RMOCJ: Ed Wood

Movies and movie criticism can be terrible, cynical and soul-crushing.  So why do we go to the movie?  Random Moment of Cinematic Joy highlights a moment, scene, character or movie that is awesome in a way that can refill your reservoir of faith in films.

Ed Wood is for me the ultimate cinematic sorbet.  

If I see a terrible movie and need to cleanse my theater-going palette, Tim Burton's ode to the worst director ever is my go-to choice.

I could talk about Johnny Depp's incredible performance as the always smiling title character.  Or Martin Landau's imagining of the old and broken Bela Lugosi.  Or the amazing supporting cast ranging from Patricia Arquette to Jeffrey Jones to Bill Murray to George "The Animal" Steele.  But for me, this is simply the ultimate valentine to Hollywood.

There are scenes that stick with me.  Wood's first interaction with Lugosi as he is coffin shopping.  Wood's random run-in with Orson Welles.  His sheepish, but brave, admission that Wood likes women's clothes.

But the scene that always sticks with me is when Wood begins shooting Glen or Glenda.  They shoot with Wood as the lead looking in a window wistfully.  He yells cut and the crew asks if he wants another take.  Wood immediately answers that no, the shot is perfect.  But that description minimizes the moment.  Depp's Wood is filled with energy and optimism.  It's not the shot that's perfect; it's the fact that he is being allowed to do the thing he loves.  He's not a terrible director because of a lack of ability or an ego (though those are factors).  No, he's a terrible director because he loves the medium so much.

Ed Wood makes me smile like no other movie.  And it makes me anxious to head to the theaters again and give myself completely over to the cast and crew of storytellers whether it's a blockbuster or an independent.

Comic Pop: Nemesis TPB

So Mark Millar has apparently found his career niche: looking at some comic book trope and making a book about that.  In Kick-Ass, you get an ineffective Spiderman-like character and a way too young female assassin.  In Nemesis, we get the tale of a rich playboy who uses his toys to buy all sorts of gadgets, cars and planes, but instead of fighting crime (like so Bruce Wayne), he is targeting the world's best police officers.  That premise itself has loads of potential.

Unfortunately, that's where the creativity ends.

I'm assuming Millar saw Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.  So why he is copying that movie exactly?  A black Batmobile with a motorcycle hidden in it becomes a white sports car with a motorcycle hidden in it.  The Joker wanted to get thrown in jail so he can escape, and so does Nemesis.  At least the Joker had a reason.

Once the book telegraphs that everything Nemesis does is part of his plan, the book becomes completely uninteresting.  Everytime something happens, we know what's coming next.  Hell, Nemesis himself is constantly telling his pursuers and captors that he meant to do whatever happens.

The book both wants to be grounded in a sort of reality and then be completely ridiculous.  Nemesis at one point lands on Air Force One while it is in flight, and starts walking around.  They never explain how he stays on (magnetic boots maybe), but the absurdity of someone actually being able to move let alone avoid being crushed by the wind?  It's silly and takes you out of the book.

The only saving grace is Steve McNiven's art.  At one point, Nemesis captures the President and Millar only treats him as a pawn on the chessboard, a plot device.  A couple of McNiven panels provide that sense of what is really at stake in a way the script fails to do.

Silly, stupid and predictable, with an ending twist that seems tacked on as a "we could write another series if this does well" ending, Nemesis is best avoided by anyone who wants more from a book than blood and swearing.

* out of *****

Superman: War of the Supermen Book 3 TPB

Written by James Robinson

Really?

I have never in my life seen such a big, blinking reset button hit in a comic book.  I am struggling to think of when a comic has so transparently moved itself back to square one.

