Bondathon: From Russia With Love (1963)

Bondathon! Because me writing about the same goddamn thing over and over again is better than me writing about nothing! And don't worry I'll put up a post about my experiences in England once I have an opinion on it beyond "it's cold". Fuck it! Let's jump in.

Obviously, Dr. No was a box office success, but that's probably not a surprise. It did have over twenty goddamn sequels. By this point the studio was very much in the mindset of "okay, we're really doing this." So the next film on the agenda was given a doubled budget (about $2 million), and a release date for literally the next year.  The results were pretty good.

From Russia With Love

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

Date: 1963
Director: Terence Young
Bond: Sean Connery
Number: 2
Starring: Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Vladek Sheybal, Lois Maxwell, and Desmond Llewelyn.
The one with: The train, Istanbul, Cold-War, knife-shoes, Red Grant, gypsies.

The interesting thing about this plot is the fact that it's actually fairly complicated, especially compared to the last film. This time, MI6 is contacted by Tatiana Romanova, a Soviet Intelligence agent who wants to defect to England with a code-machine that the English desperately want. The twist is, she will only meet with one agent: James Bond, who she alleges to have fallen in love with after seeing pictures of him somewhere, which is precisely why Bond does not have a facebook.

Obviously it's a trap, she is working for Rosa Klebb, who is, in turn an agent of SPECTRE, a criminal syndicate run by a faceless man with a cat. SPECTRE wants to steal the device and then sell it back to the soviets, while also getting revenge on Bond for killing a former agent: Dr. No.

Bond goes to Istanbul where he meets with agent Kerrim Bey, together they enjoy lapdances by gypsies and fight off Soviet hitman, and Bond meets with Tatiana, before the two finally get on the Orient Express train, and that's where the film really gets started. Throughout the film, Bond must get Tatiana to fall for him so that he can maintain her allegiance and get the device, all while dodging assassination attempts by train, plane, and boat. During the time on the train, we finally get an answer to the age-old question: who would win in a fight between James Bond and Quint from Jaws?

The answer is Batman

Bond

Connery is great as ever, but he's more reserved here. This is only the second film, so there's still a level of vulnerability. He almost dies several times, and when he comes face-to-face with Grant, we actually get scared for a second.

The Villain

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

There are quite a few villains, actually, but the main one is Rosa Klebb, and she's not too scary. She's more of just a very angry, ugly, Russian women. She has several points of vulnerability and desperation as well, do in no small part to her working under a far more sinister villain whose face is revealed later. She gets the plot moving, but the guy we're scared of comes later.

Bond girls

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

This section is actually more restrained this time; we only really get one and that's Tatiana, and she's fantastic. She's gorgeous and witty, and keeps Bond and the audience on their toes as to which side she's on throughout the film. Daniela Bianchi is not a poor actress either, which is great considering she's the catalyst for the film's plot.

Review

But in order to get into what's great about this film I have to go over the supporting cast, particularly the always great Robert Shaw as Red Grant, the hitman hired by Klebb to track down and kill Bond. Part of the great thing about this being the second film is that Bond still feels less like a superhero and more like a man. There are scenes with Shaw that bring out the mortal man in Bond, and the scene where they meet in particular is not only incredibly suspenseful, but it quickly leads to a fantastic fight scene.
The reason Grant is probably my favorite Bond hencheman by far is that we are lead to see him as the Soviet's answer to Bond; cold, merciless, and willing to complete any job at any cost.

Hell find Bond for three, but he'll catch 'im, an' kill 'im, fer ten.
Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

In most other ways, this is a pretty great movie. The action is surprisingly exhilarating for it's time, and the performances and setpieces are all fun to watch. It drags occasionally, not so much on the train, which has the great chemistry between Connery, Bianchi, and the always hovering Shaw to keep it interesting, but a lot of the scenes in Istanbul could feel a little unnecessary. But for a truly great Bond movie, or even just a taught, engaging intelligence thriller, this is a good choice.

A

Bondathon: Dr. No (1962)

Great, now Bondathon can get started proper. Dr. No, for those of you don't, well, "No", I guess, is the first official Bond film ever made and released in theaters. But because this is the first Bond film, there's a lot of background to cover. The novel "Dr. No" was not, for example the first James Bond book (it's the sixth, released in '58), nor is it the most classic (I know that's a subjective statement but this is a blog so it's fact), nor was it the most popular. All of those things describe Casino Royale, but the rights to that book had been sold in the mid-fifties to someone else. More on that later, trust me. Fortunately, Bond was an established character in an entire franchise of popular books to choose from at this point. Like Jack Reacher, or Katniss, only more people than your dad and your sister liked
him.

So naturally, the time came to create a film franchise. Now I could go all E-True Hollywood Story on you and try and convince you that it was a long-shot, and then show interviews with a bunch of talking heads saying things like "nobody knew it would work!" and "there was a huge risk" and "everyone thought he was crazy!" and "he eventually wound up in rehab", because, while there's certainly an element of all that (except for rehab), as there is with any venture in Hollywood, it's mostly bullshit. It was the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars of it's time; there may have been a risk, but the smart (and shrewd) definitely saw the reward. Sure, not everyone saw the investment value in it; this was, after all, an older, more artistic Hollywood. A Hollywood where Douglas's were Kirked and Hitches were Cocked (those both sound painful...), and movies generally weren't blockbusters unless they were old enough to legally drink and involved Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable sighing at each other for three-and-a-half fucking hours.

