The Pure Michigan Rules

If you watch much television, you’ve probably seen these “Pure Michigan” advertisements that have been running for a while now. If you haven’t, they’re basically a series of commercials put together by Travel Michigan to promote tourism in their state, with narration by Tim Allen. Here’s an example:



Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the advertisements at all. In fact, they kind of make me want to spend some time in Michigan. I just wonder why they decided to go with the theme from The Cider House Rules – a movie that was actually set in Maine! It works surprisingly well, but it’s still a bit puzzling to me.

On a completely unrelated note, I thought some of you might be interested to know that I had two comic book reviews published on IGN this week. The first is a back-up review for Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers, and the other is the main review for Dark Reign: Young Avengers. Please leave a comment either here or on IGN, if you feel so moved!

Sci-Fi Sundays #1 – Night of the Blood Beast

I love science fiction movies because even when you know the general premise of a sci-fi movie going into it, you never know exactly what you’ll get. There are common themes, sure, from robots to aliens to spaceships, but not in any other genre can you find such a wide variety of movies based on such a concentrated number of shared concepts. In each Sci-Fi Sundays post, I’ll talk about a different science fiction movie – old, new, good, or bad, but always interesting in its own way.

Night of the Blood Beast is a 1958 B-movie about what happens when the first man in space unwittingly brings an alien creature back home with him. The action begins during the opening credits, as images of a crude-looking, hand-drawn spaceship “fly” through “space.” The reason I use quotation marks is that I’m not wholly convinced the astronaut ever left Earth’s atmosphere, seeing as his ship was surrounded by clouds. Of course, never having been to outer space myself, I guess I can’t say for sure that the filmmakers are completely wrong. Maybe they have been to space, or just know something that neither I nor anyone else with a rudimentary knowledge of physics or outer space does.

It isn’t long before tragedy befalls the space vessel. From what I could gather, the astronaut, John, had digestive issues while a smoke machine malfunctioned in the background – never a good combination. Anyhow, John’s little episode sends the ship to a fiery crash (at least, I assume it was fiery, since it happens offscreen) in a mountainous region near Cape Canaveral. The filmmakers again show how much smarter they are than me, this time in terms of geography. Silly me, thinking there are no mountains in Florida!

Scientists from the nearby research base find the ship, which is still perfectly intact other than a small hole in the side (the smoke machine still seems to be on the fritz, though). Peering through the hole, the scientists see John’s body – also in one piece, surprisingly enough; John apparently took lessons from Indiana Jones on how to survive falling thousands of feet in a small metal box. Even though he shows absolutely no signs of life, the scientists take him back to base and decide to put him on a table in the lab and stand around watching his lifeless body anyway.

Unfortunately for the scientists, some guy in a cheap Halloween costume - I mean, an alien - has hitched a ride back to Earth with John and his ship. Once everyone has gone to sleep, it sneaks into the base and eats half of the lead scientist’s head. Why half? I’m not sure, to be honest; maybe he got full, or perhaps he just realized that human beings don’t taste very good. Conveniently, the other scientists only realize what has happened after the alien is gone, and shortly thereafter, John decides to stop playing possum and begins to walk and talk again. He reveals that he’s pregnant with the alien’s babies, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone else too much. In fact, the others seem relatively bored by this revelation. Perhaps John has cried wolf about this sort of thing before.

Not one for subtlety, I guess, the alien takes this opportunity to just sort of barge into the room and stand in the doorway, at which point it’s predictably shot at. Bullets have no effect on its Swamp-Thing-meets-Black-Lagoon hide, but one of the researchers scares it off by chucking a lamp at it and setting the place on fire. Luckily, pillows prove just as good as flame retardant when it comes to putting out a fire.

Apparently forgetting that the alien ate half of another guy’s head, John insists to the others that the alien means well and that everyone should just give it a chance. They eventually hunt it down to a cave, where it tells John (in the voice of the scientist it killed!) that it belongs to a dying race which needs humans to give birth to alien babies in order to continue to survive. John, finally realizing that he’s been used, stabs himself with a rock and dies while the others shoot the alien to death with flare guns.

So as you’ve likely concluded by the sarcasm throughout this synopsis, Night of the Blood Beast is both an absolutely terrible and an incredibly funny movie. I can’t imagine either of those qualities were intended by the filmmakers (including Roger Corman, who executive-produced), but regardless, credit really must be given where it’s due. My favorite part comes at the very end, when the scientists walk away from the remains of John and the alien and basically pat themselves on the back for a job well done. They seem to have forgotten that John’s alien babies are due to be born at any moment, and that an alien invasion can’t be too far behind after that. Oh, well – if John is any indication, the human race is so gullible that it might actually deserve to be wiped out of existence.

