Random bits

Last time I posted something, I was having big dreams of writing all kinds of entries on here about various items. Obviously, that never happened, so find a combination of all these things after the jump.

I have been delinquent

It's true, I've been neglecting the blog here. It may have something to do with buying Mario Kart Wii. For the sake of having everything in one place, I've written two blogs for Zoom In since my last post, and I'll probably write something else on here soon about how much I love The Wrestler and something making fun of the Friday the 13th remake.

But in the meantime, here is a bit about how the moviegoing experience and how we watch films in general has changed over the decades, and here I write about how Kristen Wiig should be in a romantic comedy (and how that genre's crappy in general). Seriously - imagine Virginia Horsen treking the globe in a hot air balloon trying to find her dream lover. It's romantic, right?

Don't jerk me around, Ron Howard

When internet sites like Ain't It Cool News post rumors about movies that are coming out, that's one thing. Often times, you can tell when it's a lie. For example, I remember a fake script review that AICN posted for Star Wars: Episode III which had young Lando and Han Solo, and an appearance from Lando's father aptly named... Grando Calrissian.

But what happens when people you should trust start spreading such vicious and/or misleading rumors? More often than not, I get my hopes up for nothing. A prime example in recent years has emerged whenever Dan Aykroyd would be interviewed about anything and then he would talk about his latest draft for a Ghostbusters 3 script. First there was the Ben Stiller film, then there was the talk of Ghostbusters: Hellbent with Peter Venkman as a ghost in the film, then the CG movie, and now the legitimate one that they ran a story about in Variety. Still, it took years of lip service to get to that point, and I'm still skeptical that it will happen until they announce a production start date.

Samsploitation, or: How I Learned To Talk Really Really Loud and Love the Snakes

Back in the day, there were all sorts of fun subgenres that would be categorized with the umbrella of 'exploitation films.' Anybody that's in NYC can head to St. Mark's Place for a visit to Kim's Video to check out some of these subgenres: blaxsploitation, chixploitation (with its own subgenre 'women in prison'), hicksploitation, apesploitation, and my personal favorite "[Charles] Bronson Is God."

Now it's beginning to come to my attention that there is a new exploitation subgenre on the rise. In fact, it's been around for years, but I'm going to stick my flag in it and declare its existence: Samsploitation.

The Rule of Threes (with comic book films)

Yesterday Gavin (the person who lives in the other room in my apartment) sent me a message on gChat with a tempting offer -- "Want to watch that really bad Fantastic Four sequel tonight?" Considering there was beer recently brought into the apartment, OF COURSE I wanted to watch a really bad movie! On top of that, I've been attracted to watching awful movies as of late. Some readers may recall that weekend Joel Schumacher still owes me, and just the other night I was starting to watch Blood Simple when the mere sight of Dan Hedaya made me say, "You know what movie I could go for instead? Alien Resurrection." I don't know if maybe I'm suffering from depression, or perhaps I'm feeling anxiety because of the crippling economy that these news anchors told me about, but some voice deep inside of me says, "I know you just bought a copy of Magnolia and all, but wouldn't you much rather reminisce on all those good times you had with Brett Ratner when he mangled the X-Men franchise?"

However, I digress. All of this bad movie watching has made me notice as of late that comic book film franchises tend to follow a rule of threes: First installment -- pretty damn good; second installment -- AMAZING!; third installment -- trainwreck.

Allow me to analyze the examples we've already been provided with, starting with Superman. The first film from the Christopher Reeves era was a wonderful adaptation of the character and the comic. While I generally don't enjoy straight up Superman vs. the bad guys stories, this film has a bit more to it to make the film a fun fantasy romp that successfully makes the character's origin accessible to new audiences, and I'm also fond of watching how Reeves transformed himself between Clark Kent and Superman. Although the increased quality in the second film is debatable, I don't think it is. Simply put -- Zod rules. 'Nuff said, now KNEEL. When we enter the third one, we have a mess of a film where somebody decided it would be a good idea to have Richard Pryor help Robert Vaughn invent Brainiac. They also lifted that idea about stealing penny fractions from bank accounts from a much better film called Office Space.

The next major comic book franchise we had was Batman, and wisely chosen was Tim Burton to helm the first film. While farther off from its source material than most people realize, the first Batman maintains several key elements of the character's core, and there's no way anybody can forget Jack Nicholson's awesome presence as The Joker. Except seriously, why was Vicki Vale allowed in the Batcave? Anyway, the success of that allowed Burton some more freedom to create a much darker toned film with Batman Returns, which is the direction most Batfans would like to see with the character. And then there was Schumacher. Take my word for it, Batman Forever sucks. If you don't believe me, I will once again direct you toward Brando's Lost Weekend to read up on that subject more.

