#1,398: Passengers

I'm glad that an actor as good as Andre Braugher makes money acting in studio movies. It's too bad he doesn't get quality roles lately though. Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Andromeda Strain, Passengers... The Mist was closest to passable, I guess.

• Find Me Guilty - Lumet. Thumbs up. Uncharacteristically good role for Mr. Diesel.

• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - Lumet. Thumbs up. Not as good though. Some of the efforts to be twisty seemed to be overdoing it.

• If I See Randy Again, Do You Want Me To Hit Him With The Axe? - Not great, but worth watching to add such a fine title to my list.

• Daughter - Not very scary, not very short scary short film. I suspect the creator of employing fake symbolism to appeal to professors, and since it got his career rolling, I guess it worked.

• Dear Zachary - a doc from the prestigious MSNBC films. Topped a number of 2008 best lists, so I went in knowing nothing about the content of the movie. Always a good strategy; I recommend the same to you. Thumbs up.

• JCVD - Another one I recommend that you view in the same manner I did. In this case, that's bookended by 20 trailers from other JCVD movies and followed by one of his goofiest 90s flicks. Turns out the guy can do some acting, and the audience cheered at all the right parts. I'd like to see it again some time in fact. Thumbs up!

• Hulk Vs. - ...Thor was a lot better than ...Wolverine, which seemed to be animated to the quality standards of fan art. (Which they rub in by showing classic comic panels of each character at the end.) The Thor segment tells a story worthy of a saturday morning cartoon. The Wolverine segment pushes caricatures of some of the most deadly x-men characters around the screen, all carefully not harming one another. Omega Red has never seemed less scary. Thumbs down!

• The Beach - Not at all what I was expecting, which was something more Cast Away-ish. Very kinda okay, like lots of Boyle movies. Does Leonardo DiCaprio ever play a different character? He seems to turn up as the same guy an awful lot.

• Oktapodi - One of this year's Oscar nominees for animated short. Pretty good, but I'll tell you, not entirely realistic.

• Passengers - This movie finds a bush and then beats all around it for many hours. I wish I'd looked at the clock to make a note, but scanning back through the movie I'd say the 'Answer' (it's that sort of movie) occurred to me around 20 minutes in. And then, after another week or so of running time, they actually spent a full 10 minutes (no exaggeration) doing that 30-second flashback you usually get in these kind of movies that shows you all the clues we saw earlier, now in the light of the Answer's big reveal. I suspect that if you've got that much explaining to do, you might not have actually told a story with your interminable pile of scenes that came before. I like Anne Hathaway, but I kind of felt sorry for her each time her attempts to do acting smashed into the brick wall of a male lead again and again. (Here's hoping he doesn't drag down Watchmen too.) Despite a 4-second cameo by W. B. Davis, aka C.G.B. Spender, aka the Cigarette-Smoking-Man, thumbs down.

• Medal of Honor: Airborne - on the 360. In much the same way that coin-operated arcade games don't seem so long when you don't have to keep dropping quarters to continue playing, the single player 'campaign' mode of this game is around 5-6 hours of FPS gaming stretched double or triple through the saddling mechanism of the 360 controller. It's not a bad game, and you see all the battles one might expect whenever one fights World War II. This is a leftover from my suspiciously-good deal on a 360 console and games.

• 24 - For the first 6 hours of the new season, I'm enjoying the show. I liked how this year's conceit started out as Jack in the real world. The real world people are baffled by Jack's decisions, and the threats of the 24 supervillains. Jack's super powers don't seem to work on anyone except those villains, although he does seem to be able to infect real world people he meets, bringing them into the fold. For example, the FBI agent who finds his methods deplorable...until she gets a taste of them in action, and half an hour later, her previous moral compass has been thrown to the magnetic wolves. I think we did blatantly see a series of events from one perspective and then another though, and that the producers were telling us that 'real time' may not be as important anymore when the scientist kidnapped in the first 5 minutes of the season had managed to assemble the insanely powerful and useful technological macguffin in less than ten minutes.