Of course, most of the film’s comedy comes from the fact that the creature the scientists are so terrified of looks like a Power Rangers villain reject. If only it had had more time on screen, this movie would have been perfect for just sitting around and ripping on with friends. Even after adjusting for inflation, my guess is that Blood Beast couldn’t have cost more than a hundred dollars to make – fifty for the alien costume, and another fifty for the actors to sort out amongst themselves in a steel cage match set against the mythical mountains of Florida. Come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea for a sequel.

Movie Rating: ½ (0.5 out of 4)
Entertainment value: **½ (2.5 out of 4)

New Post! New Look!

Sorry to take so much time off since my last update – I’ve been really, really busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve watched a grand total of two or three movies since my last post. But with the spring school semester over, I finally have a bit of time on my hands again, and I thought I’d make the most of it by getting back onto the blog scene and making a few changes to the site:

1. As you’ve probably already noticed, the site has a slightly different background and layout. I was tired of it being practically identical to so many other blogs on the web, although I may still fiddle around with it a bit. Question to everyone reading this: do you like the current look, or would you rather see something that fills an entire widescreen monitor?

2. I won’t be doing a Movie of the Week anymore. As much as I like the idea, after a while it just became impractical for me to be able to do one every single week…kind of a self-defeating point for something called “Movie of the Week.” But don’t worry – I have more interesting things planned, which I think will eventually make this site a bit different from your average movie news/reviews blog. I hope you guys will like ‘em.

3. I’ll still be doing reviews of newer (i.e. released in the last year or so) movies that I happen to watch. I’m still working my way through a lot of 2008 releases, so you may see reviews for the ones that I get from Netflix. And as long as I’m on that topic…

4. Reviews of Star Trek and Wolverine are coming…just as soon as I see them. I’m dying to check them out, but like I said, I’ve been quite busy. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch at least one of them early this week.

5. This one’s a bit unrelated to the others – but as I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts, I’m a big fan of not just movies, but comic books and graphic novels as well. I’ve set up another blog for reviews of graphic novels; I haven’t had the chance to post in it yet, but the first post should go up in the next day or two. I’ll try to post two or three reviews there per week, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested. It should be pretty accessible, so don’t be afraid to give it a look even if you don’t know much about comic books and graphic novels.

Well, I think that’s about it for now. Feel free to post any feedback in the comments section, and I’ll see you for another update later today!

Movie of the Week – Raging Bull

Sorry for not posting this on Monday. It’s been kind of a busy week for me, but everything should be back to normal now.

As one of director Martin Scorsese’s best films, it seems surprising today that Raging Bull (1980) was initially met with mixed reviews, and that a poor marketing campaign caused it to fail at the box office. In fact, it’s taken quite a while for it to truly gain the recognition it deserves. It was nearly a decade before critics began to really view it as a modern classic, and almost two more before the American Film Institute finally named it the fourth greatest American film of all time in 2007. In many ways, Raging Bull represents the first and, to this day, most definitive realization of director Martin Scorsese’s creative potential and cinematic vision.

The story follows the life of Jake La Motta, a real-life boxer and former middleweight champion portrayed in the movie by Robert De Niro. The role earned him his second Oscar, and it’s easy to see why. His transformation from a taut, muscular boxer in La Motta’s early days to an overweight, pathetic has-been as he gets older is mesmerizing, to say the least. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an actor in any other movie devote himself to his craft as physically as De Niro does in Raging Bull.

While the film’s boxing scenes are predictably (although not by any means uninterestingly) brutal, the most unsettling violence occurs outside of the ring. In fact, La Motta might even be more violent in his everyday life than he is as a professional fighter. His own insecurities lead to constant fights with his family, and his rages can materialize out of nowhere in less than a moment’s notice. In one scene, convinced that his steak has been overcooked, he suddenly explodes and overturns the kitchen table; in another, he smashes down his own bathroom door in order to get at his wife (Cathy Moriarty). His paranoia about her fidelity eventually alienates him from his brother (Joe Pesci) as well, bringing the strongest and most important relationship in his life to an end.

Even as he becomes more violent at home, though, La Motta begins to lose his edge in the ring. He doesn’t put up much of a fight at all in his final bout, losing the middleweight title to longtime rival Sugar Ray Robinson. La Motta’s life after boxing is mildly horrifying to watch – having gained considerable weight, he operates a sleazy nightclub and tours the country as a painfully unfunny stand-up comedian. Perhaps saddest of all, he continues to view himself as the fighter and celebrity that he once was.

All of Scorsese’s signature directing techniques are here, from his constantly, often imperceptibly, moving camera to his use of popular music in the soundtrack. Shot in black and white, though, Raging Bull is unique to much of Scorsese’s work in its wholehearted devotion to the time period in which it takes place. However, that doesn’t stop him from placing color in a few places that contribute to the film’s meaning.

