TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON TRAILER

Alternate future 1960s, the moon landing was a cover for a different mission - the government had discovered alien life...that were cars that transformed into robots. The opening premise would make a great film but then the Transformers franchise got a hold of it and ruined it with their shiny Bayian excess. 

Caught this trailer before Tron Legacy and thought it was going to be an intelligent science fiction film then, the shinyrobots (seeing robots usually rules) come in and Michael Bay's name flashes and all hopes and dreams of an interesting film die.

TRON LEGACY

The original Tron is a dull memory. The giant clamshell VHS box on the shelf of the video store. We never rented it and I never saw it. Tron became a rumor, gossip about a visually groundbreaking yet silly film.

Plus, I always thought that was Mathew Modine gazing off into the digital distance on the cover.

At this year’s Comic Con the main film being pushed was Scott Pilgrim VS The World but on the sidelines sat Tron Legacy. An old steakhouse was turned into Flynn’s Arcade. We played games and were ushered through a corridor that lead to the End of Line Bar. To explain it back when I saw it I had to stumble for references for what the space looked liked but after seeing Tron Legacy I can tell you this, they recreated the End of the Line Bar in an empty warehouse. We were on the grid. This spectacle was a hidden gem.

A five minute trailer was show every few minutes, not one that gave away story but one that relayed tone and mood. In between viewings Daft Punk’s “End of The Line” boomed from hidden speakers. A full Tron suit was on display as were models of lightcycles and other Tron ephemera. A museum showcase for an unseen film. Clearly Disney felt this movie would be big and gave it the subtlest of shoves, giving the perspective audiences crumbs to follow.

I fell for the hype, or more accurately, I felt the hype.

I saw Tron Legacy in 2D after hearing that the 3D was pointless. From the other 3D films I’ve seen I’m not surprised. It was all I had hoped it would be. Visually stunning and moody. The Daft Punk score is amazing. The two biggest surprises were Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn and Olivia Wilde as Quorra.

Garrett Hedlund as the star was a bold move – an actor of really no esteem, just a regular working actor that turned out an excellent performance similar to Chris Pyne's James Kirk in Star Trek. Garrett Hedlund is a strong force on the screen and made an unbelievable scenario more human. He’s what Shia Lebouf wants to be, tries to be. Lebouf’s portrayal of Mutt in Indiana Jones was of an actor trying too hard to come off as rebellious and youthful. He still plays like a child actor pretending to be an adult and for some odd reason he keeps getting cast in ill fitting roles in giant films.

Olivia Wilde’s Quorra was charismatic and charming. Innocent and eager. Yes, it is the “hot girl” role but they didn’t turn her into an object of affection. I’ve only seen her in House where she is annoying, or more accurately her character is annoying, so I did not expect to find her enjoyable at all. She has a great moment in the end sequence, riding on Sam’s motorcycle, hair in the wind and eyes bright. You can’t see it but she’s smiling and she buries her face into the back of his jacket. This is not about young love, this is a character who has never seen the real world and is overjoyed.

I want to say I was disappointed in the film, but I’m still not sure that I was. It left a healthy amount of unanswered questions and the plot was held together by the thinnest of ideas. My main aggravation was that they idea of these programs on the grid was never explained. What do they do on the grid? None of them are seen acting as a program, they’re all shown as idle people wandering the streets or enjoying cocktails and blood sport.

There are police everywhere but we are never given a reason why any of the programs would be taken away for repurposing. How are they chosen?

Quorra is an ISO, a program that self created on the grid. So? What did Flynn plan on doing with the ISOs? What can he do with them? We are told that the ISOs are a big deal but never shown why. CLU slaughters them all because that’s what villains do.

All of the flaws in the film are the same as ones I see everyday in the scripts I read. It’s always surprising to see films like this that have to simplest of plot holes. Who read the script and thought, “This is perfect!”? I would love to know the logic behind not clarifying the world of Tron.

Truth is, I still enjoyed it. I take that back. I loved it. I’m going to track down the shooting script and give it a read. It would be interesting to see where it all came. Maybe the plot made sense and one point but was torn apart to make room for lightcycle fights, which isn’t entirely a bad thing.

