Which way do YOU sway on this?

OK- I have a few more Watchmen comments since I have seen the coverage of the movie, and talked to other people who have seen it. The overwhelming response I am seeing is, “did you see Dr. Manhattan's wanker?” Well, of course I did, as did the grown women giggling throughout the film in the theater with me (minus my beloved Jennifer, who apparently is unmoved by blue genitals...I suppose I should be relieved?) on opening night. There are even people complaining the film should have had a higher rating than R, and primarily because of the animated male nudity- and keep in mind, that's what it is: animated. This is not Billy Crudup's actual willie (unless of course someone attached the motion capture sensors, what a job that would be). This is a blue CGI model of a penis, just like how Shrek is a green CGI model of an ogre and not a real one, and Jar Jar is a pink CGI model of a... whatever the hell he's supposed to be and not a real one.

Now (minor spoilers follow) this is a movie where a pregnant woman is shot in the face with a .45 automatic; the implication is made a six year old girl is butchered on a cutting board and we see two German Shepherds playing tug with her severed leg; a man is killed with a meat clever through his skull; several gangsters are graphically reduced to the consistency of chunky salsa; a man's arms are severed with a circular saw; a man severely beats a woman, then bends her over a pool table to rape her. Though I see some references to the graphic violence in the movie, I haven't really seen complaints (except the dramatic discontinuity of Dreiberg and Laurie killing a bunch of muggers, but elsewhere in the film being indignant at Rorschach and Ozymandias' methods). The penis however, warrants complaint and outrage. And girly giggles.

A Google search for “watchmen dr. manhattan penis” returns 77,600 results. And that's with “safe search” on. (And no, I didn't click on “show image results”!)

Why are we as an audience that hung up on the well-hung Doctor? Why aren't we hung up on the violence? I am not arguing that we should be- I do expect parents to be parents and keep their kids away from this movie (I am), but I am really disturbed at what our priority of outrage or preoccupation is. If nothing else, this evens the score for years of exploited woman flesh in comics and comic movies. Admittedly, there's some revealing female outfits in this film, but they are remarked upon as being fetishistic, and you don't get the full frontal the way the good Doctor repeatedly delivers.

Perhaps both the violence and the Blue Meany are too much, but I think there's a real issue with folks who DO have a problem with a penis, and DON'T have a problem with a bloodied stump.

Oh, and the Google safe search “Watchmen Dr. Manhattan wang” got 163,000 hits- one for each girly giggle I heard Friday night.

Be fair warned OSG...

Well Oh Shit Guy- don't say I didn't warn you. I mean, read this. I, for the record, do not support shooting the Oh Shit Guy. I am much happier with publicly embarrassing him and pointing out his rude behavior, followed by force 9 glares each time he again opens his mouth. Putting bullets in someone is a bit of an extreme reaction (and further disrupts the movie I might add), but if the OSG had kept his damn mouth shut and exhibited a modicum of courtesy, it wouldn't have happened. Please enjoy the movie you paid twelve bucks for in silence.

I guess I'm just saying I thought I was an ass about people talking in the theater, but obviously I am not as big a jerk as I thought I was. I still let them breathe.

I know the origin of the Joker!

Someone took their toddler to see this guy at the movie theater!



I could indeed wax poetic about this movie, and use all kinds of well deserved hyperbole. Let's just say I think I am going to have to choose which one of my top five favorite movies to bump to number six so Dark Knight can be number one. All the emotion and visceral effect I was looking for in movies this summer is here, giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every time the Joker came on screen. Not only is the Joker anarchist, the movie makers destroyed all the rules of summer movie making to give us a film where the good guys really don't win. Brilliant movie.

Now let me explain the title of this blog.

Both times I have (so far) gone to the theater to see this film, someone had toddlers or babies there, to include a 9pm showing. Now, yes I also sat next to the Oh Shit Guy, but about six minutes and four "oh shits" into the film one patented "Dan's Scornfully Delivered Glare of Scorn" put an end to that. It was the three year old sitting behind me that was the problem. Not just for my enjoyment of the film, but the fact these parents didn't bother to be parent enough to look into this movie before dragging the kid in to see the most convincing portrayal of a sociopath in movie history. To be fair, the movie should be rated R, not PG 13; however, there's a large gap between 13 and 3. Let me thank these lousy parents for the reminder about why I had stopped going to movie theaters. And I hope when their kids' first mug shot looks like this:



They don't blame movies or video games or some other excuse, they accept they were just bad parents.

