Also new in the store: the remaining print copies of the charming and utterly wrong holiday fable "Santa's Lil' Gimp," my 1994 collaboration with Mr. Gregory P. Dorr. (You can browse the book online at SantasLilGimp.com.) _____
Last January, the Portland Opera invited about 20 cartoonists (including yrs. truly) to watch (and draw) a dress rehearsal of Puccini’s "Turandot." KC Cowan and a camera crew from OPB's "Oregon Art Beat" followed us around that night as we drank at Morton's, got a backstage tour and sketched the performance.
The resulting video aired on Thursday, Oct. 27. Click the embed above (or here) to watch it.
(Above: The latest piece of "Sabertooth Vampire" fan-art by Sara Machajewski. Click to enlarge.)
During the Friday, Oct. 28 "Cort & Fatboy" podcast, we talked about "Sabertooth Vampire" fan-art, "In Time," steak, and '70s toys, among many other things -- and I read a Becky Ohlsen e-mail outlining her intelligent beef with "The Rum Diary."
Detailed show-notes can be found in the comments under the podcast post. ________
"In Time" is exactly the sort of unsubtle, high-concept slice of sci-fi "social commentary" that would have starred Charlton Heston in the early '70s. I mean this as a compliment.
Writer/director Andrew Niccol returns to "Gattaca" and "Truman Show" territory here -- making a slick-looking movie that leads with a big fat "Twilight Zone"-style metaphor and doesn't really sweat logical detail. Here, Niccol takes the notion that "time is money" and twists it into a very literal, earnest riff on economic disparity.
He imagines a world where people are born with glowing clocks on their arms that start counting down to zero at age 25. Adding time to your arm-counter prolongs your life; if it runs out, your heart stops. The problem is that time also happens to be the global currency -- you're paid in units of time, you buy things with units of time. (A cup of coffee, for example, costs 4 minutes.)
In the ghetto, the poor scramble with a few hours or minutes left on their arms. In the highest reaches of society, people live millions of years. Niccol throws the disparity into stark relief by trailing a poor outlaw (Justin Timberlake) through the social strata of this world. Timberlake woos an heiress (Amanda Seyfried) and eludes a "Timekeeper" cop (Cillian Murphy). The "Occupy" movement will find much to like in the film's distrust of a rigged system that its winners defend as "Darwinian."
"In Time" is about as subtle as a foghorn, and if you're the sort of person who asks a lot of rational questions of your genre entertainment (e.g., "Why isn't time-theft more rampant?" or "How would anyone agree to this horrifying financial system in the first place?"), this flick might drive you nuts. But to my thinking, the grand simplicity of the metaphor is a big part of "In Time"'s oddly retro sci-fi charm. Niccol is practicing the old-school craft of making a barn-broad alternate-reality that forces you to think about the way we all consensually agree to participate in systems -- even when those systems are hopelessly screwed up. _____
During the Friday, Oct. 21 "Cort & Fatboy" podcast, we were joined by my actor pal Ryan McCluskey(pictured) for a particularly rowdy conversation. Among the many topics: "Paranormal Activity 3" (and how I ruined the series for myself by visualizing Charles Nelson Reilly as the invisible demon), "Yacht Rock," and a truly harrowing story about Brian Blessed collapsing onstage.
(As Fatboy later put it, "At least 15 different ringtones reside within this show if you care to cut them out.") _____
Slightly longer version of a review in the Friday, Oct. 21 Oregonian....
"Margin Call" assembles an enviable gang of character actors to dramatize the tragic decisions that led to the biggest financial crisis of our lifetimes. First-time feature writer/director J.C. Chandor has a mellow, no-frills style, and it's pleasant to watch the cast do some low-key verbal jousting.
I just wish the movie wasn't also so monologue-choked, muted to a fault and fond of oversimplifying financial lingo to the point of meaninglessness.
Structurally, anyway, "Margin Call" has a bit in common with "Dazed and Confused" -- both movies are period pieces taking place over a single transitional night. But in "Margin," the joy of school letting out in 1976 is replaced with the bummer of layoffs at a Manhattan investment bank in 2008. Among those let go: a risk-assessment analyst (Stanley Tucci) who was just about to figure out that mortgage-backed securities are going to tank the firm.
As he's walking out the door, Tucci passes his research on to a young analyst (Zachary Quinto). The result is a long, sad all-nighter of ever-larger board meetings with ever-escalating management teams (played by the likes of Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker and Jeremy Irons) as the company debates the finer points of dumping the securities, destroying the company's rep and tanking the economy the very next day.
