Carte Blanche

Jeffery Deaver’s first foray into James Bond, Carte Blanche, does a 180 from Sebastian Faulk’s fine effort from 2008, Devil May Care and sets the British agent in the modern day.  Not exactly a green reboot agent as in the Daniel Craig reboot, but certainly early in his career, Deaver handles Bond’s character with familiar ease.  The plot was engaging, the characters well-drawn, and there was a real sense of danger and intrigue.  The story was a low-key Bond story, more of the Craig-type rather than one of global domination that seems to be the vogue of the 70’s and 80’s, but not without threatening impact.  Running through the background (and sometimes foreground) was the theme of recycling and “green” products – the tale benefitted greatly from the current-issues incorporation, and its perversion by the arch villain.

The Bond story aside, the lingering takeaway I had from the book was an intrigue into the future of this Bond.  Notsomuch a reboot as a alternate universe re-imagining (think Star Trek) of the character (and characters) was refreshing and felt like it set a new direction for a fresh series of novels.  Really, so much has been written about Bond that it’s impossible to keep the old stories without being tied down to the timeline or the fact that he’d be about 70 years old by now.  If you are going to bring him to modern day and shed some of that history, why not work with the rest of it.  Deaver’s story and loose ends does what it is supposed to do, sell me his *next* book.

Captain America

Captain America is a comics hero that needs to be handled more deftly than others.  He’s a true hero – not so much representing the country that is his name, but the underdog.  In an era where the United States is no longer looked at through rose-colored glasses, a superhero wearing the flag colors is more likely to get burned with mockery than embraced.  Fortunately, an early scene in the rather excellent new film nails it when Steve Rodgers explains his desire to fight: Rather than agree with the question of if he wants to kill Nazis, he shakes his head and responds, “I just don’t like bullies.”

Rodgers is a 98-pound weakling whose desire to stand up against tyranny is done from such a pure place that, by being in the right place at the right time, he is chosen to become the first super-soldier through a mysterious process that is destined to die with its creator.  (The effects of displacing Chris Evan’s body with another actor’s are unnervingly seamless.)  Set up against a dark alter-ego of sort, the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, threatening and sometimes quite funny), Steve overcomes a lot of odds to become the embodiment of a hero, whilst suffering real, painful loss.  The film is not sugar-coated, and rather moving at times.

Ultimately, this is a prequel for the new Avengers film set for next summer, and it handles it’s task with pitch-perfect tone.

Thor

This much is certain: he must work out.

I’m not entirely certain about a lot of other things about Thor.  The plot is complicated, dare I say almost too complicated to absorb by this poor sap in one sitting, but enough to warrant a second viewing when the time is right (read: release on DVD).  So that’s a good kind of complicated, as one would expect for a plot hatched by the legendary Loki.

I’m not exactly certain why Natalie Portman is starring in this Avengers vehicle, either.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining (aside: when did Natalie Portman become the recognized standard for geekly lust?  Or rather, when *after* the Professional was it okay to admit that freely?), and her acting doesn’t suck, but Jane Foster (I had to Google the last name and I have a decent collection of Thor comics) isn’t exactly one of the premier comics roles that you go after.  I am pretty sure that it has to do more with Kenneth Branagh in the director’s chair than Hemsworth’s mighty torso.

And I’m not exactly certain why Kenneth Branagh is directing this film, but I have to say it intrigued me enough to want to see what he would do with it.  He really didn’t disappoint.   Neither did Hemsworth in the lead role and his aforementioned sculpted body.  He inhabited the role playfully and believably.

No, I’m not really sure how I feel about the film Thor, but I’ll gladly see it again, because it certainly was fun to watch.  So, that’s something.

Flashback

Dan Simmons is my favorite author these days, so I picked up (the Kindle version of) his latest, Flashback, without ever reading a jacket synopsis of the novel.  Having finished it on a long plane ride back from Colorado, I’m not quite sure I’ve had enough distance to be objective.  As an unabashed Simmons fan, I’m also not quite sure I’ll ever have the objectivity because of high expectations.  But the instant reaction I had was this: not a top-ten Simmons effort.