Just kidding, no hour spent watching this movie will be a fucking hour. That's for sure....

But the right man saw a way to turn this film into a franchise, showing an attitude towards movies that was surprisingly ahead of his time (if this were to happen today, he would have had reboots planned, and each film would be in three parts). This man was Albert R. Broccoli. Remembering that Salt always went great with Broccoli (I'm so sorry...) Al teamed up with Harry Saltzman, who had recently gotten film rights from the man, myth, and legend himself, Ian Fleming, for seven movies. United Artists, upon hearing this, offered complete financial backing. In order to hold the rights, Saltzy and Brocolli created the company EON to produce the movies, and Hollywood was one step closer to being the sequel-crazy industry it is today.

There's more too, about how the first script involved Dr. No being a monkey, but that's not important.

No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

Dr. No

Photo credit: United Artists/MGM

Date: 1962
Director: Terence Young
Bond: Sean Connery
Number: 1
Starring: Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell.
The one with: "Bond, James Bond", Ursula-in-Undress, Jamaica, the tarantula, the "dragon", radioactive material, guy with metal hands.

The plot is actually not that complicated. When a British agent in Jamaica is killed by black blind people, MI6 suspects treachery and sends another agent to go take his place and investigate the circumstances of his death. Because Jamaica is rife with crime, gambling, and naked women, but also seems to be an intelligence dead-zone where odd happenings occur, it fits that MI6 send an agent who is both sexy and dangerous enough to investigate in ways other men cannot. This agent is codenamed 007, but this code name proves pointless because he announces his real name to literally every person who will hear it. Apparently his name is Bond James Bond, which is how he introduces himself.

Bond James Bond arrives in Jamaica and meets with CIA agent Felix Leiter, who reveals that he is investigating a signal in the area that is jamming American rockets! With the help of Jamaican associate Mr. Quarrel, Agent Bond James Bond goes to the island of Crab Key, where he investigates strange ongoings that involve miners mining for suspicious rocks under the employ of the mysterious Dr. No.

Will Agent 007 be able to find out what is happening at crab key? Can he beat a man with metal hands in a fight? What is the nature of the mysterious bikini women he meets, and does it involve romance? You'll have to watch to find out the answers to these questions, which are probably, hopefully, and definitely. 

Bond

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

 First thing's first: as popular as the books were, and as unpopular (I'm assuming) as that Climax! show was, this was Bond's introduction to a whole world of fans; and the same goes for his actor, Sean Connery. A little background (you should be used to it by now): Connery was not the first choice for Bond. Fleming didn't like him, he wanted David Niven (I'll tell you how that went...), it was Broccoli who chose Connery, a young bodybuilder at the time. The reason being, I suppose, that a young man without much money could be taught to be dapper, but a rich gentlemen could not be taught to be a badass. 

The results are obvious; Connery is fantastic. To get the obvious stuff out of the way, he's suave and sexy from the moment he introduces himself in the middle of lighting a cigar at a table, but he's also dangerous in the way that women like. Or, in the modern vernacular, "he's a hilarious douchebag." Bond doesn't give a shit. He sleeps with plenty of women even though he clearly has a girlfriend back home, not to mention a receptionist with whom he clearly has a history. He's also dangerous in the way that men like, or in the modern vernacular "he might be a psycopath". He famously murders a guy in cold blood in one scene. It's exciting because this is the first time we're meeting the character, and even if you've seen the movies before, watching Connery in the role is a whole different experience.

But the main thing Connery brings to the role is humor, which is something he would later admit in interviews to being a personal choice. Bond never takes himself too seriously, even when he's doing serious stuff, and this would turn out to be why we loved him.

The Villain

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

The villain is, of course, Dr. Julius No, which is almost certainly a fake name constructed to either do evil or write detective books. Dr. No is played by Joseph Wiseman, who rarely gets the credit he deserves as the first true Bond villain, perhaps because he doesn't actually show up until fairly late into the film. But that's kind of the point, for most of the film he is MIA, and this somehow makes him that much more creepy. He sets the precedence for baddies who can use money and power to make bad things happen and then cover it up, but when he finally arrives we're not let down. He just exudes power. He matches Bond's humor by being entirely cold and humorless. He's not a perfect Bond villain, and indeed we get some much better ones later on, but for his film he works.

Bond Girls

Photo Credit: United Artists/MGM

Ursula Andress, as Honey Ryder, is sexy, in that weird "she's really really old now"kind of way. Honestly, her acting isn't great though. I know that's a weird thing to want from a role that's historically played by models, but work with me here. I was kind of underwhelmed. We also get Eunice Grayson as Bond's on-again-off-again girlfriend Sylvia Trench.

Review

I'll try and keep this short because this is already a long-ass post. Basically, when I undertook "Bondathon" I wanted to answer the question of "if you're going to sit down and watch a Bond movie, which one should it be?" While it depends on what you're looking for, Dr. No is a pretty great place to start, because, well, it's where everyone started.

 Honestly, when you come down to it, Dr. No is not a very good Bond movie, because it seems like it doesn't offer anything at all new, because when it came out everything was new. It is, however, a great movie for that reason, if only in the sense that introduces us to Bond, and all the crazy things he does. Even when it's slow, it's suspenseful, and when it's fast, it doesn't get too silly. 

The supporting cast is very good as well, we get introduced to Bernard Lee as M, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, and Jack Lord as Felix Leiter. It's not perfect, the action isn't very believable. You may say that's a lame accusation for a movie from the sixties, but the next two movies have incredible action for their time.