I have actually enjoyed a lot of the New Krypton tale.  For those catching up, the bottle city of Kandor from Superman's home planet became a community on Earth, complete with people with the powers of Superman.  Humans distrust the Kryptonians and after some sabotage between the two races, the Kryptonians establish a new planet that mirrors Earth's orbit.  General Sam Lane (Lois Lane's father who was thought to be dead) leads a plan that involves Braniac and Lex Luthor to destroy New Krypton.  The end of volume 2 had the Kryptonians' military leader (and Superman arch-villain) General Zod declaring war on Earth.

(SPOILERS AHEAD) I am not even going to get into the arc of this story as it is pretty slight (especially considering it is a full scale war between thousands of Superman-like beings and Earth).  To put it in some perspective, at one point Luthor launches a rocket that turns the yellow sun into a red sun, negating the Kryptonians' powers.  Within a minute, this major development is undone by someone from Superman's extended family.  Within a minute.

The ending really colors the entire run of James Robinson for me.  In the end, Mon-El, Zod, Non and Ursa are all back in the Phantom Zone.  Flamebird is dead.  Nightwing (no relation to Batman's Nightwing) is in the Phantom Zone to keep an eye on Zod.  General Lane who surprisingly was not dead at the beginning of the series, killed himself at the end.  I am hard-pressed to think of a new character who survived any of the goings on here.

The art is good.  I prefer the more human, less ridiculously muscular depictions of Superman and he is handled well in the graphic novel.  There's a lot of characters and a lot of different locations and they are all detailed and beautifully drawn.

This was a real disappointment.  A story that felt like it was building to a dramatic showdown just kind of petered out.  Superman's new status quo is the same as before the New Krypton story arc.  Meh.

** out of *****

New Green Lantern Footage!

After some not-so-great images and a widely derided trailer, how long does it take for Warner Bros. to completely restore my faith in this film?  Apparently about four minutes and two seconds.  This captures exactly the tone I'm looking for.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Directed by George Nolfi
Starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery and Terence Stamp

What is free will? Do we have a soulmate? Are we the masters of our destiny? Or are we simply pawns being pushed around a chess board as part of some greater plan?

These questions and others are glossed over or ignored entirely through some of the worst dialogue and ridiculous scenarios of the year in The Adjustment Bureau.

Matt Damon plays a congressman running for Senate who falls in love with Emily Blunt's ballet dancer. Only the grand plan calls for him not to fall in love her. Enter the Adjustment Bureau to help reset the board by some subtle mental manipulation. And the use of doors. And hats. Lots of hats.

The cast is great. Damon and Blunt have real chemistry. John Slattery leads the Adjustment Bureau members in their day to day operations which requires him to wear a suit and he's more than proven an aptitutde for that on Mad Men.

The biggest problem is the script. I hate watching a movie where I am consciously rewriting the dialogue while I am watching it. The movie could have shown us how the Adjustment Bureau works. Or it could have left the bureau as a mysterious force, making us wonder if everything that happens was chance or done by design. Instead, it shows the bureau members standing around, talking about what a pain Matt Damon is.

The rules they operate under are inconsistent. At one point, Slattery trips Damon with a flick of his mind. So why do the members of the Bureau spend the entire movie chasing Damon? They threaten to reset Damon's mind if he goes against them, he goes against them constantly, and they... complain. Don't get me wrong. It's REALLY dramatic complaining.

The movie is unnecessarily crowded with characters.  The Bureau has a lot of members we are introduced to throughout the film, but most of them were unnecessary. Hell, two of the main members (Slattery and Stamp) were completely interchangeable.

The central thesis of the movie is that free will and love should win out over the idea of a divine plan. But does the movie even support that? Damon and Blunt end up together, but it's made clear that it is because the divine plan gets rewritten to support that. They still aren't really in control.

The Adjustment Bureau is not as smart as it pretends to be. It's a five-year old child who learns some big words, but has no understanding of their meaning. Sure, it sounds cute to hear him stumble over multi-syllabic words and use them in nonsensical ways, but you aren't about to take that seriously. No matter how hard the child wants you to.

