I Drank the Dark Knight Kool-Aid

A week ago Tuesday, RoboGirlfriend and I headed down to the local cineplex and purchased tickets for The Dark Knight. "How many tickets have you sold?" RoboGirlfriend asked. "We have about a hundred and fifty left..." replied the Tickemeister, "but we're going to sell out." We nodded, a glance passing between the RoboGirlfriend and myself -- "Let's get dinner quickly then," before the Ticketmeister added, as we headed towards the door: "The line is forming outside."

Fuck.

A line? For a 7:55, TUESDAY night showing? Needless to say, RoboGal and myself snagged dinner mighty quick before returning to the side of the theater. The line stretched all the way down the length of the theater. Damnit. And then we realized -- no it didn't. That was the line for the 7:50. The line for the 7:55 was eight people long. Score. We hopped in line, and began to shoot the proverbial shit. The line grew behind us, eventually becoming as long as the one for the 7:55. We delighted in our nearly-front of the line status. We also discovered that a handful of those surrounding us were seeing the movie for the 2nd time. This is a movie with legs, I thought. 

Or, as the RoboGF pointed out, a movie with a dead movie-star. 

Never underestimate the ability of tragic death to sell your film.

To be fair, The Dark Knight kicks a lot of ass.

Everyone has their opinion on this movie, and it's mostly positive. I won't disagree. At the same time, I'll keep it relatively short, because I don't want to waste your time. If you are, inexplicably, a human being in North America, or some other territory where the film has been released, and you have not seen it, then maybe, maybe, you might find something of value in this review. Otherwise... it is an exercise is readily available knowledge.

The Dark Knight is am ambitious and mostly effective tale of crime in the big bad city. As a whole, it works amazingly. It's in the details, in the nitty gritty, that the film's resolution begins to grow fuzzy. 

Heath Ledger gives a great performance, and you've already heard about it. It redefines the concept of who and what the Joker is, so that really, this isn't THE JOKER anymore, it's The Joker... a completely different bad guy with the same name and theme-of-dress. This Joker is off the wall, ready to kill anyone, with a deep loathing of society and its rules.

As a counterintuitive counterpoint to this, he is the Napoleon of Batman villains, as he manages to out-plan, out-organize, and nearly defeat through assumed reactions the entire Gotham Police Department as well as Batman. Which is counter to the idea of the character, but since the result is so awesome, when we pull back... move further from the detail... it's a problem that's easy to ignore.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is pretty great, and a very believable "white knight" to the city as its District Attorney. He's a man who wants to clean up the streets, and seems to have the integrity to do it... Which is why it seems vaguely out of character for him to threaten to blow a hole in one of Joker's Goon's head (even if Dent had rigged the results...). His transformation into Two-Face (a nick-name from his past that is never explained, and, again, seems counterintuitive when every other character keeps referring to how honest and true and good he is) is expedited in favor of speed, glossing over the natural progression of this transformation -- from ultimate good guy to ultimate bad. Instead, we just get him wailing, talking to the Joker, and deciding that without this lady-friend in his life, well, fuck, he might as well go around and dish out some old skool justice. I didn't buy it, and this is my biggest problem with the film. Two-Face was too rushed.

Not only that, but director Christopher Nolan sadly lets Eckhart slip into "yell" mode as the bad guy, chewing up the scenery and spitting it out onto the audience as if we were some kind of gigantic spittoon. Eckhart is a super solid actor, and his work through the rest of the film is very effective. It's only when his character loses his humanity... that Eckhart loses his grasp on the role.

Maggy Gyllenhaal is pretty useless as Rachel Dawes, and I have to say, I don't think it's a vast improvement from Katie Holmes. You can kick Holmes as much as you like for her "boring" and "wide eyed" (both quotes from someone in line) performance in Batman Begins, but I blame the lameness of the rest of that movie, and the total uselessness of her role, not the actress. Ms. Gyllenhaal brings maybe a smidge more humanity to the role, but she's such a pawn in the games between other characters that it's hard to feel for her at all. For me, there was no emotional punch to what happened to her. Nolan didn't make me care about her from the beginning. So why would I care at the end?

