Category: Audio Visual

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Audio Visual

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). 83 minutes, Handmade Films / Sony Pictures. Directed by Terry Jones.

It was the fall of 1979. I was in my senior year at LaRue County High School, in Hodgenville, Kentucky (trivia note: the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln!). I was coming off a fantastic year on the school debate team, in which my team partner Mark Shelton and I had taken the state championship and placed 38th in the national competition. That year, the last year before college, the last year before Ronald Reagan, the last year of the seventies, one of my biggest obsessions was Monty Python.

Have you seen High School Musical? You know the musical number in the lunch room, where all the different cliques in school sit at their own table, each with their own way of dressing, communicating, etc? My high school was exactly like that… although, regrettably, none of us were anywhere near that good-lucking, and we never broke out into song and dance. Anyway, my lunch table was The Smart Sarcastic Kids.

We were the college-bound psuedo-intellectuals (some of whom ended up becoming genuine intellectuals) who considered ourselves a bit above the rest of the school. And Monty Python was one of the things that bound us together. Back in 1979, Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired at midnight on PBS, right after Saturday Night Live finished a minute or two earlier on NBC. This schedule ensured that Monday’s lunchtime conversation was sure to be filled with quotes from the weekend Python episode. For my younger readers, try to conceive of a time before VCRs or Tivos: you saw a show once, when it aired, and that was it.

Now, Monty Python was considered very risque in 1979, especially in backwoods Kentucky. Thankfully, our television actually came from Louisville, 60 miles away. I really have to give credit to PBS back then – they aired the episodes uncut, complete with the odd bit of nudity here and there and hysterical British swear words intact. My god, you cannot imagine how much my friends and I ate it up.

The best of the best was one weekend when they aired Monty Python and the Holy Grail instead of Flying Circus. To me and my friends, this movie was a Revelation. I just can’t state it any more plainly than that. For weeks, months afterwards, my friends and I quoted that movie. We bought the record of the soundtrack. We bought the book with the complete script. We acted out bits for each other and for the benefit of those who had missed the one-time showing.

And then, a miracle: A new Monty Python movie was coming out! Something called Monty Python’s Life of Brian. But not just another movie – this one was controversial! It takes place in “olden bible times”, and Jesus is even mentioned in the movie! People were protesting it, claiming it was blasphemous! Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire. I mean, we wanted to see the movie just because it was Monty Python. But when we read that people were protesting it, there was nothing on earth that would keep us away.

One Friday night, when all our classmates were going out on awkward dates to Senior Prom or Homecoming or something like that, we ditched the entire affair and drove up to Louisville to see Monty Python’s Life of Brian. As I recall, we took two cars – my tiny, electrically challenged Chevy Chevette, and Tim Well’s rusted-out Chevy Nova. We crammed six people into the Chevette, which was so badly wired that the whole electrical system would constantly shut off, throwing us into complete darkness while rocketing down the freeway at 60 miles an hour. Only violent shaking motions from all passengers, or everyone jumping up and down at the same time, would force the lights to come back on. As you can imagine, this made for a very entertaining ride.

The movie did not let us down. We saw a 7pm showing, and then all went to a local Pizza Hut afterwards. We talked about the film over many pizzas until we were grazing against our collective curfews. We corrected each other over exact lines; one of our members, Kris Prather, had a near photographic memory, which helped greatly in this regard. We drove back in the pitch black, hopping up and down every few minutes to keep the headlights on in the Chevette, singing the movie’s concluding song.

The following week at school, no one else could understand why we had collectively skipped out on Homecoming or Prom or Whatever. But when we told them what we had seen, they were in awe. Monty Python’s Life of Brian never made it out of Louisville to the local theaters, at least not that year. Nowadays I suppose you’d call what we had “geek cred”; back then we just thought we were the coolest kids on earth.

Last week, I got the new Blu-Ray high definition disc of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Over the weekend, I sat down to watch it. First I had to sit through a very annoying and lengthy disc load time and menu, and then I was finally able to watch the movie. (Side note: I want a switch on my Blu-Ray player called “movie only”, then when pressed, skips the loading of all the damn menus, “BD-Live” sign in garbage, previews, advertisements, legal warnings, embellishments, and everything else and just plays the damn movie already. On some of these discs it takes more than five minutes to get to the point where you can actually watch the movie that you paid for!).

The Blu-Ray version is amazing. I promise you, this movie did not look this good in the theater in 1979. The film looks like it was shot now, not 30 years ago. Everything looks so crisp and clean. The colors are sharp and clear, and the amount of detail is astonishing. This is one of the best transfers of an older film to high definition that I have yet seen. No scratches, no splices, no artifacts of any kind.

Since Monty Python’s Life of Brian is now an established classic, I won’t bother to recount the biblical-era plot: that and more can be found in this excellent Wikipedia article about the film. Like all Python projects, the dialog is what makes it so special. And the Blu-Ray’s wonderful 5.1 remix in TrueHD means that you can hear every single line of dialog as clear as a bell. The entire conversation between John Cleese’s latin lecturing Roman Centurion and a recalcitrant graffiti-painting Brian. The lisping Biggus Dickus on stage with his equally speech impaired old friend Pontius Pilate. And of course, the closing song by Eric Idle as the surviving cast are all crucified, singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life“.

Also on the disc is an hour-long documentary, “The Story of Brian”. This includes interviews with all of the surviving members of Monty Python (Graham Chapman, who played Brian, died in 1989) and the film’s producers. The documentary covers the making of the film, its release, and the controversy that followed it. The highlight of the documentary is clips from a live debate between two clergymen and two Python members (John Cleese and Michael Palin), where they debate whether the film is blasphemous or not. Not surprisingly, the clergymen come off looking like fools.

At the end of the documentary, the question is asked: Could this film be made today? The answers vary, but the consensus, expressed by Terry Gilliam, is “Well, I certainly hope so”.

Personally, I doubt it. Watching the movie again, it seems much edgier now than it did to me in 1979. Back then, it seems, you could poke fun of a lot more things than you can now. Back then, satire was challenging and eye-opening. Back then, the world was our oyster and anything and everything could be made into a joke. That’s just not true anymore.

Nowadays we have Muslim fundamentalists who will kill you if you draw a cartoon, Christian fundamentalists who would burn you at the stake for suggesting that Christ ever had doubts, and Jewish fundamentalists who take even the slightest criticism of Israel as a sign that you would gladly invoke a second holocaust. Making jokes at the expense of organized religion is not going to fly here in America 2008.

Nothing yet has surpassed Monty Python’s Life of Brian in that regard, and I doubt anything ever will. And though the film treats Jesus himself with respect and deference, the same cannot be said for the implications it makes about his followers.