More about the movie later... Thanks for indulging my crotchety gripe about youngsters.

Go see this man's film.

So, I braved the Oh Shit Guy and the Giggly Teenage Girl Group to go see Hancock last night. Thankfully, OSG must have been at Wanted, though the Girls were in my theater. Someone told them to shut the hell up before I did though, so I was able to actually watch the movie in peace.

I know this movie is getting some very mediocre reviews. They are wrong. See, three days before I went to see The Incredible Hulk, which was fine but lacking in almost any emotional resonance. Apparently Hancock absorbed it all Rogue style because unlike the "let's focus on nothing but Hulk smash" script, there's actually emotions and drama in Hancock, and like Iron Man, it's a grown up film which happens to be about Superheroes. Indeed, that may be the problem-- I would compare it to another movie I really liked that no one else did, Superman Returns. Each are about real people in a world which allows superbeings to exist. Each involves characters having to deal with the consequences of their decisions. And each deserves more audience than it is getting. Yeah, I know Will Smith is richer than King Farouq- then go see the movie to help out Jason Bateman. He's incredibly talented, vastly underrated, and may be the hero of this film. I am keeping this review spoiler free, but depending what Dark Knight does for me, this may be my favorite movie of the summer.

Good and Bad (but not in the greater philosophical sense).

It occurred to me that I have been griping a bit more than usual lately, and I am trying to be generally less gripey. Therefore, though I have something I really want to gripe about I will balance it out with something cool. Ying, Yang, Ohm.

I am not a smoker. I was raised with smokers, and have tried it in the past, but it never stuck. There are times it bugs me, and I believe that people who want to smoke should extend courtesy to others who choose not to. I am however pretty damn tired of anti-smokers. I am tired of crying soccer-moms on TV crying over the fact they have to take lozenges to quit. I am tired of bars and restaurants being told they can't allow smoking; if a restaurant owner wants to restrict smoking, good for him- but it should be the business owner's choice. If I don't want to be around smoking when I eat, I won't go to that restaurant that allows it.

I'm tired of lawsuits against tobacco companies. Yep- they're assholes. Yep, they make their product more addictive. Yep, they suck. So don't smoke. You want to damage them? DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCT!

"Oh, but mean blog-man, I'm all addicted now and it's their fault I can't quit."

Yeah, Joe Camel came into your house with Phillip and Morris, shoved the cigarette in your mouth and lit it- enough times to hook you. Commercials? You fell for commercials? Most people start as teenagers, giving into peer pressure. Grow up. Put the pack down. Just don't smoke.

"I'm addicted! I can't stop!" You put the pack down and you don't smoke anymore, it's that easy. Yes, you're going to be cranky, and uncomfortable, kind of like I am when I start exercising again after a break in fitness. Please claim a little bit of personal responsibility.

"I didn't know they were dangerous!" OK- if you grew up in America, and you didn't know cigarettes were bad for you, this is Darwin at work trying to pull you out of the gene pool. In 1947 Tex Williams released "Smoke, Smoke Smoke that Cigarette" with such lines as:
Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death.

Yes, elsewhere in the song he says:
I don't reckon that it'll hinder your health
I smoked 'em all my life and I ain't dead yet...

Tex Williams died of lung cancer. The "whack" sound he heard at death was the irony stick hitting him in the skull.

The point is, who hasn't heard the moniker "cancer stick"? "Coffin nail"? There's been a label on the side of the things for the last 38 years! Smokers consider their habit an acceptable risk. As do alcohol drinkers, doughnut eaters, fried food consumers, people who don't wear seatbelts, coffee drinkers, skydivers, and people who participate in democracy. I don't smoke, and I think it's rude. Should there be a law? No, there should be courtesy.

I've lost people I loved to lung cancer... but no one forced them to smoke.

So what's the good news? I saw Casino Royale, Oh-Shit Guy be damned. Finally, FINALLY someone made a movie about Ian Fleming's Bond. He's callous, brutal, and arrogant. He has no real gadgets, and has to rely on wits and fists as much as nice cars and guns. Daniel Craig is perfect as this steely killer, and this movie has immediately taken the spot of my favorite Bond film (unseating "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" with George Lazenby- oh yeah, I was one of those).

