The Dotted Logline

Sorry for the lack of postage. All my time recently has been consumed by moving prep, and that is frankly very boring.

I took my mom to see Flight Plan this evening. It’s not normally the type of movie I’d go see in the theater… parts of it were pretty silly, but you have to respect a movie that has a 40+ year old female engineer as an action hero. I was a bit skeptical of how well an airplane would work as pretty much the only setting in a suspense/action movie, but they solved that by using a newly designed ginormous airliner with two levels, a full bar, and tons of nooks and crannies.

If someone were to make a list of best ways for action movie heroes to deliver emotionally satisfying smackdowns on villains, a fire extinguisher to the face should rank pretty high.

If you’d told me yesterday that there was a movie that featured Jackie Chan, Roger Moore, Burt Reynolds, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin, Dom DeLuise, Jack Elam, and Adrienne Barbeau fighting a biker gang while Farrah Fawcett waited off to the side, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Cannonball Run is an awful, stupid movie. But aside from above fight scene, it has Roger Moore as a Jewish guy who thinks he’s Roger Moore and Dom DeLuise running around in a cape and mask, so it’s worth seeing at least once.

I hate to say it, but Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka just didn’t work for me. It’s a painful thing to say about an actor whose work you’ve always admired and respected. A lot of it might have been the hair and makeup, but the squeaky voice was definitely a big factor. On the plus side, the facial expressions killed.

Overall, even though I thought the designs and most of the kids, and Charlie’s family were better than the classic Willy Wonka flick, it didn’t have the same sense of magic. It did convince me I really need to get off my duff and find a copy of the book. It is one of the only Roald Dahl books I haven’t read. He was a favorite author of mine when I was young, and The Witches was, in a way, the book that first inspired me to write when I was seven, almost a year before I started writing seriously .

It’s funny that when given the opportunity to see either a movie I know I will be seeing at a future date or a movie I have already seen twice, I go with the one that I know I definitely like. Yes, I saw Batman Begins again. No, I’m not tired of it yet. At least I’m doing my best to contribute to pulling the industry I want to work for in the future out of a supposed slump. And at least this is a better movie than the last Batman flick I saw three times in theater, Batman Forever (and of course it’s miles above Batman and Robin, which I had to suffer through twice.)

I caught Toy Story 2 again today, the movie that makes all toy collectors feel incredibly guilty. In many ways, I think it is equal to or better than the original. But at the same time, there is something painful about toys contemplating their mortality, especially when the indication is that their final fate will be lying around in a junkyard somewhere with full awareness. True, they are independently mobile, but it’s a far darker destiny than that of my favorite childhood fictional toy, the Velveteen Rabbit.

Hopefully, most children don’t put quite as much thought into this or parents will never get them to give up their old toys.

Yes, I’ve already seen Batman Begins a second time. I’ve decided the secret to playing Batman is the eyes. It’s all in the eyes.

Also, I forgot to mention this in my last post, but it really annoys me how they mispronounce Ra’s. I mean, it was an actual plot point in the DC aniverse, yeesh.

I saw the long awaited Batman Begins tonight. The script I read back in December was very accurate.

This movie is the real Batman. No Day Glo. No Prince music.

Christian Bale is easily the best of all the live-action Batmans (I have a fondness for the voice work of Kevin Conroy who has become synonymous with Batman for me after more than a dozen years in numerous animated series) I can see why Bale has been cast in what seems like creepy roles for most of his career. His level of intensity is probably a bit high for the standard romcom-loving audience. I will definitely be looking to watch some of his previous films. The rest of the cast was also excellent. Katie Holmes was even generally acceptable.

Unlike the Burton films with their heavy gothic/noir feel, and the neon-drenched Schumacher flicks, Batman Begins has a real world immediacy. For the first time, we see Batman dwarfed by Gotham City (portrayed by its real life inspiration, Chicago) This film actually has more villains than any of the previous ones, but as they don’t spend nearly as much time chewing scenery as the typical comic book bad guy, it isn’t obvious. In fact, I’m very impressed at how well Nolan pulled this off, considering the plot was pure comic book.

The most important thing is that they finally got Batman right. Whatever else Batman is, he’s a bit of a psycho. Sure, the murder of his parents is extremely tragic, but it is isn’t an uncommon enough occurrence to drive him to the extraordinary lifestyle he chooses. The driven personality of Batman is who he really is. Bruce Wayne is merely a facade. This Batman was perhaps SLIGHTLY less driven than Miller’s Year One version, but they are certainly close in spirit.

I still think the Tumbler is the ugliest thing ever put on wheels. But it can smash through anything and everything, so who really cares.

Anyway, good good movie. Go see it ASAP.

I just saw the trailer for the upcoming movie Serenity, based on the TV show Firefly. For those who haven’t seen Firefly, it is a fantastic sci-fi/western show by the brilliant Joss Whedon, which was unfortunately canceled due to Fox’s poor handling of the series. It is available on DVD for your viewing enjoyment. I highly recommend it. It’s an awesome show, and the movie looks to be even more awesome. I suspect this is going to be one of those trailers that I watch dozens of times before the release date.

I caught the end of the new Return Of The Jedi DVD. For those who haven’t heard, Lucas made a number of changes to the original trilogy for the DVD release, one of the most noticible being the addition of Hayden Christensen to the happy Jedi ghost party scene in the RotJ finale. A lot of fans are screaming at the travesty but I actually like the change. With the prequels done, the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker is firmly established in the Star Wars universe. It’s only fitting that the ghost of Anakin at the end should look the same as Anakin did in his last moments before he became Darth Vader. No offense to the actor who was edited out of the scene, but I always thought he looked out of place. He was just some guy.

I saw Revenge of the Sith again. As I expected, I liked it better the second time around. Then again, I was even able to tolerate Jar Jar in Phantom Menace by the third or fourth time around.

I think this time I was able to see Anakin’s desperation more, where before I was mostly reading him as angry. I still think most of the problems in the movie hinge on the weakness of Padme’s character. She’s just so dislikable in this movie that I can’t see anyone loving her enough to go to the extremes Anakin did. And lets not even get into the fact that she didn’t have the “will to live” for her children.

So many of the glaring problems could have been solved with just a few little tweaks to the plot. It’s times like these that I think I would be happy having a career rewriting other people’s scripts.