Dino De Laurentiis August 8th 1919 - November 10th 2010

Dino De Laurentiis August 8th 1919 - November 10th 2010
At 91 years old, producer Dino De Laurentiis has passed on. I'll always remember when I was a wee lad and I first saw his name during the opening credits of CONAN THE BARBARIAN and thinking it was a foreign film. I would see his name quite a bit more during his career.

I didn't know the man and outside of his films I know very little about him, yet, I feel the desire to mourn his passing. He was an artist and through their work is how an artist is known, and through their work an artist lives on, never dying in the minds of the audience.

Mr. De Laurentiis has an audience, one that knows his name and one that only knows his work, but an audience that will keep him alive forever.

Jon Favreau's COWBOYS & ALIENS

The trailer for Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens" just went live yesterday. I haven't heard much about the film yet outside of a few Twitter emoticons of adoration here and there. From the looks of it - or actually from the title of it, you get a pretty damn good idea what this film is.



The trailer makes you believe it will be a bit more serious than your average comic book to film adaptation. It's definitely not as fun overloaded as other tent pole productions we've seen recently. Quint over at Aint It Cool News was able to see some actual footage with Jon Favreau and had nothing but favorable things to say about it which is to be expected.

The concept itself seems a bit tired and easy - aliens attack the wild west. It's so obvious I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a million film students and amateur screenwriters from around the world tossed their similar scripts into the trash the day the film was announced. The single element that most likely sparked the most interest is the alien bracelet Daniel Craig's character wakes up with. He doesn't seem to know what it is or how it got there, a sort of GREATEST AMERICAN HERO element as he learns to use it. This could be the key that propels the story beyond it's obvious battle of man versus alien plot line.

When all is said and done, Jon Favreau has turned out to be an amazingly entertaining filmmaker so I'm curious to see what he does with this film.

A LOOK AT: DISNEYLAND

I once knew a married couple that despised Disneyland. They wouldn't let their daughters watch any Disney film and refused to introduce them to the Disney characters. No princesses and princes. No heroes or villains. From where they stood, Disney was just a machine. A merchandising powerhouse that tosses the public entertainment designed with only one purpose in mind - to affix a price tag on it.

You pay to enter the park and on your way out why not pay for a shirt or a coffee mug, something to hold your memories in?

They didn't want their two girls tricked into thinking they could be princesses and then have themselves suckered into spending hard earned money on costumes or other detritus that clutters the Disney Store. This is what they saw, what they believed in. Money's relationship to life's experiences.

I won't defend Disney and say they aren't out to get our money, (they are a business after all) but I also won't say that they don't offer experiences that have value and aren't worth the money.

I respect my friend's opinion. In my younger days I might have felt that distrust and disdain as well. I could feel what they’re feeling if I let the cynicism seep in, but I don’t do that. Not anymore. Now, I adore Disneyland. Its faults and flaws are minor compared to its magic, and I do believe in Disney Magic.

I cannot explain the charge of glee, joy, and awe I feel when I walk through the gates of Disneyland. It is a charge indeed, all energy, a tingling that erupts in a broad grin. This last weekend the wife and I went with our parents for my birthday. I was up earlier than I’d ever been (I am not, nor have I ever been and early riser) and I didn’t lose steam at any point during the trip. I chugged through Adventureland, New Orleans Square, Frontierland, Critter Country, Fantasyland, Toon Town, and Tomorrowland. We did all the rides, some two or three times, like we had in the past and will do again in the future. It wide-eyed ecstasy, a full heart of joy at every sight and sound of the Disney experience.

Interrupting side note: I must confess – we have one Disney coffee mug in the cupboard. I never use it. I can’t explain why, but I love that it’s there. In the morning when I grab the cheap Ikea mug I see Mike from Monsters Inc. smiling down at me and I get a bit choked up, teary even, smacked in the face with a jolt of happiness. It’s sudden and urgent, this happiness, and when I close the door on him my heart sinks a little - a little, not a lot, but I feel it heave and drop.

Like I said, in my younger days I wouldn’t have had this response. I enjoyed Disney films enough but never gave them too much thought. I had never been to the park growing up, so I lacked that experience as well. It wasn’t until my 20s that I first visited the park, and it is hard to recall the exact moment, but something in me kept drawing me back. During college I took a solo road trip through California, wandering from San Francisco to Big Sur. I kept driving, unplanned really, and wound up at Disneyland. It happened again when I went to Big Bear for my 30^th birthday, once again alone. I drove to Anaheim and spent a full day at the park before driving all night back to San Francisco.