If you have a Blu-Ray player, get this disc now and give it a spin. If you have a DVD player, get the DVD version made from the same remaster and watch that. Enjoy the 20th century’s greatest comedy troupe at the height of their creative powers.

I leave you with this bit of dialog from the film. This bit is near the end, when Brian is trying to convince the crowd outside his window that he is not the messiah, and does not, in fact, have anything at all to tell them whatsoever. I used to quote this bit over and over, and this scene actually helped to form one of my life’s mottos: Think for Yourself.

Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me, you don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!

The Crowd (in unison): Yes! We’re all individuals!

Brian: You’re all different!

The Crowd (in unison): Yes, we are all different!

Man in Crowd: I’m not…

Categories
Audio Visual

Funny Games

Funny Games (2008). 111 minutes, Warner Brothers Independent Pictures. Directed by Michael Haneke.

Pretentious, sadistic, and capricious film that advertises itself as a horror film, but is in reality a two-hour-long Film School project about the arbitrary rules of Hollywood style movie scripts. Unless you really feel like attending a lecture on didactics, avoid this one at all costs.

Funny Games starts out seeming like one of those mildly interesting remakes of a foreign horror film, like The Ring or The Grudge. It is, in fact, a shot-for-shot remake of the original Austrian film written and directed by the exact same man responsible for this version, Michael Haneke. May God have mercy on his soul.

A wealthy family of three – Husband, Wife, and Adorable Son – show up at their summer vacation house. Two teenage guys, who fit in seamlessly as prep school boys in tennis outfits, imprison the family in their home, then proceed to torture (mentally and then physically) all 3 family members, and finally kill them one by one. I will not identify the actors or character names, since they must have all been blackmailed into doing this film, and I don’t want to add to their obvious pain and embarrassment.

For the first 45 minutes, this seemed like any other annoyingly stupid slasher film. You, the audience, clearly see the danger, whereas the people on screen do not. We see a knife, in closeup, fall out of sight in the family’s boat – and we “know” that will come into play later in the movie. The family has a dog that barks at the psychotic teens. The couple’s son seems precocious and bright.

I watched this “movie” with 2 other people, and at about the 45 minute point, I paused the movie, and suggested we stop and forget it – it seemed obvious to me that this was a cheap stunt horror film, where we would just be screaming at the characters the whole way through, “You idiot!! Grab a knife, it’s right behind you!” or some such. I said let’s just challk up the $4.99 rental fee as lesson learned, stop now, and watch something else instead.

I was outvoted, and we continued watching. And slowly, the film revealed itself for what it really is: a “lesson” in the “games” that movies play with us:

  • “The cute dog won’t get killed”: So the dog is killed, and we watch its lifeless body fall out of the car.
  • “The kid will escape or survive, kids don’t die in movies”: So the Adorable Son is shot in the head with a shotgun as the first character to die, and his dead body lies in the living room for the next 40 minutes on screen.
  • “The wife will escape and get help“: Except the Bad Guys recapture her and then murder her Husband in front of her.
  • “The knife in the boat that was telegraphed at the beginning will save the day at the end”: Except the Bad Guys immediately see the knife and throw it overboard.
  • “The bad guys promised a twelve hour bet that the wife couldn’t outwit them”: Except the Bad Guys, after deciding they are hungry, simply throw the last survivor (the Wife) overboard and kill her, then go get something to eat. The End.

And, in case you still aren’t “getting it”, occasionally one of the Bad Guys will turn directly to the camera, break the Fourth Wall, and say something like “What do you think should happen?” or “Don’t you agree”?

The worst part of all came at about 30 minutes from the end. The Wife lunges for a shotgun on the coffee table and kills one of the Bad Guys. The remaining Bad Guy says “Shit! That’s not what I wanted to happen! Where’s the remote?” The Bad Guy picks up a remote, and then proceeds to rewind the movie – the actual movie you are watching – back before that scene and then start it up again. This time, the Wife doesn’t kill the Bad Guy, and the Bad Guy instead snatches the gun away from her in time, and then kills the Husband anyway.

Isn’t that clever? Get it? See? The whole movie is playing “Funny Games” with your head! Ha ha! See, you rewind it and it doesn’t come out the same way when you press Play! Ha ha! Oh, this screenwriter is so clever I’m just going to shit my pants.

This is the kind of movie that weak-minded professors at lame film schools will slobber over and proclaim post-something-or-another, then say that it cleverly deconstructs the structure of the horror film, blah blah blah. I call it pretentious and sad. If the director wanted to point out the conventions of slasher films, he should have just written an article for Film Comment and called it a day.

A few years ago one of my nephews talked me into watching Saw, which I thoroughly hated. It was the worst example of the kind of “stupid people do stupid, unrealistic things and let killer torment them as a result” genre of film. Funny Games, which I suppose the director intended as some sort of smarmy “answer” to that kind of movie, is ten times worse than that was. I saw another review of Funny Games that called it “the visual definition of the term ‘Artsy Fartsy'”, but that is being far too kind, and giving this film much more credit than it deserves.

I want two hours of my life back. The people who made this should be chained to a classroom desk and forced to listen to an endless series of dry lectures about the Meaning of Film and Deconstruction Theory for all eternity. Let this post serve as a warning: No matter what anyone tells you, do not see Funny Games. If anyone tries to recommend the film to you, run, run, away, as fast as you can.

I’ve never been in favor of burning a film, but I might be persuaded to make an exception in this case.

Categories
Audio Visual

The Music of Jonathan Coulton

Over the past few days I’ve discovered a great singer/songwriter, Jonathan Coulton. Apparently he’s been an Internet “It” Boy for a while, but somehow he passed right by me. My geek cred is suffering.

Yesterday, I was listening to one of the XM radio comedy stations, when they played his song “RE: Your Brains ”. By the end of the song, I was singing the chorus at the top of my lungs in the car, and wishing that my car stereo came equipped with an audio version of Tivo.

This morning, I found Coulton’s web site, and downloaded “RE: Your Brains”, which is every bit as good as I remembered. So I bought the entire album. And then I bought another album. And then I figured I’d better wait at least a few days to buy some more, or else I’d feel like a fool for not just shelling out the $70 for “everything” on his web site in one download.

Coulton is something I’ve not encountered before: a humorous songwriter who actually has a great voice, and sings more than just humorous songs. For example, on the same album “Thing A Week Two” is the song “Flickr”. This is a beautiful tune that is a sort of stream of consciousness describing photos you’d see on Flickr – but perfectly rhyming and set to a tune that is as radio-friendly as any I’ve heard. On his web site, in the “wiki” section, he has a video for the song that has all the pictures in it that he sings about. This video should play on MTV… except, of course, that they don’t play music videos anymore.

