Steve Gerber

Steve Gerber died last week. I've been trying to think of something to write about the guy since I heard (he was one of the great mavericks of the comic book world), but even after a week nothing flowery and grand comes to mind. So I'll just type away and see what happens, it's all I can do.

The sad thing about Steve Gerber (other than the fact that he died) is that he will forever be remembered (if at all) as the guy who created Howard the Duck. And Howard the Duck will be remembered (again, if at all) as George Lucas' big box-office turkey. This is sad for a number of reasons:

1. Howard the Duck, the film, had almost nothing to do with Howard the Duck, the comic book. Like most comic-to-film adaptations until quite recently, it was a fast-and-loose translation that bore little resemblance to the source material.

2. George Lucas himself had very little to do with the making of Howard the Duck. All he did was put up the money. Willard Huyck directed the film; he and his wife Gloria are also responsible for writing that piece of rotting sheep's entrails called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and they helped out on American Grafitti, and I suspect they might have had something to do with the Ewoks as well. But George is actually mostly innocent as far as Howard is concerned despite what the public thinks, much to his annoyance.

3. Steve Gerber deserved better. So did Howard.

My good friend Jman, he of the supreme Trekkiness, let me borrow Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 1 (pretty much against my will), and I was shocked at how awesome it was. Under Gerber, Howard was always sharp-witted, silly, and pretty ridiculous, yet poignant at the same time. As a character, Howard frequently reflected Gerber's passionate worldview on a number of topics, and when Steve had something of a nervous breakdown, the comic reflected this in interesting ways. The comic is highly recommended.

Steve was one of the first comic creators to sue for the control of his creations. He also co-wrote "Contagion", one of the better episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was pretty good, and had a few instances of that trademark Gerber wit. Steve continued to write comics until the end, when he was working on a Doctor Fate series for DC.

Steve Gerber was 60 years old.

REVIEW - Gone Baby Gone

Have I mentioned how much I dislike Ben Affleck?

I'm not sure what it is about the guy. Was it all that Jennifer Lopez and her taco-flavored kisses business a few years back? Was it the horrible things he did to the character of Matt Murdock when he made Daredevil: The Man Without a Prescription? Maybe it was his character from Mallrats, the manager from Fashionable Male who liked to abuse girls in an uncomfortable place (the back of a Volkswagen?), that I've never been able to disconnect him from.

I'm sure he's a nice guy, and I certainly don't wish him harm or anything, but I just can't deal with the guy.

THAT SAID, dude made a heck of a movie.

How is this possible? Well, Ben Affleck may be an actor of debatable quality (he was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!), but he obviously isn't retarded. Clearly, he doesn't subscribe to auteur theory, because in order to make Gone Baby Gone he surrounded himself with quality people, and shot a very solid script.

Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play private investigators hired to find a missing girl. They are assisted by a pair of cops, played by John Ashton (Taggart from the Beverly Hills Cop films, awesome!) and Ed Harris. Chaos ensues.

Was it nepotism to cast little brother Casey in the lead role? Well, maybe Ben wanted to work with his brother or something, but Casey Affleck pretty much owned this film, which is saying a lot when you've got Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman in the mix too. Both of them are top-notch as usual (especially Harris), but this is absolutely Casey's film and he totally carries it. Amy Ryan was Oscar-nominated for her role as the hysterical mother who is also a drug addict, but I don't see her winning. She did a good job, but it didn't beat Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton (my pick) and it certainly won't beat Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan (the predictable frontrunner). It was also cool to see Titus Welliver from HBO's Deadwood, he's a solid character actor and does not disappoint.

The amazing cinematography was done by John Toll, the guy who did Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, The Last Samurai, etc. This guy could light a trash heap and make it look beautiful; fortunately, here all he has to do is make Dorchester look mostly gritty and a bit noirishly cinematic. He succeeds.

