Happy Panic Productions

Roger,Ebert, I read you: Fantastic Four (2005)

I was a sometime fan of thie comic, but the previews I saw made me very wary. I just didn't get the sense that this would be a movie that knew how to be entertaining. Also, nothing about the FF seems well suited to the motion picture medium. We are, after all, talking about the comic which is notable first of all for its building of a continuity between installments, and also for the ongoing interpersonal relationships among the tea members. This is the stuff of a serial, people, not of a self-contained two hour adventure. Lee and Kirby's genius was to break the superhero story out of the one-off adventure mold, and do something that, for all the world-saving exploits of the heroes, was on the personal scale nothing more than a soap opera. Shoe-horning that continuity into a summer blockbuster is a disservice to that stroke of genius.

It was nice to see Tim Story got the characters and the casting right (Chiklis is a good Thing, and Gruffudd rises to the challenge of making Reed Richards a character you don't want to beat up), except where he got it so very wrong. Ben Grimm voluntarily turns back into the Thing? Did this ever happen once in the comics? I remember the Thing living with a curse, staying behind on the desolate Battle World just because there he could turn human at will. The whole compelling basis of his
character is undone. Now we know he can stop being the Thing just as quickly as it takes Reed to build another of those Brundlefly machines. Yet he remains rocky... out of a sense of responsibility? He's no longer the Thing, he's Spider-Man.
And Invisible Girl is an unfortunate collision of bad writing and worse casting. Mere moments before she has to turn invisible at a magazine stand because she's "shy", Alba is strutting down the street like it's the catwalk. And I think enough has been said about Dr. Doom's origina and powers.

But maybe the single biggest problem with this movie, because it's the one part of FF that would have translated well to the big screen had Story bothered to pay it any mind, is that the scale of the physical plot is all wrong. The remainder of this movie, after the origin has been dealt with, would have occupied one page in Lee/Kirby's hands. Okay, maybe I'm exagerrating. Five pages, tops.

The real Fantastic Four only partake in adventures of a grand scale. On an average day, they're thwarting a plot to rule or destroy the planet. A big deal to them would be saving an entire dimension. The smallest plot I can ever recall them bothering with was the size of a metropolis. (Okay, technically, a Microverse.) And what is Dr. Doom's magnificent plot in this summer blockbuster romp? To knock off three members of the Fantastic Four so that his own girlfriend will like him again. I mean, he's not even trying to take anything that's not his -- they're technically still dating, for crying out loud! It's such a pathetically unambitious villian we have to watch in this movie, the only feelings he evokes are embarrasment and pity. The once mighty Dr. Doom, now nothing but a dweeb and a loser? I honestly don't think there has been a more broke-dick villain in summer blockbuster history.

I think Ebert nails this one. You have to keep in mind while reading this review that here is a guy who likes both comic book movies and comic books. But this feature is supposed to be fun, so I'll point out a couple of awkward passages.

It's all setup and demonstration, and naming and discussing and demonstrating.... He forgot to mention it demonstrates a demonstrative demo demonstratively.

...you see one fire truck saved from falling off a bridge, you've seen them all. And if you've seen one person get shot, you've seen 'em all, I suppose. Why don't filmmakers spare us this repetition and simply supply title cards to tell us what happened?

Otherwise, it's a well written review, except: what the hell does he keep digging on X-Men for?

I got unexpectedly wistful when I happened to discover that eight colors were retired from Crayola crayons in 1990 (actually, renamed), and among them were three of my favorites: Green Blue, Orange Red, and Raw Umber. I suddenly remembered how my young mind had used the example of the Red Orange and Orange Red crayons to conclude that "pop", not "soda", was the proper shorthand for soda pop. I reasoned that Orange Red was more red than orange, and Red Orange was more orange than red; by analogy, soda pop was more pop than soda.

I also had a friend and neighbor named Umber, who incidentally was the first girl I ever kissed, under the table in first grade. I wouldn't describe the kiss as raw, though I suppose technically she was.

Things my boss just said

After sitting down at his desk and turning on a fan near his chair:
"Get ready for some fart air."

Roger, Ebert, I read you: March of the Penguins

The saddest, most erotic penguin movie yet.

"This is a love story," Freeman's narration assures us, reminding me for some reason of Tina Turner singing "What's Love Got to Do With It?" One of these days, Ebert will drop one of these brainfarts on us and then go on to explain how one thing reminds him of another.

And in other news, dog bites man

Headline on back page of today's Michigan Daily:
"After hosting All-Stars, Detroit returns to normal"

The Wikipedia is either indispensible or completely irrelevant

I can't decide which, but I am sure that one of those must be the case, ever since I stumbled upon the entry for kancho.

Roger, Ebert, I read you: War of the Worlds (2005)

I'm considering retiring this feature. Ebert's reviews of the last three movies I've seen didn't produce anything particularly noteworthy (I didn't even bother to do a post for Revenge of the Sith), and I've agreed with him more than I've disagreed with him. I think he's pretty right on with everything he says about War of the Worlds, except I'm surprised that he focuses solely on the surface details of the film. The real reason I was interested in seeing this one was because of the adage that sci-fi/horror/disaster movies are an expression of the anxieties of society at the time. From what I could tell of the previews I'd seen, Spielberg seemed conscious of this and its application to 9/11 when making this movie. And watching it, it is so conciously hitting all of these memes that you imagine the filmmakers running down a checklist to make sure they got them all (and interestingly, hit a few points I wasn't expecting, with a wider eye toward the War on Terror and Iraq). Too bad the end of the movie departs completely from these themes and feels irrelevant to our world outside the movie; Ebert hits the nail on the head when he compares it to Jurassic Park. Funny how Spielberg made the same error in Minority Report: he spends most of a movie building a story about a deeply flawed justice system, but sacrifices all of his themes for a neat and thrilling dramatic climax, with the result that it's no longer the system that's flawed, just one bad man. War of the Worlds isn't as bad, since it doesn't undermine its themes so much as depart from them. Anyway, I was surprised Ebert never addresses the 9/11 angle in his review.

Overall, it's interesting, yet very difficult to enjoy. The tagline should read, "Relive the trauma!"

Water drops

Last night I bought a dehumidifier. I was carrying it out of the store, it was raining the biggest rain drops I have ever seen. Since The Matrix: Revolution, anyway.

I ran the dehumidifier in my basement overnight. I checked it this morning. In less than 12 hours, it had pulled 50 pints of water out of the air. And it might have taken far less than 12 hours; it shuts itself off when it reaches that capacity.

By my best estimate, by a small amount, I am currently living farther from a large body of water than I ever have in my life. Yet this morning, for the first time ever, I saw a pelican while driving to work.