Ultimately, Dr. No is't just a Bond movie, it's the original Bond movie. So it's a fun, exciting, and cool introduction to the series, but to someone already familiar with the character, it only really offers novelty. 

Rating: A-

Bondathon: Casino Royale (1954)

Finally!

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but haven't gotten the time (or focus) to sit down and actually start. In honor of James Bond's fiftieth anniversary, and in recompense for having been completely out of the loop in terms of Bond lore, I decided to watch all the Bond movies from beginning to end and do a review of them.

Now, as I'm sure I don't need to remind any of you, I'm new to this whole blogging thing and I'm lazy, so I'm already about seven movies in and I haven't reviewed any. And I took a break like three months ago to start my INLAND EMPIRE NEWS BLOG BITCHES! (You can visit it here: http://iegrapevine.com/). Being a blogger, it turns out, is much tougher than I thought it would be. I mean don't get me wrong, it's still incredibly easy, but just work with me here.

BONDATHON
(imagine the Bond theme is playing right now)

James fucking Bond. Why do we love him so much? Men want to be him, women want to bed him, and some men want to do both. In many ways he's a suave, sexy, and killer vision of masculinity and adventure. In many others, he's a symbol of fascism, misogyny, and is probably a complete psychopath. His escapades have led to some of film's most iconic moments, and has been instrumental in making hollywood the way it is today. It shows too, the franchise is the second most successful in history, having grossed a grand total of over six billion dollars at the international box office, stretched over twenty-three official films and two unofficial ones (we'll go over just what that means later). That's an average of $246 million per film. So come along on my magic rainbow of nude women and guns, as we traverse over fifty years of cinema to look at all the movies starring the man called Bond.

I could write a whole post about strictly the franchise alone, but that would spoil some of the points I make later, so let's jump right in. And, in a series full of some of the spy genre's most famous titles, where is a good place to start?

Why, with something nobody's ever heard of, of course!

Casino Royale (Climax!)


Date: 1954
Director: William H. Brown Jr
Bond: Barry Nelson
Number: 0
Starring: Peter Lorre, Linda Christian, Michael Pete, Eugene Borden.
The one with: nobody watching.


You may want to call me out on this one, considering that Bond's first ever appearance onscreen was during a half-hour episode of anthology series Climax! in the fifties, and not a theatrical film. But, it is a "movie" (with a running time of 48 minutes, it meets the criteria, but barely) starring James Bond, so I felt it deserved a mention. Also fuck you, it's my Bondathon. Go make your own if you don't like it.

Plot: CIA agent (no you read that correctly) Jimmy Bond (still reading it correctly) is commissioned to attend a game of high-stakes Baccarat in order to bankrupt terrorist financier Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre), so that he can be taken into custody, but the situation becomes complicated when Bond finds out that an old flame of his, Mathis (Linda Christian, in a role that would later be played a large italian man), has a thing with Le Chiffre and may be playing both sides. Bond's going to need help from his British secret agent buddy, Leiter (still reading it) to stop Le Chiffre!

Background: In order to understand Casino Royale the movie, you must understand Casino Royale the book. The novel, by Ian Fleming, introduced the world to James Bond, and is considered a literary classic of spy fiction as a result. However, in its early years it was jut a sort of popular book, so the tv series Climax!, an anthology of television fiction not unlike The Twilight Zone decided to adapt the story as an episode of the show. The rest is history. Literally. Nobody saw the episode when it came out and it got lost for almost two decades. It's on youtube now.

Review: Now, it's time to address the elephant in the room: everything is fucking backwards. Bond's an American, Leiter's a brit, and Mathis is a woman.

Pictured: The love interest.

If it were made today, people would freak out.
But, it wasn't made today; it was made almost ten years before the franchise got started proper, so judging it by today's standards may not be fair. But even aside the obvious comparisons, it sort of fails to hold one's interest. It's forgettable, which is probably why it got, well, forgotten so easily. It's not really bad, but watching it at the time could not have been an experience beyond boring, and watching it today is just oddly surreal.

Bond: Nelson is the first actor to ever play James Bond, which is funny because he's probably the worst. In the original book, James Bond was supposed to be a boring, uninteresting brute who ran around and did shit, like a hero in those books your dad likes to buy from the gas station. To his credit, Barry Nelson (whose most famous role is as the dude who interviews Jack Nicholson in The Shining) definitely plays him that way. I almost cracked up when I saw him the first time. Most of this comes from the fact that he's completely uninteresting and not incredibly charismatic. To be fair, he brings a vulnerability to the role that would be missing for quite a while afterward.

Bond Girl: Linda Christian has the honor of being the first ever Bond girl, and she serves her purpose. She's an unwitting femme fatale who gets the man she loves into trouble because she can't separate him from her professional life. She's not a bad actress and she's attractive in that "this feels weird because she's dead now" kind of way.

Linda Christian: seen here with noted time-traveller James Franco

Villain: Peter Lorre is Le Chiffre, and while he's arguably the best thing about the episode, he's still by no means as good as Mads Mikkelsen, or even Orson Welles (we'll get to that later though.)

Here's Lorre, looking more like James Bond than literally anyone else in the movie.