Being from the area, it's obvious Ben Affleck wanted to show off the city of Boston, and Gone Baby Gone is a love letter to the city's seedy underbelly. I read a review criticizing Affleck for stocking his film with freakish people; I beg to differ. It seems more to me that Affleck just threw a bunch of Dorchester people in front of the camera, sorry if they're maybe fat or racially mixed or not that one reviewer's idea of attractive, but I thought it added a bit of gritty realism. Because yeah, if you walk into a bar at 2 in the afternoon you probably will see a guy with a tracheotomy. That's realism, these people exist; sorry if Affleck forgot to sanitize the film to reflect a shut-in reviewer's shiny-happy worldview. Lady, if the denizens of Dorchester's bars bothered you, just Google Darfur; there's a dose of some real reality for you.

This being a find-the-missing-girl film, the plot has a few twists and turns. I was very impressed with Affleck's handling of this. Plot twists were never telegraphed, but they never came out of left field either; the film hangs together and makes sense at all times. Information is relayed to the audience at the right times, ensuring that they're never lost in the plot but also aren't complaining that they saw the ending a mile away. Twists can be tricky. Plot elements can build up for too long, alienating those with short attention spans (see The Spanish Prisoner, which I personally enjoyed greatly), or the screenwriter can just cheat his way out of the whole thing (see The Usual Suspects, which is just an awesome film but come on that ending is such a total cheat). Gone Baby Gone does neither of these, choosing instead to come by its ending through an honest series of plot twists, leading to a difficult moral quandary.

Gone Baby Gone was definitely one of 2007's better films. How Ben Affleck managed to do it is clear. He surrounded himself with the best actors and technical personnel available, developed a script using a setting he was intimately familiar with, and, I'll admit it, the guy's got some chops. I look forward to seeing another Ben Affleck film, which is something I never thought I'd say. For serious.

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY - February, Week 3

Between going to see Jake Shimabukuro and accidentally stabbing myself with a knife (long story), I've had an eventful week. Apologies for the lateness of this column. Again.

MUSIC

There are no notable music releases this week, except maybe Jesus of Cool by Nick Lowe and I think Mike Doughty from Soul Coughing might have had something come out too, maybe.

DVD

Michael Clayton
I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, but until then I think Michael Clayton just might be the best film I saw in 2007. My full review is here. Solid performances and a tight story make this a must-see. Highly recommended, unless you're still having trouble getting through 3 Ninjas Kick Back because the plot is too convoluted.

American Gangster
A tour de force from Ridley Scott, featuring fine performances from Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Josh Brolin. Read my full review here.





Kurt Cobain About A Son
Nirvana's reluctant frontman tells his story in haunting audio recordings, culled from interviews with Michael Azerrad for the book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Essential viewing for the grunge fans; probably pretty interesting for everyone else, as well.



Also available: Tommy Lee Jones plays a Texas lawman yet again, this time paired with Charlize Theron (dialed down from smoking hot to only reasonably attractive) in In the Valley of Elah; Brian DePalma blows the lid off the whole soldier misconduct in Iraq thing with Redacted; there's this movie I keep hearing about called Rendition but all I know about it is Jake Gyllenhall is in it; Ang Lee does for heterosexual asians what he did for gay cowboys in Lust, Caution; Nicole Kidman annoys the heck out of her family and Jack Black proves he doesn't have to be funny all the time to be awesome in Margot At The Wedding; Shannyn Sossamon spends a boring 80 minutes lost in the Paris tunnel system in the poorly-reviewed, unscary thriller Catacombs; and, because Grandma demanded it, Season 4 of Walker Texas Ranger is now on the shelves.

Jake Shimabukuro

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Jake Shimabukuro perform on Monday night. He is an amazing ukulele player as well as a pretty awesome dude. He performed on Conan O'Brien last night, doing one of his signature tunes - a cover of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Guys, this guy is so great you have no idea.For more information on Jake, check out his website!

Jack Bauer Gets The Year Off

24's Jack Bauer has been running on no sleep, Jolt Cola and, I dunno, beef jerky I guess for six seasons, but now it looks like he's going to get a short vacation.

