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Man of Steel: Superman is Finally the Man of Tomorrow
After three great but decidedly non-comic-oriented Batman films and one stillborn attempt at tackling Green Lantern, one can almost smell the despair wafting off of DC and Warner Bros. Picture the publisher that invented the superhero comic and is couched in one of Hollywood’s most venerable studios, looking on sullenly as Marvel Studios cranks out hit after hit and then successfully combines them into the theatrical equivalent of Scrooge McDuck’s moneybin, while their own half-baked plans for a Justice League movie are foiled time and again like the predictable machinations of a Z-grade supervillain. The good news is that for DC and Warner, Batman’s no longer the only game in town. Superman’s back, and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a huge leap in the right direction, which if played correctly could be the definitive first step towards a shared cinematic universe to compete with Marvel’s unstoppable Avengers engine. That is, if the Internet can manage to not foul things up for everyone.
Star Trek Into Darkness Treks Into My Heart
Director J.J. Abrams’ 2009 franchise reboot was, by most accounts, a pretty good Star Trek film. A little heavy on the lens-flare, perhaps, and for those familiar with the characters, it could occasionally suffer from “origin story fatigue”. But all the pieces were there, the roles were well-cast, and the decision to branch out into a parallel universe and free the series from the confines of old continuity was well-played. The recently released follow-up, Star Trek Into Darkness is not just a good Star Trek film or even just a good sci-fi film, it is simply a good film. The all around stellar cast now fully inhabits their iconic roles, and Into Darkness breaks into that once-rare territory of sequels that easily surpass the original.
Batman Unlimited “The Dark Knight Returns” Figure Review
In 2003 Mattel launched a line of 7″ scale figures featuring Batman and an assortment of villains and allies, all of varying degrees of quality and complexity. This line then began to be alternated with waves of Superman figures, before finally giving way to the DC Universe Classics line: Mattel’s answer to the competing Marvel Legends figures, and a series that would become legendary for inspiring customer frustration. It seems we’ve now come full circle, and Mattel’s once again has a collector-oriented line focused entirely on the residents of Gotham City, entitled “Batman Unlimited”. I was heavily invested in all the lines that led up to this one, buying almost every single figure for around six years, until I eventually had to sell the bulk of my collection. Even though I do still have a modest shelf of Batman toys, thus far the Unlimited line has not really piqued my interest. The figures are expensive, there are only around three released at a time (taking any and all fun out of sifting through the pegs at the store), and I generally just try to be a little more careful with my purchases these days. Today, however, “responsible” lost a critical battle with “fanboy”, and I walked out of Target with a brand new figure based on pre-crazy Frank Miller’s magnum Batman opus, The Dark Knight Returns.
The Lords of Salem: Rob Zombie’s Lost Student Film
As a musician, Rob Zombie has carved out a genre all his own, and every new album he releases is, for lack of a better word, an incredibly “safe” buy for me. His back catalog doesn’t really have any low spots as far as I’m concerned, and when he made the transition into filmmaking part of me was hoping for more of the same. And really, things got off to a pretty good start. House of 1000 Corpses certainly had its issues but at the end of the day it feels like it’s just for me. It’s a long-form music video with some pretty great performances out of Bill Moseley and Sid Haig, tons of memorable dialogue, and a few truly impressive scenes (the backyard execution, for one). And it spawned the vastly improved sequel The Devil’s Rejects, which so far is one of my favorite horror movies of the 21st century. Then he started remaking Halloween films and I stopped caring. The original Halloween was a perfect one-and-done horror story; it didn’t need its sequels, much less a remake. Much less a sequel to the remake. So when Zombie started leaking casting info and images from his newest film, The Lords of Salem, I really wanted to be on board. I didn’t get the same strong sense of concept that I did with his first two efforts, but it wasn’t Halloween 3 and it wasn’t aping any of the well-worn trends that have caused me to take a step back from the horror genre as of late, so despite any minor reservations it really felt like something to get excited about.
Trance: This Year’s Best Unpromoted Film?
Danny Boyle is a squirrelly director to try to pin down. In 1996 Trainspotting made me fear hard drugs and heroin in particular more deeply than anyone has ever feared anything, in the history of fear. 28 Days Later came along and was a brilliant “zombie” movie while simultaneously probably wrecking the zombie movie subgenre for years to come. Then, after a handful of great films across a wide variety of genres, the Academy finally backs a truck full of Oscars up to his front door for Slumdog Millionaire, and I just…I might be in the minority here, but I hated that movie. I made it through, but only via sheer force of will. 127 Hours was an incredible experience which threw me firmly back into Team Boyle, but it’s hard to deny that, compared to his other work, it felt like the product of someone who had tasted gold and wanted more. I started to long for the old days, a feeling that finally seeing Shallow Grave solidified. What I’m trying to say is that as a subscriber to the auteur director theory, Danny Boyle renders my belief structure difficult and uncertain at times. He maintains a strong visual style which I adore, but his project choices have such an element of randomness to them that I’m never quite sure how excited I should be about his next release. Anyone else occupying the same fence as I do would be well served to go out and grab a ticket to Boyle’s newest film, Trance.