Again, it feels mean to pick on the film, or episode, or whatever, but it's kind of its own fault: it had no real idea what kind of story it was adapting and it shows. But the guy who plays Leiter isn't bad, and Lorre is a good Le Chiffre, although by no means the best one. But, who cares. It has its moments of suspense, particularly in the third act. It was also filmed live, believe it or not, which is pretty impressive. If you're a huge Bond fan, it's worth a watch just for the weird novelty, but if you're a casual viewer, you won't get much out of it.

Rating: C



Ryan Downs will return in Dr. No

My Thoughts on the VMAs

Here I will outline all the things I thought about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs:

What's going on?

I don't have any

This may be because I missed them. But then I wrote about comic-con, which I also missed. But whereas comic-con was interesting in it's own weird way, I don't see how this is interesting in any way.

I guess it was weird. Or something.

I guess JT did something cool, which pretty much describes every award show in Hollywood.

Usually something weird happens at the VMAs, and this year was surprising in that something weird happened, which is not surprising. I still remember the good old days, when everyone was freaking out about Taylor Swift getting hilariously interrupted by Kanye West, who thought that Taylor Swift did not deserve an award that should have gone to Beyonce. (To be fair, he was right.)

But apparently this time something happened.

Miley Cyrus's thing was kind of gross

Okay, I did see that, and I did not like. Somebody needs to tell her that having her tongue out is not attractive, or slutty, or worth attention, or shocking, or anything. It's just a thing she does. And that's the whole performance. Like that tongue thing is "her thing" now or something. It's not, it's just weird. But hey if that's her deal, whatever.
It's called demographics. Which brings me to my next point.

Who gives a shit?

Now I don't want to come off as all high and mighty that I don't find this interesting. I just wrote an article for a news blog I work for about Ben Affleck being the new Batman. I'm in no position to comment on people talking about pointless things. But Batman is always interesting, a celebrity who is less famous now than she used to be acting crazy at the VMAs (which is kind of the place you're supposed to do it, really) is not new.

And what's with all this feminism bullshit? Suddenly we're having a discussion about sexuality and it's place in feminism? Don't get me wrong, that's a good discussion to have, but does Miley Cyrus have to be the framework? Maybe she does. I don't know. Again, I don't give a shit. You know what I do care about?

Didn't we literally just decide to blow up another country?

There it is!

Again, I don't want to come off as high and mighty, but how come nobody's talking about this?
Because apparently we really need to have a discussion about behavior that was clearly invented by a bunch of cynical perverts who manage a teenage girls music career to sell more publicity?
Well, again, I'm not one to point fingers, because I'm not the target audience.

Why the hell am I even writing about this?

What people are forgetting is that, to an outsider, Miley's like that one girl at a party. You know the one. Her behavior isn't really shocking or sexy, it's just sort of weird, and we're not going to talk to that girl anymore. It's so asking to be shocking that it isn't. But then, I'm not the target audience.

You know who I am the target audience for? The new Avenged Sevenfold album.

Comic Con 2013 Coverage (From Someone Who Did Not Attend)

Comic Con, the weekend-long celebration of nerddom, or whatever the media likes to believe is nerddom, has come and gone once again. And, once again, the geekiest boy in San Diego county missed his opportunity to attend.  It's come as a surprise to many of my friends that someone like me is so conspicuously absent from the activities, and I am positive I was missed.

My relationship with Comic Con is tenuous, much like Ross and Rachel's; everyone knows I'm going to end up inside it one day, but its just a matter of time as to when. I attended once in 2006 with me dad, and all I remember was walking around in the main hall (you know the one with all the actual comics, where the real nerds go), and then attending like two or three panels about children's trading card games and nickelodeon shows (the biggest panel I've ever attended was the nickelodeon one). My dad used to take me to nerd conventions a lot when I was a kid, because setting up conventions was more or less his career, and by 06 he was retired and I was a friendless kid in high school so neither of us had much of a life  we both had plenty of time to go do cool shit together. I remember the biggest things going on were the panels for the upcoming Simpsons Movie and Spider-Man 3 (poor little dears were so excited), as well as a lot of press for that summer's upcoming box office disaster, Snakes On A Plane. I wasn't quite the same kind of guy that I was back then. Remember how I said I used to just like Bionicles and trading cards? That was the summer I became a true geek. To put it in perspective, that very same summer I saw Bryan Singer's X-Men 2 for the first time and I have never been the same since. I went from a shy, closet nerd to flamboyant media whore in the span of a summer

Left: me before Comic Con, Right: me after Comic Con

Why I Was Not There

This is all an incredibly long way of saying that I have not, for various reasons, been back since. Why? Laziness, lack of someone to go with for a few years, and that fiasco back in 2011 when the site crashed during sales (even quicker than usual). This was because a panel for the final Twilight film: Breaking Bad or whatever the fuck it was called, had been announced and the sheer volume of nerds who don't normally attend Comic Con (those exist) suddenly buying tickets made it near impossible for anyone else to. To put it in perspective, imagine if there was panel where Tim Tebow was officiating, and you could punch him in the face whenever you wanted. Nerds wouldn't care, but chances are, so many sports fans would come just for one panel it would fuck up the whole system.

                                                 

I don't even pay attention to sports, and even I don't like this guy.