Almost all of his songs have a catchy tune, a bouncy beat, and are fun to sing along with. On his album “Thing a Week Three”“, “Tom Cruise Crazy” and “Code Monkey” are two standouts that should also both become hits. “Code Monkey” will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s ever worked in a cubicle environment with computers, and “Tom Cruise Crazy” is just a damn good song all around.

You really have to listen to these songs to appreciate how incredibly good they are. Every one of them is impeccably written, with rhymes and hooks that are downright giddy. Coulton’s voice is a great folk-rock singing voice, evoking a 21st century combination of John Denver and Bruce Springsteen. I don’t know why he hasn’t had at least several Top 40 hits already. Or perhaps he has, and I am even more behind the times than I think I am.

There’s even a delightful cover of a Beatles song, “I Will”, to be found on “Thing A Week Two”. By the way, I was confused at first about why he has four volumes of “Thing A Week”. Well, as it turns out, when he got started as a full-time performer, he made himself write, record, and make available a new song every week for a year. Hence, “Thing A Week”. An admirable lesson to anyone who’s trying to start their own business, especially in a creative field.

“RE: Your Brains” is still my favorite. This is a song from one co-worker to another – except that the guy singing the song is a zombie, and he’s trying to get his office mate to let him eat his brains (as zombies are wont to do):

Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall
Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?
Thing have been OK for me except that I’m a zombie now
I really wish you’d let us in

I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand
But here’s an FYI:
You’re all gonna die screaming

And then that fantastic refrain, in which an entire chorus of singing zombies joins along:

All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable, I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains

I defy anyone not to sing along once you’ve heard this song. In less than 24 hours, this has become one of my favorite Car Songs. Play it loud, pound on the dashboard (traffic permitting), and shout along at the top of your lungs. It will put you in a great mood and really set the rest of your day in perspective, trust me.

So don’t wait for the undead to take control – head on over to Coulton’s web site (we Jonathans have to stick together, right?) and buy a few songs. Buy an entire album or two, they’re worth it. And all of his music is available as non-DRM’d MP3 tracks in high quality, which I heartily support and greatly admire. I already know I’ll be buying the rest of his music over the next few days, I just can’t resist. You can get his stuff on iTunes and Amazon as well, but why not buy them directly from the man who makes them?

Now come on, everybody! Gather ’round and sing along! All we want to do is eat your brains…

Categories
Audio Visual

The Orphanage

The Orphanage (El Orfanato) (2007). 105 minutes, Warner Bros. Pictures de España Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona.

An atmospheric, intelligent, elegant and extremely scary horror film with an ending that will leave you gasping for air. Don’t watch this one late at night.

I love our Apple TV. An inexpensive device that you can rent high definition movies on, delivered right to your house for $4.99? I get both instant gratification and a geek thrill at the same time.

Since getting this Apple TV for our theater room about a month ago, we make a point to check out the new high definition rental releases. For example, last week we rented and watched Cloverfield and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead. Both were fine films, and if I had all the time in the world, I’d review them as well.

At the same time, we also rented The Orphanage. We held off watching it, however, since it’s in Spanish, and we wanted to make sure we started watching it early enough that we could concentrate on reading the subtitles without missing anything.

It’s been months since I’ve watched a subtitled movie. It requires a bit of extra concentration to watch a movie in a language I don’t understand, since I must read the subtitles while trying not to take my eyes off the picture. And, I’ve still got to listen carefully, because subtitles only translate the main dialogue – not the surroundings, ambiance, music, etc.

Watching a spooky horror film in another language is even more involving (the last time I can remember watching a foreign horror film was the Dutch film The Vanishing, almost 20 years ago). Perhaps that’s why this one hit me with such a jolt. I had to concentrate whole heartedly on watching the film, and therefore I had to immerse myself completely in its little world.

The Orphanage is a Spanish film, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and written by Sergio G. Sanchez. I call out both names because this film is incredibly well-written, the acting is fantastic, and it looks beautiful. This is a high-class effort from beginning to end.

The Orphanage begins with a flashback that takes place about 30 years ago. A young girl is one of six children at a Spanish orphanage, which seems… creepy. You can tell right away that something is wrong with most of the kids; one is blind, another has leg braces, another has some immense headgear that looks beyond orthodontic. As a girl counts off a game of tag, the phone rings, and via a closeup of adoption papers, we see that the girl counting down the tag game – Laura – has just been adopted. We never see the face of the woman who is talking on the phone, although it’s obvious that she works at the orphanage. A dissolve, and the girl Laura is waving good-bye, as she leaves the orphanage to start a new life with her new family.

The movie immediately moves to the present. The girl Laura, now a grown woman (Belén Rueda), is moving into the apparently long abandoned orphanage of her childhood. With her is her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their seven-year-old son Simon (Roger Príncep). Simon, it seems, has some invisible playmates. And it is soon clear to us – although not to Laura – that the playmates are the ghosts of the children that Laura used to play with.

Laura and Carlos plan to run the house as a small orphanage, caring for special-needs children. During an opening day party for the newly remodeled Orphanage, and after the revelation that Simon is himself adopted and has special needs as well, Simon disappears. And never returns.

Months go by. Laura hears sounds in the house. Bizarre clues appear. Is it Simon, trying to talk to her from the dead? Is it the spirits of the five missing children from her youth? And what about the strange old lady who showed up, claiming to be a social worker? Laura hires a team of psychic investigators, who bring with them the mysterious medium Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin). What Aurora discoveres gives a clue to what may have happened to Simon… and so Laura renews her search.

I really can’t say more than that. I will say that if you liked The Sixth Sense… you’ll like this. Stay alert, pay attention to everything that occurs (especially everything that young Simon tells his mother about his “imaginary” friends), and you’ll get one hell of a creep-out at the end, when you realize just what has occurred at… The Orphanage.

Man, I love movies like this.

Categories
Audio Visual Books

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass (2007). 113 minutes, New Line Pictures. Directed by Chris Weitz.

A dismal, unsatisfying and confusing adaptation of a great book. Avoid this one like the plague, especially if you have read the book. Or even if you are planning on reading the book.

I should have known. When I originally heard that New Line was planning on adapting all three volumes of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, starting with The Golden Compass, I thought, “Wow, that’s awfully gutsy for a major studio”.