It really pains me to say that, because I love his work.  Maybe I’m a little too critical because my expectations are lofty, or the story didn’t resonate with me, or make sense in particular places (unusual for a Simmons story), but I can rattle off six other works of his without hesitation that are better (subjective per my opinion) than this.  And if you aren’t writing something that challenges you to at least  think about where this would wedge in the top five, you aren’t setting or meeting the bar you rose to last time.  (Last time, by the way, was Drood, and that definitely enters into a top five conversation.)

Flashback’s dystopian near-future is one where the United States has cowed (via appeasement) to Islam, been splintered into nation-states, and has a large populace addicted to the drug “Flashback” that allows the user to relive any memory.  Because most of the people in the US had better lives before The Day It All Hit The Fan (as it is known in the book), many choose to rely on the drug to live the past rather than face the present and future.

Set in this time are a Flashback-addicted former cop (Nick), who is hired by a powerful Japanese businessman to reinvestigate his son’s murder six years ago that was never solved – a murder that coincided with his wife’s accidental death and subsequent estrangement from his son and father-in-law.  As you expect from a Simmons tale, there are technological surprises, action, sudden and head-turning deaths, and twists throughout.  Unfortunately, the story spends way too much time figuring out where it is going, or at least revealing it to the audience.  (It is in the last 25 pages that true events are revealed.)  In retrospect, the set pieces and interesting backstory don’t make up for the lack of driving plot events.

Alcestis

An NPR recommendation, of all things that even I find chagrining these days, led me to the enjoyable, Sapphic take on the Greek legend of Alcestis.  Alcestis’ story as passed down by legend (to Wikipedia) is one of female devotion to her husband.  It goes like this:

Alcestis’ newlywed husband Admetus foolishly made the impertinent mistake of not offering a sacrifice to the goddess Artemis on his wedding night.  Gods can be quite temperamental, so upon finding his wedding bed, he found a bed of lethal snakes in addition to his wife.  Another awesome God, Apollo, appeared and graciously said that if anyone would volunteer to die in Admetus’ place, he could live.  After a particularly long and uncomfortable silence from all his gathered friends (I’m not really sure just what was expected there), Alcestis spoke up.  She was whisked away to Hades.  After a period of serious pouting by Admetus, Heracles went down to Hades and rescued her.

Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis is told from the first-person perspective of Alcestis.  From the start, we aren’t greeted by a romantic framing of ancient Greece, but the realistic (albeit, one with Gods who roam about and are their usual prickly, capricious selves) place where woman are objects under control of men, with no rights and very little to say about anything.  Beatner’s Alcestis longs for her long-lost sister in Hades, and tolerates the world of men with a grudging weariness.  Where there is single-minded obedience and sacrifice for her husband in the legend, Beatner creates a multi-dimensional character that craves for more and understands a great deal more than the men around her.  Her journey to Hades, encountering the seductive wife of Hades, Persephone, allows Alcestis to claim more from her return than any woman likely could hope to in that time.  Alcestis is a refreshing, emotional, and thoughtful reboot of the male-fantasy myth.

X-Men: First Class

The first half of Matthew Vaughn’s prequel-of-sorts, “X-Men: First Class”, was better than I thought a comics-based film could be.  The second had continued moments of brilliance that were inexcusably dotted amongst a forced tableau of piss-poor hack writing and contrived drama I would expect out of a 4^th-grade writing class.  There’s some real eye-rolling events that when mashed with bits of exhilarating action and human moments that inspire one to actually wonder aloud, “what the fuck?”  The cumulative effect was a bit of a tease; I didn’t know an X-Men film could be that good, but I’m really just bent because I didn’t get the full payoff promised.

