Blógünder Schlock

My good friend Richard invited me to drop what I was doing and see Inglorious Basterds with him. I had no idea what to expect, other than that this was a Quentin Tarantino film and would therefore feature some incredible dialog and over-the-top graphic violence. Oh, and Brad Pitt with a big knife — I remember that much from the one trailer I’d seen.

This film is my new Number Four for the summer, which leaves the standings as follows:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Inglourious Basterds

5. District 9

6. Terminator: Salvation

7. Angels & Demons

8. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

—-The Threshold of Disappointment… do not cross!—-

9. Transformers: ROTF

10. Land of the Lost

11. Night at The Museum 2

12. Wolverine

I’ve never been so tense during movie dialog. In particular, I commend to you the opening scene in which an SS Colonel interviews a French farmer who is hiding Jews under his floorboards. We all  know things are going to end badly, but we don’t know exactly how, and while we sit and worry both the SS and the Frenchman are so incredibly polite.

It was heartbreaking. And it nicely set the tone for a film which uses the glorification of man’s inhumanity to man to horrify us. Or maybe to make us laugh. Or, remembering that this is Quentin Tarantino we’re talking about, both.

Just don’t expect this film to fit in with what you think you know about World War II. It’s not historical fiction, it’s not revisionism… no, it’s outright “alternate history,” and that’s on a good day.

I’m back from GenCon Indy, but I’m far too tired to write about it. I decompressed at the movies today, and I’m glad I did. District 9 was pretty powerful.

It wasn’t what I was expecting, but that’s because I had almost zero expectations. I’d only seen one trailer for the film, and that one only served to provide context: alien refugees are under quarantine of some sort in Johannesburg, South Africa.

You know what? I’m not just too tired to write about GenCon… I’m too tired to write a proper movie review. I’ll just say that the film earned its R-rating via violence and repeated f-bombings, and startled me nicely a couple of times, and that it’s probably the smartest science-fiction film I’ve seen since Serenity.

It is my fourth-favorite film of the summer, and as such it pushes the threshold of disappointment down to between #7 and #8. Here are the standings:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. District 9

5. Terminator: Salvation

6. Angels & Demons

7. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

8. Transformers: ROTF

9. Land of the Lost

10. Night at The Museum 2

11. Wolverine

Hopefully the threshold of disappointment will continue to drop. After all, that means that I’m only seeing movies that fail to disappoint me, and that sounds like the sort of thing I want to have happen with my movie dollars for the rest of the summer. Unfortunately I’m not sure what else the summer has to offer. Does 9 count? Is September still Summer Movie Season?

I saw G.I. Joe last night with my brother. When the Joe snowmobiles popped out of the Joe VTOL he laughed, turned to me and said “so many vehicles.” And that was before the big fighter-sub dogfight, during which we repeatedly hummed the Cheat Commandos “Buy All Our Playsets And Toys” theme. (It’s okay, though. We were in the handicapped seating so the “seats” next to us were empty slots for wheelchairs.)

I haven’t been to WalMart recently. Is there an entire aisle of new G.I. Joe toys coming off of this film?

My expectations were pretty low, and the movie was pretty campy, but I had a great time. Listening to my heart here and asking myself at which of these films was I having the most fun, here’s where it fits in:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Terminator: Salvation

5. Angels & Demons

6. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

7. Transformers: ROTF

8. Land of the Lost

9. Night at The Museum 2

10. Wolverine

The threshold of disappointment is somewhere between  #6 and #7. Transformers definitely disappointed. Joe came close, but cleared the bar.

The chase scene in Paris was big fun. Michael Bay could learn a lot by watching that scene. It was comprehensible! It told a story! But stuff still blew up with big crunchings!

I laughed pretty hard when the self-destruct mechanism (not a spoiler — come on, you know there’s going to be one) results in icebergs coming off the bottom of the polar ice-cap and sinking to crush the base (okay, that WAS a spoiler. Sorry!) I can buy into a submarine that looks like a fighter jet, because technology maybe could do that. But if the filmmakers are going to change something as basic as the density of solid water they should offer an explanation. Ice really, really, REALLY wants to float, and anybody who has ever made a cold drink knows that.