And then the year after that I was in Ireland. This year, I was just busy, and considering most people who get tickets to Comic Con get them a year in advance (that is, they literally buy them at the convention) it's incredibly hard to get them again. Every time it seems like not that big of a deal, until it comes and I get all upset that I wasn't there when a bunch of big things happen without my presence (let alone my permission). However, I still try to stay in the loop, so lets look at a few things we did find out this year.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Let's start with the least surprising news by far: there is going to be another Avengers movie. Big surprise. While 2011's revelation of the long-planned Avengers movie, and its full unveiling of the cast, is precisely the sort of reason you go to Comic Con, the Avengers 2 panel could not have been that interesting, in my completely less-than-credible opinion. I also imagine it was a dissapointment, and everyone there was secretly thinking "gee, if only we skipped the whole thing and just stayed at home and blogged, that would have been the smart thing to do!"

Okay, as much as I wish, that probably isn't the case, and the panel did have some badass news (and any opportunity to see Whedon in person has to be well worth it). Among them was the news that the next Avengers movie would be based on the Age of Ultron storyline from the comics. You know, the one that's not even a year old. And involves not just the Avengers, but the entire Marvel Universe getting their asses kicked by Hank Pym's robot. Of course, keeping in mind that, in Avengers math, ludicrosity directly correlates with badassery, it should be pretty cool.

Yeah, remember this guy? He's not gonna be in it after all. 

Days of Future Past

But if there is one panel that I am genuinely sorry I missed, it's this one. As I mentioned earlier, X-Men, specifically the films, will always have a place in my heart, and Brian Singer's movies, though criticized extensively by some of Marvel's bitchier fans, remain among my favorite films ever made. Since then, in a desperate attempt to keep the series going since Brett Ratner's shitty ending, we've had two Wolverine spinoffs (one of which will not be out for another week, and the other of which was a piece of shit), and a prequel. So when it was revealed that the sequel to First Class would not only be an amalgamation of the original trilogy and the newer films, but also an adaptation of one of the greatest X-Men stories of all time, Days of Future Past, I was already pumped. But I didn't really feel it until I saw the pictures of the entire assembled cast at the panel.

Notice how nobody gave Peter Dinklage a box to stand on. I'm guessing nobody had the balls.

For those of you keeping track, in the above picture are at least five of my favorite actors, including Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, in addition to five actors I really respect, Game of Throne's Peter Dinklage, Omar "that guy fromThe Intouchables" Sy, James McAvoy, and Oscar nominees Ellen Page, Halle Berry and Anna Paquin. Also Shawn Ashmore. The only guy up there I don't really like is Nicholas Hoult, whose ugly face is mercifully blocked by James McAvoy's more handsome face. There's also some guy from American Horror Story, who will be playing Magneto's son, Quicksilver; a character who will allegedly be appearing in Avengers 2 played by somebody else, because fuck you Hollywood.

Now the reason this upsets me is because, as many of you know, I'm running out of things to be excited about. Now that Harry Potter is over, Dark Knight is over, and The Hobbit is lame, the only movie I'm still really really excited about is this one. This could be the last time so much talent I respect are all at one panel. Seriously, the only thing missing from above is Christopher Nolan, Viggo Mortensen, and a T-Rex to make it perfect. But until Jurassic Park 4 comes out (which it probably never will), this is what I'm most excited for.

But that's not what you're interested in. No, you want to hear the big news....

World's Finest

Far beyond the news that there is going to be a sequel to Hunger Games that will probably be awesome, or the fact that a stuntman from Kick-Ass 2 managed to save a suicidal woman from a ledge, or the news that Bryan Cranston walked the floor disguised in cosplay as his own character from Breaking Bad, was the news at the Warner Brothers panel.

Yes, this is happening.

In typically dramatic fashion, Zack Snyder, director of 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, and a litany of other movies that should have been amazing but were just sort of okay, invited the angry black guy from The Matrix Reloaded to read the "I'm the one man who beat you" line from Dark Knight Returns before this behemoth took over the screen. It's a bit surprising that we should be so surprised: Warner Brothers needs a new direction with the Man of Steel sequel, they need a film to introduce Justice League, and they want to reboot Batman, so why not do it all at once? I'm too much of a skeptical cynic to be completely excited though, and here's why.

First of all, the old Batman hasn't even been dead for that long. I know Warner Brothers wants to move on with their big Avengers ripoff as soon as possible, and, considering that I love both Batman and Justice League, I should be excited right? So how come I'm kind of....well...not? Maybe it's because even a super nerd like me has his limits, and I must admit I'm getting a little fatigued. I'm sure I'll talk more about this in the future, and I will probably see it, but, as far as I'm concerned, my generation already has a Batman. What's it going to be like when they reboot him, again? Is he going to keep the voice? The grit? My thoughts on how a Justice League film could work in the post Dark Knight trilogy context is enough to fill a whole nother post, which I'm sure I'll get around to in due time, so I'll keep it to this. In spite of all my cynicism, there is absolutely no way to look at the above picture and not be a little excited.

The good thing: It's directed by Zack Snyder and takes place in the Man of Steel world, so it's a fresh take on the character instead of another Dark Knight sequel. The lame thing: I't's directed by Zack Snyder. Goodie.

The End

Well, that about does it. It was probably the most momentous year for Comic Con in a long time, and will continue to be for a long time. Oh well, there is one thing I can gleam:

These two missed it too.

Also, I saw the Stones in concert and you didn't. So there.

Bionicle: An Explanation

Because, frankly there needs to be one.

