Anyway, it kind of made me laugh when I saw a commercial for the new Need for Speed game the other day that began with the prominent statment, “A trailer through the eyes of Michael Bay”.  The guy already has the reputation of making films with all the reality of a video game, so I suppose it’s a natural fit for him to direct a trailer for one, though I don’t know it’s necessarily the best career move. Regardless, I went online to check out the full trailer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yup…that’s a trailer for a video game all right. I doubt it benefits in any way from having Michael Bay direct it. Honestly, I’m not even sure what Michael Bay did here. What does “through the eyes” even mean? Maybe all he did was pick out the music. Whatever.

Though I’m not going to lie–it does look exciting.

As to the why of this video…I don’t know. It’s a pairing that really shouldn’t work at all. I’m not even sure that it does. But I love Tom Jones and I love The Cardigans. I have no opinion about the Talking Heads, whose song they’re covering here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, here’s my favorite YouTube comment of the day:

If I had a voice like Tom Jones’ I’d give up all my worldy possesions and stand on a street corner and sing things like: Who wants waffles?! Hoh, yeeah — wahh haff alls!

+1

Bonus Video!

Remember the ’90s? Man, I feel like I’m a Freshman in college again watching this. I really enjoyed the kitschy, bubblegummy flavor of The Cardigans’ early albums. It wasn’t earth shattering stuff, but it was fun.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I highly recommend watching this on YouTube so that you can simultaneously enjoy the debate about whether Justin Bieber is the Satan-spawn or merely a faggot. For the record, I’ve got nothing against Justin Bieber–he seems like a good kid. That said, his song that samples Lovefool sucks balls in the worst way.

It’s largely down to opinion, anyway, though it does strike me funny that it seriously gets under some people’s skin when you say something negative about Chris Nolan’s Batman films. These people should read what I had to say about Inception so they can just write me off as a hater (which wouldn’t be accurate, of course, because in general I kind of like Chris Nolan as a filmmaker).

This is all to say that the key, apparently, to driving readership is to just be a dick about something that people hold sacred. So now I’m wondering what else I can be a dick about…

Anyway, moving on to an entirely different topic, this is pretty cool:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A while back, I’d heard an NPR story about this 3-D virtual singer named Hatsune Miku who performs live to sold-out arenas, and I had meant at the time to check it out on YouTube. I finally got around to it.

Pretty amazing. We’ve come a long way from Josie and the Pussycats.

Sucker Punch (2011)

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Sometimes it’s nice to know that nobody gives two shits about your reviews. Like now, for example, because I can admit to having enjoyed watching Sucker Punch.

You know…I kinda think Zack Snyder demonstrates elements of genius in his filmmaking, not solely in his striking use of computer imagery, but also in his visual storytelling. And I’m totally serious. This is a work that could almost be played as a straight silent film (and in point of fact, for the first five minutes or so, that’s pretty much exactly what it is).

I’m only going to say three things about this movie:

(1) I was never bored. At all. I found it roundly entertaining from minute one right through to the unexpected musical number in the credits.

(2) It’s not totally empty-headed entertainment by any means. While so many action films feel uncomfortably familiar, as though you’ve seen them before, I promise you, you’ve never seen Sucker Punch before. You may have seen fragments of this film elsewhere, but never strung together this way or within such an odd narrative frame.

(3) Neat soundtrack, though this could just as easily be somebody else’s complaint, as the film at times feels like a sequence of music videos.

If I’m being honest, I don’t quite understand why it was eviscerated by critics. And I’m not going to bother reading the reviews.

Is it a brilliant work of cinema that 20 years from now is going to be studied in film theory courses alongside Citizen Kane? No, of course not. Hell, it might not even be a movie you’d be willing to watch more than once. But even if you consider the film a failure, it seems you would have to acknowledge that it’s an interesting failure, at least.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Why do the writers of these movies always feel the need to inject at least a few ridiculous mutants of their own creation? To be honest, I haven’t read a bunch of X-Men comics, so perhaps some of these lame-ass characters are actual Marvel creations, but just as an example, this film gives us a stripper with dragonfly wings who hawks up fireballs from her throat. She’s not a prominent character, really, but the point is, she’s in X-Men: First Class, and when you see a character like that, it makes you cry a little bit for all of the awesome mutants they could have employed instead.

Also, there’s a character that’s just Nightcrawler except he’s red and Russian. Get it? And there’s another guy whose “ability to adapt” somehow allows him to encase his torso in a turtle shell. Or something.

Nitpicking aside, this wasn’t a bad origin story for the X-Men. It hits all the notes: Magneto’s beginnings during the Holocaust, the friendship between Xavier and Magneto, the romance between Xavier and Moira McTaggert, Xavier’s paralysis, Professor X’s School for the Gifted, and so forth. And along the way, it manages to explain things like how Mystique fell in with Magneto, how Hank McCoy turned all blue and hairy, and even how Magneto acquired that helmet of his. Internally, it’s pretty sound storytelling as all things organically fall into their place as we know they must.