Looking back at this list you may see what appear to be inconsistencies. The list is not about “how good the movie was,” it’s about  answering the question “how much fun did you have at the show?” It has nothing whatsoever to do with re-watchability. I’d probably rent Wolverine, but never Night at the Museum 2  or Land of the Lost.

You there, Schlock reader! Odds are good that if you want an autographed copy of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery you’ve already ordered it, or plan to get yours at GenCon. Thank you!

I know that for many of the rest of you a role-play supplement just isn’t “your thing.” That’s fine. I don’t want to sell you stuff you don’t want, don’t need, or won’t like. But you can still help us…

Between now and Saturday we need you to identify friends who role-play (easy indicators: do they have dice in their cubicle? Do they make jokes about gaining levels at work?) and send them this link. That’s not the store link. That’s a link to a glowing review from one of the writers at Role Playing Pro. But it’s not the only one!  There’s another one here!

Tracy, Curtis, and I have been trying to tell people how fantastic this book is, but I don’t expect anybody to take our word for it. Today, though, we have some solid feedback from the target market, and it would appear that this book is every bit the “must-have” supplement we’ve been saying it is.

Pre-orders close on Saturday. Monday I’m sitting down with Tracy and Curtis and we’re signing all the pre-ordered books. The next time the three of us will be together will be at GenCon, and then who knows?

So, the call to action. Find friends who role-play, and send them those book-review links. They don’t have to be Schlock readers. They can be players of any table-top RPG — D&D, Shadowrun, GURPS, World of Darkness, Paranoia , Final Redoubt — anything. This book will help them. Samuel and John said so.

I saw an advanced private screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Bood Prince this morning courtesy of my friend Rodney, and as I write this review I’m struggling with the fact that a confluence of events (of which the film is but one) are knocking my sleep schedule 180 degrees out of phase. This means that right now, through the haze of exhaustion and gritty eyes, I am seeing an alternate world in which I did not leave the house at 6:45am to see a movie, and that world looks pretty attractive.

But I’m going to try to look past that. I distinctly remember enjoying myself a lot while I was at the theater. I wasn’t disappointed, that’s for sure.

Here are the rankings:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Terminator: Salvation

5. Angels & Demons

6. Transformers: ROTF

7. Land of the Lost

8. Night at The Museum 2

9. Wolverine

It’s possible I’m being generous, but I listened to my heart on this one. I asked myself “how much fun am I having right now?” The answer was “not as much as Up but more than Terminator.” So there you have it.

Now then… there are a number of things I’m sure the hardcore Harry Potter fans will have trouble getting past in this film. First and foremost, the fun puzzles are glossed over or absent. Working out the identity of The Half-Blood Prince gets a back seat. It’s so far back, in fact, that the reveal was kind of an “oh, yeah, we’re supposed to care about this” moment. Were it not for the obvious RowlingWorld Franchise problems I’d suggest that the movie have a different title, like Harry Potter and the Edited Memories or maybe Harry Potter and the Confused Horny Teenagers. 

But I won’t ramble or rant in that direction. In truth I should apologize for that second title, because the Confused Horny Teenagers were brilliant and fun to watch. Those actors and actresses are to be commended for their work, and the director and coaches should be patting themselves on the back for years for drawing those performances out of the principals. In a word, I believed those were real teenagers.

And that’s the secret, really. I believed. If you, mister-or-missus filmmaker can make me believe then you win. I believed in the stuff I know about (human behavior, with which I’ve got a few decades of practical experience) so I’m willing to trust the film to be honest about the stuff I don’t know about (what does it look like when you see another person’s memory? How do Death-Eaters fly? What does apparating feel like?)

I believed in the teenagers, so I was able to fully appreciate the special effects the way they’re meant to be appreciated — as if they are real.

Even though there were piles of problems with the story, and even though the pacing was stilted (likely a compromise resulting from editing down a much longer but better-paced film,) I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Just don’t ask me to sit through it again for at least a couple of weeks. I am so tired.

