments reminiscent of the LotR movies. It succeeded, and for that I will always love it.

Star Wars: Empire At War is a game that succeeds in the same way. Forget, for a moment, all the hairsplitting details. This is a game that allows me to wage pitched space battles against the Empire while orbiting above strategic moons. Admiral Akbar can cry 'Concentrate fire!' at critical moments, directing entire swarms of X-Wings at key hardpoints on an approaching Star Destroyer. Obi-Wan Kenobi can sacrifice himself heroically to hold off Darth Vader. Chewbacca can hotwire and steal AT-STs. The Death Star is a playable unit. Seriously, what isn't there to like? Not much.

Gameplay revolves around a clean spacey-looking galactic map. Garrisoning troops, building spacecrraft, launching invasions of enemy-held moons, and so on all happen at that high level. Once you've built up a fleet, you can sling it from planet to planet until it meets resistance, triggering a real-time space battle. Unlike most RTS games, it's impossible to build new units while you're in combat. You prepare your forces during the lulls, and find out how well you've done when combat commences. If you're victorious in orbit, you can send down a first wave of transports to launch a land battle. Capturing key points around the map lets you pull down additional reinforcements from your orbital fleet, but the no-new-units-in-combat rule holds true. If you come to a fight with a weak mix of forces, there's no way to recover save retreat.

The three modes -- map-based resource allocation and fleet-building, real-time space combat, and real-time ground combat -- make an interesting mix. In addition, whenever a battle is initiated it's possible to auto-resolve the conflict. Rather than sloging through a fight yourself, the computer can skim the statistics for the two warring fleets or armies and figure out who'll come out on top. If all the battles are skipped, Empire At War actually reminds me of old galactic conquest sims from my early gaming days.

After playing, though, it's not the tweaky details that stand out. It's stuff like 'The Millenium Falcon chasing down a Tie Fighter while Chewbacca growls victoriously.' It's a good season for geeks, I think. Even though the latest Star Wars movies were cringe-laden franchise-milking, the games hitting the market capture the fun I remember from the first three films. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take down some AT-ATs...

I haven't read much fantasy, to be honest. My few experiences with it were probably the kind of cliche stuff that causes real fantasy lovers to cringe and wince and start pulling out lists of the stuff that one should really read. The equivalent of over-wrought space opera in the scifi world.

Just as literary scifi is starting to gain traction, though, there seems to be a new wave in fantasy building up steam. Over the holidays I finished China Mieville's excellent Perdido Street Station, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The writing is fluid and evocative, with a curiously unfolding plot and complex characters. The book's heaviness, though, made it a bit of a slog at times. The writing and China's relentless creativity pulled me through, but I kept wanting to shy away from the grinding that his downtrodden characters had to endure. It's like eating four pounds of high quality sushi -- eventually, you have to walk away and take some time to recover.

That's why Looking for Jake, his collection of short stories, hits the sweet spot for me. Fourteen unique dishes, most top notch, and none so long that the flavor overpowers. Most skirt the edge of fantasy/horror, carefully ircling themes of otherness and disaster. Several are apocolypses -- tales of humanity's twilight as people vanish from the streets of London, or are conquered by creatures reaching through mirrors. That last story, The Tain, is one of the longest in the book. It's a perfect example of Mieville's writing: a fascinating premise that unfolds into an unsettling, horrific mystery. If it were any shorter, the story would be unsatisfying, but if it stretched out even a chapter or two longer, the nature of the story would be, well... really depressing.

It's good stuff, this book. I know I'll be foisting it on Benson and Jason in the near future, and I'm pretty sure others would like it as well.