The Batman voice Christian Bale uses as Batman is stupid. You'd think that Billionaire Bruce Wayne, who managed to create a CAPE that turns into WINGS for GLIDING could attach a voice distorter onto the neck-piece of his suit. Too logical. More growling needed. 

And Bale himself is fine. The problem with all Batman films is the conflict they feel between Bruce Wayne and Batman, and how much to show of each. I think this film also had that trouble -- the conflict of Batman is put on the warmer, not the flame, and doesn't hold up as well as other elements of the film.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again: Christopher Nolan cannot direct action. I enjoyed the film, but the action-bits were cut too fast, shot too close up, and semi-incoherent. The climax of the film, action-wise, didn't work for me because it's told partly through CGI, otherwise determining the geography of the action is confusing and badly done. Also, there are a lot of dogs attacking Batman.

Other issues: The stupid phone crap, the length -- which, while it never bored me,  did feel like a two and a half hour movie, some weird end-of-scene cuts, the music, and some anti-batman behavior by Batman.

BUT: As a whole, the movie is awesome. The Joker's plan makes total crazy sense, and if you can buy he's the best organizer in the city, you'll buy some of the great feats he manages to accomplish, and the great time that it leads to. I also can't complain when Nicky Katt shows up in a film (his 2nd Batman flick), and when shit blows up. Gary Oldman is the most bizarre person to play a straight-man ever cast, but beyond a bafflingly badly handled mid-film development for his character, he portrays a real integrity to the character that's so necessary to balance the Bale-Eckhart show.

It isn't, however, the greatest superhero movie of all time. And I don't think Heath Ledger's performance -- as awesome as it was -- is deserving of an Oscar nom. It's admirable, and crazy, and great, but not, I think, particularly nuanced. However, lucky for the Academy, my opinion means bull-crap to them. Probably best they keep it that way.

If you somehow haven't seen The Dark Knight, do it now. Or wait a weekend.

It's not like it's going anywhere.

Oh, RoboGF, and everyone else in the audience, seemed to have a great time. And, if it helps, I'll be seeing it again. It's a beautiful beautiful woman... with bad skin. I think I can ignore its faults to get to the parts worth adoring. In fact, I think when I go back, I might have to grab a cup of that delightful drink they were offering... I might take a swig of this Dark Knight kool-aid. Will you?

-RoboNixon

Caprica Trailer-y Goodness

So you must follow THIS link to io9, which has up the trailer for the next step in BSG goodness -- the trailer for CAPRICA, the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, about the creation of Cylons.

I have to say, it looks pretty snazzy. I concur with io9's write-up on the whole thing -- which is to say, the further they stay away from BSG territory, the better the show can be. I already think it's a stretch that one of the two protagonists is Admiral Adama's father -- it reeks to me of "Star Wars-ism" -- that is, a gigantic universe that is conveniently really, really small and connected -- but the actors are great - Esai Morales as Joseph Adams, and Eric Stoltz (STOLTZ!) as Cylon creator Daniel Greystone - and as long as they keep the writing consistent, focused, and relevant, we could be in for quite a treat.

-RoboNixon

FRINGE -- WARNING

So you may have seen the kooky ads for JJ Abrams new TV show, FRINGE, which debuts in the fall. They're pimping it hard, so I'd be more surprised if you hadn't seen anything for it, despite the chunk of time between now and its premiere. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Hey! I like JJ Abrams TV shows! And this one looks like his take on the X-Files! How can it not rock!?"

It can not rock in many, many ways.

Written by Transformers scribes Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, along with JJ Abrams, I had the great fortune to watch the Fringe Pilot a few weeks ago, and I've been putting off writing about it because... well, because it was a huge disappointment. 

The gist of the show is this (from IMDb): A television drama centered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.