Rather than let the show run from now until the summer (when apparently no one watches television? Not sure these seasons are very realistic, TV scheduling guys!), producers of the popular FOX show have decided to postpone the premiere of Season 7 to January, making 24 the latest victim of post-strike scheduling issues. Meaning your television will be totally Jack-free for like a year! Personally, I find this unacceptable, but as long as it gives them enough time to prevent a repeat of the retardedness in Season 6, I guess I'm okay with it. I guess.

But wait a minute guys, Tony Almeida's back and he's a bad guy! What is the deal??? I've got to wait until January to find out?!?!?!? UPON FURTHER REVIEW, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS SORT OF SCHEDULING DO YOU HEAR ME FOX I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT

TRAILER - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

UPDATE: Crappy bootleg trailer replaced with non-bootleg, higher quality trailer! I dunno, guys, that looks kinda awesome. Not too sure about the in-battle wisecracking, but otherwise it looks like a return to form. I hope.

Red Alert In Spacedock

In what is surely a smart move, the release of J. J. Abrams' semi-reboot of the Star Trek franchise will be pushed back to Summer 2009.

This comes one day after the Writers' strike officially ended (yay!), meaning that 1) everyone can get back to work (thank goodness), and 2) J.J. has been really really wanting to tweak the crap out of the Trek script, which he had been unable to do because of strike restrictions. Here's hoping that this deadline extension gives J.J. the time he needs to make the film fire on all cylinders, because if it tanks I have a feeling you may never see Star Trek again.

Which, depending on how this one goes, may not be a bad thing. I mean, Star Trek...everybody running around in their space pajamas fighting guys in albino gorilla suits.

Was that a cheap shot? I don't know.

Martin Scorsese Wants You To Shut Up

I think all of us can agree that people in movie theatres who talk (or text - those screens are bright!) on their cellphones during the film are somewhere between puppy drowners and white supremacist dentists on the contemptibility scale. Apparently, Martin Scorsese and AT&T agree.How awesome is Scorsese? I mean really, can you see Spielberg doing this commercial?

REVIEW - Fitzcarraldo

Werner Herzog is insane.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the production of the film Fitzcarraldo. Not since Francis Ford Coppola shot Apocalypse Now have there been production issues like the ones faced by Herzog back in 1982.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Fitzcarraldo follows a guy living in Iquitos, Peru at the turn of the century named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (or, as the natives call him, Fitzcarraldo). He tried to build a trans-Andean railroad, but that business failed. He has an icemaking business, but there isn't a whole lot of need for ice in Peru. He wants, more than anything else, to build an opera house in Iquitos so Enrico Caruso can sing there. In short, Fitzcarraldo is a crazy person.

Because nobody in Peru needs ice, Fitzcarraldo investigates the rubber trade, which is the best way to make money in Peru. He is shown a map by a helpful but annoying rubber baron, who points out the only remaining unclaimed parcel in the area. He explains why no one has yet claimed it: while it straddles the Ucayali River, the parcel is cut off from the Amazon by a treacherous set of rapids. However, Fitzcarraldo notices that the Pachitea River, another Amazon tributary, comes within several hundred meters to the Ucayali upstream of the parcel.

So he leases the inaccessible parcel from the government. Then he buys a steamboat from the annoying rubber baron, raises a crew and sets off up the Pachitea, the parallel river. This river is known to be more dangerous the further one gets from the Amazon because of the headhunting tribes that inhabit the area. Fitzcarraldo's plan is to reach the point where the two rivers nearly meet and then, with the manpower of enlisted natives, physically pull his three-story, 320-ton steamer over the muddy 40° hillside across an isthmus, from one river to the next. Using the steamer, he will then collect rubber on the upper Ucayali and bring it down the Pachitea to market.

This plan is, of course, ridiculous.

What's more ridiculous is that director Herzog actually had the steamer pulled up the 40° incline for the film. There were no special effects involved. This is no Hollywood fakery, they hacked up a path and took a 320-ton boat and pulled it up and then down a hill in the middle of a jungle. This is the kind of mentality that the film is dealing with. Herzog knows crazy because he is crazy.

Klaus Kinski was a raving lunatic of an actor who portrayed Fitzcarraldo with a single-minded obsessiveness. Originally, Jason Robards was cast in the role, but I can't see the film being nearly as interesting without Kinski's intensity. He really elevates the film to another level entirely.

