GeekBob: Another Movie-Geek Blog for the Pile 

Strange Directions, pt 1

Two truly bizzare directorial announcements over the last two days, both of varying degrees of interest to the Geek Community:

First up, Marvel Pictures' Avi Arad officially announced that, after rumors had flown for years about everyone from James Cameron to Steven Soderberg to Sean Astin bucking for the job, they've finally chosen a director for the film adaptation of "The Fantastic Four." The lucky winner is none other than Tim Story:

http://www.superherohype.com/fantasticfour/index.php?id=1152

Yes, THE Tim Story.

Kidding, of course. We're all to be forgiven if we don't know who Tim Story is. He's a newcomer, currently "best" known for directing the two "Barbershop" flicks. He was also holding the wheel on the as-of-yet-unreleased "Taxi," a Queen Latifah action vehicle remade from a sequel-spawning Luc Besson flick that never bothered to premier in the U.S.

This, of course, makes completely perfect sense. I mean, I dunno about you, but when I hear the words "multi-million dollar action epic/summer tentpole based on a franchise that's been internationally-famous for over 40 years," the FIRST thing that jumps into my mind is "better hurry up and sign the director of Barbershop!"

I kid. It'd certainly be unfair at this point to take shots at Story, especially considering that the same elements that make him seem like such a "huh!?" choice (like, say, the complete lack of anything in his resume that even suggest a remote connection to the genre) also make him NOT an automatically bad one: This is, without question, MUCH better than learning that Paul W.S. Anderson or Ewe Boll had been tapped for the job.

Speaking as both a Comic Geek AND Movie Geek, I see approximately TWO things for fans of both stripes to be concerned with here with regards to Story. Firstly, he's so-far cut his chops exclusively as a director of comedy. For those who've followed the developments of the "FF Movie" for any length of time, the constant "dark cloud" hanging over the project was Avi Arad's insistance that the "best direction" for it was to become more "situation comedy" than serious pulp scifi. (For non-fans, "The Fantastic Four" superheroes are also an extended family comprised of the Mr. Fantastic, his wife Invisible Girl, her brother Human Torch and family-friend The Thing.) The hiring of a comedy director sends up more than a few red flags that the "sitcom" concept is alive and well.

Secondly, Story's "newness" also means he likely brings with him very little "leverage" versus the HUGELY powerful studio and corporate interests invested in the movie: He could well turn out to be a visionary with the perfect concept for an arse-kicking Fantastic Four flick for the ages, but Socratic logic dictates that when the studio interests start demanding coolness-killing studio-isms like "more merchandisable gadgets," a "score" of Total Request Live pop anthems and innapropriately-cast "name stars" in the lead roles, he may not have the clout to stop such nonsense even if he wanted to.

Best of luck, of course, to Mr. Story: NOTHING would be more cool than for a "brand new face" to emerge as a major talent by making a powerful epic out of this franchise. BUT, until we start seeing more details this is on my "WORRIED" list for sure.

Notes before "The Alamo"

Disney's new retelling of the Alamo legend was supposed to come out last year before the holidays, but got bumped after it didn't "test well" with audiences.

It'll now debut on Friday, a badly-buzzed historical epic that'll struggle to do respectable business amid stiff holdover competition from last week's #1-grossing "Hellboy," (gleefully wacky lil' entry there, definately check it out if you haven't already) and the (depressingly) predictable Easter Weekend re-surge for "The Passion of The Christ," which will substantially cut into the "God, guns & glory" crowd that a movie about the Alamo NEEDS to woo to so much as break-even.

Unless it turns out to strike some kind of major chord with audiences, Disney is probably looking at a minor B.O. dissapointment on this one, and it'll be the unceremonious end to a notoriously troubled project. Ron Howard was originally supposed to make this, but backed out when the studio wouldn't spend the necessary money on his vision of an unromantic, strictly-historical retelling of the story which is the stuff of legends to Texans and devotees of traditionalist American historical lore.

To wit: The event involved a ragtag grouping of soldiers and militia who holed up in an abandoned Spanish Mission in a bid to hold back the Mexican Army during the Texas war for independence. After a standoff of many days, the occupants (including frontier legends Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie) were massacred after a nightlong firefight. Not long after, Texas Army general Sam Houston led his troops into battle with the rallying cry of "remember the Alamo" and defeated the Mexicans.

The preview-screening buzz on this was toxic, breaking down as "bad" and "too long." It was pulled for "fixing," and now the first reviews are trickling in sounding not much better, save that "too long" seems to have been supplanted by "confusing." Rottentomatoes.com has the early buzz, and it ain't purty:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheAlamo-1131222/

So it looks like either a critical, audience or both-of-those failure is in the offing, no big deal. Happens all the time. EXCEPT...