The main title, for instance – as you can see in the theatrical poster above – fills the frame with bold, blood-red letters when it appears at the beginning of the movie, instantly communicating to the audience that the story about to begin is one that will be characterized by both violence and anger. And while it is both of these things, what ultimately elevates Raging Bull to a higher cinematic level is not just the interesting nature of La Motta’s story, but the exceptional nuance that Scorsese and De Niro inflect upon the character along the way.

Marvel Release Dates Pushed Back

Well, this is sort of a bummer. It seems we're going to have to wait a while longer for Marvel's Thor and Avengers movies, as they've been pushed back a year each:


Not mentioned in that list is that Spider-Man 4 is also slated for May 2011. In other words, there are three Marvel movies scheduled for three consecutive months in 2011, and just one scheduled for 2010.

I guess it's probably a good thing that the movies were pushed back, seeing as we haven't heard anything definitive yet about any of them aside from Iron Man 2. I just worry that if one of the 2011 releases isn't that great, the others will get lumped in with its bad press. Still, at least Marvel is keeping their timeframe on the realistic side, and I hope the movies will turn out for the better as a result.

Movie of the Week - A Boy and His Dog

It’s been a while since the last “Movie of the Week,” but starting this week I’ll do my best to bring back the tradition and talk about a new (old) movie each Sunday or Monday.

A Boy and His Dog (1974) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie based on a short story by Harlan Ellison. Future Miami Vice star Don Johnson plays Vic, an 18-year-old boy who is able to communicate telepathically with his dog, Blood (voiced by Ted McIntire). The story follows the two as they scavenge the last nuclear war-ravaged vestiges of civilization for food, drink, and (in Vic’s case) women.

Vic is a crude, immoral, and misogynistic character, and his behavior ranges from the absurd to the downright deplorable. Living as he is, in such a lawless, tenuous world, perhaps we can’t expect much better of him. Nevertheless, it’s hard to sympathize with such a base persona by himself, so we need Blood and the way he so pointedly antagonizes Vic in order to balance things out. The movie works extremely well when they’re together, with Blood as the wise yet misanthropic teacher and Vic as his ambivalent young student. Their constant verbal sparring, while quite funny at times, also drives their characters forward and establishes the truly desolate nature of the world they live in.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the movie falls apart a bit in the final act, with the two main characters separated while Vic chases an attractive woman down a hatch and into her subterranean community. Vic’s hormones blind him to the obviousness of the trap the people there have set for him – when they say they need someone to impregnate their women (their men have become sterile), Vic volunteers under the false assumption that he will get to have sex with all of them. Without Blood to play off of his impulsiveness, though, the plot languishes in scenes where Vic is held the community’s unwilling captive. It doesn’t help that director L.Q. Jones goes too far with the underground culture’s bizarre nature, unnecessarily applying all of its inhabitants with clown make-up. The people are deprave enough without this touch, and I honestly think they would have been scarier had they been more normal-looking.

Even if some parts of it are a bit off-putting, though, it really is interesting the way the movie hints at a larger universe in which these characters play only a small part. One early scene has Vic and Blood attempting to hide from the “screamers,” whose presence is indicated by an eerie green glow and a series of high-pitched, ghastly shrieks. We never actually see the screamers, but they work well as a sort of unseen horror – perhaps even better than if Jones had actually found it appropriate (or in his budget) to show them to us.

But what really makes A Boy and His Dog worth seeing, despite the weakness of part of the story, is its brilliant ending. Without giving anything away, this is the sort of ending you secretly hope for and yet don’t think is actually possible – and when it does play out that way, the payoff is perfectly fantastic. This is easily one of the best endings I have ever seen in any movie, and it bears watching if only for that reason.

Do Not Watch the Watchmen

The title is a bit cliché, but I wanted something that would grab people’s attention. As you’ve probably guessed, this post is all about why you shouldn’t see the Watchmen movie that opens this week. There are a whole host of reasons why this movie never should have been made, and I’ll try to go through all of them.

First of all, just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, Watchmen is a twelve-issue 1986-87 comic book series written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons. It’s about a group of former superheroes who are being killed off in a world where costumed vigilantism has been made illegal. It’s widely considered to be one of the best and most influential comic stories of all time, and it’s been collected into a graphic novel which has been in print for over two decades.

A movie adaptation of Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300), comes out on Friday, and for reasons that I really can’t understand, some people are just foaming at the mouth for it. I love the book, but the movie looks like a complete disaster in every way imaginable. It’s more than just that, though – the movie, in a lot of ways, represents everything I dislike about the film industry and certain segments of the movie-going public.

The fundamental difference between Watchmen and comic books like Spider-Man or Batman is that you can always tell new stories about those characters – even ones that might be a better fit for the big screen than for a comic book. But with Watchmen, there is only one story, and it’s already been told. Any retelling of that story can only dilute it, especially if it’s in a medium other than comics.