Chandor writes monologues for seemingly every member of the ensemble, which gets a bit wearying, but is also how I'm guessing he attracted this stellar cast. He also makes some rookie mistakes. For one, he underplays everything to the point of mild sleepiness. For another, he writes far too many variations of that Hollywood device where a character asks for a spreadsheet or highly technical financial concept to be explained to them "in plain English, please." It leaves the film feeling over-distilled, on-the-nose and a bit slight. _____
(105 min., rated R, playing in Portland at Cinema 21) Grade: C-plus
In Chinese history, Di Renjie was a respected chancellor under China's only ruling empress, Wu Zetian. In pop culture, he's enjoyed a fictional career as a crimefighter -- on Chinese television and in Robert van Gulik's "Judge Dee" novels (derived from a 1700s Chinese detective novel).
And now -- thanks to barmy-kinetic Hong Kong director Tsui Hark -- Di can fly and wields a mean mace.
"Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" imagines Di (Andy Lau) as a Sherlock Holmes-brilliant supercop in a mad exaggeration of the Tang Dynasty -- a world filled with wire-fu, shape-shifting, talking deer, crazy action set pieces and a Buddha statue as tall as a skyscraper. Di finds himself hauled out of prison to figure out why people are spontaneously combusting on the eve of Empress Wu's coronation. There might even be some mild political commentary amid all the scheming and threats of torture.
Fans of Hark's "Once Upon a Time in China" flicks and "Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain" will probably find a lot to like here. Lau plays Di as a cool lone-wolf philosopher who serves justice above any human master. His reluctant Watsons (Li Bingbing, Chao Deng) are vividly sketched. And the Sammo Hung-choreographed wuxia action is gleefully ridiculous -- especially during an extended fight in a watery underground cavern filled with flying timber, flipping boats and a killer marionette.
In their best moments, Hark's action movies have a what-did-I-just-see giddiness, as if their choreography were springing straight from a cartoon id. Though I could have done without much of the film's CGI-heavy fakery, "Detective Dee" finds that giddiness more than a few times. _____
(122 min., rated PG-13, playing in Portland at Regal Fox Tower)Grade: B
On Friday, Oct. 21 from 6-9 p.m., I'm joining forces with Aaron Duran and James Sinclair for a blowout book-signing party at Bridge City Comics.
We're releasing the second issues of our comics. I'll be debuting the second "Sabertooth Vampire" minicomic, "Sabertooth Vampire Unleashed." Aaron and James will have copies of Issue 2 of their paranormal-investigator series, "La Brujeria."
• During the Friday, Oct. 7 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast,we announced our Oct. 21 signing party, founded a new church officiated by Aliens and Predators, and reviewed "Real Steel." Among other things.
• We also recorded a "Midnight Movie Commentary" for John Carpenter's best and bleakest film, "The Thing." Featuring Cort, Fats, Erik Henriksen, David Walker, and yrs. truly. Show-notes in the comments under the podcast post. _____
"Real Steel" is a sporadically crowd-pleasing but frequently brain-dead sci-fi take on inspirational sports flicks. It is also wish-fulfillment for children who think their wayward dads can be redeemed by playing video games.
The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokemon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about a decade-and-a-half from now. In a fairly serious misunderstanding of what sports are actually about, the filmmakers imagine a world in which human boxers have been replaced by giant robots; boxing is now an RC monster-truck rally with punching, basically.
Working the outer fringe of the robot-prizefighting circuit is a failed boxer (Hugh Jackman) -- a man so loathsome he actually sells the custody rights to his surly, long-abandoned son (Dakota Goyo), right after the boy's mother dies, in order to afford a deluxe fighting 'bot that will put Jackman in the big leagues. Jackman also makes one of his robots punch a bull at a rodeo, for money, in the film's opening scene. It's like a PETA-baiting "Transformers."
The kid is forced to spend the summer with Jackman. The deluxe fighting 'bot doesn't work out so well. The kid finds a scrappy underdog sparring 'bot in a junkyard. Dad and kid bond as they train the robot and journey through the corny distilled plotline of every '80s inspirational sports movie ever.
"Real Steel" has sporadic charm, thanks almost entirely to Jackman's star power, and the robot design and special effects are often excellent. I like that the story is set in the future's sunlit rural areas. But mostly it's dopey. The movie just begs too many logical questions for its own good.
Has no one really ever thought to mime a fighting robot's moves on a professional boxer's? Ever? In a future where Wii-style controllers and motion-capture presumably kept gaining ground, why do so many pro fighters control their robots with keyboards and joysticks? Why is the tiny sparring 'bot borderline indestructible? Why are spectators allowed to stand so close to flying shrapnel? Why is bull-punching a rodeo event? Am I supposed to invest in the boy/robot bond or the Jackman/Goyo bond? Why is Hugh Jackman such a jerk? Why is his kid such a jerk? Why am I rooting for jerks? _____