Werner Herzog has made some really incredible films, and some others that are just kind of weird. I think Fitzcarraldo is probably a pretty good gateway film into the world of Herzog. It's fairly straightforward in its narrative, and isn't as leisurely paced as some of his other films. Also, Fitzcarraldo's theme of a protagonist with an impossible dream is one common to much of Herzog's work.

So if you want to watch a movie where an insane German guy plays an insane Irish guy and he gets a bunch of Amazonian tribesmen to pull a steamship over a mountain, check out Fitzcarraldo. It's pretty cool.

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY - February, Week 2

Yeah, I know it's already Wednesday. Deal with it.

MUSIC

Michael Jackson - Thriller (25th Anniversary re-release)
Remember when Michael Jackson was black, and people talked about him because he made awesome pop music and not because he slept in the same bed as children? Well, this is that Michael Jackson. The awesome music one. I have this on vinyl, my mom bought it when it came out...25 years ago, I guess. It's still the one to beat in sales, with 100 million copies sold worldwide. Take that, The Eagles!

Simple Plan - Simple Plan
Go ahead and buy this. You'll get everything that's coming to you. I think everything I want to say about these guys is encapsulated in this one particular xkcd comic.





DVD

Gone Baby Gone
Guys, I hate Ben Affleck so hard, but I think this film (his directorial debut) might be the real deal. A review is forthcoming, but with Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris in the cast, and an adaptation from the author of Mystic River, we may have a winner with this one.

In The Shadow Of The Moon
I just posted my review of this today. Check this documentary out, it's pretty awesome. Unless you don't think going to the moon is any kind of achievement, in which case you should probably get back to those reruns of Laguna Beach you find so desperately important.

The Equalizer - Season 1
Old guy beats up jerkface criminals week after week. Sure, it's kind of high concept, but in the hands of Edward Woodward, The Equalizer is television magic. Plus, Stewart Copeland did the best music of any 80s TV show, especially the incredible theme song.


Also available: Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix are (adopted? how else would it work?) brothers in the horribly-titled We Own The Night; Anne Hathaway takes a break from playing supercute princesses to play a supercute fictionalized version of Jane Austen in Becoming Jane; John Cusack tries to take care of a kid with problems in The Martian Child; Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones try to make a bearable romantic comedy in No Reservations; Tyler Perry continues his neverending assault on the world of film with Why Did I Get Married?; and if you just can't muster the courage to suffocate yourself with a plastic bag because you think maybe life is worth living, perhaps watching Blade: The Complete Television Series will change your mind. Or, if you're like me and you just can't get enough Justine Bateman, Season 3 of Family Ties streets today, er, yesterday as well.

You know, whether or not you believe in auteur theory, that Tyler Perry guy's got some serious brass ones to be slapping his name on everything he does like it's a selling point. "Ooh, Tyler Perry did this! Maybe he'll dress up like a fat old lady and club a man with a rolling pin!"

REVIEW - Elizabeth: The Golden Age

I don't know what went wrong here exactly, but there is something horribly amiss with this film. Let's figure out what happened.

First of all, the previous film, 1998's Elizabeth, is really awesome. I think it's important to judge this sequel on its own merits, but it's also near-impossible to divorce one from the other.

I think perhaps my biggest problem with The Golden Age is its tone. The first film was very dark, with conspiracy at every turn of its labyrinthine plot. There are a number of plots running through The Golden Age, all vying for the title of Main Plot, but none of them really win out. The threat of the Spanish Armada is ever-present - but only in the background - until they need a climactic battle to end the film; the love triangle between Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh (a subdued Clive Owen, but then when is he not), and her lady-in-waiting (Abbie Cornish) is more than a bit awkward; and the predictable assassination plots by Elizabeth's Catholic relatives (in this case Mary, Queen of Scots, well-portrayed by Samantha Morton) seems like a bit of a retread of the original, but without any sense of urgency and intrigue. The problem is that all of these plots are fine in themselves (if executed properly, which doesn't quite happen here), but put together they leave Queen Elizabeth constantly reeling; this leaves the usually-brilliant Cate Blanchett with a lot of frustrated acting instead of the complex, measured character she was in the original film. Dramatically, instead of peaks and valleys the film is just all over the place.