I’ve always been afraid to focus and find the reason for my love of Disney, afraid that I would uncover a fatal flaw in it and I would return to being the cynical Generation X derivative that I had been in my teens so on this trip, I opened up. I looked for reasons to lose faith. A hidden skeleton made of ATMs. If Disneyland was to eventually crush my soul I wanted it to be done quickly, and at my own hands. I would push it to do so.

Over the weekend I had found elements to scrutinize and tear apart.

Examples.

I: In A Bug’s Land the lights are fireflies and the walkway is covered by a false milk carton, but the garbage cans look like generic garbage cans.

II: Tomorrowland has a rotating building which houses the Innoventions exhibit, which is an obvious shill for Hewlitt-Packard, ABC, Microsoft, and Honda. It was a disgusting display of smiling faces and nonsensical rhetoric by corporate America. This was the biggest offense. Walter Elias Disney, be ashamed. Be very ashamed. Roll in thy grave.

Those are the two extremes of Disneyland's faults, from the minor to the easily ingnorable. I’ve been to Disneyland roughly a dozen handfuls and hadn’t experience the vacuous dread of Innoventions until this past trip. It’s cell phone mall kiosk level dread. Sick from false sweetness, empty brained notebook knowledge of useless prop utility. So next trip, I'll just avoid it. Easy.

The Bug’s Land garbage cans should be fixed too, perhaps in mock shrine to matchbooks or candy boxes, but Innoventions is in need of an entire overhaul to give it a purpose worthy of the name Disney. The carnival barkers for Microsoft and ABC should be silenced to let the magic be heard and it is at this exhibit that my cynicism leaks in and kills all enjoyment. I’ll give my darkside this moment to shine and caw.

The hatred of Innoventions is well deserved on Disney’s part and with that, there it is, the shining beacon of some horrible truth. The crux of my married friends' point. Disney just wants your money. No love, no hope. Smile and steal. From your child's dreams to your wallet into Disney's stock price.

But that’s not what’s important. Not now. Not to me. It might creep in later and I might let it, but now I welcome the unfettered joy Disneyland spurs inside of me.

Interrupting side note II: We saw the new show at California Adventure called “World of Color,” a show of water, fire, colored lights, and images in concert with choice Disney music. My heart warmed over, the heated blood pulsing up to my head, to my eyes, swelling inside in my chest and settled throughout my being. It was the feeling of lost innocence, a vision of a child unknowing, scared, facing the world. The show itself had no story and it flowed through a swarm of Disney heroes and villains pointlessly, but what I did see on display was that Walt Disney’s legendary innocence was still intact.

The show used scenes and characters from famous Disney films as well as those from lesser known films. What I saw was an artist as proud of his famous work as he was of his work that failed to find an audience and make tons at the box office because the truth is, Disney’s ideals are not in fashion right now but they do not change what it is they do. They offer childish beauty and dreams, hope and fluttering innocent visions of life.

There is a sadness contained in Disneyland, a great sadness, or really, a great sadness in us that gets released at Disneyland. At least this is the truth for me. Disneyland shows me so much joy and hope that my heart breaks every time I leave. I understand that this outlook paints me as a pathetic sheep, blind to the ways of corporate America and its lust for all the dollars in the world but once you remove all of these superficial layers to Disneyland what you find is the heart and soul of an amazing artist. Walt Disney, with his specific and universal vision. In the middle of a culture based on sarcasm and cynicism, somehow an ideal like his can still be successful. His characters and the world they live in goes beyond ours.

In Disney we do not get a vision of the world as it is or how it ever really was, but of how it could be, but never will.

This is the greatest of all sadnesses, brought to you by Walter Elias Disney.

BETTER OFF TED, YOU ARE MISSED.

On August 24th 2010 the final episode of BETTER OFF TED aired. In Australia. On May 13th 2010 the show was cancelled by ABC, but two episodes remained that had not aired. They still haven't aired in America, but through some corporate magic they were show to Australian audiences only.

I pretty much ignored the show during its live televised existence and it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I had enough interest in the show to stream the first episode via Netflix. The first episode promised that BETTER OFF TED would be a clever series full of the wacky misadventures of the employees of Veridian Dynamics, the colorful casts place of employment. Veridian represents the peak of corporate greed as well as capitalist innovations. They made weapons, light bulbs, computer parts, super foods, and any other piece of technology that showed off intellectual prowess as well as the mundane aspects of human living.