You can mark my words, if "The Alamo" bombs you can look forward to the story being spun in a peculiarly annoying way by the "Right Wing" press here on the Web and elsewhere. The first shot across the bow on this angle can be seen as-fired here:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37909

Here's the jist of the issue, same old story as usual: The film apparently wants to be "more accurate" in it's portrayal of the iconic real-life heroes, so fellows like Davey Crockett are probably NOT going to be shown in their old-school image as immortal paragons of virtue. That kind of portrayal just doesn't sit well with some critics of the "Culture War," and this is just more grist for the mill of their favorite myth: That "liberal Hollywood" is insidiously trying to "trash" American Patriots with "revisionist" history.

The "mythic" version of Alamo (since there was only one survivor who didn't witness the actual massacre, any retelling is tinged with certain myth to be sure) has already been filmmed a few times: A MEGA-HIT 1950s Disney telefilm of "Davey Crockett" concluded with the Alamo events and is probably the best-known version, (it's also a pretty good film that holds up surprisingly well, the era and the dubious history considered) the most notorious is John Wayne's starring/directing version that contains hardly a shred of real history and officially signaled Wayne's decline as an actor/filmmaker of note.

Just watch and see. If "Alamo" doesn't score at the B.O., it'll largely be because it (apparently) isn't any damn good (I'll have a review up as soon as I see it.) BUT the "spin" from the cultural right will be an attempt to cast this as a "told you so" to their Hollywood "enemies." The angle will be: "REAL Americans have rejected Liberal Hollywood revision of their history, take THAT evil Godless left-wing boogeyman!" Trust me, you'll hear some variation of that coming from a good deal of "culture war" film essayists as the release ticks closer, and if the story has any kind of "legs" it'll make it's way to the Right's bully pulpit, the Fox News Channel.

The Orgasm-Level-Event, though, that the "fight liberal hollywood" crowd is hoping for in this is for "Alamo" to make a bad showing WHILE "Passion" has a resurgance. THEN the spin becomes merely part of the manufactured tale of the Religious Right's 2004 "insurgency" into the "Babylon" of the entertainment world through their new best friend Mel Gibson and his Jesus movie.

Sigh.

Remember the good old days, when a movie like "The Alamo" could suck on it's own and didn't need conspiracy theories to tell us WHY it sucked?

While I was out...

It would be, I think, an impossible and redundant task to try and go back over EVERYTHING that has come out between my departure and return to this blog. However, since they will no doubt be the subject of further news and, thus, further blogging on my part, I feel I should go back and offer my take on some of the bigger film-related stories of the recent months.

The biggest and most significant thing to happen to the world of film and film fandom in the time I've been gone is, unquestionably to my mind, the staggering sweep of the Academy Awards by "Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King." It is not possible to convey the strength of my feelings on this, but I will try.

This is the single most important Oscar victory (hell, victorIES) to occur within the lifetime of most people reading this blog. In one fell swoop, the curse was broken: At the Academy Awards, the mouth of the "mainstream," the third and culmulative chapter of an epic FANTASY trilogy blew all competition out the doors.

The importance of this event to the future of film fandom CANNOT be overestimated. The last wall dividing "the geek genres" from "normal genres" has been blasted to scrap. The message to the film industry, whether they choose to recognize it is, to quote Joaquin Pheonix in SIGNS: "The Nerds Were Right!" Sf/f action-dramas have ruled at the boxoffice for a few decades now, but now with this a final hurdle is crossed: Not only can a serious 3 1/2 hour epic about Hobbits, elves and magical rings dominate worldwide ticket sales; now it can dominate prestigious award shows, too.

Film buffs, myself included, can joke all we want about how Oscars are crap and don't "matter" to any real extent, but the truth is that the award does carry real lasting weight: Fantasy/action films may ultimately prove a "fad" in terms of genre trends, but this record will last: LOTR was already enshrined among the great cinematic epics of all time before this award, but now it's enshrinement is CODIFIED. It will be in the "memory" reel of Oscar history, included on lists, etc. It will not fade, not ever.

If film is the dominating artistic medium of American culture, and the "heart" of film culture is film fandom; then a LOTR oscar win, a slate of huge-grossing films based on comic books and hundreds of fantasy/scifi projects fast-tracked at the studios makes a profound statement ABOUT that culture: The beating heart of American pop-culture has moved from coffee bars and watercoolers and taken up new residence in the comic book store and the World Wide Web.

Short and sweet: The Geeks have inherited the Earth.

The SECOND biggest film story going on right now is the ongoing jawboning over the single most overrated film I can recall in my 23 years of age. I'm talking, of course, about Mel Gibson's self-financed torture-porn Jesus movie, "The Passion of The Christ."