Brian K. Vaughan (the writer of such popular comic books as Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, as well as one of the writers on TV’s Lost) puts it extremely well: “I’ll go see it [Watchmen] if it doesn’t feel like a betrayal of what Alan Moore wants. But it’s like making a stage play of Citizen Kane. I guess it could be OK, but why? The medium is the message.”

It’s an excellent point. Personally, I’m fed up with the mentality that film is the ultimate art form, and that any story told well in another medium should automatically be made into a movie. I love movies (enough to have started a whole blog about them!), but to assume that every story worth telling has to be told in audiovisual form is arrogant, presumptuous, and entirely disrespectful to the original creators of that story. Speaking of which, perhaps now would be a good time to mention that Alan Moore refuses to have anything to do with the film (and, in fact, says he has no intention of even seeing it).

Another big part of my problem with Watchmen boils down to some basic issues I have with the increasingly mainstream nature of comics. Comic books are more in vogue now than they have been probably since the 1960s, and it has a lot to do with the excellent quality of so many recent superhero movies. But while it’s nice that one of my favorite hobbies doesn’t get me as many awkward glances as it used to (I’ve been reading comics on a regular basis since I was in the seventh grade), I find myself incredibly annoyed that so many people are reading comics these days just because it’s the “cool” thing to do.

The people I’m talking about aren’t the ones who are legitimately interested in learning about the medium – people like that are always welcome – but rather the ones who say, “I’m going to read Watchmen and V for Vendetta so people will be impressed by me” and who refer to comics only as “graphic novels” because they think it makes them sound more refined. Newsflash, guy (or girl): the comic books you’re reading aren’t “niche,” they’re as mainstream as it gets. Hell, Time Magazine listed Watchmen as one of its top 100 American novels a couple of years back. It’s good that you’re reading some truly great stories, but doing so doesn’t make you “cultured” or “well-rounded.” It’s a lot like bragging about having seen Star Wars or The Godfather.

Unfortunately, these are the sort of people for whom the Watchmen movie was tailor-made. They’re the people who think film is the only legitimate art form, that Chuck Palahniuk is “deep,” and that Watchmen is the next Dark Knight. Most importantly, they’re the people who didn’t get Watchmen when they read it. Because as anyone who appreciates the comic and has done even the slightest research on the movie knows, the changes director Zack Snyder has made for the movie – specifically, in the ending – completely undermine the entire thrust of the story.

I know a lot of people reading this probably haven’t read Watchmen, so I’m not going to spoil exactly what Snyder changed. The point, though, is that a significant part of Alan Moore’s ending in the book is wild, bizarre and comes out of left field in a way that it has to in order for the plot to work. But more than that, the way Snyder has changed the ending not only creates a plot hole big enough for you to drive a truck through, it eliminates something essential to the overall tone of the story.

Many people, including Moore himself, have made the argument that the true ending of Watchmen is “unfilmable,” and that the average movie-going audience wouldn’t be very receptive to it. They’re probably right. But the solution is easier than you might think: just don’t make a movie based on Watchmen. I really can’t say it enough – just because a story is good doesn’t mean it has to be made into a movie. In the case of Watchmen, the greatness of the original story arises from things inherent to its being a comic book. Everything from Rorschach’s mask to the nature of Dr. Manhattan’s powers just works in a way that can’t be replicated, much less improved upon, in another medium.

Even if all you’re looking for is a mindless action flick, the Watchmen movie is still a failure. Every trailer and video clip that’s been released has reveled in its own slow-mo, music-video-style editing, but it’s all old hat at this point. It’s the exact same style Snyder used in 300, minus the decapitations – so if you’re really a fan of that kind of stylized action, you would do better to just rent that movie. At least in 300, the technique sort of works; it’s a movie that puts style over substance and succeeds because, honestly, its substance isn’t anything special. But in the case of Watchmen, a story that actually does have some meat to it, that kind of action can only detract from the rest of the experience. If Moore and Gibbons didn’t need slow motion action scenes to tell their story, why should we need them to enjoy the story now?

I hope by this point that I’ve gotten my point across without sounding like a raving lunatic. The fact is that even in the best-case scenario, the Watchmen movie can’t ever be more than an inferior version of the graphic novel. And why settle for inferiority when you don’t have to – especially when the more likely scenario is that the movie will just be flat-out bad? Please, for your own sake, do not see Watchmen. You’ll be wasting your time and money, and if you haven’t read the book you’ll be denying yourself a truly wonderful experience.

And just in case all of that isn’t enough to convince you, let me sweeten the pot a little. If, say, twenty people go to the comments section of this post and honestly pledge not to see the movie, I’ll choose one of them randomly and buy him or her a copy of the Watchmen book. (If you get chosen and you already have the book, I’ll get you something you don’t have.) So that’s it…comment away!