Ted, the lead of the series, does quite a bit of voice over to guide the audience through the story lines as well as breaking the fourth wall to narrate in scene to the audience. In this first episode it is his job to introduce us to the world of the show, to the company, and to the characters. When he introduces us to two scientists at Veridian Dynamics he refers to them as, "The smartest men in the world." Of course what comes next is we meet them and see that as smart as they might be, they fail at anything requiring courage and social interaction. What struck me is the fact that Ted refers to them as the smartest men in the world. Seeing as Veridian is the pinnacle of of its industry requiring only the smartest brains available, we can confidentally assume that Ted is correct in calling these men "The Smartest Men in the World."

In our real world, companies such as Microsoft, NASA, and Lockheed Martin only take the mightiest of brains. If Veridian were real they would top this list.

Does this mean that the writers of the show BETTER OFF TED must be of equal intelligence to these scientists to write them? Of course the answer is no. It's a sitcom. No one who writes for HOUSE is actually as smart as Greg House and no writer on the BIG BANG THEORY needs to swim in the same vat of knowledge as Sheldon and crew do. What it does mean though is that the writers have made a promise to the audience on behalf on the characters. Elements are in place to ensure that this statement of Ted's cannot be false. They are in fact the smartest men alive.

That statement irritated me from the start. I didn't know why until I started writing this and considered what made me focus on the writer's choice of words for Ted in regards to his co-workers. The truth is that I was looking for a flaw from the start. I wanted to find a reason why the show failed, or why I failed to watch it while it was still on network television. There had to be something there that made it not work. I looked to the writing.

After watching the first season it's clear it was not the writing that got the show canceled. Not the acting, directing, set design, pace, or humor. All of those elements are solidly in place, unbreakable - so what made it fail to find and audience? I don't know. It's an incredible show that deserves to be seen and enjoyed, and definitely deserved to at least run a few more seasons. I'm doing my best to promote the show within my circle of friends. You never know, with enough word of mouth it could gain the cult the status of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and give Portia de Rossi two revered shows.

It is depressing to watch a television show with such great writing and such a strong concept fail. There are no answers here either, beyond money. It's gone and if you asked the network executive who's decision it was to cancel BETTER OFF TED why he did it, the answer would come down to money. Cost too much or didn't earn enough.

Maybe it didn't attract an audience because of its title, BETTER OFF TED. Is this a riff on the movie BETTER OFF DEAD and if so, is it saying we'd all be better off being Ted than being dead? It does imply a certain relationship to death, an element the show doesn't have. Did audiences stay away because they thought it would be another show like DEAD LIKE ME or REAPER? I got to say, the name does give the impression of suppressed doom, comedic tales of hapless fools tricking death.

Well, it's gone and that's it. One thing it did make me realize is this --

I wish I looked as dapper as Jay Harrington does in a suit.

ARNOLD AT THE CONCOURS D'ELEGANCE

A few weeks back I found myself at Pebble Beach for the Concours D'Elegance to mingle with wealthy car enthusiasts. This event is all about cars and their stories. Each vehicle on display had a story, some start with the idea of what it will become and others are shaped purely by history. Some cars were built for kings and queens, celebrities, and others survived world wars. To truly appreciate these cars you need to have an understanding of where they came from and what they've been through - these stories is where you find what makes them special beyond being well-formed pieces of metal.

Among those in attendance were the governor of California himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was crowded by men in black sunglasses and ear buds as he made his way to an elderly couple and their car.

 

Of course, I was brushed aside, told to move along because, "The governor is coming." I understood and in my excitement didn't care at all to be pushed aside for The Terminator, Conan himself. If it had been a normal government official I would not have bothered to hang around for a photograph and I wouldn't remember it beyond the next beer, but Arnold - that is going to be remembered. Forever.

It makes you wonder, or at least me, about the nature of actors and the characters they play. Did Arnold make the Terminator what he was? Would it have been as successful without Arnold's presence? What about Conan the Barbarian or Predator? My honest guess is that no, without Arnold's charisma and charm, those films would not be remembered how they are today. Not too sure how that reflects on California politics, but hopefully some of his counterparts felt the same way and made his job a bit, at least a little, easier.