*1/2 out of *****

Trailer Pop: Hangover 2

Trailer for The Hangover 2 below:




I have a mixed reaction.  Of course it feels familiar (it's a sequel) and the jokes aren't as strong as the original's trailer (the tiger, the baby, Mike Tyson), but it's great to see the Wolfpack again and perhaps they are holding back the best stuff as they know this will do some business.  Oh, and Ed Helms is brilliant.  His reaction to the tattoo and the sequence in the car look like they are worth the price of admission.

Pop Century: Safety Last!

Our latest update at 100 Years of Movies is Harold Lloyd's classic Safety Last! from 1923.  Give it a look if you have a moment.

Comic Pop: Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne

Written by Grant Morrison

Pencils by A Whole Lot of Characters 

It's been a rough year for Batman.

Between Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, he seemed to get killed twice.  Only one time, he was (in the words of Miracle Max) only mostly dead, and the other his apparent death sent him hurtling back in time.  Bruce's prodigies set out to fill the void.  Dick Grayson (formerly Nightwing) took up the mantle of the bat and became surrogate father to Damian (the new Robin and Bruce's biological son).  Tim Drake became Red Robin and had run-ins with the League of Assassins in his efforts to prove Bruce was still alive.

All of this leads to The Return of Bruce Wayne, a six issue arc collected in a graphic novel format.

The basic story is this: Bruce was thrown back in time by Darkseid.  He starts in the caveman era living in the very caves that would become his fortress, and begins leaping forward through time.  He becomes a witchhunter, a pirate, a cowboy and a noir-like detective.  He begins with no memory, but each step in his journey gives him a little more information about who he is.

Meanwhile, the Justice League is trying to prevent Batman's return.  They have discovered that with each jump in time, Wayne builds up more omega energy and when he reaches the 21st century: boom!  Game over.

Grant Morrison is a fascinating writer and the story here is universally compelling.  The narrative is pretty loose throughout, but I think that suits the story well.  Each of the tales is recounted almost as a half-remembered dream rather than a dense story.  And that's okay, because Morrison's got bigger fish to fry.

In telling the tale, Morrison burns Batman down and reconstructs from the ashes.  We see him as primal force, vigilante and detective.  We see the echoes of enemies from the Joker to Two-Face.  Each piece provides a mirror for who Batman has been and what he has become.  In telling the tale, Morrison both reveals Batman's character and better integrates the mythos of Batman into the history of the DC Universe.

The weakest part of the tale is the framing device which should give the finale its stakes.  When you are reading a tale of Bruce Wayne jumping through time and title it "The Return of Bruce Wayne," you've already given us the end.  The story that takes place at "the vanishing point" is narratively dense to the point of becoming incomprehensible in parts.  It's never clear exactly what bad thing will happen.  Bruce himself dismisses the threat as just another monster for his friends to beat up.

The art is universally great with the exception of the western tale penciled by Georges Jeanty (who was so reliable on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer books).  The scarred half of Jonah Hex's face looks like someone just took an eraser to it.  Many of the characters are difficult to differentiate from one another, making the story really hard to follow.

On the whole, this is a great arc.  I love seeing a crazily creative Morrison set loose on such a tent pole character.

****1/2 out of *****

The Absentee Landlord

So, a couple of years ago, I purchased the property called Pop Went the Culture.  It was shiny and new and I had some fun posting random thoughts about television and movies.  However, soon afterward I put a deposit down on another gorgeous space called 100 Years of Movies.  I became a little obsessive about my new property and stopped coming around here.

So I was shocked (SHOCKED) to discover as I swung by my old haunt that the windows were cracked and broken, the paint was falling off the sides and the landscaping has gone to hell.  I was an absentee landlord and I'd created blog blight here on the interwebs.

This will not stand.

Starting today, I'll try to do better.  You will see movie, television and comic reviews.  You will see my thoughts on crap I see going.  Sometimes it may only be a few sentences (did I mention I have four kids), but things should start to improve.