Which isn't necessarily the most true explanation, but it hits pretty close to home.  Now, it sounds like a great concept. It's got a great exec, JJ Abrams, and it has a totally hot cast, in Joshua Jackson and Anna Torv. But where it fails is an arena that might seem familiar to you Disappear Here readers... it fails... in the writing.

I would like to preface all of my Fringe comments with this: I only saw the Pilot. And while I was horribly, terribly, utterly disappointed in it, it is JUST the Pilot. The TV development process can (and often does) enact incredible changes on a show between Pilot and Series. So while the Pilot blows... there is a good chance that the series itself could pick up and totally rock. As such, I will watch the first non-pilot episode when it shows up on TV. But not the Pilot. Ew. I've suffered enough.

We start on an airplane in the middle of a storm where some extreme turbulence upsets the passengers, one so much that he injects himself with something, which then proceeds to gelatinize his flesh, and soon enough, the flesh of everyone else on the plane.  And in a totally sweet opening, we see a plane-full of passengers melt. Great.

Olivia (Torv) and John (Mark Valley) are both FBI agents, and totally shacking up together, against the rules, and are called in to Logan Airport where the aforementioned plane, which had some new doohickey that lets the it land itself on autopilot, sits. They all go inside, discover the melted people, and proceed to immolate the aircraft. But why did these people melt? Ah, of course, the mystery. So Olivia and John, again hiding their romance from their superiors (including Lance Reddick, who you Abrams fans might recognize as Abaddon from LOST), go off to do some investigating. They seem to find the culprit... until a booby-trap goes off, covering John in the skin-melting shit, and, you know, making Olivia upset. 

So doctors put John in suspended-animation, so he doesn't melt, and Olivia must go on a quest to save her lover's life.

Which is cool. Except nothing happens. For the whole show. With such a great opening, and an explosion in the beginning, the possibilities for where to take the show are endless. But it turns out that a lot of where the show goes is laboratories, where lots of talking happens. And visits to other characters minds. And Iraq. Also, there's twins. And blah blah blah.

The coolest moment of the show is when Olivia visits the headquarters of Dr. Bishop's (the crazy doctor from the summary) former partner, who has gone off in the years Bishop was in a mental institute (don't ask) and formed a ginormous company, Massive Dynamics.  Olivia is inquiring into what exactly is up, and is told of The Pattern -- a series of paranormal (or generally not-normal) events which are being investigated by the government, and which the cyborg-armed Ms. Sharp (Blair Brown) tells Olivia that -- whoops -- maybe that's just a bit above her pay-grade. The sense of this larger mystery... of things much much more interesting than flesh-melting chemicals... is what could keep the show hop-a-loppin' along. The X-Files-ish nature of these things, but done as only JJ Abrams can. That's the show I'm waiting to see.

I'm not going to lie: This pilot bored the shit out of me. And not just me either -- RoboRoommate v. 1 watched it with me and was also sufficiently comatose'd. Other associates who have seen the Pilot have expressed similar feelings towards it. Which might explain why Fox is pimping it so hard -- when your show ain't the cat's pajamas, you got to make it all purty-like for the audience.

I think the cast is great, even the crazy doctor, played by John Noble, whose mumbles you can't understand half the time, and the set-up is awesome. But if the rest of the episodes are like this -- an awesome inciting event followed by lots of... talking... and being weird... and not much else -- I don't know how long it can last for.

But don't let this stop you from watching the Pilot when it airs. Just stick-around for the next episode, like I am, and maybe we can figure out whether or not JJ Abrams just had a bad pilot... or just a bad show.

-RoboNixon

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I want to tell you Hellboy II is a step-up from its predecessor. I want to tell you Hellboy II is a step forward for director Guillermo del Toro in creating unique, twisted -- and accessible -- pieces of entertainment. I want to tell you to go see it.