The movie serves as an origin for 007, playing off a lot like "Batman Begins" in that it is a realistic look grounded firmly in our world. He's a little sloppy, but we see Bond learn the tricks of his trade, pick up some certain habits essential to the Bond myth. The movie has plenty of action while still having a lot of the film's tension play out in a poker game. Yeah, I said poker, not baccarat, but for God's sake, who among us could keep up with an onscreen baccarat game? Well, OK, I could, but I only know baccarat because of the original Bond books.

See it, it is the real Bond, James Bond. Can't wait for the next one... Although, should I complain that we don't see him smoking?

If this is about you, stay out of my theater.

Well, ring my chimes and hang my stockings, I look around and it is the holiday. As part of God’s temporal joke he has been playing on me, this year has flown by and I am hardly ready for Halloween, and it is already Christmas. I only hope He keeps the joke going when I hit Babylon and the year there goes by quickly as well.

Otherwise, there isn’t much else to report. I am completely enamored with the TV show “Heroes.” If you aren’t watching it, you are wrong. TV is my primary entertainment these days because I have decided to never go to the movie theater again. Why, do you ask? Because of the “Oh Shit” guy.

You know who he is- anytime something happens in a film that is daring, a surprise, this guy has to interject at the top of his lungs, “OH SHIT!” It’s not a quick interjection, it is a drawn out sing-song of an exclamation that pulls you completely out of the moment and grounds you back in the sticky-floored mass of humanity you paid 12 dollars to share a movie with. Case in point, the (spoilers ahead if you’ve not seen Superman Returns) in the best movie I saw this year, we learn that Lois’ young son is not the son of handsome go getter Richard White, but rather of a Kryptonian Demi-god who goes by Clark. The biggest moment of this reveal is the boy defending his mother from a violent psychotic thug by… well, hitting him with a piano. Singer gives us a moment of silence for realization purposes after the instrument plays its last chord against the thug. A moment to grasp all this moment means; the parentage, the fact that this boy’s first use of power has killed another (admittedly deserving) human being, the end of his mother’s reign of hypochondria. Instead for me, not once but twice, this moment was filled with the hearty peal of “Oh SHIT!” How this man managed to be seated within 10 feet of me twice, I cannot say. My assumption is the movie theater management was hoping I would kill him and spare other movie goers this man’s cries of wonder in the future.

My biggest fear is that there is more than one “Oh Shit” guy. That no matter what theater I go to, there will be a member of this secret cabal plotting to eviscerate my fantasy and unceremoniously drop me firmly back in reality regardless of the magic movie moment. A bullet bounces off Superman’s exposed eyeball- “Oh Shit!” Aliens blow up a famous building in Los Angeles as the first strike against humanity- “Oh SHIT!” Colossus appears to defend the vulnerable students at Xavier’s academy from Striker’s troops- “OH SHIT!”

You win, “Oh Shit” guy. I have not seen a myriad of interesting movies this year because of you. No James Bond, no Borat, no Tenacious D. You and your accomplices “Giggly Teenage Girl Group” and “Watch This, This is Great” guy have kept me out of theater and in front of my big screen. I may not see the movies quick, but when a fellow viewer turns out to be the “Oh Shit!” guy, I can send him to his room.

My review of “Superman Returns” or “Did I see the same movie as you guys?”

Let me give fair warning right now, this is not a spoiler free review. There are lots of them. So what I’ll do is give my spoiler free review right now-
This movie is the most “real” superhero movie ever made. The emotions are adult and complex, and the layers of the various interrelationships and plots are so deep I had to just sit and think about this movie for about as long as I watched it. Then I watched it again. This is a movie that is more than worthy of a Best Picture nomination. Unfortunately, looking at the internet and box office response, this seems to have scared away people who just wanted to see Superman catch airplanes and beat up Lex Luthor. There’s plot and emotion, and apparently that’s a detriment to some people. Spoilers begin now…
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If the movie suffers in my book from anything it is that it should have been longer. I did walk out wanting to see some scenes between scenes, and luckily these are things that I understand were filmed and we should see on the DVD release. The film stands beautifully on its own however, provided you are willing to give the movie a little thought. This is no popcorn film. It is grown up. Very grown up. Once again- this is the spoiler part, so here’s your last chance. Superman goes to visit the remnants of Krypton resulting in a five year absence from the Earth, which learns to move on without him. Lois Lane in particular has moved on and has a child with her fiancé Richard. They live together in bliss in a lovely house. Lois has made herself a life, grown up and settled down. Yet deep within her she is hurt- hurt that Superman would leave without even saying goodbye. Her resentment manifests itself as an article entitled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” This article has also earned Lois a Pulitzer Prize.