You see, the trilogy covers the epic journey of a young girl on a parallel version of Earth, joined by various friends and opposed by numerous enemies. The action takes place on her own world, and then, after the first volume, on our world and then many other worlds. It culminates ina battle of the forces of good against… well, God and the Catholic Church, basically.

Yes, in His Dark Materials, God is an evil overlord who uses religion (specifically, the Catholic Church on our world, and its corresponding entity on other worlds) to control and enslave mankind. And the little girl Lyra, accompanied at the end by rebel Angels and others, finally succeed in destroying God and freeing the universe from… His Dark Materials.

Well, if that doesn’t have “Studio Blockbuster” written all over it, I don’t know what does!

The book(s) are about a lot more than that, and I’m summarizing it a bit loosely to make the point, but it is very far and away from Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. The Golden Compass, the book that starts it off, is downright subversive in its appeal. It’s only after you’re into it for a 100 pages or so that you go, “Hey… wait a minute… what the hell…” as you start to realize that this fantasy story with talking animals, armored polar bears, and flying witches is really about A Lot More Than That.

Just as C.S. Lewis used his Narnia tales to teach a thinly-veiled allegory for Christianity, Pullman uses the three books including The Golden Compass to issue a thinly-veiled allegory for atheism (or really agnosticism, I suppose, since in Pullman’s works God is actually real, he’s just evil). It’s hugely popular in the non-U.S. parts of the western world, mainly in the U.K. and Australia, and reasonably popular among “weird kids” in the U.S.

Now, I personally loved The Golden Compass (the book!), as well as the other two novels that continue and complete the story, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. But I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not suitable for everyone, and it definitely would offend and upset a large percentage of American parents. I mean, the people who protested Harry Potter actually have a solid argument about this series!

I guess New Line thought that if Harry Potter and Narnia were such big hits, they’d pull up another popular Young Adult Fantasy Series and give it a go. That’s what I thought when I heard they were going to adapt the books into big-budget films. I wondered what they would change…

The next thing I heard about the movie was some months later, when Nicole Kidman was cast in the part of the lead villain, Mrs. Coulter. I thought the casting was perfect. In the books, Mrs. Coulter is a beautiful, stylish, and deeply evil woman who actually tortures children. On purpose. And when they die (yes, children actually die in this series), she shrugs her shoulders and moves on. I thought Kidman would eat that part up.

But then Kidman said she would never act in any film that was not respectful of the Catholic Church and all that it stood for, and that “of course” all those elements had been “removed” from the film. I went back and re-read The Golden Compass. It seemed to me that if you just removed “those elements”, the story would not make any sense at all. And as it turns out… I was right.

The Golden Compass (the movie) is an antiseptic, by-the-numbers adaptation. Sure enough, all references to religion in any way, shape, or form have been removed. All tonal references to growing up sexually, or to the concept of a soul (“dust”, as it’s called in the novels) has been removed as well. Unfortunately, they weren’t replaced by anything.

So throughout this movie, we have no idea why anyone is doing anything. Why is Lyra given the golden compass? What is its purpose? Why does it matter that it tells the truth? Why does “The Magisterium” want to separate humans bodily from their animal other halves (daemons)? What are the flying witches? What are the armored bears? What is dust? None of these concepts or actions are explained in the film. Not even in a vague, comic-book-explanation kind of way. They are just… presented. Like someone made a PowerPoint summary of the plot of the novel in bullet points, and then they just filmed it.

Even the special effects look half-hearted and sterile. In this day and age, with CGI art being what it is, it’s not much of a challenge to make a talking polar bear or a flying witch. But to make such things look real and lived-in, especially when you’re supposed to be looking at actions on an entirely different world, takes real care and art. And apparently no one cared.

The whole movie looks like a video game, or, as Frank said while we were watching it, “one of those awful new Star Wars movies”. It never looks like anyone actually lives in it – it just looks… well, clean, crisp, and fake.

And by not explaining why or what anything is, the story just makes no sense. Here is my prime example: A linchpin of The Golden Compass is that on Lyra’s world, human minds (and souls) are split in half, physically. Half is inside your head, the other half resides inside an talking animal companion that is always at your side. This companion is referred to as your “daemon”. Every person has one. The types of animals are different, although usually the type of animal is representative of the overall type of person you are. Up until puberty, your daemon changes from one type of animal to another, as your personality forms. But once puberty hits, you daemon fixes forever on one type of animal. People know who you are, in a sense, by your daemon.

On Lyra’s world, the “internal dialog” that we have inside our heads is held instead with your daemon, all the time. All daemons, of course, talk. And there is a taboo, very strong, that you never, ever touch another person’s daemon. And, if anything happens to your daemon, it happens to you (and vice versa). If your daemon is killed, you die – and vice versa. And if your daemon is physically separated from you somehow, you would both die. After all – how could you live with half of your mind, or half of your soul?

All of that is very, very important to understanding even the basic plot of The Golden Compass. And almost none of that is explained in the movie. One key point about any scenes in the book is that there is always a certain amount of physical distance between people, so that daemons don’t touch when walking down a street, for example. Imagine a crowd scene where everyone is at least three or four feet apart from everyone else, so that their daemon has room to stand as well as not touching anyone else’s daemon. It would look quite cool if done right…

…but all of that is completely ignored in the movie. Daemons are there, of course, but most of the time they’re just thrown in as random CGI critters milling around people. Crowd scenes were obviously shot as normal crowd scenes, and then CGI animals were stuffed in around the edges. Sometimes you see people with their daemons, sometimes you don”t. No one pays any attention to them, and no one makes space for them.

And because none of this is explained or illustrated properly, the horror of what the church is doing to the children in the film – physically removing and killing their daemons while somehow leaving them alive with half of their minds – is also not explained. And so the horror is not felt. All we see is one child saying, “Where’s my rat?” and looking pale. In the book, this same scene is absolutely horrifying – because you realize that what the villains are doing is lobotomizing children so that they will become zombie slaves without free will. In the movie, however, it comes across as if they’ve just hidden a boy’s rat somewhere. Barely “evil” at all.

The whole movie is like that. Concepts from the book are kept intact, but all reasoning and explanation for them is dropped – probably because the filmmakers were afraid they’d offend somebody. As a longtime fan of the book, I was angry, annoyed, and very disappointed.

Frank, however, had never even heard of the book. HIs summation was that the movie was boring, sterile, and made no sense at all. We’d pause it every five minutes when he’d go “What the hell?” I’d try to explain it using the book version as a reference.. which was a losing battle.

Honestly, this film is terrible. Sure, there are some pretty visuals here and there, but that is absolutely all there is. It is so glaringly obvious that no one – not the writers, not the actors, not the producers – cared about the source material of this movie at all. I would be willing to bet that only a very few people involved even bothered to read the book.