Elizabeth was also literally very dark, with lots of candlelight and shadows. The Golden Age, in deliberate contrast, is incredibly brightly lit at all times. Cinematography is very important in setting mood in film, and the brightly lit scenes fail to add a sense of the impending doom Elizabeth is apparently dealing with throughout the film. The only time we get back to the shadows and candles is when she visits Dr. John Dee to get her astrological reading, and ironically Elizabeth seems happier in those darkly lit scenes than in the rest of the film. I know that director Shekhar Kapur deliberately lit the film so brightly to reflect the prosperity Elizabeth's reign had brought to England, but maybe since they didn't defeat the Spanish Armada until the end he maybe should have only turned the dimmer switch up halfway? SORRY SHEKHAR I THINK YOU MADE A BAD DECISION WITH THE LIGHTING THERE

Geoffrey Rush returns as the now-ineffective Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's spymaster. His character's degeneration unfortunately makes us remember how awesome he was in the last one and gee isn't he so lame now, so it was probably not a great idea. His character wasn't originally in the film, but Kapur felt he should still be around. I would agree (putting Geoffrey Rush in any movie is always a good idea), if they hadn't marginalized Walsingham so much.

The second-biggest sin the film commits is with its use of CG. There are a lot of digital mattes, some crowd scenes, and of course they're not going to build any sailing ships (nevermind the whole Spanish Armada), so there was a need for liberal use of CG throughout the film. I'm not a huge fan of CG in historical epics; unlike modern films or sci-fi or fantasy, the suspension of disbelief isn't really there so much in historical films because the situation (or something similar) was supposed to have actually happened. It's easy to spot the CG throughout the film because it doesn't quite look real. I don't know who they got to do the work, but it all looked like it was realistically painted or something, not photorealistic. Way worse than Gladiator, and Gladiator came out like 8 years ago. Am I being too hard on the CG? Yeah, maybe, but it takes you right out of the film, if you weren't already.

Ultimately, I really wanted to like this film because I liked the original so much, but it's got a lot of problems. Maybe Shekhar Kapur got a bit too pretentious this time around, I'm not sure, but I really didn't think Elizabeth: The Golden Age was very good. Do yourself a favor and just watch the original again.

REVIEW - In The Shadow Of The Moon

I don't have a whole lot to say about this film. It's just one of those things you have to watch for yourself, if you're at all interested in hearing about landing on the moon directly from the people who were actually there. ON THE MOON.

That's the hook of In The Shadow Of The Moon: the story of the Apollo missions from the astronauts themselves. They're an interesting bunch, and their anecdotes aren't the least bit boring. There are insights into all aspects of the program, from development, to the deaths of three astronauts in a training exercise, to the Apollo 11 mission, the near-disaster of Apollo 13, and the final mission, Apollo 17. We learn the reason Buzz Aldrin hesitated before climbing off the lander's ladder onto the lunar surface, and how fast those lunar rovers can go. It was a time of great social upheaval as well, and the astronauts discuss what they did, how it affected the world, and how it affected their own outlook on things. They also, in the closing credits, address the conspiracy theory that the landings were faked.

Conspicuous by his absence is Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. That's got to mess with a person's mind, knowing that your name will be remembered throughout recorded history. Armstrong is now semi-reclusive; he gave his blessing to the film, but declined to participate in the interviews. So Neil Armstrong isn't in the film, but pretty much all the other guys are.

Here's a question: why did we lose interest in going to the moon? Because the Cold War is over? Is there no money in going to the moon? I would imagine the moon has some natural resources that could be exploited; it's not a good reason to go, but it's a reason. I just don't get why it's not a big deal to people. In the film, one of the astronauts said that his father was born around the same time as the Wright Brothers, and couldn't reconcile the fact that his son had walked on the moon; the astronaut's son was born five years before the Apollo missions, and thought the moon was no big deal. How much the world changed in such a short span of time.