                                                 Lego

For those of who you knew me growing up, you may have known that there were two things I was always interested in above all else: Dinosaurs and Bionicle. Yes, believe it or not, cinema, art, literature, video games, alcohol, women, still dinosaurs, batman, and more alcohol did not cover the bases until I was older and more developed. For most of my life, it was dinosaurs and Bionicle. And Yu-Gi-Oh (but the less said about that the better). That's because when one is into Bionicle, one is often not into other things, up to and including conversing with human beings.
The reason I bring this up is because everyone had that one thing they were really nerdy about as kids. I mean we all loved Harry Potter and stuff, but everyone had that one thing that they were absolutely obsessed with. For most normal people (or, normal nerds), it was Star Trek, or superheroes, neither of which I showed much interest in until I was older. For me, it was Bionicle. It was a magic thing for me, and like most things that are magic to children; it accomplished this with a focused combination of genius and absolute stupidity, one of which became more and more apparent over the years.

Yes, there was a movie at one point. I watched it more than I went to church.

       

An Overview

"Bionicles" were those lego things kids bought and assembled in their homes. They had masks and swords and moving parts that you could choke on if you were too young. So, naturally, they were considered the coolest things in the world for like a week in 2003. I don't want to be completely assholeish, there is something undeniably neat about an action figure you can create, and customize, at your will. It built upon a children's imagination, and their need to buy more things to satiate their imagination. Your kid becomes smarter, and they make money off of it, great!

But here's where it got interesting: there was a story to it. A story that you had to read books and watch movies and go online to follow. Every toy had a character and a purpose. It started off small, a bunch of villagers (all available in canisters for about $5.99) lived on a racially segregated island. The white guys live in the mountains and are quiet, the black guys live underground, the brown ones are jocks, the red guys are assholes, the green guys never shut up, and the blue guys are women (if it seems like I'm above all of it, keep in mind, I know all of their names). But there's a big evil guy who wants to take over the whole island, and the good warrior guys (the primary sets) have to learn the value of teamwork and come together to stop him and his army of bigger, more expensive sets.

Because if your parents did not give you Dark Lord Teridax, your parents did not love you.

And it carried on like that for a while, and it was actually pretty badass. They even made a movie, and it was my favorite thing ever as a kid.

But then it got weird

The problem with Bionicle is that it relied on the story too heavily, a story that involved an almost obsessive compulsive level of consistency with each year being the same. So, they decided to pull a George Lucas, and make a prequel. In 2004 and 2005, we found out that the little villager guys on the island used to live on a completely different island.......way underground. And it was a futuristic city. Being attacked by plants. So the idea was to tell a story about how these weird little robot dudes lost their memories and ended up on a tropical island.....all while trying to sell a bunch of toys to little kids.
The job fell on the shoulders of Mr. Greg Farshtey.

Now Greg was the head writer of the Bionicle books and comics and shit. It was his job to build the universe based on the toy models from the boys upstairs. Problem was, the story started making less and less sense. The guys from Lego would come to Greg with toy models and be like "okay next year they're all going to be underwater, so find a way to make that work" and then the year after be like "okay now they're all airplanes, they have like fuckin' wings sticking out of their ass, because Jim did too much coke on a plane." And he couldn't explain to them that that doesn't make any sense because I just had them underwater, how can they just turn into planes?

This is your fault Jim!

Then it got really weird

When 2006 hit, the boys in the office came out with new set designs featuring Bionicles that had big ugly thuggish grills, and carried guns. Well not guns, they were called something else, but they were guns. There was a rap video released starring the characters, and it became pretty obvious they were trying to corner a certain market. It was their most successful year.

                                                        Bionicle: Straight Outta Compton

But the story continued to get weirder and weirder. By this point we found out that all the villager dudes and warrior dudes and big evil guys are all robots living on a bunch of different islands inside a really really big robot who is in a coma and underwater. Before long, Greg would have to run Q and A blogs on a major fan website just to help people understand what the shit was going on. By this point, the fanbase and the universe it loved was the saddest thing in the world. A bunch of people who knew everything about a story, but nothing else. It's like what Star Trek used to be, but it never really caught up to that level of mainstream popularity because....

And now

Now it's over. A few years ago Lego got sick of the story because they couldn't get anyone new involved, so they moved the entire story to a completely different location. A distant planet where little robot villager dudes and big robot warrior dudes lived. So, in other words, nothing changed. The line ended about a year later.

By this point, I was still paying close attention, but I was only one of about five fans left in the whole world, and I'm pretty sure the other four were Danish. To put the point home, Greg said he would keep adding story chapters online, but he stopped when he realized nobody was paying attention anymore, which is literally the most depressing thing that can happen to an expanded universe.

In the end, it's just this weird thing that happened. I'm pretty glad it did, for the most part. It made me want to tell stories, and it was a lot of fun for me as a kid. It's ridiculous in the sense that it's an amazingly complex and creative world that nobody really knows about, and they probably never will, because for all its more interesting facets, it was meant to sell toys. But a product that makes money off of your imagination is a step in the right direction. Also it got replaced by this.

New from Lego: Totally not Power Rangers, we swear.

Woke Up This Morning

Well this is my fifth blog post to date, and already my second blog post about a celebrity who has died recently and made me sad. Believe me when I say I did not intend for this blog to become an obituary for famous people. I really had much better aspirations for this blog. In fact, I was kind of hoping it would be "Annamal Crackers". Look it up (are you looking at it? I used to hang out with that chick!) There were a lot of things I wanted to talk about, like how awesome Justice League is, but then one of my all-time favorite actors had to go and die and shit. So I'm going to try and make sure this post does not reflect how sad I actually am. Shouldn't be too hard, I think most bloggers are that way.