Thankfully, this film tanked at the domestic box office. I fervently hope that they never make the rest of the series into movies. What in the name of all that is good would these people do to the climatic battle to overthrow God out of heaven in The Amber Spyglass, I’d love to know.

Don’t watch this movie. Don’t buy this movie. But if you love well-written, challenging fantasy, read The Golden Compass. And see the perfect version in your head, not on the screen.

Categories
Audio Visual

Across the Universe

Across the Universe (2007). 133 minutes, Columbia Pictures. Directed by Julie Taymor.

I am a huge Beatles fan, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the film I am going to relate.

My fascination with the four lads from Liverpool can be traced directly to my friend Paul Trandahl, who began my indoctrination as a Beatlemaniac in 1981. Paul made sure I understood such important things as being sure to get the albums in their original British versions on high-quality vinyl with the actual Apple label, for example. Throughout college, Paul and I read every book on The Beatles as it came out (I specifically remember Shout! and All You Needed Was Love), listened to and discussed every song and every album, and watched every film.

During my senior year at college (go Northwestern Wildcats!), I was in an advanced screenwriting class. We had to do all sorts of writing exercises during the course, including overnight TV scripts, commercial spots, and even radio plays. One exercise we had was to create a screenplay based on some sort of marketing tie-in. And wouldn’t you know it, the assignment was to create a movie based on… Beatles songs! Miine was a very silly comedy called “And Your Bird Can Sing”, which featured a singing parrot that knew all the secrets of anyone who came into contact with it. As bad as it was, I felt that mine was one of the better efforts in the class. The professor, as I recall, was pretty disgusted with the lot of us, and said he hoped none of us ever sold one of those horrible scripts.

That was in 1984. And as far as I know, in the following 23 years, no movie based on any Beatles song ever came out. I guess the creative karmic stench from our class had wafted out into the ether. But then, last year, Across the Universe appeared. I didn’t pay much attention to it, other than noting it had received some decent reviews. However, one night a few months ago I was on the phone with Paul. During the course of one of our normal “whatcha doing” conversations (Paul lives in Los Angeles, I live in Fort Lauderdale), he said “So… have you seen Across the Universe yet?” When I told him I hadn’t, he said I had to see it. “It’s the Beatles movie we always talked about, and now somebody finally made it”.

I said I would definitely go out and see it, but somehow I never got around to seeing it in the theater. And then a few weeks ago it came out on Blu-Ray (as well as regular DVD, for that matter), so I was finally able to see it.

Paul Trandahl was right. This is the Beatles movie we’d always wanted.

Across the Universe is a musical – a full-on, lip-synced, dancing and everything musical, but all of the music is Beatles songs. The songs are all sung by the actors in the movie and in character and as part of the story, which is quite an achievement. But it doesn’t end there. Every character name, tons of background elements, events, passing characters and more are all taken from Beatles lyrics. This movie was made for anal Beatles fans – I’ve watched it twice now, and I don’t think I have caught every reference yet by a long shot.

The story takes place during the 1960’s. Although no dates are ever shown on screen, I’d say it goes from about 1964 to 1969 (in other words, the time the Beatles were on the world scene). The story follows two people on two different continents, and how their lives and loves intertwine during that tumultuous decade.

Jude (Jim Sturgess) is a young dockworker in Liverpool, England. He leaves his mother Martha and his teenage girlfriend – whom he promises to “write home every day, as I send all my loving to you” – to work as a deck hand on a freighter. He jumps ship in New York, however, and it is soon revealed that he is really trying to find his estranged father, a Yank that had an affair with his mother during World War II.

Meanwhile, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a high school girl, sees her boyfriend off as he enlists to go and fight in Viet Nam. As he fights in the war, she reads his letters with joy, and sings how “it won’t be long, till he comes home, to me!”

Maxwell (Joe Anderson), Lucy’s older brother, is a student at Columbia University – where, coincidentally, Jude’s estranged father works as a janitor. And so, the night Jude comes to find his father, he runs into Maxwell (who gets by with a little help from his friends), and the wheels of destiny spin.

At the point where Jude and Lucy meet, and then go on a bowling outing together (“I’ve Just Seen a Face”), the movie kicks into high gear, and I will stop the plot summary and simply say that Jude, Maxwell, and Lucy live together through every major event of the sixties, and sing nearly 30 Beatles songs during the course of the film.

The absolute highlight is the middle of the film, beginning with “Dear Prudence” being encouraged to come out to play. The group (including, by now, Sexy Sadie and JoJo her guitar player) then stop by a pyschedelic book store to hear hippie guru Dr. Robert (Bono) hawking his new book, “I Am The Walrus”. Bono sings the John Lennon classic with great style as the group all pile onto a pyschedilic painted bus and zoom off cross-country to try and meet with Timothy Leary. And although they never see the good Dr. Leary, they do get to see the bizarre circus tent performance “For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite”. Mr. Kite (Eddie Izzard) takes them on the film’ absolute show stopper – a flat out animated acid trip rendition of this song from my absolute favorite Beatles album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

I’ve watched the “Mr. Kite” segment over and over, and it gets better every time. It manages to be creepy and scary in addition to being fun – exactly what an acid trip is actually like. Or so I have been told. Not that I would have any actual experience in such things, of course. Ahem.

Other sections worth special note are “Come Together”, where Joe Cocker performs as three separate characters, all singing this great song from “Abbey Road”. And “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, sung as a recruiting anthem for the Army. And “Revolution” as a breakup song.

Across the Universe is, of course, a love story, and I guarantee that you do get to hear “Hey Jude” before the end… and it fits in perfectly, both in the plot and thematically. Maxwell does indeed wield a silver hammer at one point (although the song is never sung), someone comes in through a bathroom window, and in the end, all you need is love.

This movie also looks and sounds great. The acting is decent. Perhaps more importantly, everyone (except Eddie Izzard, who “talk sings”) can sing well. The two leads are pitch-perfect, important since between the two of them they sing over half of the songs in the movie. The special effects and animations that pull off so many of the numbers are perfectly integrated. The costumes and settings feel exactly like the sixties. It’s also clear that everyone involved in the creation of this film, especially the writers and the director. are huge Beatles fans. Even the fictional record company in the movie, “Strawberry Jams”, is an homage to the actual label for the Beatles, Apple Records.

And now that the High Definition Disc War is over, let me take this opportunity to preach the wonders of Blu-Ray discs. This film in particular looks stunningly beautiful in full 1080p high definition.