In The Shadow Of The Moon is an historical document, an oral history of a bygone era; a time when the impossible was, for a brief moment, within mankind's grasp. And if anyone today thinks going to the moon is no big deal, fine.

YOU DO IT.

TRAILER - Adventures of Power

I've been gone for a week and all I come back with is a lousy trailer?

Yeah, well.

I'm really not sure about this one. Since Napoleon Dynamite came out, everyone keeps making these movies about goofy, awkward characters trying to do something retarded; much of the success of these films seems to come from people laughing at those characters, and I find that somewhat insulting since I'm apparently one of the few in the audience laughing with them. Anyway, this one is about a misfit air drummer. Yeah.Quite honestly, the main things that I like out of this are the supercheesy 80s songs (which are also getting a bit old, but I don't think that trend will be finished until someone finally uses "We Built This City"), and Steven Williams with an afro.

Really, we've seen all this before and it's becoming formulaic. Unless there's something earth-shatteringly awesome in this film that the trailer isn't showing us...I don't know.

REVIEW - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

The Oscars are full of crap.

It's funny, because I'm pretty sure this is something we all really know in our heart of hearts, but yet sometimes it seems like maybe we want to see the film or artist we want to get that recognition. We want to say, Yes, this year you will give the award to The Right Guy and not the cinematographers from Gandhi I mean come on.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is not a Best Documentary nominee this year.

It is, however, the best documentary you're likely to see for quite some time.

Logically, then, it follows that the Oscars are full of crap. I guess Michael Moore going to Cuba or complaining about the war is more important. SORRY I DISAGREE

The King of Kong follows Steve Wiebe, a regular guy who says, "Hey, let me see about maybe doing something cool like going for the world record at Donkey Kong." What he fails to realize, until it's too late, is that maybe the current world record holder doesn't want his record broken.

Billy Mitchell is, as portrayed in this film by Billy Mitchell (as this is a documentary), a Grade-A scumbag. He sets arbitrary rules and fails to live up to them himself, makes veiled accusations, has syncophants do his dirty work for him, and is just an all-around arrogant jerkface. Also, he is impolite and not a very good sport.

All the while, poor Steve is just trying to do beat the high score on a video game, to finally be a success at something in his life. It's difficult not to feel for Steve, mostly because he's clearly just a really nice guy, but also because of the way Billy Mitchell is just this amazing mustache-twirling bad guy foiling him at every turn.

Did the makers of this documentary know what they were getting into when they decided to follow Steve and Billy? I've got to believe that they were just fortunate enough to fall into one of the greatest battles of wills ever caught on film. This is the kind of story you can't make up, because if you did no one would believe it because it was too formulaic. The whole story is a Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey with video games.

Don't like video games? That's okay. This film isn't about video games. Well, I mean, it is about video games, but in the same way Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is about some stupid rocks that got stolen from some dirt-poor Indian village. Anyone who doesn't want to see the film because it's about video games is missing the point entirely.

There is a team working on a dramatic version of this story; I'm not sure this is the best way to go, but it could be pretty cool if they do it right. It's just that the documentary depicts things so well, it's tough to imagine telling this story any better than The King of Kong already does.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is superawesome, and by far one of the best films of 2007. If you want to see an average joe do his best to stick it to an arrogant jerkface, I highly recommend it.

J.J. Abrams - The Mystery Box

I'll tell you what, this Abrams guy is going places.Basically, J.J. needs to teach a master class in Awesomeology, and I need to take this class. That's what the deal is here.

Props to Jman for the heads up.

DIY Filmmaking 101

These days with technology being as futuristic as it is, it seems like anybody talented enough can make an awesome movie. Case in point: three British guys went to Normandy, shot footage of themselves as soldiers, and made a short D-Day film. Check this thing out, it's severely awesome.Filmmakers of the world, your only limit left is your own imagination! I guess it's time for me to make that romantic comedy I've always wanted to...

REVIEW - Sunshine

I like a lot of Danny Boyle's stuff. Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, 28 Days Later, I liked them all quite a bit. Actually, is it just me or is A Life Less Ordinary supposed to be like some kind of Coen Brothers film? Maybe the fact that Holly Hunter is in it gives it that vibe, I don't know.

