cymbaljack

Tomorrow I will probably get my post about Star Wars III: Such As It Is done. For today I want to focus on my impressions of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, based on a couple of trailers and my general experience with Marvel supers movies.

So in other words, here's

What's Going To Be Wrong with the Fantastic Four Movie
(This entry may contain spoilers, for all I know. Then again, if even half my predictions are true, the movie is already spoiled.)

• Johnny Storm is going to be very annoying. The movie will present him as immature, self-centered, and superficial. Of course all of these characteristics are part of the original character, but in the comics he was a scrawny teenager, so we could to some extent forgive him. When a grown man acts this way, it's going to be hard to put up with.
• The Invisible Woman will be even more annoying. Jessica what'shername will continue to look out of place in the movie. She will not have the grace that Sue Storm (later Richards) always had, and she won't do nearly as many cool things with her powers as Violet did in The Incredibles.
• There will be too many explosions for no reason, and far too much gratuitous destruction. The overall feeling of the movie will be that the main thing the F4 have brought to Manhattan is several billion dollars worth of property damage.
• Ben Grimm (The Thing) won't be nearly funny enough and will spend too much time feeling sorry for himself. He won't feel like a product of the ghetto. He will say "It's Clobberin' Time" one time too many.
• Johnny Storm will say "Flame On!" at least three times too many.
• Reed Richards will be dumbed down. He won't talk as smart as he does in the books, and he will do at least two really stupid things.
• Doctor Doom will be a complete disappointment. He won't look right (I'm pretty sure about that from seeing the trailers). He will not be a brilliant, ruthless dictator but instead some kind of psychotic, sadistic Joker rip-off. Instead of being a mad scientist who also dabbles in black magic he will have been given some "power" as a result of the same events that give the F4 their powers, which will mess up the metaphor. The F4 are obviously the 4 elements, so adding a fifth guy doesn't make much sense, unless the story is Chinese (it's not) and the fifth guy gets wood powers (he won't).
• On the whole it won' be fantastic enough. While Spider-Man pretty much just beats up villains in NY, the Fantasic Four were always the crew who were out exploring the unknown and doing the impossible. They go to the center of the earth, outer space, and other dimensions as often as most people go to Starbucks. This sense of wonder will be missing from the film.
• In the end, they will (at least supposedly) kill of Doctor Doom, ignoring the reality that (1) this is virtually impossible to do and (2) there is no way ultra-humanitarian Reed Richards would ever allow it. (This is, after all, the guy who once saved the life of Galactus the World-Eater.)
• There will be a "Herbie the Robot" joke. It will be the funniest thing in the movie, to those who get it.

So there. 10 predictions. Once I see the film, I'll let you know how I do, and by extension, how they did.

Yesterday my wife and I went to a nearby grocery store. We got up to a checkout line with nobody in it. The cashier appeared to be a young woman, but she had her back to us, and all I cared about was nobody in line ahead of us. So I quickly started flinging our groceries up onto the belt, and the cashier turned around.

Cashier: Hello.
Me: AHHHH! Please don't eat my brains!

Okay, I didn't actually say that, but I wanted to. I did come very close to making noise when I saw her. She had the scariest makeup I have ever seen. I'm glad Jill was with me, because it allowed me to confirm later that the makeup was very, very frightening. Jill also said that she didn't think it was accidental--it didn't look to her like the makeup was applied poorly, just too much, too dramatic. Seriously, if I'd had something in my hand, I would have dropped it.

When my little sister reached the age where she wanted to do such things, she ask my mom if she could start wearing makeup. My mom said, "Only if Pop can't tell." I think that's good advice. I'd be happiest if the entire makeup industry just went away and let people look how they look, but failing that, I wish those who choose to use makeup would aim for a target of using it too subtly to be noticed.

On the other hand, my heart got a good workout yesterday, which I don't usually expect from a grocery store trip.

This review/commentary on Batman Begins contains some spoilers: proceed at your own risk.

It is definitely the best Batman movie yet. That isn't saying a whole lot, though, and there's still some definite room for improvement. I was surprised to find that I agreed almost 100% with Scott Kurtz on this movie. (Go to his PVP Online page and scroll down to find his review.)