You know, besides Tumblr. Everyone's sad on Tumblr.

For those who don't know, television's greatest actor (sorry Bob Crane) recently passed away at the young age of 51 this week, when he was violently attacked while on vacation in Italy by his own heart. Sometimes you just can't trust those fuckers. To most people who met him, which, sadly, was not me, he was a gentle and honest man. To most of the world though, he was famous for playing a large, constantly angry Italian gangster who dealt with his stress by beating the piss out of other people and occasionally seeing a therapist. Naturally, it was generally regarded as the greatest thing to ever happen to television since the invention of the remote.

Just kidding, this thing sucks.

In playing the befuddled and stressed, but nonetheless badass mob boss Tony Soprano in the earlier part of the 2000s, Gandolf the James established a standard in TV performance that had simply not existed before, and became an overnight legend for turning HBOs The Sopranos into what was certainly the greatest television show of the time, if not all time. Yeah I said it, fuck The Wire (mild sarcasm, The Wire's fantastic). His show, and his presence on it, helped pave the way for more complex  fare on television like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Justice League. Whereas before if you wanted to watch quality television you would have to watch shows like Frasier and reruns of Star Trek. I cannot imagine a greater hell. Granted, the series owed an equally large amount of thanks to the rest of the cast, including Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, and other people who are all both less talented and still alive, and so will receive no more credit on this particular post. 

But we don't want this whole post to be just about Tony Soprano, who has been dead for going on five years now, if he died at all (I don't know what the ending was all about either). Mr. Gandolfini was much more than just a physically intimidating italian man, although this typecast proved difficult for the man to shake. It's not hard to see why; he once had a guest spot on Sesame Street where he talked to Zoey (and by extension, all of us) about things that are scary. It was a very sweet moment, but surreal at the same time; most of us would recognize that disarming smile of his as something we've seen multiple times before he proceeds to beat the shit out of someone who "went against the family". Even paparazzi exerted caution in harassing him, even though the actor himself has probably never hurt someone in his life. It's a moment that stuck out to me because I had never known beforehand just how much of a regular guy he was. He seems a man who cared deeply about his onscreen persona, while being careful to keep his offscreen identity separate. Indeed he was probably the single safest person on Sesame Street during his appearance.

If only because Elmo is completely psychotic

It might seem weird to say that the single saddest thing about the passing of a 51 year old actor is all the promise he showed, but its the truth. It seems in recent years he managed to break into Hollywood with an exciting vigor, appearing in films from the underrated comedy In the Loop to the more recent Zero Dark Thirty, as well as multiple indie films. While the performance that made him a legend will persist, and while it is an amazing performance, one can't help but think we never really got to know the guy.

Worst Films of 2012

Usually the only thing more fun than doing the top ten films list is doing the bottom ten of the year. It's well known that the only thing more fun than listening to someone rant about movies that everyone likes is hearing them bag on movies everyone hates. So, I'm probably going to piss some people off with this one. And for mostly good reason; 2012 was an astonishingly good year for movies, which means most of these really aren't all that bad. So even my list, which is somewhat neutered as it is to make up for my almost obsessive habit of generally staying away from bad movies, probably has a few that people liked. Ergo, all of this year's favorites, like Ghost Rider 2 or whatever crap Adam Sandler came out with probably didn't make the cut. Just whatever I got forced into seeing on a date. Which, does not happen a whole lot.


10. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

 Oh wow. I'm going to get shit for this one. If I'm lucky it'll just be in the comments section and my friends won't give me too much shit. Look, I don't hate The Hobbit Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, it's not even really a bad movie. I even sort of enjoyed watching it. I'll probably even watch the next one. Again this about as good, or bad, as I can do. I loved the book as a kid, and I was looking forward to the movie for years. I'm willing to overlook the fact that there is CGI in almost every shot, or the fact that the film's childish tone, and the high frame rate basically make the film look like a cartoon, or the fact that the only truly good points are when characters from the Lord of the Rings show up for no real reason. But the real problem is the most obvious one; it isn't complete. By the time the movie is over, it's been three hours and I couldn't help but feel that all that time, and all the stuff they needlessly threw in from Tolkien's appendices was completely worthless in helping us get to know the characters better. I wasn't expecting a Fellowship-worthy masterpiece, but I was expecting a full movie. Also, it's currently in the IMDB top 250. I know we all love Tolkien, but it's important to remember that just because a film does justice to a good story does not make the film itself good.

9. The Amazing Spider-Man

On the subject of movies I don't hate, here's this. I know people that like this movie, and people who absolutely hate it in every way. I understand both arguments. At this point, I'm kind of just judging it by whether or not it's worse than "Hobbit" and, to that film's credit, it is. But this one is not that bad either. It offers a slightly more gritty look at the character, where the darker sides of New York are on display. Furthermore, Stone and Garfield have great chemistry, Martin Sheen and Sally Field are a great Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and Dennis Leary is great as Denis Leary. But that's it. The rest of the movie is full of plots that are left unanswered, awkwardly directed scenes, and dumb dialogue. Also Kermit the Fucking Frog is the villain. And his objective is to turn everyone in New York into other Kermit the Frogs. The 3D was awful too.