If you like the Beatles (and especially if you love the Beatles), you’ll love Across the Universe. And even if you don’t care for the Beatles one way or the other, but you like musicals, you’ll enjoy this movie quite a bit. However, if the sixties and/or hippies scare you, stay away.

Now I’ve got to go and watch a double feature of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. The Fab Four are so gear.

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Audio Visual

Hairspray

Hairspray (2007). 117 minutes, New Line Productions. Directed by Adam Shankman.

A fun, colorful musical with likable characters, enthusiastic acting, great dancing, snappy tunes, and an overall joyful tone. A “feel good” movie in the best sense of the term.

Hairspray is the wholesome (well, not “Disney wholesome”, but wholesome nevertheless) story of a plus-sized teenage girl in the early 1960s who dreams of stardom in local afternoon television. Every afternoon “when the clock strikes four”, Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) and her best friend Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes) tune in to “The Corny Collins Show”, a teen beat dance show that’s sort of like a Baltimore version of American Bandstand. Tracy hopes to win the heart of teen dreamboat Link Larkin (Zac Efron) , who’s a dancer on the show. Her mother, agoraphobic laundress Edna (John Travolta in drag and a fat suit), and her father Wilbur (Christopher Walken), the owner of his own joke shop, have differing opinions about Tracy’s quest for local fame and romance. This being a musical, Tracy makes her dream come true – but not without learning a lot of lessons taught in song and dance about love, race relations, and being a Size 60 in a Size 2 world.

In her quest to learn the latest dances, Tracy befriends a black student, Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) and his mother, Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). Mabel hosts the once-a-month “Negro Day” on The Corny Collins Show, the only day that black people are allowed to be seen on local television. But even that once a month is one time too many for the evil station manager Velma von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who wants the show to exists only as a spotlight for her daughter Amber (Brittany Snow). Before the movie ends, rest assured that The Corny Collins Show will be integrated, true love will find a way, and you’ll be humming at least two or three snappy tunes in your head for the next few days.

I have enjoyed Hairspray in all three of its incarnations – the original 1989 John Waters film starring Ricky Lake and Divine, the 2002 Broadway musical with Harvey Fierstein, and now (the subject of this entry) this new 2007 version – a movie version of the Broadway musical. This new one is definitely my favorite.

From the first scene of this movie, I could tell I was going to enjoy it. Hairspray opens with a shot that echoes the opening shot of West Side Story: the camera starts high above the city of Baltimore. A drum beat begins. A few notes chime in. The camera moves closer in, down into a row of apartment buildings. It glides down the street as the music gets louder, into an apartment. We see a teenage girl waking up, getting dressed (all in tasteful extreme closeups of her hands, her hair, etc). Then, in one shot, the girl turns around, and we see her face for the first time as she sings, “Good Morning, Baltimore!”, the opening number.

As she sings about the joys of the city (“the rats on the street / all dance ’round my feet’) while dancing on her way to school, the film establishes the time period via a newspaper (May 1962) and its faux technicolor tone. Right away I was reminded of the extreme, over-saturated technicolor feel of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and other movie musicals of the 1950s, with their color-coordinated outfits. Everything color in Hairspray is fully loaded, something you just don’t see in movies nowadays. And even though it’s not shot in actual Technicolor (I doubt that would even be physically possibly anymore), it has that same deep color feel.

This movie has no slow spots. And unlike most Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptations, almost all of the songs came over intact. The only two songs from the Broadway version that I missed were “Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now” and “The Big Dollhouse”. Two new songs were added, “The New Girl In Town” and “Lady’s Choice”, both of which fit in perfectly fine. I strongly suspect “Lady’s Choice” was added just so that teen heartthrob Zac Efron (of High School Musical fame) would have a additional solo number (the other being “It Takes Two”).

John Travolta, all decked out in a female fat suit to play Edna Turnblad, is surprisingly good. He plays the role somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as it is meant to be, but with just enough realism and feeling that Edna comes across as a real character that we can root for. When she jumps out onto the dance floor to join in the show-stopping finale “You Can’t Stop The Beat”, I complete forgot that it was a man in a fat suit (despite him throwing in an hysterical visual homage to his role in Pulp Fiction) and thrilled to see Edna get her groove on.

I’ve seen this movie three times now, and it is so much fun. As a bonus, the two-disk “Shake and Shimmy” special edition (I have the Blu-Ray high definition version, but I understand the regular DVD set contains the same materials) includes a ton of behind-the-scene footage and interviews. There are full documentaries on choreography, casting, costuming, and sets. Plus there is a wonderful documentary that traces the development of the Broadway version from conception to opening night, including differences between the stage musical and this movie version.

You just have to see this movie. Seriously, it is a blast from the first minute to the last. It’s fast, funny, and timely. They don’t make many good musicals any more, but this one is a welcome respite. For those who enjoyed the newest “High School Musical” , as well as those that enjoyed the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musicals of the 30s, Hairspray absolutely fills the bill. You can’t stop the beat!

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Audio Visual

Chuck and the Incredible Exploding Computer

Ah, the new fall television series. An American event that has survived from my childhood up until the current day, albeit in a somewhat altered form. It was 1977, I believe, when I first started to pay close attention to the fall season, and all the new shows that would debut at that time. In ’77, I remember The Man From Atlantis, Spider-Man, and Soap. 1978 was Battlestar Galactica. And so on.

Despite the fact that now, through satellite and cable, I have many, many more television viewing options these days, it seems that I am always drawn back to the main, over-the-air television networks and their shows. At the moment, all of my favorite television shows (baring a few oddball reality series here and there) air on one of the Big 4 broadcast television networks. I don’t know why this is… but it is.

And so, this year I find myself drawn, like a moth to the flame, to the new fall television series. Thanks to the modern miracle that is Tivo, I have recorded the premiere episodes of all the new shows I could find that seemed of interest, and I’ve been slowly previewing them over the past few weeks. The season premiere of Heroes, of course, I watched live, and it’s as good as the previous season. I’m in for the ride on that one.

Possibly I’ll get around to reviewing some of them as time goes on (Bionic Woman is my current favorite of the new crop), but this post is about Chuck (Mondays at 8pm on NBC) .

Chuck‘s premiere episode came with a good pedigree; it was directed by McG, who directed both Charlie’s Angels and its sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, two films which I enjoyed immensely. The tone of this show is comic with dramatic elements, not unlike the two Charlie’s Angels films themselves. That’s an odd mix that somehow works in a film, but somehow doesn’t seem to work very well on TV. I’ll expand on that in a bit.