What's good about this movie is mostly the cast. My wife says that Michael Caine stole the show as Alfred, and I can see her point. But Morgan Freeman is great as Lucius Fox, and I liked what'shisname as Batman/Bruce Wayne. For me, it helps having an actor I don't really know in that role--I don't get distracted by his being so familiar.

I've heard several people object to Katie Holmes. I'm not sure her performance is bad, but she is poorly cast, and in any case her role makes no sense in the movie. She's too petite and young-looking, lacks presence both physically and psychically to stand up alongside the intensity of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Plus, the movie wants to have it both ways--wants her to be the outsider character who shows him what it's going to cost to have a dual identity (she is obviously turned off by his "billionaire playboy" actions), but also wants her (for no reason) to be a love interest that he reveals his identity to. And this Batman isn't going to last very long when he reveals his identity to the first person who asks.

"Welcome to super-hero training school. Lesson one: if someone asks your secret identity, don't tell them!"
"Oooh, I'd better write that down."

Really, all the movie's problems stem from trying to fit the blockbuster summer movie formula. They think there has to be a love interest so they force a character who doesn't fit and pretend that these two are attracted when for most of the movie they just seem like childhood friends who've grown apart. There are far too many explosions, fireballs, and general property damage. Batman doesn't look heroic when he destroys buildings and police cars--he looks desperate and clumsy. But I know they don't think they can make a thrilling chase without lots of pursuing police cars being wrecked. Alfred, watching TV coverage of the chase: "It's a miracle no one was killed." Me: "Yeah. Good thing the writers threw that comment in or we might believe our eyes."

Where I disagree with Scott Kurtz (other than in his continued love of the X-Men movies (?!?)) is in his statement that the fight scenes are too unclear. I actually liked that here, though I've complained about it elsewhere. Batman is a creature of the shadows, and I don't think we should see him too clearly or know exactly what he's doing most of the time. Maybe the climactic showdown fight could have been clearer. Otherwise I just think the fights should have been shorter. Either that, or we need to have more sense that Batman's really struggling to win the fights because he's new to this.

But at least we corrected some of the worst problems of the previous films:
1) The actors are professionals who take their roles seriously.
2) The script has some structure and development and several nice reversals/re-used lines with irony. Even if I could see pretty much all of the surprises coming, it's a better script than we've seen in a Batman movie in a long time.
3) The villains have their own creepy personalities rather than just being the Joker over and over. I mean, I never like Jim Carrey, but I could gladly spit on whoever decided he should play the Riddler like that.
4) We don't kill villains, because Batman doesn't kill. Okay, some people probably died in the temple fire, and despite Alfred's reassurance, there's some dead cops in that chase. But he doesn't set out to kill. Well, Ras al Ghul, kind of. But Ras will be back, no worries. Ok, um, we have less completely killed off bad guys than in previous films, which allows for the possibility of seeing these villains again, which is a key part of the standard super-hero genre.

Best feature of the film: the creepiness. Batman should be scary, and with the Scarecrow as a key villain, it should be a creepy movie. At times, it really is.

Worst feature: the cave-in to formulaic "thrills" whether they make sense / fit with the character or not.

Overall, it's definitely worth seeing. Unfortunately, it's not even the best film I saw yesterday, because that I-can't-believe-Disney-made-this gem Lilo and Stitch was on TV last night. But more about the wonderfulness of L&S another time.

• It's very cute.
• It's about as portable as a grill can be, particularly if you also get the cart for it (sold separately, of course).
• It lights very easily; however, the flames that the instruction book tells you to look for are very small, blue flames that are hard to see. If you are ignorant or new to grilling (I was both), you might not see them at first. So the first time, we probably lit it 10 or 12 times and kept shutting it off because we thought we were failing to light it.
• Using it, my wife can make awesome grilled tuna steak tacos.

It happened that last week, as we were visiting my parents, they got the call informing them that my uncle had died. So about an hour later, I was sitting on their couch and wondering why nobody ever taught me about the important stuff. I felt very useless and stupid, sitting there not knowing what to say to my father when his brother just died.

I'm not suggesting that having some teacher along the way lecture me about grieving would have helped. I know about Kubler-Ross's research on grief and that sort of thing. But that didn't tell me what I could say or do. And while possibly no one could have told me what to say or do, talking about it at some point might have helped.