I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday, and it was not my favoritest thing ever. Here are the rankings as they now stand:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Terminator: Salvation

4. Angels & Demons

5. Transformers: ROTF

6. Land of the Lost

7. Night at The Museum 2

8. Wolverine

I got my fill of giant robots beating the cybersnot out of each other, yes. I even liked some of the bits that other reviewers despised (specifically, the twin robots “Jar-Jar” and “Binks,” or whatever their names were.) And the film had me completely gripped for the entire first Act, which concluded very powerfully.

But then we switched movies. It went from exciting and powerful with a touch of humor to being silly and stupid with a touch of “why am I still sitting here?” And there was the big Act II Continuity Flaw, in which a Transformer who has been hiding in the National Air & Space Museum (which we all know to be in the heart of Washington, D.C.) pounds his way out the back through a hangar door and steps onto an airstrip somewhere in Nevada – arid landscape with mountains on the horizon, nary a city in sight.

I can understand taking certain shortcuts for the sake of the story, but this knocked me right out of the film. I stopped believing in Transformers, and started seeing the whole thing as a dumb cartoon for kids, only with too many boob-cam shots for me to be comfortable treating it as a kids’ show.

That’s a high crime right there. When a film-maker manages to convince me to put on my suspenders of disbelief, it’s okay for him to tug on my pant leg from time to time. Ripping my pants off sideways and then giving me a wedgie? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Anyway, that was Act II. Act III had another continuity problem, this one more obvious. Four people in car, one freaking out. Somebody tases the freaker-outer, and he slumps. Cut IMMEDIATELY to car exterior, swerving to a halt. All four people jump out heroically. I actually spoke out loud… “It was nice of them to wake him up.”

But Act III’s big crime was that it meandered. Oh, sure, there were giant robots blowing the crap out of stuff and each other, there were Constructicons being all huge and dangerous, and our heroes were being all heroic and outnumbered, but it just went on and on and on. With lots of boob-cam.

By the time the film ended I didn’t care. I wanted to get out of the theater into sunlight and the real world. I wanted to go to the gym. You know the old theater saw, “Leave ‘em wanting more?” This movie was like a buffet of mediocre all-you-can food at which I unwisely ate enough for three days and then left, swearing I would never come back.

Perhaps appending the “L” to ROTF is misleading. But I bet this movie would be riotously entertaining with a group of like-minded friends shouting at the screen, or maybe just RiffTrax. In fact, that might get me to sit through the whole thing again.

The remodeling in my office is not done yet. I’ve booted the kids off of their computer for a bit so I can write this. My own computer is still disassembled, and all my furnishings and trappings remain in a heap in the family room. Today I hoped to be moving it all back into its own space, but the contractor was still laying flooring.

So I decided to go see a movie. My brother and I have had good, laugh-out-loud experiences at Will Ferrell comedies in the past, and we like sci-fantasy special-effects pics, so Land of the Lost was the obvious choice.

Here’s where it fits in my summer rankings:

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Terminator: Salvation

4. Angels & Demons

5. Land of the Lost

6. Night at The Museum 2

7. Wolverine

Numbers 5, 6, and 7, are all pretty close in terms of how much I enjoyed them. They’re ranked the way they are because of how my expectations were set before the film. Land of the Lost is probably not as good a movie as the other two, but my expectations were quite low. I mean, yeah, I’ve enjoyed Will Ferrell’s work in a few other films, but that’s not the same as me jumping up and down in thrilled anticipation for his next movie. I went in expecting a dumb-joke comedy featuring a down-on-his-luck hero who stumbles upon an alternate world, and got pretty much exactly what I asked for, only with too much unnecessarily lewd humor.

Given that it was a Will Ferrell movie this should have been part of my expectations. Will I never learn?

I caught the midnight showing of Up last night, and now I’m conflicted. I loved the film, but I’m not sure my in-theater experience was superior to the one I had with Star Trek. I do know, however, that this is a film that I simply have to own, while I’m content to leave Star Trek as a happy memory of the big screen.

In fairness, that means Star Trek remains at the top of my summer rankings. If I ever decide to start ranking DVD and Blu-Ray purchases we can revisit this discussion.