Introducing familiar characters with fresh eyes, the prologue to the tale now posits young Charles Xavier forming a familial bond with a future Mystique, and concentration-camp-interred Magneto bonded to pain and anger via the arch-villain (Sebastian Shaw) of the film.  Shaw is played with real strutting menace by Kevin Bacon (I didn’t think I could write that line about KB), which is what you’d do if just about anything thrown at you makes you literally stronger.  Fast-forward to the post-collegiate years for Xavier and Raven, who have very different views on the world.  Here we find James McAvoy’s Charles using his talents as advanced pick-up lines, where Raven struggles with her own beauty and identity.  That divide, which Charles just doesn’t understand, ultimately drives them apart.  Magneto’s journey is that of vengeance, as he mercilessly hunts down Nazis instead of cooing coeds.  Their two worlds couldn’t be further apart.

The entire first act feels like a world of limitless possibilities, with the stories we thought we knew re-imagined and acted with some real chops.  It reminds me of what the reboot of Star Trek was able to do with a new alternate universe.  And then slowly but surely the second half of the film introduced some tired in-your-face mutant shtick of “mutant and proud” and cold war stereotypes and awkwardly-written getting-to-know-you scenes that just play flat and forced.  McAvoy, Bacon, and Michael Fassbender carry the entire second half of the film on their shoulders, despite the hacked script.  (The point where I had to shake my head in the theater was the juxtaposed moments of the Russian and American Captains thanking their crews for serving with them right before they believe they are to die.  Instead of being poignant, they now serve as the lines that I will remember most from the film because they are unnecessary, hack, and execrable.  However, as this movie does outweigh its stupidity with its brilliance, I’ll quote from a great mid-movie cameo, and imagine what he’d say to the writers who suggested those lines: “Go fuck yourselves.”)

In short, I’m excited about the future, and hope that the filmmakers can correct their mistakes to fulfill the promise.

Han Shot First

I'm a fan of the show Justified on FX, of Timothy Olyphant, and of Star Wars.  So, when FX started airing a promo clip of the show featuring Olyphant in a bar staring down another patron across the table and referencing the now-infamous scene in Star Wars with Han Solo and Greedo, I was in stitches.

Here's the clip from TV.com.  The basic transcript is this: Waylon Givens (US Marshall) is sitting in a dingy bar across from a nervous looking patron.  Waylon asks the man if he knew that in the original Star Wars it was Han who shot first.  The patron looks nervous as they both draw guns.

The implication Waylon is making here is that Han was the hero, but in the original version of the film, the hero didn't wait for his adversary to draw on him to justify self-defense.  Now, the caveat is that Greedo is a bounty hunter who has a pistol trained on Han and is seriously threatening to take him back to Jabba if he doesn't pay him right then (with money he doesn't have).  At the point where Greedo makes it clear that he's not going to be put off, Han unstraps his pistol behind the cover of his knee.  Greedo follows that up by making a direct threat ("Over my dead body".  "That's the point.") that pushes Han into a corner.  Greedo is unconcerned with Han's life, and is prepared to hand him over to the gangster right then.

The choice of me or the callous bounty hunter working for a gangster isn't a choice at all, and shouldn't serve as a moral conflict for anyone.  The fact that Han shot first doesn't make him morally questionable, just a little edgier in that he's able to see the choice at hand and act on it before it's too late.  He had tried to reason with Greedo and bargain with him, to no avail.  Greedo pushed him into a corner, and he wasn't going to rely on the happenstance that a paid assassin (!) would miss from a range of three feet should Greedo try to kill him.

And let's think about that for a second.  It is not correct to say in the original that Han shot first because I've never seen direct evidence that Greedo shot at all.  This makes much more sense than Greedo even shooting in the first place.  From what we've seen in both Empire and Return, Jabba very much wanted him alive.  (From Empire, Boba Fett remarks "What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a LOT to me!")  Switching it up just doesn't make sense for the circumstances much less Han's character.