But what I must tell you is a bit different.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army, is a wonderful piece of eye-candy, and a nice counterpoint to these $200 million blockbusters that pop-up each summer. Guillermo del Toro made a movie from $85 million that looks like it had a bigger budget than The Incredible Hulk. From the bajillion monster costumes, puppets, CG effects, and sets, it's all larger than life. Make-up is top-notch, and the performances of Ron Perlman and Doug Jones as Hellboy and Abe Sapien, respectively, are never hindered by the layers and layers they're covered with. From the oft-spoke-about Troll Market sequence to the Angel of Death, to the Forest Elemental, the visuals in the film are dynamic, and a treat.

Unfortunately, as a piece of cinema, the film does not hold up. I thought del Toro's previous film, the Spanish-language Pan's Labyrinth, was a fantastic, well paced, and focused piece of fantasy. Hellboy II is all over the place.

The film starts with a nice little flashback to an eleven year old Hellboy on an Army base on Christmas, being read the expositional-back-story to the Golden Army by his "father," Professor Broom, played by John Hurt who briefly reprises his role from the first film. 

With so much time spent on the expositional back-story of the Golden Army, and with the first non-flashback character we meet being the villain, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), the biggest problem of the film comes to light: Not enough time spent with Hellboy. Especially for new comers. If you didn't see the first film, you'd be fairly confused as to who Hellboy is and what he struggles with. For the first act of the film, it seems as if Hellboy, who has a --ahem-- fiery relationship with fellow "freak" and Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense co-worker, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), is all about being accepted by the public. Which doesn't really know he exists. So, of course, in cleaning-up the scene of Nuada's first act of war against humans (it involves Tooth Fairies eating people at an auction), he allows himself to be "outted" to the public... which causes a headache for Bureau Chief Manning (Jeffrey Tambor).

The thing is, with so little 1st act time actually spent with Hellboy, it's hard to understand why he wants to be part of the public so much. We don't meet Hellboy for probably 15 minutes, and then we don't really get a sense of who he is for maybe another half-hour. In fact, in the first scene we see him in he's having some sort of fight with Liz over their (I guess) co-habitation space being all dirty from his incredible-amount-0f-crap. Of course, there's something else a-brewin' between them, but since we don't spend really any time with just the two of them together, it's pretty difficult to surmise how things are. 

I should add that when Hellboy "comes out" to the public, Washington sends a new liaison to try and wrangle him. The man is another "freak," the ectoplasmic Johann Krauss. Voiced by Family Guy's Seth McFarlane, the character is a lot of fun, even if the "rules" of how his ephemeral body works is never quite clear (despite him listing what he can do). It's perhaps a tad ironic that a character who is not the focus of the film, who has no eyes, can exhibit no physical emotion, is the easiest to understand; Late in the film, when he must make a choice, his decision is clear, and you totally understand why. It's the little things, and seeing how it works so effectively when done well makes the lack of it for everyone else all the more tragic.

And this is the problem with the film. So much time is spent on moving the (rote) story forward that we end up with a lack of time with the characters. Abe, the pseudo-amphibious team member, quickly falls in love with Princess Nuala, Nuada's sister, and keeper of the last piece of the Golden Crown which controls the Golden Army. But why does he fall in love with her? Do they have some sort of connection... because all we get in the film is them touching each others' hands (they're both empaths -- can "read" thoughts, events, by touch) and... that's it. 

The big conflict of the film for Hellboy is between wanting to be part of the Human world -- which, once he's outted, likes to throw shit at him on the street and tell him he's ugly -- or the monster world, which is hankerin' for a war with the humans. Where does Hellboy's loyalty lie? But with the exception of a single moment, where this conflict is explicitly stated by Nuada, when Hellboy must decide whether to destroy a forest elemental --"the last of its kind"-- thus saving the occupants of New York -- or to let it live, thus choosing to side with the monsters against the blah blah blah humans.

But beyond this moment, it's never there. This central conflict of who Hellboy chooses to be is, well, not so central. 

As such, the movie sort of stutters forward toward a fairly anti-climactic end-fight, and you're left thinking: For a movie that looks so great, it failed to keep my attention.