Anyway, basically Sunshine is what happens when Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland stayed up real late one night drinking Bawls and eating pork sandwiches and they watched Alien and Event Horizon over and over again. Now, I could watch Alien on an endless loop forever, but I can't say that Event Horizon even approaches watchability, which is why I've never sat through more than ten minutes of it. Sam Neill with his eyeballs in his hands is not necessarily my idea of entertainment. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that any circumstance in a film where a character has bloody eyeballs in their hands and shows them to the camera isn't the most entertaining thing ever. Your mileage may vary, some restrictions apply.

I am pleased to report that Sunshine has no such eyeballs.

Anyway, Sunshine is kind of like if Alien wasn't quite as good as it actually was and Event Horizon was like a million times better, and they both got mashed together and they sprinkled some bits of 2001 in for good measure.

The plot follows the crew of the Icarus II, a spacecraft built by IKEA, who's crew are on their way to the sun to drop a bomb into it to recharge it. As far as I know, the sun isn't going to die out for another million years or so, but let's just work with the filmmakers on this one. Anyway, Icarus II is going because seven years prior the original Icarus mission never made it and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As you can probably imagine, things also go wrong with the Icarus II mission and chaos ensues.

It was shaping up to be a pretty cool movie, but then it made a weird left turn where I guess you could tell they were heading in that direction, but I think maybe it was a bit unnecessary and frankly, kinda retarded. It's sort of like if you were making a Friday the 13th movie and suddenly a sasquatch comes out of nowhere and chases Jason around with a machete yelling "Now how does it feel, you jerk???" See, it doesn't make sense, because sasquatches can't talk.

Anyway, I really liked the cast in this film. Cillian Murphy is always pretty good, and he's excellent here. Michelle Yeoh is in a movie where she doesn't have to kick people, and she is pretty great. People don't give her enough props as a straight-up actress. Chris "Human Torch" Evans is better than normal, probably because the material is better than he usually gets. Rose Byrne is her usual cuteness. I think Benedict Wong is one of the best character actors out there, and once again he doesn't disappoint. But the "Who's That Guy He's Awesome" Award goes to Hiroyuki Sanada as Captain Kaneda. Apparently, we'll see him soon in Speed Racer. He was pretty awesome.

So I thought Sunshine was pretty good for most of the time, but the last fifteen minutes or so were kinda retarded. It had some good performances and effects, but I'm not sure that's enough to recommend it wholeheartedly. If your idea of a fun time is to watch a guy who usually plays a guy on fire, except in this movie he's trying to save a mainframe by diving into a vat of coolant fluid, you might want to try Sunshine.

TRAILER - The Happening

People might have written off M. Night Shyamalan after maybe feeling gypped by the ending of The Village or the less than stellar performance of Lady In The Water. But Signs did pretty well and I thought it was exceptionally good, and Shyamalan's latest, The Happening, seems to be along the same lines without really copying it. Actually, from this trailer it looks like it's ripping off Radiohead's "Just" music video, but only a little bit. Well, maybe a lot, I don't know.

Anyway, M. Night got a pretty good cast this time around (he usually does), including Mark Wahlberg (I have promised to stop bringing up the Marky Mark stuff), John Leguizamo, Alan "Cameron Frye" Ruck, and the lovely Zooey Deschanel. The Happening hits theaters June 13, and I have no idea how I'm going to be able to see all these summer films because this is looking like the Summer of '89 all over again.

Indiana Jones Climbing On Some Crates!

Paramount and Spielberg, I don't know what you're playing at with not showing an Indiana Jones trailer during the Super Bowl, but I hope the one attached to The Spiderwick Chronicles is going to be awesome. Actually, I hope The Spiderwick Chronicles is good, because I've heard good things but the trailer didn't exactly fire up my imagination.

None of this matters right now though, because there is a picture of Indiana Jones in a warehouse climbing on some crates and it is right below these words. If you don't have any inkling as to why this may be potentially awesome, you need to turn in your geek card or perhaps get retested.