After Joel Schumacher killed comic book movies for the rest of the 90's, Bryan Singer came along to seek sweet, sweet redemption with the X-Men franchise, even if he did start the subtrend of comic book films with questionable female casting (Halle Berry in this case, which has continued with Kirsten Dunst, Katie Holmes, and it appears Gwyneth Paltrow). Again, X-Men wasn't the greatest film ever, but it was a lot of fun and its success treated us to a bigger, better film with X2. It was evident that Singer was trying to carefully plot an arc stretching across several films with plenty of nice set-ups and winks in this film. And who didn't freak out with the obvious allusion to the Phoenix at the end? Of course, Brett Ratner came along and while he at least didn't Schumacher all over Patrick Stewart's scalp, he committed the atrocity of cramming too much into one film with a hearty side of arbitrarily introducing characters.. just because. Was Angel really pivotal to those two scenes he was in? And while I get a good laugh out of the videos online as much as anyone else, but did Vinnie Jones really need to declare that he was the Juggernaut, bitch?

But no film committed the heinous act of two-films-in-one as badly as Spiderman 3. Oh, Sam Raimi, where are your morals? The scope and sheer wonder of the first Spiderman completely captured my imagination, and while it isn't "the film" that made me do so, it was an important catalyst in making me decide I wanted to enter the film industry. And you made Spiderman 2 so much better! You did such a great job of capturing the struggle that a masked vigilante must endure when trying to be a hero and living their own life. Nobody had done so well with it, and they still haven't touched it since. But the third? Far too much was attempted at once. It felt like some black suit, Venom, and Sandman stories were taken and thrown into a garbage compacter and then you reached in and found your script. That's really what the film is -- garbage contained to a much smaller space than it should be. All that was accomplished in this film were some cool effects with the Sandman and effectively making James Franco look like some sort of pederast.

At the end of this retrospective, we must think of what the future holds for this cursed Rule of Threes. Christopher Nolan looks to be well on his way to following the same path with his rebooted Batman franchise. It's astounding how well he simultaneous took the character back to its core on screen while helping ease the pain of those dreadful Schumacher versions of the character. The Dark Knight looks to continue on this same path, and the opportunity to see The Joker and Harvey Dent (Batmans two biggest adversaries if you ask me) in top form on the big screen is sure to be a fanboy's -- and a Brando's -- wet dream.

All of this considered it makes me think what Christopher Nolan could do to screw up any Batman film. Not only is he doing great things for the character on the silver screen, but he's Christopher Nolan! He made Memento! And The Prestige!! I asked the same about Sam Raimi, of course, but we all see where that ended up. Would Nolan ditch a character he seems to be so enthusiastic about working with before the third movie? Or do you think he would do something drastic like take his source material from Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder (aka The Goddamn Batman)?

I'm also a little curious to see if this works in the opposite direction. For as bad as Rise of the Silver Surfer was, it was still better than its predecessor. I can't deny how cool the Silver Surfer looked. In theory, this is going along with the rule of threes only with diminished quality in its proportions -- part one is really crappy, with part two being slightly less crappy. If they make a third Fantastic Four, can you imagine how epically terrible that would be? It would probably even be subpar to your average made-for-Sci-Fi Channel movie.

And what are your thoughts on the matter? Are you more secure than I am about the direction our comic book properties are headed on screen? Do you think I'm actually suffering some sort of weird mental disorder that makes me more likely to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning rather than The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford when I get home from work tonight?

Just kidding about that last one.. there's a new South Park on tonight. But seriously, let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment or sending me an email -- brandonrohwer@gmail.com

Those crappy Batman movies

For Christmas I had the wonderful fortune of being given some Amazon gift certificates by my parents. I put them to good use and bought several things I've needed for sometime DVD-wise, like the Planet of the Apes 35th Anniversary Edition and the Joe Schmo Show. I also at long last purchased The Batman Anthology.

Since my work schedule has calmed down immensely since the aftermath of Sundance and a couple other projects which shall go unnamed, I've cherished my freer weekends as of late to watch some of these new films I've purchased recently. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and just don't realize it, but I decided to put off doing taxes once again in favor of a double feature of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The lesser of the two evils? Hmm, good question.

Originally, I had planned to begin a series of blog entries entitled "WHY!?", where I would watch bad movies such as these and catalog each fault that made me yell out "WHY!?!?" Unfortunately, I couldn't keep doing this after fifteen minutes of Forever. It just got too damn exhausting.