I've seen the film twice and found it to be a major dissapointment both times. It's a heavy-handed, overblown, preposterous would-be epic that somehow manages the feat of being both pretentious and simplistic at the same time. Using a (dubious, at best) profession of Gospel-fidelity as both a transparent shield and battering ram, Gibson (who's films and acting I'm usually a huge fan of) offers up what is essentially a context-free revel in the mechanics of scourging, flagellation and Roman crucifixtion. It's notable, sure, as the most violent film that everyone's 85 year-old churgoing Great Aunt will ever see, but in the end it's little more than an unending, numbing and ultimately BORING spectacle of stage-blood and extreme closeups of subtlety-challenged actor Jim Caveziel. (Who is currently traversing the country speaking at religious/conservative events, solemnly intoning his belief that he was "fated" for the role because his initials are J.C. and explaining without a drop of irony why he believes that his strict Catholic upbringing forbids him from simulating a sex scene with Jennifer Lopez but encourages him to simulate his own drawn-out slaughter.)

The film's "moral center" is practically nonexistant: The extent of what it has to say about Christ can be summed up as "He took a beating for YOU, man!" The revolutionary elements of Christian philosophy are giving the short-shrift in favor of gushing wounds and slow-motion Aramaic moaning. It doesn't just preach to the choir, it bludgeon's the choir into submission berates them for not singing in the Traditional Latin.

With it's emphasis on guilt-tripping the audience into psuedo-awe, the film manages in two hours to cast aside every reform and scrap of progress made in the Christian faith from Martin Luther up through Vatican II: "The Passion" de-evolves the whole concept of Christian belief all the way back to the barbaric, blood-soaked Medieval mindset that first birthed the dubious theater of "passion plays."

Finally, it's just not a very good movie: There's almost no story to speak of, context and background are nonexistant and the direction is pretentious and over-the-top. Even Cecil B. DeMille, who based his epics in the Old Testament in order to push the envelope of onscreen sexuality and carnage with the biblically-concious cenors of the time, would likely shake his head is astonishment at the monumental "look at my symbolism!!!!!!" scene where the "Wrath of God" is signaled by a lone teardrop following from Heaven.

The reprecussions of the now (finally) lessening but still major success of "The Passion" have been varied and vast, and I'm sure I'll still blog more about them in the future. However, I'll leave with this: The best two Jesus movies ever made are STILL "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" and "The Last Temptation of Christ," skip this and rent those... and THEN go see Monty Python's "Life of Brian," being re-released to theaters soon.

Thank Heaven for Python :)

There and back again, a Blogger's tale

So here we are again.

Okay, first question is obviously "where did you go for almost a year?" Funny you should ask that. So much has happened from when I started this blog and now I really feel I ought to just hit the old "self-serving recap button" and try and get up to speed as part of my new commitment to the blog.

Long story short: When I began this blog I was working as a video store clerk. Shortly after starting this, I joined a brief stint as a Cable Access TV co-host on a film criticism show. Unfortunately, that particular venture AND the clerk job ceased to work out at around the same time but nontheless managed to eat up a large amount of my life and free time.

Presently, I've found new and comfortable employment as, yes, a theater usher and have embarked upon a promising venture with a group of close friends to make independent films.

Also, I feel I must be honest, my return to regular blogging is also a part of a return to sanity on my part after dealing with some serious unemployment-related psuedo-depression on my part. Nothing major, just a SERIOUS sense of malaise and misdirection in life.

My "breakthrough" against the blues came, as it so often does to a purebreed Geek as myself, through solidly film-related means. For WEEKS I had been stomping around my then-futile job search with a peculiarly defiant tune in my head. It took awhile for me to place it, but once I did things just seemed to fall into place...

The tune was Danny Elfman's 3rd act "March" theme from Edward Scissorhands. You remember the scene: Edward, after spending nearly the whole movie trying to "normalize" himself into the world of the beautiful, pleasant, "regular" folks and being lulled into a false sense of belonging by their fickle/short-lived "appreciation" of his artistic side only to have them turn on him when he shows signs of being "weird" again, stalks enraged through the suburbs. Using his bladed fingers, he furiously SHREDS off the suit and dress-casual pants he'd been wearing to "fit in" and re-emerges in his REAL skin, reborn as his true self. The small, pathetic "normal" people may fear him once again, but it matters not: He's HIMSELF again, and if that's not good enough for the townspeople then to hell with them.

Once I identified the tune and, subsequently, what my geek brain was trying to tell me with it, it was a short trip back to relative-happiness, sanity and a feeling of self-comfort: I know who I am again, and I feel like ME for the first time in years.

So, then, Geekbob is back. Bigger, better, and Geekier than ever before.

Let the Blogging begin.