Thank You, Roger Ebert
When I first heard the news of Roger Ebert’s death, 12 hours ago as of the time I’m starting this article, my immediate reaction was that this was going to be the hardest article I ever had to write. Then after reading a handful of pretty eloquent tributes/obituaries from around the Internet, I decided I wasn’t going to write one myself. I felt like everything that could be said had been said, much of it by better writers than myself. I thought I’d save myself the experience of being at the computer at 4am, halfway through a bottle of wine and trying to maintain enough composure to write about something that affected me deeply enough that I feel like I’m still trying to process it. Then I sat down and wrote a few pages of a screenplay for a homework assignment that about five other people in my class will do and even fewer will actually care about. Later on I watched a pretty great documentary called These Amazing Shadows, about the process of preserving and inducting movies into the National Film Registry. As I watched the credits roll on that, I realized I wasn’t escaping this article. There are few things in this life that make me as happy as not only watching movies, but also discussing them with everyone I possibly can, and to that end I owe a great deal to Mr. Ebert. I’ll sadly never get to tell him that myself, but at the very least I can tell a bunch of other people about it.
GI Joe Retaliation: Now With More Ninjas
On the scale of toylines that get turned into movies, 2009′s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra fell somewhere between Michael Bay’s first two Transformers movies. It was slightly more of an incoherent mess with no regard for the source material than Transformers, but at least managed to not be an offensive and racist mess like Revenge of the Fallen. Mostly, it just made me sleepy. I actually fell asleep on my first two attempts to watch it, not getting all the way to the end until the third try. Like how you hear about mental techniques designed to help people withstand torture, I think my body has just been conditioned to shut down during Stephen Sommers movies. Even with a new director I was wary about a sequel, but the fact remains that way back at the tender age of 19, my very first tattoo was a Cobra insignia. I’m immensely fond of the original cartoon and the surprisingly well-written 80′s comic book series, and truly believe that somewhere in there lies the potential for a great series of films. When it comes to fulfilling that potential, GI Joe: Retaliation doesn’t quite get there, but it’s definitely aimed in the right direction.
Bioshock Infinite: Pack it in, 2013. You peaked in March.
Every console generation, for me at least, carries with it a handful of vivid memories that stand out above the rest–experiences that remind me how great of a hobby video games can be even when so many executives and shady developers are out to prove otherwise. For the current cycle of consoles one such landmark moment came in 2007, after swimming through the flaming wreckage of an airplane to find a lighthouse. Greeted by a large red banner proclaiming “No gods or kings. Only man.”, and accompanied by a violin rendition of “Beyond the Sea”, my first trip to the decayed underwater paradise of Rapture is a moment I’ll never forget. Lots of great games have come and gone since, but for me nothing has ever lived up to the sense of wonder I felt playing through Bioshock for the first time. Bioshock 2 was better than its reputation, even if it did suffer from retread syndrome and detached, arbitrary multiplayer features. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t really recapture the magic. So I kept a cautious eye on the development and seemingly endless delays of the third entry in the series, hopeful but all too aware of how quickly the gaming industry can disappoint its fans.
Stoker: Catch it if You Can
Stoker is the US directorial debut of Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, best known in this country for his “revenge trilogy”, comprised of the thematically similar but otherwise unrelated films Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. I’m a big fan of those three titles, as well as his contribution to the anthology film Three… Extremes, but I’ll admit I wasn’t sure how he’d handle a more low-key American thriller. But the trailer grew on me each of the four times or so that I saw it in the theater, and despite Fox Searchlight’s baffling strategy of following up heavy marketing with a whisper-quiet limited release spread out over an entire month, we finally managed to find a theater nearby that was playing it. Was it worth the wait and/or effort to see? Read on and find out!
Wrestling Legend Paul Bearer Dead at 58
I don’t watch a ton of wrestling now, but the sport as it existed in the 80′s and 90′s is burned into every fiber of my being. And that means that, like many who grew up watching in that era of full-on kayfabe and the all-important manager/wrestler dynamic, I am a gigantic fan of Bill Moody, better known to wrestling fans everywhere as Paul Bearer. And tonight, as I neared the mid-point of my customary late-night movie, I got a text from fellow ANO writer Aaron that hit me like a rare few celebrity deaths ever do: ”RIP Paul Bearer”.