On the topic of Improving My LA Experience, I may have found a solution to the unemployment thing, which seems to plaguing ever more folks around me every day; I'm pondering new living arrangements; I've dropped an improv group that wasn't working out so well for me; and I'm still working on Better Radio. This is taking longer than expected, as usual, between recasting, failed recording attempts, slow post production, and a difficulty in corralling a staff into one place and time. But every day, some new piece of the ten-episode puzzle falls into place. Today's piece of that puzzle? A fresh segment submission from that glittering jewel in the Italian crown, Z-Rob!

#1,388: 21

WATCHED a lent copy of Foxy Brown this week. Fun and crazy and interesting to see where the different standards used to be. READ a copy of How to Cheat your Friends at Poker, presumably by J.D. Richards. I'm inclined to believe that Penn Jillette really did help someone else get their text into print on his good name, because Penn's never so dull in anything else he works on. Pretty much like reading a bound up handful of old BBS-era textfiles describing how to be a successful cheat with all the usefulness of Steve Martin's advice on how to get a million dollars and never pay taxes. Don't know that I really wanted someone to train me at cheating in a game I don't play, but I wanted more than I got.

WATCHED 21, the Los Vegas advertisement that looked kind of neat in the commercials. I talked with some of the dealers about the movie last time I was there. They said if anything, it was pretty good for the town, since it got more people in thinking they could work the system the movie didn't actually explain to them.

But I was still surprised by how bad the movie was.

While it ran, I had a litany of complaints, but I thought writing them as it played was corny, and now, minutes after the film ended, it almost completely escapes me. The cheesy 80s score, the paper-thin plot twists, the just enough romantic subplot to fill in a spot in the trailer, the reams of voiceover material that tells us how great vegas is. I guess they just didn't sell the fantasy of winning a lot of money, since, like poker chips, it didn't seem like money. They don't use it for anything, and they don't seem to have really worked for or earned it, so there's no reason to care when things go south for the characters, as they inevitably must in order to fulfill the plot formula. There was one fun moment when one character took everything from another character, but that didn't last.

ALSO, this week I saw a bunch of Robot Chicken, which really loses its fun when it isn't fresh; the Rifftrax Live short 'Self Conscious Guy,' which was good; the start of season 3 of the excellent UK series Hustle, and I synced up the last segment of 2001 with Pink Floyd's 'Echoes,' which is like doing Wizard of Oz + Dark Side of the Moon in that it's kind of neat, but doesn't really work any more than how most songs will seem to fit most videos.

OH, and I cranked through most of the Google Reader I'd been ignoring for 3 or 4 weeks. Sweet Christmas I wish people proofread their posts. It's like the /film people are using a speech recognition program, for how often they get simple words and homonyms wrong. Also, even though nobody should have to be told this, if you're a journalist, or even if you're just pretending to be one on your blog, the fact that you're writing the story IS NOT the lead, least of all on your first day on the job. Unless maybe you're 9. Or 93. Yuck.

#1,386: Disturbia

Movie roundup:

• Zero Day - Z-Rob Day? More authentic feeling than Elephant, funny, and then of course the inevitable happens.

• Idiocracy - Mostly didn't like it as much as I heard I should, excepting some of the jokes built around following a line of logic through to an extreme, like "the electrolytes (re: salt) plants crave!"

• Slumdog Millionaire - Also less awesome than advertised. Until the (spoiler!) FULL CAST DANCE NUMBER kicks in! Woo!

• Blindness - In which we learn that blind people are worthless. But still not as worthless as women.

• Death Wish II - In which we learn how darn rapey LA is. Or hopefully, was.

• Twilight Zone: The Movie - This movie takes 4 episodes of the classic TV show and makes them boring. It's almost as if this movie was made in....The Twilight Zone! (ps, thank heavens I haven't seen any Twilight-zone puns having to do with that vampire nonsense that went around lately)

• The Golden Compass - In which we learn about how repulsive those filthy Egyptians are! Actually, this wasn't too bad, but it didn't always seem to be made for the kid audience it was presumably chasing. Also has one of the to-be-continuedest endings ever; too bad they won't be making the other two. That CG polar bear will never get his bottle of delicious coca-cola.

• Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane - Way better than Snakes on a Plane, hands down.

• Diary of the Dead - Liked it. Wonder if it was supposed to take place on the same day as 'Night of,' or if the Romero series isn't necessarily a continuous chronicle of the same outbreak. There's audio re-used from the 'Dawn of' remake, so maybe it fits in that timeline instead.

• Out Cold - The secret to happiness is low expectations, so I liked this better than, say, co-star Zach Galifinakis suggested I might.

• Bulletproof - This action movie parody starring Adam Sandler is played so straight I'll bet a bunch of viewers didn't even notice it was a comedy.

• Over Her Dead Body - It's Ghost Town except with a girl seeing a ghost girl and dating her dude, instead of a dude seeing a ghost dude and dating his girl.

• Sharks in Venice - Has sharks. Has Venice. Has some other stuff the makers half-remembered from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Ah, Venice!

• Death Wish V: The Face of Death - Pretty confusing, since I haven't seen DW3 or DW4 yet. Between the lack of rape, the lack of plot-irrespective architecture scenes, and the more creative kills, it practically didn't feel like a Death Wish at all.

• Seven Pounds - The more puzzling opening section of this was the most fun. Some nice little touches that weren't explicitly called out, even through the more formulaic second half. Liked it, not sure it would work.

• Strictly Sexual - Two girls hire two guys to be live-in whores. Naturally, love ensues.

• Disturbia - Rear Window. Explains too much. Better than the Reeve remake, I think. Probably one of Ben Savage Shia LeBoeuf's best roles, but that's not saying much.

Looks like only 6 or 8 for 17. Pretty mediocre lineup lately.

#1,368: Burn After Reading

Say what you will about the Coen Bros., but I really like their nihilistic streak as of late. I didn't like this as much as No Country for Old Men, but for two movies in a row by people I thought I didn't like, it's almost enough to make me want to go back and check out some of their older movies again, in case I'm the one that changed. I did change my location: I'm in Cleveland for a few weeks. It's a winter wonderland!

Other movies I've seen lately:

Notes from The Day the Earth Stood Still - seen under some delightfully bad projection ("It's okay Bill, just make sure most of the image is actually on the screen!"). - The helicopters looked weird at all times, but I wonder why you'd assemble a team of the world's finest scientists and then put them in the air at the expected blast zone. - There was an 800 number on the screen that I didn't quite catch - The US Dept. of Defense is still using a "mainframe?" Really? Still? - obligatory christ pose - stolen clerks gag - running from the bugs at the end made no attempt to make sense - The big thing here was that 10-15 minutes in I was genuinely wondering when Will Smith was going to show up, and then the movie has his kid in it, talking about how his dad would be fighting the aliens, except that he's dead. It seems that the entire movie was kind of an elaborate meta joke. - Keanu got to do his matrix birthing scene again, but I think Norm MacDonald would have been as good or better as Klaatu.

Punisher: War Zone - This was an absolute cartoon. Even the kills weren't particularly interesting or exciting, might as well have been video game footage, except that they lose points for recreating a move from Boondock Saints of all things. Luckily, I mixed up the times on a trip theater hopping, so I walked out around the time the Punisher was punching his wife's grave in favor of...

Bolt! In 3D! - I do like the 3D in a movie. This one was a bit too long and repetitive, I say. No Meet the Robinsons here. The show-in-the-show scenes were pretty great. Weird that they just lifted the goodfeathers wholesale though. Overall, I liked it, but I would have rather seen the movie that Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders was going to make.

The Visitor - This movie offers the message that Yes Man seems to offer, and I'm sure it does a better job of it. It could have ended about 20 minutes sooner with no distinguishable difference to the outcome.

Stuck - For an accomplished director and lead actress, this was surprisingly amateurish. Bleah.

The Mist - I expected to dislike this one. Heard bad things, and the opening was a little Happening-like. But then it was quite good. They just kept doing things I liked. Right down to the ending. Well done.