Then, He comes back.

I capitalize personal pronouns for Superman in this film, as He is painted as a deity. His five years away seem to be His forty days in the desert. He returns to His mission, and Lois’ resentment still holds.

I expected from this film for Richard White to be a jackass. I waited for the scene where Lois realizes she’s just settled for some jerk in lieu of Superman. Not here. Richard is a great guy, a great father, and a hero in his own right. When Luthor’s plot (which I will get to in a moment) endangers Lois and her son Jason, it is not Superman, but Richard who gets there first. And herein lies the complexity- you see, Jason is not actually Richard’s son; he is Superman’s. It is my suspicion that Lois doesn’t even know this. You may remember in Superman II Superman has erased her memory of their intimacy with a kiss- I don’t doubt that Lois thinks Jason is Richard’s, at least until an incredible feat on Jason’s part proves otherwise. The movie leaves us with this scenario- Mommy, Daddy, Kid, and kid’s real Daddy- the modern nuclear family, only this time with a cape. There is no easy solution, but as humans they are going to get by. It makes me consider the relationship between Joseph/Mary/Jesus/God- How does the surrogate father of God’s son look upon the boy he’s raising? In this film Richard gets it- gets Lois’ feelings for Superman, and moves forward. They are going to make it work no matter how difficult. It’s a mature, difficult relationship usually reserved for films about British servants at the turn of the century with lots of people named “Hopkins” and “Thompson” in them. Here, we get it bundled with Superman. Now, to react to naysayers who say Kate Bosworth doesn’t pull off the feisty Lois here I say- have a kid. Your hell brand days are over. Lois here is a mature woman who still carries the spark of her youth but has to pick the kid up from school- she doesn’t have the ability to sit in the Daily Planet all night. Is Bosworth a little young for this role? Maybe, but I think she pulls it off well enough, and I didn’t end up questioning her in the role- she still wouldn’t be my first pick, but her spark with Routh is good.

Routh is Superman. From the moment you see Him, you know He is the Man of Steel. It is interesting that this incarnation has Superman bring a little of Clark into His life. In the scene of news montages chronicling Superman’s return, you see a building burning, which is blown out by Superman. Before He flies off, He gives a self conscious smile and wave- very similar to one given by Clark to throw Richard and Lois’ suspicions off in the Daily Planet office. I can’t wait to see Routh in this role again.

Lex Luthor. He is diabolical. I have seen a lot of bashing on his plan, and frankly I wonder if they saw the same movie I did. Luthor historically in the films has been a land obsessed megalomaniac who hates that Superman even exists. He sits waiting in jail, the events of Superman II in his mind, knowing there is Kryptonian technology just sitting there. And Superman is gone! Gone! Lex must get out. He does, he tracks his way back to the Fortress of Solitude, stepping on hearts and souls to do so. And in the Fortress he finds not only tech, but tech that can give him what he so loves- land. Sure, creating a new continent is going to do some damage, and billions will die, but it is what they deserve for not bowing to his genius in the first place (is it a coincidence that Metropolis will be the first city wiped out by New Krypton? I think not…). More than that, he achieves his goal by besmirching the memory of the missing Superman, by bastardizing everything Superman stood for, and using Superman’s own home technology to do it. It is a perfect plan.

Then He comes back.

Lex is not to be outdone however. He will still create his continent, but this time he will not only use the Kryptonian technology to defend himself from human retaliation, he will lace the entire thing with Kryptonite, making him invulnerable to Superman- at least he believes. And indeed, when Superman arrives he is brutalized by Luthor and his minions (think Jesus beaten by the Romans, the imagery is there). Lex proves what a thug he really is as he violently shivs Superman with a chunk of His homeworld. Even more brutal though is the simple fact that Luthor has created a bizarro version of Krypton. The place Superman so desperately wanted to see that he went to visit “a graveyard” and was missing for five years is now recreated right here on Earth in Lex Luthor’s twisted way. It is Satan reinterpreting the Kingdom of Heaven, and Heaven’s Son must stop it.