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY - February, Week 1

February's got a lot of cool stuff on the way just in time for, I dunno, Presidents' Day? They have a lot of sales on Presidents' Day. I'm sure it's what Washington and Lincoln had in mind, for people to use an arbitrary Monday between their birthdays to set aside a day when people can buy automobiles and toasters at a fraction of retail prices. Remember that next time you buy a microwave - Lincoln took a bullet so you could get 20% off.

MUSIC
They Might Be Giants - Here Come The 1 2 3's
The Twin Quasars of Rock follow up their immensely successful children's album Here Come The A B C's with this logical follow-up. Kids of all ages thought Here Come The A B C's was pretty great and I'm sure Here Come The 1 2 3's will be no different!

Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge
This guy's pretty interesting, and his CD is finally out stateside, so you should check it out somehow and then maybe purchase it. I don't know. I guess that would be cool. Be the first on your block, you know?

DVDs
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
People keep complaining about the title being too long, but I think those people are maybe too retarded to remember Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love The Bomb. At any rate, I hear Brad Pitt does a pretty good job in this, but Ben Affleck's brother Casey does an even better job. Also, Zooey Deschanel is in it and she is teh awesomest.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
I skipped this one in theaters because I heard an awful lot of bad press for it, which is hard for me to believe when you've got Cate Blanchett 1) in the movie and 2) reprising her star-making role as Queen Elizabeth I. Also, Clive Owen is in it and I heard there's a battle with ships and horses and stuff. I don't know how this could turn out as bad as everyone has said, but I aim to find out what the deal is very soon.

Also available: Watch Julie Delpy walk around the City of Lights with an unshaven American man not named Ethan Hawke while they muse on any number of trivialities in 2 Days In Paris; watch an ill-conceived celebration of the Beatles by Julie Taymor called Across the Universe; get lost in a Turkish prison with Midnight Express, and afterwards, if you still feel like living, check out the re-release of You've Got Mail. Yeah, I went there.

2008's Best Super Bowl Commercials

Let me first preface this by saying that Robert Goulet and his antics were sorely missed this year. A bunch of ads attempted to step in, but come on, what's funnier than Robert Goulet pulling office pranks?

There were a bunch of good commercials this year, but none of them really stood out. Except these.

FIRST PLACE: FedEx - Carrier PigeonsPretty much the best thing to happen all night that wasn't football.

SECOND PLACE: e*trade - Baby Trader
At first I was like, "Oh here we go with the tired talking baby schtick," but then the baby spit up. Classic.And this one was even better:

THIRD PLACE: Bridgestone TiresAnd who knew there would one day be a commercial featuring Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons?Those were the commercials that I liked.

Congratulations to the New York Football Giants!

Guys, I'm not the biggest football fan in the world, but a lot of my friends are Giants fans so I've been following them a lot this year and they won the Super Bowl last night! This is pretty awesome on a number of levels, but mostly because they beat the previously-undefeated New England Patriots, who swaggered into Arizona with a sense of entitlement so strong even Paris Hilton was amazed.

But that quickly faded when Tom Brady kept getting sacked, and the Pats could not effectively solve the Giants' defensive line. Late in the 4th, Eli Manning refused to get sacked and passed to David Tyree, who caught the football with his helmet. They scored on this drive and won the game 17 - 14. It was pretty neat.

TRAILER - Superhero Movie

I'm reasonably certain that this film is going to be horrible, though the presence of Leslie Nielsen as the "Uncle Ben"-type character has my interest piqued slightly. Also, Brent Spiner, Jeffrey Tambor and Christopher McDonald are in it, but maybe they had bills to pay or something.Not sure what the actual title of this is; the trailer says Superhero Movie, but the IMDb page says it's Superhero! Pretty sure no one's going to notice.

Everything that's right about these kinds of films: the nailgun scene.

Everything that's wrong: the breakdancing scene. Also, old lady in a woodchipper? Not so funny.

I kinda wish Leslie Nielsen was playing the superhero character. The fact that he's like a billion years old just makes the idea funnier to me, I don't know.