Here’s the premise of Chuck: A hapless nerd – the titular Chuck – works at a “Buy More” store, an obvious clone of Best Buy. If you’ve seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, just think of the scenes with Steve Carell in the electronics store, and you’ve got the exact picture. Chuck lives with sister and her husband / boyfriend (it’s not clear and it doesn’t seem to matter), and hangs out with his nerdy friend who also works in the Buy More store.

In a side-by-side story, we see Chuck’s college roomate, now a CIA spy, downloading a shitload of stuff from some strange government computer room, and then e-mailing a file to Chuck before he gets shot. Did he email it to Chuck on purpose, or did his dying hand just happen to hit upon his address at random? It’s not clear.

Chuck gets the email, opens the file, and “all the secrets the government has” download into his head. He now becomes a walking, talking computer with all NSA and CIA information available to him for instant analysis. And so two agents – a guy from one agency and a girl from the other (the girl being the former girlfriend of the now-dead agent who emailed the massive file to Chuck), tag along with him to do, well, spy shit.

There you have it. On paper, it sounds like fun, sort of Charlie’s Angels meets The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I’m sure was how it was pitched to the NBC executives. “The nerds will love it”, they must’ve said. “A pretty girl and a heroic nerd. It’s television gold!”

Not so fast. The problem with this show? It’s really, really dumb. Too dumb to be funny, and way too dumb to be even vaguely dramatic. Now, Charlie’s Angels was “dumb”, but it was sort of in its own little world, so you buy it. This show is not. It tries for the same goofy vibe, but it just does not fly when you try to merge that into the real world that you and I actually live in. And, far worse, no nerd or geek will ever like this show – because they are just waaaayyy too stupid with the computer stuff.

For example, I’ll bite on the concept that somehow a guy could “download” a bunch of government secrets into his head. Of course this could not happen in “real life”, but along the lines of Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, I’ll go along with it if that’s the premise. But they didn’t even try. Instead, we get crap like the following…

The big giant government computer in the beginning? It consists of a single room, which is covered floor, walls and ceiling with LCD screens. And a single Macintosh on a pedestal in the middle. Not even a modern “Mac”, mind you. But an original issue, 1984 type Macintosh. Which magically has a color screen and can send email. And somehow can stream all of the data from a government computer over the internet in real time. Uh huh. Right.

Next, the downloaded data is sent to Chuck in an email, sent from a weirdo non-existent hand-held device that doesn’t look even remotely like anything sold today. OK, so it’s fantasy, right? No iPhone product placement for them, they’ll make up a completely phony science-fictional hand-held gizmo for our government agents to use.

But then – Chuck receives the resulting email on a very normal Mac Pro, complete with Apple Cinema Display and keyboard. He opens the email – and it does things no email attachment could ever do. It takes over the entire screen instantly, turns into a full-res HD video stream, and plays all night long, as a hypnotized Chuck gets data fed directly into his brain. Uh…. exactly what kind of computer network on the planet we live on can do that? If they had given Chuck a made-up computer as well, I might have gone along with it – fantasy device and all that – but they don’t. Or they could have had him somehow get hooked up directly to some sort of bizarro secret device that tapped directly into his brain… there are millions of ways they could have done it that would not have had to use real-world computers doing ridiculous things.

Later, a ninja (!) tries to steal Chuck’s Mac Pro. And drops it. And, in true movie fashion, it instantly smashes apart, with parts flying out of it willy-nilly. Most of the parts which fly out don’t exist inside any computer I’ve ever seen (and I have, in fact, seen the inside of my own Mac Pro many times), such as mounds of wires, LEDs, several metal gears, etc. He takes it into his Buy More store, where the geeks gather all around the pieces and say, “It’s hopeless”. Uh… what? Dropping a computer causes everything in it to instantly become so destroyed that nothing can be retrieved? This is key, because since apparently no other copy of this data exists anywhere else, they have to rely on Chuck. Uh…. sure. I can see the director now: “Throw some more parts into that computer case, so when it gets dropped, more stuff flies out!”

I’m sorry. but this show just doesn’t work. It’s annoying and frustrating instead of being funny and endearing. For example, in Bewitched, Samantha still drove a normal car that did normal car things, unless and only unless she did some magic on it. She didn’t walk around and have magic just happen for no reason. Chuck wants us to go along with a silly premise, but they hang the silly premise on stupid, ridiculous interpretations of how computers work. What self-respecting geek is going to be able to see past that? I’ll accept 24th century Star Trek technobabble about crystals and hyperspace, but you can’t show me a computer that’s for sale right here and now and expect me to go along with it having magical capabilities that no real computer can ever have.

TV executives, listen to me carefully, OK? Here’s a checklist for you:

  • A Mac Pro will not fall instantly apart and break into pieces if you drop it.
  • Even if a computer did fall apart, you could just pick up the hard disk and get the data off of it easily.
  • Email attachments are limited to about 5 megabytes in most cases. That’s about 10 photos or so.
  • Little handheld gadgets that can send email would take at least a minute or two to send even a normal, large size attachment. Never mind 8 hours of high-definition video.
  • Emails, when opened, do not go into full screen and show video nonstop.
  • You cannot stream high-definition video through an email that will play for eight hours.
  • Macintosh computers from 1984, while certainly cool and retro looking, will not function as interfaces for government supercomputers.

So, no season pass for Chuck. It goes into the ashcan of stupid TV shows. Will it last? I predict not. We’ll see if I have to eat my words in the future. You can’t make a show targeted for a certain demographic (geeks), insult their intelligence with the same show, and then expect them to watch it. For Christ’s sake, couldn’t they have just asked any real geek for a half-hour’s consult? Wil Wheaton lives in Los Angeles, they can give him a call. He’s even got years of experience in dealing with Star Trek technobabble!

Oh, and one more thing… the guy who plays Chuck? Zachary Levi? He is about as convincing a nerd as Brad Pitt or George Clooney. This guy is tall, dark, handsome, and physically very well-built. He tries to look “geeky” by having, uh, slightly unruly hair. That’s about it. Sure, I’m gonna believe this guy is perennially dateless and working at a Buy More.

A good comedy has to have a sense of smarts and style about it, no matter what its stated situation. And a good action drama needs a key binding theme that everyone watching can buy into and believe in. Chuck has neither, and is neither.

Chuck – You Are The Weakest Link. Goodbye!

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Audio Visual

Disturbia

Disturbia (2007). 105 minutes, Dreamworks Pictures. Directed by D.J. Caruso.

A taut, engaging and extremely gripping thriller done in true Hitchcock style – paired with a modern feel and a snappy sense of humor.