8. Snow White and the Huntsman

 Snow White and the Huntsman, like most of this year's less good movies, is a great example of an otherwise fine film ruined by the script. For one thing, it's clear to say that Charlize Theron is the best thing about a film that should have just been called "Evil Bitch Queen". I'm not going to lie, this is one of the best shot films in a year filled with well shot films, and Theron's female Darth Vader is an intimidating dictator. I honestly didn't regret watching it, but it's not really worth the money to watch again. It just doesn't hold one's interest for too long. The dialogue is kind of shitty, and the pacing is off, and the characters don't have any chemistry. Also, there are seven dwarfs in the movie, none of whom are actually played by dwarfs or have any influence on the story.

7. The Campaign

 Now we're getting into the bad stuff. The Campaign is a mostly unfunny attempt by the usually fantastic Adam McKay at political humor in the middle of the 2012 presidential race. One of the problems is that, contrary to popular belief, Will Ferrell acting like a manchild and Zach Galifinakis talking like a weirdo is not intrinsically funny. Neither character is incredibly likeable because of one major problem: you cannot do political satire without pissing people off. So trying to have both a republican and a democrat main character should at least give a little insight into the political system. But no, we wouldn't want to offend anyone. So everyone of every belief is right at the end of the day, because the Koch brothers are the ones raping the system. That's only half right. At least The Newsroom is honest about where it stands.

6. The Bourne Legacy

Okay, let's explain the good things about Bourne Legacy. The acting is mostly good, there's two truly tense action scenes. And that's it. Fuck this movie. I wasn't looking forward to seeing it, and I wasn't looking forward to it being made. At least the initial premise, where the CIA decides to kill every assassin that's ever worked for them after the events of Ultimatum, acknowledges that Paul Greengrass's fantastic, genre-bending trilogy happened. But from there it's a bullshit story where Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) tries to find the government drugs he needs to make him who he is. The film tries to have the same realistic grit as the previous films, but it keeps forgetting that it replaced the badass amnesiac with a druggie. It's the rare sort of bad sequel that, if you didn't know it existed, you'd be better off for it.

5. Lockout

Lockout is the latest from famed french screenwriter Luc Besson, and the first film in quite a while to star the great Guy Pearce, who usually just has cameos in other, much better movies than this crappily written Die Hard ripoff...in space. Yes, I realize that sounds amazing, but aside from some witty banter from Mr. Pearce, there isn't anything about this movie that makes us care even remotely about these people. It's not aggressively stupid, but it is incredibly mediocre, to the point that it's annoying. You can see every twist from a mile away, even when you can tell how stupid they are.

4. Act of Valor

Act of Valor was intended as a recruitment video for Navy SEALS, and it shows. I have to be careful what I say, because there are a ton of people in my area, and a few probably reading this, who love this movie. It's understandable, if you like military shit, a story about being a Navy SEAL featuring active-duty Navy SEALs in the starring roles, using actual Navy SEAL tactics should be fantastic, right? There's even at least one very well-filmed scene (that invasion scene was pretty badass. Okay, so is the interrogation scene). But most of the film is kind of pointlessa; the characters talk and act like what the movie wants us to think real people talk and act like, but there is one problem: Navy SEALs are not actors, and there's something kind of perverse about putting them through the things they are put in in this film. It's not awful, but it's not really a movie, it's just propaganda.

3. The Lorax

Okay, I've been pretty nice so far to the movies on this list, because, to be fair, they're almost all at least watchable. Except for this movie. In the words of Roger Ebert "I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated it." The E-Man was talking about the Elijah Wood movie North, but it holds true here. It was bad enough that they fouled up one of Dr. Seuss's most tragically straightforward books by filling it with stupid jokes, annoying cliches, and poor voice acting. The ultimate sacrilege is what the film represents. A bunch of greedy executives took what was essentially an anti-capitalist story and turned into the year's number one product. It's the ultimate perversion: an environmental message being sold to us on the side of buses. Perhaps you can watch it, just so long as you don't think too much about all the starving voice actors in Hollywood who did not get hired because the studio wanted Taylor Swift and Zac Efron.

2. Project X

It's curious that this film came out the same month as Chronicle; whereas that movie managed to be great in spite of it's found footage approach, Project X keels under it. To be fair, I was surprised that this was based on a surprisingly interesting true story, let alone that it even had a plot. However, just barely. I borderline hated the characters, and the film spends way too much enjoying what is clearly a party gone totally wrong, when it would have been far more interesting and entertaining if it let the characters languish in its disaster. Instead, it's a dreadfully condescending movie about a bunch of nerdy kids who become cool when they throw a dangerous party and then get no real consequences. It's not that I'm a prude whose afraid of parties or chaos, but chaos disguised as fun is no fun at all.

1. The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn: Part 2

That's more colons than should be in a title. It's funny, really, I've been waiting forever for this movie to come out and finally end this crappy story. Now, I have to give credit where it's due, and the fair answer is that this is not an incredibly horrible film It's even fun to watch in a few campy ways, but the fact that 55% of the critics on rotten tomatoes apparently think it's worth watching is a bit preposterous. Yes, there is a riotously entertaining ending fight, but it's rendered worthless by one of the most ridiculous twists I've ever seen. Yes, you care about the characters a little more than in Twilight, but it doesn't help that they constantly make baffling choices. Or the fact that every major conflict is usually just some misunderstanding that Michael Sheen's hilariously prissy villain gets all upset about for no reason. But what baffles me the most about this supposedly romantic story is it's utter saccharine nature. I don't want to spoil anything, but what's there to spoil? There's no conflict! Literally every problem is just two vampires deciding to jump at each other instead of just fucking talking about it like normal people. But whatever. It's over. It's finally fucking over, so let's all start forgetting about it.