But in this country, we don't particularly talk about anything important. We've all but forbidden any serious discussion of God, because you'll either be dismissed as foolish by the eggheads, who have all decided that they're smarter than all the brilliant people who came before who were convinced God was real, or silenced by religious zealots who won't let you talk honestly about God. (One of my co-workers once said in class that he would be on campus every day "God willing." A student went to the dean to complain about his "casual" talk about God.)

We don't seem able to talk seriously about any serious matters, either. About death or life or marriage (or any sort of commitment) or what kind of society we are becoming. Or about what we will be when, inevitably, we are no longer the world power. We could make good choices right now about that--about whether we want to become a former power like Britain, that still retains influence and pride, or whether we intend to fade into nothing like so many major powers before us.

But we're too busy, busy with TV shows that deliberately avoid anything important, busy buying crap to distract us from those important things until they sneak up on us, and someone dies, or we're forced to confront a major decision, or we find ourselves in over our heads and we wonder if God still listens to people.

I wish we would make more time and energy for the important things. I intend to. In fact, I'm convinced that if I do, the less important things will recede to their proper place, and the less serious things, the frivolous things, the fun things will be sweeter.

I was not close to my uncle. But I will always remember the joke he used to play on me when I was small. "You wanna see the geese?" he would ask, and if I said yes (probably only the first time), he would stand behind me and cup my head in his hands to tilt it up to "see the geese." Then he would lift me off the ground by my jawbone, leaving my feet dangling in the air. Thereafter, for years, he would ask, and I would hastily say, "No."

But now I wish that at least one more time I had said, "Sure!"

As I was standing in line at the grocery store today, I had the chance to flip through their cover story revealing secrets from Lost, season two. As is always the case with Lost (see my May 12 entry), revelations proved less forthcoming than promised. Fortunately, I have used my extensive Hollywood contacts to get the real scoop, and so I proudly present

Secrets of Lost (season two) revealed!

10) In a flashback, we will learn that even though she is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, Kate has a heart of gold.

9) On weeks when there is not a new episode (approximately every other week), ABC will show the series premiere again. They want everyone to get a chance to see it, and apparently there are some people (current estimate: 8) who haven't yet.

8) In a flashback, we will learn that even though his medical ethics vanish more mysteriously than promised revelations, Jack has a heart of gold.

7) On the island there is apparently some kind of monster that can be seen by people but cannot be described or photographed with television cameras.

6) In a flashback, we will learn that even though he is creepy, psychotic, and underhanded, Locke has a heart of gold.

5) On the raft, Jin will somehow find a Korean-English dictionary and a complete set of Learn English Instantly CDs, which he will put to good use.

4) In a flashback, we will learn that even though he is a lying, wife-abusing gangster, Jin has a heart of gold.

3) We will discover that on an uncharted island full of predators, parasites, diseases, and traps, a dog running loose has a longer average lifespan than a character who actually knows any information.

2) In a flashback, we will learn that even though he is a selfish, manipulative, murderous con artists, Sawyer has a heart of gold.

1) In the season two finale, you will learn that even though you invested another eight months watching this show, you still don't know much of anything.

Saturday morning we decided we should try for a quick bike ride. We'd had two solid weeks of rain and threatening-rain, and Jill had heard that the morning was our best chance of decent weather. So we saddled up and headed over to circle Bald Eagle Lake.

It turned out there was a race in progress around the lake. I don't know what race it was, or whether it was super-competitive or just a "run" to raise money or what. But for most of our tour around the lake, we were riding against the stream and watched the racers plod by. We had already missed the front-runners, but had plenty of opportunity to see lots of runners.

Even in the front group one person had dropped to a walk. Throughout, we could see evidence of the strain. Faces were grim or slack with exhaustion. People were panting, struggling, or stoically pressing on. Occasionally another was walking.

Then, in the middle of the final third of the runners, one young woman smiled broadly and said, "Hi," separately, to each of us.

Was she some super-fit runner who just wasn't pushing herself? Does she just not notice physical tiredness as much as other people? I don't know, but she certainly stood out amidst her companions.

So anyone who did whatever race/run that was: congratulations on doing a hard thing. And smiley, whoever you were, thanks for the cheer on a gloomy day.