I heard about this movie back in the spring sometime when Shia LaBeouf was making the rounds of all the talk shows. Since it sounded to me like just some cheesy Rear Window rip-off, I wasn’t particularly interested in it. I’ve always loved Rear Window, and I didn’t think it needed to be remade, especially as a teen slasher flick.

I love it when I’m wrong. This movie was an absolute blast.

I decided I would watch it after I saw Transformers in the theater earlier this summer. Now, I couldn’t stand Transformers – I told the group I was with that apparently I “was not in the target demographic” (meaning idiots who would enjoy an Independence Day remake that is way more stupid than the original, only with toy robots instead of aliens) – but I did think Shia LaBeouf was the only good thing in the movie. His acting made that eight hour movie (well, that’s how long it felt to me, anyway) a little more bearable, and I thought that he was certainly way better than this piece of crap about giant robots deserved. So, when Disturbia came out on Blu-Ray, I decided to give it a spin.

Many of those reading this may have never seen Rear Window, so before I go into Disturbia, let’s go over the original briefly. L. B (Jimmy Stewart) is holed up in his apartment, recovering from a badly broken leg that keeps him wheelchair bound. He can’t leave until his leg heals, so his only entertainment (apart from visits from his girlfriend Lisa, played by Grace Kelly) is watching the neighbors in his large apartment complex through the back window of his living room. Every time Lisa visits, L.B. gives her the run-down on what he thinks everyone else around him is doing, based on what he has deduced from watching them through his binoculars. But one night, he spies one of his neighbors apparently committing murder… or did he? The rest of the movie is a great cat-and-mouse thriller as he tries to figure out if the neighbor really did commit murder. At the end, a murderer is dealt with, and L.B. now has two broken legs – among several other injuries. If you haven’t seen it, or if you have forgotten it, go get it and watch it now. I’ll wait.

Back already? Great. Now that you have that background, let’s go into our modern update/remake Disturbia. Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is a high school student still reeling over the death of his beloved father (whose death is stunningly revealed in the first five minutes of the film). In a fit of righteous anger, he slugs one of his teachers during a heated argument. Pleading guilty to assault, he is sentenced to three months of house arrest. He must wear an ankle bracelet that allows him to get no more than about forty feet outside of this front door. And, to further his punishment, his mother has cut off his access to video game and music networks over the internet. And his best friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) has gone off to Hawaii on vacation.

So, Kale starts to spy on his neighbors through the windows of his father’s study. One of his favorite viewing subjects is new next door neighbor Ashley (Sarah Roemer). By the time his friend Ronnie returns from Hawaii, Kale has deduced the entire lives of his neighbors. And as he explains all this to Ronnie, they spy what appears to be a murder by the strange man next door – the man that Kale has already begun to suspect as being connected to a recent missing person’s case shown on the news.

Of course, Kale, Ronnie, and Ashley are drawn into the story as they attempt to solve the murder – while trying to avoid becoming the killer’s latest victims. As they get more and more involved, so will you: I yelled at the screen constantly during this movie, including an “Oh my God is that gross!” near the end.

Honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about this movie. Every member of the cast is perfect. Shia LaBeouf really may be the next Tom Hanks – he’s that good, and he really is almost instantly likable. I was also very impressed with the performance of Aaron Yoo, who plays best friend Ronnie. It’s great to see a multicultural friendship in modern America that is so normal that it’s not even commented on during the movie.

The story moves along perfectly. There are no gaping plot holes. Everyone does exactly what real people would do in the same situations. And while there is a lot of humor that arises from the natural interplay of the characters, this is an honest-to-God scary movie with real danger and real thrills.

Watch this one with the lights out, watch it all in one sitting, and be prepared to yell and scream at the screen (“Don’t go in there! Are you crazy? He’s right behind the door!”). And if Disturbia doesn’t disturb ya, then you are one hardened puppy.

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Audio Visual Technology

HD-DVD Combo Discs: Whose Bright Idea?

On Tuesday, I was in Circuit City picking up a new TivoHD machine. While I was there, I noticed that 300 was out on both high-def disc formats. I haven’t seen 300, but have heard mostly good things, and figured it was worth a try.

I noticed it first on HD-DVD. Since I can play both formats, I’m pretty neutral when it comes to which one I pick up. Usually it’s whatever one I find first. If I order, I choose Blu-Ray most of the time, unless the HD-DVD of the same film is significantly lower in price. Which, so far, has not happened much. tippmix tippek százalékos

Now, Circuit City is not exactly a user-friendly store, but I did manage to find their high-def disc section. I found 300 in HD-DVD first – it was $34.99. That’s over my $30 limit for a movie, so no go. Then I turned the corner and saw the Blu-Ray version of the same movie for $27.99. An easy choice! But why such a significant price difference? Aren’t HD-DVDs supposed to be cheaper, as they can use the same mastering equipment?

Ah… but now I see what is different. 300 is being sold in the moronic dual format, the HD-DVD Combo Disc! This is an HD-DVD disc on one side, with a regular DVD on the other side. So, you get two versions for one! For the price of both combined! This is the stupidest idea I’ve seen since this idiotic format war began.

Why would anyone want both formats? ingyenes kocsmai nyerőgépes játékok If you can play HD-DVDs… you have no need at all for the regular DVD version. And if you don’t have an HD-DVD player – then why would you pay $35.00 for a “combo” version when you can get the regular DVD version for $15.00? It makes no sense whatsoever. To make matters worse, the studios never offer a “non-combo” version. If you want the HD-DVD of the movie, it’s the combo version or nothing.

And – HD-DVD combo format discs have a host of problems that normal HD-DVDs do not. For example, I bought Children of Men the day it came out. And, sure enough, it was a combo disc. I put it in my XBox360 HD-DVD drive… and nothing. It just spun around and never loaded. So, I sent it back to Amazon for a replacement. A week or so later, I got a replacement copy – which also did not work. Finally, after 3 weeks, I got a copy that worked.

Come to find out, the reason it took so many tries… was that apparently there’s a problem when making these combo discs. Basically, they glue a regular DVD onto the back of an HD-DVD. And apparently, sometimes this gluing process screws up the HD side, and renders it unplayable. Had Universal simply made it a regular HD-DVD, there would have been no problems.

So, let’s sum up:

  • HD-DVD combo Discs costs more than regular, plain HD-DVD discs.
  • You get a extra side that you will never play, and which is duplicate of the side you actually want.
  • The discs have a higher failure rate than normal HD-DVDs

What idiot thought this up? And how long before these go the way of the dinosaur? I cannot for the life of me understand why the backers of HD-DVD continue to put out these expensive lemons that no one wants. If they want HD-DVD to survive (and/or “win”), drop the combo concept. Now.