Ghost Town - First time I've seen Ricky Gervais not playing Ricky Gervais. Few directorial things I thought were neat, too. And featuring Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's pal Cameron) in a new spin on the role of Ghost Dad! And (highlight to read spoiler:) a lot of people getting hit by busses, which I always love to see in a movie.

So...5 for 8. That's pretty good. According to IMDB, I've seen about 40 movies released in 2008, but I don't know that I've seen enough that I liked to make a top 10 for the year. I guess I should actually see some of the movies topping everyone else's lists so I can like 'em too.

#1,280: The Doomsday Machine

Lately, I thought I was going to Tennessee to edit a feature film, but I now know I'm not.  

I thought a project involving video and internet-related gaming was done and gone, and it seems to have now resurfaced.  

I thought digitizing tapes of guys welding wasn't any fun...and I was pretty much dead on with that one.

There was a TV program, Mystery Science Theater 3000 - people making fun of old movies.  It inspired a community that I joined about seven years ago and have been grateful for almost continually ever since.  It also inspired its various creators and producers to keep on 'riffing' on movies long after the show was cancelled.  Rifftrax mainly involves the latter-day MST cast of Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, as well as a variety of other guests producing audio-only tracks that sync with modern movies.  Cinematic Titanic is a shadowrama quinttet of Joel Hodgson, J. Elvis Weinstein, Mary Jo Pehl, Trace Beaulieu, and TVs Frank Conniff, taking on more MST-traditional older films (which the rifftrax guys also tried, under the label The Film Crew.)

I remember the summer I wanted few things as much as I wanted to work at MST3K, or a show with a similar spirit - it felt handmade, filled with a creativity and resourcefulness...it was written to the height of the writer's intelligence, and almost any given episode I might watch today contains a reference that I might not have gotten a week or a month earlier.

When Rifftrax came on the scene, it was exciting stuff.  Finally, a full dose of what we'd only had a taste of in the little gold statue / summer blockbuster preview, washing over us like a horrific flood of Kaluhah, ravaging the streets of our metaphorical Mexican border towns. I enjoy most of 'em, but they're not quite the same.  Sometimes they take what seems to be the easy way out, with a barrage of gay jokes or obvious targets (Jar-Jar bad?   Okay.  Got it.)  At other times, the riffs seem a little bit meaner than they used to, picking on the people involved for reasons not related to the film at hand, maybe.  

Cinematic Titanic arrived apparently after RT proved there was more money to be made from the MST concept.  As Joel said to Wired, "...every (MST3K) DVD set we release sells better than the previous one. Since the supply of those original episodes is finite, we wanted to give our fans something new..."  A cynical mind might see this project as a knock off money grab by the guy who invented the original.  

But, for all the speculating, I hadn't watched it myself.  Tonight, the CT crew did a live riffing of The Wasp Woman The Doomsday Machine, a barely comprehensible morality tale that shows the gruesome consequence of space rape.  And it was fun to see and hear the MST crew (Trace in particular) on stage.  The show itself was about as good as an okay / fair episode of MST3K.  Like RT, some riffs seemed harsher than they used to - maybe this is because they're coming from actual people instead of characters and puppets?  It did seem like a lot of the lines that made the audience say "Ooooooo!" were put in the Mary Jo's mouth to take the edge off by having a girl say it.  Many of the biggest laughs came from the use of classical, well-worn, time-tested jokes.  Two or three Yakov Smirnoff references ("Space! What a country!"), two or three more MST-based lines ("This is like watching somebody watch 'Manos: The Hands of Fate!'"), the 'send in a replacement to watch the movie that makes a bunch of generic observations' bit ("What a jerk!  This movie's old!  Look at that guy!"), and so on.

In the end, even though I generally enjoyed the show, I was underwhelmed, but I don't know what I'd want different, exactly. I'm sure I miss the host segments, and the riffs filtered through characters' personalities.  Maybe it's just the effect of trying to put the lightning back in the bottle that's left fans disappointed just about every other time a classic franchise is revived in some way.   I might need to spend some time with some classic MST to figure it out.