My recommendation is do with Hellboy II what you did with Hellboy I -- Wait for DVD.

-RoboNixon

ps. I saw the movie w/RoboGirlfriend and after the movie, this is what she had to say about it: "I wanted to take a nap." Nerds with girlfriends, you have been warned.

Rock Band:Crack::RoboNixon:Crackhead

Rock Band for the Xbox 360 arrived last Wednesday. Any moment of free time has been spent punishing the drums, tearing up guitar solos, or groovin' on the bass. This game is out of control.

If you are familiar with the Guitar Hero games, then Rock Band will seem like a natural progression to you: Rather than using only a  guitar-simulating controller to simulate playing... the guitar, in Rock Band you have the addition of vocals on a mic, and drums on... these drums:

So with three of your friends you can form a band and go on "tour" around the world, racking up "Star" points, trying to lure a manager, an audio guy, bodyguards and so on while earning a van, tour bus, and the like, while unlocking new songs and venues.

And it is awesome. 

Playing a hard song with three of your buddies is an amazing kind of gameplay. Rather than playing against each other, or together against a common enemy, in this there is no defeating anything -- rather, it is playing music together. When someone misses a note, their instrument drops out of the song. When you all play in sync, hitting all your notes, the amount of points you can get is endless.

Rock Band is the opposite of Grand Theft Auto IV. Where that has an open-environment, and you can do as you please, when you please, capping bitches or stealing cars, Rock Band is much more about progressing naturally through the songs, defeating them one by one (or two+ at a time during "sets") with no bitch-capping or car-stealing. 

RoboRoommate v. 1 and myself play constantly, and even RoboGirlfriend -- an anti-gamer if there ever was one -- has jumped in and figured out the bass and sings along with the best of them.

Sticking points are small, but existent: you can definitely get Rock Band'd out, and the learning curve is pretty steep. Those of you out there without rhythm -- I'm looking at you. Drums are the hardest to pick up, with bass (or vocals, depending on your personal singing ability) at the easier end of the scale.

Otherwise, the game is hella-fun (yeah, I said it), and even though it can cost you $120-160, it's well worth the money. Go get Rock Band, and you too can create your characters, create a band, and rock your way across the globe.

-RoboNixon

ps. The character and band creators are loads of fun. My drum avatar is from the Netherlands, is named Jann, and you use money from gigs to dress him up. The two bands "Jann" is in are KITTEN and PINOT FILM NOIR. Using the character creator, RoboRoommate v.1 made a pretty dead-on young-Bruce Springsteen. So there are plenty of options for those stylists of you out there.

"Silas, Do You Suck Dick?"

Good bye, Albert Brooks. Good bye.

Last night was Mr. Brooks last Weeds episode of the season (according to interviews), and it saw a number of plot-moving events happen. Last night was a very interesting episode, if not the most memorable (or good) of the season. So let's take a stroll.

I think it's a big cop out to have last week's episode end with Nancy about to off Bubbie herself, with a pillow, in the living room, and to start this week up post-funeral. I guess the writers realized that having their main character euthanize a 90+ year old woman on screen was not the most sympathetic step-forward they could take. But maybe it would have been for the best -- I already get the feeling that Nancy doesn't really have emotions anymore as much as modes of operation -- panic, less panic, and pissed of. So how great would it have been to see her emotionless face, with maybe a roll of the eyes, as the life escaped from her sons' great-grandmother? At this point I think WEEDS is on its way to becoming a sort-of Frankenstein story, where Nancy is the monster that everyone else lends a piece of themselves to create.

What was the deal with all the realtors in the episode? A lot of distracted screen time was spent with them. I hope they play a continued role in the rest of the season, if only to validate their existence in this episode. And what happened to the rest of the Agrestic cast? They are cutting characters left and right in this show. Dean and Isabella are notably absent, Conrad and Heylia are gone for good, so maybe this is their attempt to introduce some new "whacky" side characters. 