My rankings this summer now stand as follows. I can stop punishing Wolverine with empty spaces above it (soon I will punish that film by pushing it lower):

1. Star Trek

2. Up

3. Terminator: Salvation

4. Angels & Demons

5. Night at The Museum 2

6. Wolverine

I don’t want to spoil Up for anyone, so rather than tell you how far beyond the trailers the film reaches or why the first fifteen minutes are so incredibly powerful, I’ll just tell you the two things I think every Up-wardly mobile theater-goer needs to know. First, the 3-D is every bit as good as Monsters vs. Aliens, and excels by never caving in to the “now it’s right in your face” trick. There may have been extreme in-my-face moments during the film, but they didn’t stand out (I can’t remember them happening) and they definitely weren’t forced.

The second thing you need to know: the film did not begin with the traditional Pixar short. This is important information, because without it you might think that the opening scenes of the film are part of a story you won’t be quizzed on later. Also, you don’t want to be weeping disconsolately over the absence of a short when you’re supposed to be enjoying the story in front of you. Get that out of your system now. No short. The movie didn’t need one.

And that’s all I need to say. As has become custom, I’ll keep the spoilers in the comments thread.

Well… that’s all I need to say about Up. I do also need to say that I’ve been listening to the soundtracks for Angels & Demons (Hans Zimmer), Star Trek (Michael Giacchino), and Terminator Salvation (Danny Elfman) and Angels & Demons is the absolute runaway favorite. I love some of Giacchino’s work, and Elfman is one of my all time favorite composers, but the Angels & Demons score is an absolute feast for the ears.

EDIT: I’m told that some theaters ARE showing a Pixar short, entitled “Partly Cloudy.” Great. I got short-changed in a big way. For me, that nails Up in the #2 slot. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was sort of fun. At least a little. Sadly, the best part was the Ice Age 3 trailer, and since that only had one good moment in it the whole experience was more of an opportunity to rest my sketching hand for a couple of hours. It would have been nice to rest my hand AND see an awesome movie, but that was not meant to be.

In the original Night at the Museum we had interesting arcs for several characters, a fascinating little puzzle to solve, a family crisis, and two romances. We also had “cameos” from historical figures and museum exhibits, and some fun action.

In this installment we have lots of those cameos and more action, but there are no character arcs to speak of and the romance is more of a tragedy. In short, the filmmakers took all the neat elements that make for great trailers and crafted a film out of them. The movie has no heart. It’s funny in spots, and I’m sure my kids will enjoy it when I bring it home on video, but it’s going to sink like a rock on my summer rankings — a death knell to be feared by movie studios worldwide, I assure you.

My rankings this summer stand as follows:

1. Star Trek

2. Terminator: Salvation

3. Angels & Demons

4. Night at The Museum 2

5.

6. Wolverine.

I hope to be able to see Up on Friday, perhaps at the first matinee of the day, but I have a LOT of work to do between now and then. I fully expect Pixar to again push everybody else down a notch, including Star Trek. If high expectations weaken a film, Up is coming into the fray with a blindfold and one hand tied behind its back.

If you want to enjoy Terminatior Salvation it’s possible the only thing you need to do is expect to hate it. I’m not sure, though. I was pretty tired when I saw it. A weekend of conventioning will do that to a guy. I liked the movie, but afterwards I also laughed so hard I nearly crashed the car (well, no… but I still shouldn’t laugh that hard while driving) when my brother told me a story that he’d told me before.

I liked T4, and I expected not to. I didn’t like it as much as Star Trek, and I didn’t like it enough to go see it a second time, but I did like it. Digital Arnold was fantastic. I say “Digital Arnold,” but that’s not fair. He looked every bit as much “Arnold” as Arnold himself did in 1984. He looked a lot better than Wolverine’s Digital Claws.

But by telling you this I might be raising your expectations. Kick those expectations in the shins, quick!
My rankings this summer now look like this:

1. Star Trek

2. Terminator: Salvation

3. Angels & Demons

4.

5.

6. Wolverine.

Your mileage may vary. Feel free to talk about it with all the spoilering you want. Just don’t spoil Night at the Museum 2 for me. That one’s next.