For quite some time now, I've been telling people that Forever is inferior to Robin to which they promptly reply "Batman Forever wasn't THAT bad!" Now that I've rewatched them both back-to-back, it's definitely that bad. In fact, I may say Batman & Robin has even grown on me a little bit. Yes, it's still pretty horrendous, but let's take a look at what each of the Schumacher Batman films has offer.

Forever has two villains trying to act like Jack Nicholson's Joker. The weird thing is that neither The Riddler nor Two Face (especially not Two Face) should act like the Joker. Tommy Lee Jones' Two Face is just downright awful for this reason. Val Kilmer looks incredibly uncomfortable through the whole film; poor Val is completely clueless as to what's going on the whole time. So am I thanks to all of the movie-style bullshit science of brainwaves throughout the whole film. And please don't forget that Val Kilmer -- NOT George Clooney like most people cite -- was the first to don the nippled Batsuit. Basically, aside from the soundtrack, the only thing good about this film is watching Nicole Kidman inexplicably joygasm every time she looks at Batman.

As for Batman & Robin, I would say its biggest crime is the treatment of Bane, who is far from the hired muscle role he plays here. If they wanted a random brainless goon, why use Bane, who is actually intelligent and educated? If the filmmakers were to have taken a look at some Batman books instead of just talk to the children in their family about who they'd want to see in a Batman movie, they could have discovered a perfect candidate in Solomon Grundy. But on the upside, at least Robin does a decent job of feigning depth in the plot. I like that Paul Dini's tragic villain-style origin story from Batman: The Animated Series was incorporated for him here. I also like the themes of family within Wayne Manor, as many times Batman stories are a family affair (especially most recently in the comics continuity with Grant Morrison bringing Bruce Wayne's son Damien into play). Of course, that storyline is forced and as cheesy as the rest of Joel Schumacher's run on Batman.

And as for the performances, Uma Thurman's pretty damn good at over the top, and she takes ridiculous dialog and makes it work. Come on, we've all seen Kill Bill. I love Kill Bill, but most of those words probably wouldn't fly if they came out of some other actress's mouth. George Clooney is a far better Bruce Wayne and even a better Batman than Val Kilmer because he at least fits in with the rest of the film. Sure, Val had the whole 'dark and brooding' thing down in a way, but it didn't work in Forever because (1) he was the only one that wasn't goofy for the duration and it was just awkward, and (2) he didn't emote one bit.

But I digress. I tire of defending a crappy movie against a crappier movie. The point I'm really trying to make here is that Batman Forever is the worst of the bunch by far, so before you try and tell me otherwise again just think back to how old you were the last time you watched it, because you were probably just old enough when you saw Batman and Robin to realize its faults. But when it comes to the previous film, who didn't love Jim Carrey in 1995?

REALLY weird dream

Last night I dreamt that I bought The Da Vinci Code on DVD. Then I was really pissed, because I realized I had bought The Da Vinci Code.

UPDATE: Nick Sprague is a Communist

When going to The Apartment tonight, I was disappointed to find out that Nick Sprague had already came and left this momentous occasion. Having been looking towards this epic debate, I immediately called him up. He replied by saying, "I'm scared of you, Brandon." Regardless, I pushed him into admitting why he preferred The Phantom Menace among the other prequels. In a nutshell, he found the lightsaber fight at the end of The Phantom Menace* to be the most exciting event, and I pointed out that a scene does not make an entire movie good. After some conversing, he admitted he was wrong. While it would appear his preference leans towars The Phantom Menace, I made him realize that it was the inferior film.

*While I do enjoy the action in Revenge of the Sith, I may be inclined to agree that Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan v. Darth Maul may be the best lightsaber fight of the series. However, I have yet to watch all of the fights in the vicinity of each other to properly compare them.

Nick Sprague is a Communist

CAN YOU TRUST THIS MAN?

Look at Nick Sprague up there. What a creep. Can you trust a creep like that? I could, but not completely. Then you find out he claims that The Phantom Menace is the best of the Star Wars prequels. Can I still trust him? Certainly not any farther than I can throw him!

That is why I plan on crushing him with my New Powers in the Saturday Night Debate Special tonight. Somebody needs to give him some humility before we take formerly good movie recommendations like The Way of the Gun and have him use his Phantom Menace Mind Trickery to make us end up watching movies that are much like The Phantom Menace: foolish movies that pander towards children. Do you want to live in a world where you have people like Nick Sprague telling you to watch movies like Baby's Day Out or 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up? I think not!