I wonder when Andy will realize Nancy has become an emotionless machine. After being played in the desert? Maybe. But unlikely. Like everyone else in the show, he is a complete idiot. It's actually a problem I've been having with Kevin Nealon's Doug. In the beginning of the show, he's kind of an idiot because he's really good at his job, and so he can sort of be a man-child in the rest of his time -- he's bored, and that's how he exists. But as the stakes for him have gotten higher and higher (literally and figuratively), he hasn't panicked or freaked out or become less of an idiot. Now, after his sham insurance plans for Agrestic were discovered, where does he flee to? To a known accomplice's place. Where he sits in a van and gets high all the time. Dude, were I on the run for fraud, the last thing I'd do is that. It's TV, I guess. It's just a disappointment. I prefer Nealon as a spoiled, intelligent man-child. C'est la vie.

Albert Brooks shows his characters true colors (in case we had missed them before) by being a total asshole to Shane and then walking out on the family with all of Nancy's formerly-hidden-money. Shane continues to be the most fucked up kid on the face of the Earth, and Silas is just an idiot. Does anyone else remember when he punctured his condoms and impregnated his deaf teenage girlfriend? That shit's fucked up. But they've taken a half-step back, and now he's not really a tragic figure, a young man waylaid by the premature death of his family's patriarch and the downward spiral of his mother, but instead just a guy who grows weed in a truck and gets high a lot. 

And of course, at the end of the episode, Celia gets caught and Nancy is put into a precarious position. My hope is, of course, that they just put a fucking bullet between Celia's eyes, but maybe that's just me. I mean, Nancy's already a murderer (see: Bubbie), so it's just the next step, ordering hits on people. But no, instead we'll get some girls-are-back-together crap before Nancy discovers what Celia's true motives are and it all comes to a head and (yawn). 

I was thinking about how I miss Marta, from the first two seasons. But it was a very, very different show then. I still like WEEDS -- I laughed a lot last night -- but it's not the show it used to be. 

But hey. It's better than nothing.

-RoboNixon

Hand Cock

I wrote a big long scathing review of Will Smith's latest flick, HANCOCK, before realizing that it wasn't even worth the scorn. So here's my shorter review, so my brain can get to work on deleting all memories of it that-much-sooner. 

The film is terrible. And this coming from someone who enjoyed Transformers. I mean, if I was willing to give that film a pass on all of its horrible shit, you'd think I could maybe give Will Smith a freebie for his take on the superhero genre.

That is not the case. 

Now, to be fair, not all of Hancock is terrible. The first half is watchable, if not particularly good, but there were a few laughs and some cool moments. The second half is worse-than-Kindom-of-the-Crystal-Skull-bad. Just terrible. A complete misfire.

Will Smith plays amnesiac, immortal, super-powered drunk, living in Los Angeles and "fighting crime" when he feels like it. Usually this involves him inadvertently destroying things, or making the situation worse than it needs to be. And a first for Will Smith, Hancock is not only not-bright, but also has no sense of humor. Smith is always watchable, but I was afraid at any moment he'd just punch through someone's head out of frustration because he could not take a ride on "Q-Q-Q-Qantas airlines."

Jason Bateman does his best to hold together an incoherent 2nd half, and Charlize Theron is wasted collecting a paycheck and really nothing else.

Beyond the fact that Hancock's entire arc occurs in the first half of the film... Beyond the ridiculous "origin" they give him, which makes no sense... Beyond the redundant scenes of Hancock going "Tell me who I am," and someone else screaming "I hate you" at him without telling him anything, despite the fact that this other someone knowing about his amnesia from 80 years ago... Beyond the non-developed, super-late introduced "bad-guy"... Beyond all this... There's a good film that wants to be made. io9 had a particularly nice piece about all the problems with this movie, and how there's a good movie that wants to exist in there.

But, as such, it does not. Hancock is a terrible, terrible piece of shit, and the worst Will Smith movie I've ever seen, hands down. It is not worth your time, your money, or another second of me ruminating on it.

Don't see it.

I warned you.

-RoboNixon