But on Superman’s trip to Golgotha, he is first helped by Veronica wiping his face in the form of Lois pulling him from the ocean (finally, after sixty years she gets to save Him). We see a moment of Superman ascending to absorb power from the sun and then he descends, cutting the cancer that is New Krypton away from the Earth, and despite the hardship, despite the agony he conquers the Kryptonite laden rock and casts it out into space, throwing Hades into the bottomless pit. You can almost hear him whisper “It is finished” before He spreads his arms in the shape of the cross and plummets into the Earth.

Here, as Superman is rushed into an emergency room that can do almost nothing for Him we see the shortest heart-rending scene in movie history. Martha Kent stand in the throng of people waiting to see what happens to their hero, and she can do nothing. She must sit at the foot of the cross like Mary as her son does not belong to her anymore but to the world.

Then comes my one true complaint with the movie. Lois Lane brings Jason to see Superman who is now in a hospital bed. She doesn’t recognize him as Clark. Let’s face it; the disguise has never been the glasses. It’s how Clark moves and acts versus the confidence of Superman. Yet here, vulnerable and weak like Clark, Lois cannot see him in Superman. That is my one minor complaint (indeed, counter to this is a scene earlier where Jason immediately recognizes that Clark and Superman are one in the same, and I love that a child who does not bear the prejudices of an adult would see right through Superman’s role playing).

Soon after, a nurse comes into the room to find the bed empty and the window open- the tomb is empty, the stone’s been rolled away and now His body isn’t there. Then Superman gets a chance to speak to His son as His son… quoting Jor-El in a moment that shows that he understands the irony of the fact that he spent five years searching the cosmos to find a true connection to another living thing- when that connection was waiting for Him on Earth all along. Beautiful.

There are a million wonderful little moments in this film, several of which come from simple reaction- Jimmy eating a Burrito as Clark looks on with tortilla stuck on his face; the image of Superman with the world on his shoulders as he catches the Daily Planet’s globe, and Perry’s response; a bathrobed Lex Luthor finding Lois Lane on his boat, and soon noticing her young son’s reaction to Kryptonite. There are moments for the fanboys- Glenn Ford’s picture on the mantle at the Kent’s; the iconic Action Comics number one pose captured by a 12 year old with a cell phone; the opening credits taken directly from the original movies; Marlon Brando; the quick mention of Gotham City; guest cameos by the fifty’s TV show’s Jimmy and Lois. Good stuff.

And yet, we see slow box office, and people on line calling the movie slow or so-so. I know everyone has a right to an opinion, but it is such a shame to see this movie perform in a mediocre fashion. There is love in this movie for the source material from the makers, and it is obvious in every scene. There are a couple of specific nit picks I’ve seen I want to address:

Lex’s plan has him controlling barren rock on an island—He isn’t done yet, that’s why the map in the boat is incremental, and he still has six more crystals. Once he applies the rest of the crystals it will be more than a rocky island, but indeed a Superman proof version of Kryptonian Utopia. Oh, on a side note, isn’t it great that at the end, that though it isn’t Australia or New Krypton, Lex gets his island…?

Lois has been lying about Jason to Richard—she had her memory erased, she doesn’t know she slept with Superman.

Superman is gay—I’ve seen this in several places, and I can only say… what? He spends the whole movie regretting what he did to Lois and hoping to see her, even watching to make sure her life is good. Can someone tell me the gay part?

It’s too long—I wanted more, I want to see Superman on the remains of Krypton, I wanted to see more of Singer’s version of Clark’s childhood. I wanted to see more of Clark back in Smallville. I wanted more Daily Planet scenes. The movie stands alone fine, but I am sure ready to watch Superman Returns 2.

Please, if you saw this movie and didn’t like it, reconsider. Give it another look and peel away some of the layers that are waiting below the surface. I’m four pages in, and frankly I could go on for more about all the things I’ve seen in this film in just two viewings, and I know there’s more. This is a superhero movie, and a great film, and deserves recognition. I only hope we the fans don’t shoot ourselves in the foot by wanting to bash this movie and sound smart. Sell this movie to adults- it is grown up; sell this movie to kids- it is spectacular; sell this movie to geeks- it is Superman.

He has returned.