In all fairness, there’s a lot to like about this film. So why didn’t I love it? I’m not quite certain, to be frank with you. Perhaps because I never did quite get interested in the villain’s plot to start World War III. Or perhaps it’s merely because I don’t care much about characters like Banshee or Havok. Or perhaps it’s because I think it may have been pointless to attempt to wedge this into the continuity previously established by the other X-Men films; and even within those guidelines, it still creates some questionable continuity. In any case, you have my rating.

 Second Opinions

• Blessed Are the Geeks review of Sucker Punch
• Blessed Are the Geeks review of X-Men: First Class

Bonus! Random Video

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I just stumbled across it on YouTube and it cracked me up hard for some reason.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thor (2011)

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

It makes sense in a way that Kenneth Branagh should be the director tasked with helming this ship, because there is something distinctly Shakespearean in the circumstances found within. The longstanding undercurrent of sibling rivalry, Loki’s sundry machinations all for the benefit of his father’s love, Thor’s arrogance and resulting comeuppance…well, I don’t know if this is weightier material than gets covered in other comic book films, but just the same, it’s all covered here with a certain earnestness that is either overdone in some of these genre films or not quite taken seriously enough in others.

While this was not a perfect movie–and perhaps not even a perfect Thor movie–it nevertheless captures the sense of wonder and imagination that have been the hallmarks of this character when he has been at his best over the many decades of his existence as a Marvel Comics character. It sounds like a simple thing, but what I appreciated the most about this film is encapsulated in the fact that Loki wears a helmet with bag-ass antelope-like horns on it, if you know what I mean. The filmmakers aren’t embarrassed about the source material as is sometimes the case–they embraced it, and the film was better for it.

Anyway, just a few comments before I close this thing up.

Chris Hemsworth: who is this devilishly charming bastard? Stellar casting. I think I’ve got a bit of a man crush on him. Random aside: I just looked into it, and he’s a full foot taller than Natalie Portman, which is probably why most of the scenes between them are played sitting down.

On the topic of Natalie Portman, am I the only one who has difficulty buying her as an astrophysicist? I know she went to Harvard and everything, but I don’t know…

I was very pleased in general with the film’s casting. Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo from Rome) as Volstagg; Anthony Hopkins as Odin, giving a real performance instead of a “comic book movie performance”, the way a lot of guys in his position might do; and Tom Hiddleston–whom I’d never seen before, but who positively embodies the trickster god, Loki. No complaints about anybody else–they’re all well matched to the roles they play, but those were a few of my favorites.

So yeah…Thor. It won’t change your life, but it’s a lot of fun. I actually wound up watching it twice. I had nothing better to do while making dinner today, so I put it on for background noise and wound up watching it through to the end again. Suffice it to say, I liked it.

Second Opinions

• Blessed Are the Geeks review of Thor

Red (2010)

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

This movie was neither good nor bad on the whole, but it’s difficult to recommend it if only because Bruce Willis phoned his performance in and then some. Also, he looks like a turtle.

This movie does try to have fun with the concept, but it’s a little bit difficult to buy this collection of senior citizens as retired bad asses. There’s something vaguely uncomfortable about watching it, to be honest.

I suppose the concept, itself, is something that works better as comic book entertainment. None of these characters can be taken seriously as an actual human being.

And just to note it, there was a really weird transition in the film just before the fight scene between Bruce Willis and Karl Urban–it felt as though a scene got dropped. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was strikingly shoddy and I have no idea why it was released that way.

Unstoppable (2010)

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

There’s nothing to dislike about this film apart from, perhaps, that there isn’t a whole lot to it. But why does there need to be? It’s a taut thriller, and Tony Scott does those well. Simple in concept, but with two strong leads, good support from Rosario Dawson, and adept, stylistic direction and editing.

Why did Tony Scott direct two train movies in a row? I don’t know. I didn’t see The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Perhaps I should. The man does a good train movie.

Megamind (2010)

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would. I found it appealing right from the start, with the clever twist on the Kryptonian origin story, and the resulting rivalry between Megamind and Metro Man.

Will Ferrell is surprisingly restrained in the roll considering he’s often more cartoonish when he’s not actually playing a cartoon. But I enjoyed his performance. The impish quality to his voice matched well with the visual design for Megamind, which in an odd way kind of reminded me of a young Bill Murray.

The character was charming, the story, while predictable, never felt like a cliche, and Tina Fey is, you know, actually a good actress on top of being a very funny lady.

It all works, I think. The jokes click, the animation is top notch, and the script functions on a level that ensures there’s more than a little something for the adults in the room. I give it credit, as well, for never dipping down into the schmaltz. Megamind is a film that’s above that sort of pandering, and I found that refreshing.

Second Opinions

• Blessed Are the Geeks review of Megamind

Anyway, long story short, I’ve been invited twice. So I’ve had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time with the game. This weekend that just ended, in particular, I played the shit out of Star Wars: The Old Republic owing to the fact that my wife and daughter are in Europe. Seriously. Played the shit out of it.