Back to Justified.  Not to be just a cutesy tie-in, the reference used by Waylan Givens (Olyphant) is actually completely within the context of the character.  In the introductory scene of the series, Waylan actually induces an adversary to draw on him to gun him down in broad daylight.  His actions and justification (hence the title of the show) are called into question often based on his handling of the situation.  Did he provoke the situation?  Was he in the right?  Could he have handled it differently?  The interesting thing is that as a US Marshall, he was the bounty hunter in that scene.  He is playing the part of Greedo, not Han.  And by reminding his suspect in the bar of that original play, that Han was cornered and justified in defending his right to live free, he's goading his adversary into drawing down on him.  The effect of which, now justifies Waylan's legal right to defend himself.

Believe it or not, the point of this whole post wasn't to deconstruct the differences between Star Wars and Justified.  In remarking about the scene to my wife, I made the comment that it kind of scared me that Waylan was explaining how Han shot first to the bar patron, as if that wasn't common knowledge.  Who in the world doesn't know that? 

It turns out my wife didn't know that.  [Insert your version of my backpedaling.]

What scares me about this is the future.  The impending release of Star Wars on Blu Ray will be only the remastered versions, which made me consider along with this commercial that someday the originals won't exist anymore.  In years down the road, as an old(er) man, I'll be spouting the story of "Han Shot First" and it may become only a legend, unable to be justified by video evidence.  The thought scared and saddened me.

Greedo didn't shoot at all.

Red

Entertaining and instantly forgettable, that's Red.  I spent the $5.99 in Comcast On Demand fees to watch the film because there was nothing else in the library that was appealing, and I heard that it was an adaptation of the comic.  I have since found that the adaptation was loose at best.  This is not to say that I have read the original and am poo-pooing the film version based on its lack of adherence.  If this film were adapted straight from the comic, I should judge the comic to be poorly plotted.

I'm going to jump right to a part of the film that stuck out as incongruent with the nature of the film; that is, bullets fly, explosions happen, and only the bad guys get killed.  In the middle of this, our heroes surrounded by a team of killers, elect to sacrifice one of their own so they can sneak out the back door.  A little more thought (or less thought?) could have concocted (yet another) ridiculously implausible and bombastic escape for the heretofore (and subsequently) untouchable assassin team.  It sticks out like a sore thumb in a film that's just ridiculous and fun.  Coincidentally, the sacrificial lamb is the token black character of the entire ensemble (and film, I think), so actually there is historical precedent.

Other than that, a 'meh' thumbs up and a good film to watch when it goes into heavy rotation on TNT or FX next year.  Not worth five bucks, though.

Black Swan

I’ve heard that having a boisterous, unbehaved audience actually enhances the experience of viewing horror films in theaters.  For all other films, conversations, texting, guffawing, is always irritatingly distracting and frankly rude.  So, what to make of a plebian audience during the screening I saw of “Black Swan”, a disturbing, brave, profound, entrancing horror movie?  Do I pity them for not having the intelligence to see director Aronofsky’s bold metaphors for a woman’s eternal struggle between Madonna and whore?  When some boorish woman laughs at the unnerving presence of Natalie Portman’s mother in her room as she struggles to assert control over her own dormant sexuality, the reaction is distracting, but more than that sadly inappropriate, like laughing at someone else’s tragic misfortune; there’s something wrong with you.  When another patron giggles at the winged transformation of Portman later, I wonder if they have ever been in a museum or experienced art.  The audience participation of people who are just plain tragically dim themselves is something I have come to expect and dread every time out to the theater.  When someone next to you is texting, and you ask them to please not do that, and they reply “When I’m finished”, what else is there to do?  It feels like its more frequent these days, but give me a dark, empty movie theater over a crowd any day.

PS: “Black Swan” is amazing.

Drood

Dan Simmons' novel “Drood” imagines the final years of Charles Dickens’ life told through the eyes of his real-life contemporary Wilkie Collins.  Collins himself, a very popular novelist of the time, is revealed to be a delusional, egotistical drug-addict whose behavior and unreliability as the narrator lend chilling tension to the mystery centered on Dickens’ encounter with the mysterious title character. 

Simmons’ research on Dickens is richly rewarding, and the horror of the real situation that unfolds throughout the novel, with various twists and turns, is a compelling and satisfying read.  It almost makes me wish I liked Dickens.