And while I’m not technically allowed to say anything about it owing to the non-disclosure agreement, I’ll just say that I’d recommend this game to just about anybody who likes role playing games. Basically, you can almost play it like a single-player game. Except, of course, that there are other people there and there’s some really neat group content.

Anyway, I loved it. It feels like a genuine iteration on the MMORPG genre. And that’s all I’m saying. I doubt BioWare would mind me saying that much.

Person 1: I think I need to go watch Event Horizon now.

Person 2: That was such a good movie!

Person 3: Oh, yes!

Listening to nerds is funny.

The Unknown (2011)

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

There’s a point perhaps half way through The Unknown in which the movie treats the audience to the car chase that is almost obligatory in a film like this, and I distinctly remember thinking–and perhaps I even commented to my wife–”this guy [Neeson's character] is a damn good driver for a biologist.”

The point of me mentioning this is that in The Unknown, things are most definitely not what they seem, nor will you long believe that they are what they seem. But with that said, there’s a very good chance that the film will sneak the twist up on you. I didn’t guess it.

For the most part, it plays out a bit like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and so in a way, I think the viewer will want to believe there’s a sort of oblique explanation for it all that allows for certain favorable suppositions about the main character to remain true. And may I just say, damn–it’s difficult to talk about this movie at all without spoiling something.

I wanted to mention The Unknown on this blog at some point if only to impart to somebody who hasn’t seen it that some of the critical reviews on this film may have been misleading. I remember reading Ebert’s review, for example, in which he led me to believe this was going to be the sort of film that hinged entirely upon a ridiculously improbable contrivance that you had to simply take on faith in order to accept everything that followed. To be sure, it wasn’t that sort of film, at all. It made a surprising amount of sense, I would say. (In retrospect, I think I now know what Ebert was trying to say–and maybe it’s merely a function of how difficult it is to write a review of a movie like this–but the result was I got an entirely wrong impression about how this film was going to be constructed).

Naturally, it’s totally over-the-top, as most action films are, but that’s to be expected. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the epic ass-kicking extravaganza that Taken was–honestly, it’s not really at all like Taken, so I’m only mentioning it because of Liam Neeson–but it’s worth a look. It’s well crafted and well acted with one exception to the latter point: January Jones.

I had no idea who this was. I thought from the name that she was some soft core porno actress or something, and honestly, that seemed to be the range of her acting. Meh.

Black Swan (2010)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

You know, there’s a reason you don’t see me reviewing a lot of artistic films on this blog. It’s almost utterly pointless for me to attempt to assign this a point rating, but I did it anyway just for the hell of it.

Well made? Surely. Intriguing? I think so. Enjoyable? Well, I’m not so sure about that.

This was a difficult movie to watch, and not merely owing to the elements of the grotesque, like a scene of Natalie Portman’s character peeling the skin back from her fingernail and off her hand or when Winona Ryder started shoving a letter opener through her face, or even for the uncomfortable eroticism, like the scene in which Vincent Cassel seduces the emotionally internalized protagonist and practically has sex with her on the dance floor.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to watch because it’s just frustrating. The line between fantasy and reality has been so blurred that it almost ceases to exist, and when the film ends, you’ll still find yourself wondering, “So how much of what I just watched actually happened?” But not in a good way.

Granted, this disconnection from reality is kind of the point of the film, but just the same, it didn’t totally work for me.

But, you know, you should watch this film if you want to see a scene in which Mila Kunis performs oral sex on Natalie Portman. Assuming you’re into that sort of thing.

On a second viewing (with my baby daughter in another country, and thus not waking up every twenty minutes to compel me to pause the film), I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first time. The action sequences, which I initially thought became tamer after the high bar set in the opening minutes, seemed more charged and dramatically compelling this time around.

The plot, however, is still a little confusing, to be perfectly honest about it (is Lynch a rogue CIA agent, or what? how does he really intend to use those plates?), so I don’t think I would revise the quantitative rating I gave it, but qualitatively, this is a film that I would hope almost anybody would have fun watching, assuming you have a predilection for ludicrous action, like a guy popping the hatch on a plummeting tank at 20,000 feet in order to gun down attack drones.

Also, I spotted a great Easter egg this time around during the scene with the 3-D movie: one of the actors’ names in the phoney film is “Reginald Barclay”, which was Dwight Schultz‘s character on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dwight Schultz, of course, was also a main cast member in the A-Team television series.

On a totally unrelated note, I was listening to a story on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning about Colorado and how it’s the thinnest state in the nation and still something like one in five people is obese, with the percentage being even greater amongst children.

Look, I’m just going to put this out there: enough already about how fat America is.

I mean, if people want to be fat, that’s their prerogative, isn’t it? I feel a little bad about children, because I think they have less of a choice about it, but it’s not that difficult to not be obese, so when I see people who are, I just assume they don’t care. It’s none of my business.