The Simpsons Movie

Here's a short review for The Simpson Movie. It's very, very funny, and though it's extremely silly and cartoony like the present incarnation of the show, it has also brought back the sweetness and the warmth of the earlier era (say, the first 5 seasons).



Still reading? Okay. Here's why it's so good:

James L. Brooks		screenplay
Joel Cohen		consultant writer
John Frink		consultant writer
Matt Groening		screenplay
Al Jean		screenplay
Tim Long		consultant writer
Ian Maxtone-Graham		screenplay
George Meyer		screenplay
David Mirkin		screenplay
Michael Price		consultant writer
Mike Reiss		screenplay
Mike Scully		screenplay
Matt Selman		screenplay
John Swartzwelder		screenplay
Jon Vitti		screenplay

These are the men who created "The Simpsons" as we know it today. Getting them back to collaborate on the film was the only way to ensure that it would work, and they have all risen to the challenge, composing what's sure to be among the year's most funny, rewatchable comedies.

I've been a huge "Simpsons" fan for what feels like my entire life. (I was 11 when the show made its debut on December 17, 1989.) Like a lot of long-time "Simpsons" fans, I still enjoy watching the show, but it no longer feels like essential viewing. Rather than a full 30 minutes of hilarity (most of the classic episodes manage to get at least one or two good jokes in every 60 seconds), recent episodes are easy-going, enjoyable-enough entertainment punctuated by one or two really sharp gags. Still, it's "The Simpsons," which for me makes it comforting and familiar even if it isn't a non-stop Kavalcade of Komedy. What I'm saying is, I no longer feel pressed to memorize entire episodes as I once did. But that's probably healthy...

I doubt I'll be committing the film to memory any time soon, but the experience of watching it in a theater was the most fun I've had watching "The Simpsons" in a long, long time. Sure, some of this is bound to be the excitement of opening night in a crowded theater full of enthusiastic fans, applauding after particularly good jokes and singing along to Homer's "Spider-Pig" anthem. Watching the film on my computer alone will be the true test of its staying power. But it just feels right, feels like "The Simpsons," from leaping over Springfield Gorge to Bart wilding through the center of town on his skateboard.



A few of the more inspired decisions:

- Bringing back Albert Brooks to voice the film's villain. He's one of what I'd consider the three All-Star "Simpsons" guest voices. The first is obviously Phil Hartman, who voiced one of the greatest characters in "Simpsons" history, lawyer Lionel Hutz, along with actor Troy McClure, monorail shyster Lyle Langley and too many others to name. Second would have to be Kelsey Grammar, whose Sideshow Bob stars in my favorite-ever episode, the Emmy-nominated "Cape Feare." And third is "A. Brooks," responsible for self-help guru Brad Goodman, Bond villain Hank Scorpio (from another Best Episode Ever contender, "You Only Move Twice.") Brooks is awesome here as EPA chief Russ Cargill.

- Making the movie PG-13. It feels different and a bit more risque, particularly one completely ingenious shot I would not dream of revealing here, but never dirty or inappropriate for a family audience. This is not "Family Guy." This is the show "Family Guy" secretly wishes it could be, amusing without having to rely on '80s references and innuendo. (I'm still entertained by "Family Guy" in fits and spurts, but it's hardly on the level of "Simpsons" or "South Park.")

- Improving the animation...but not too much. There's obviously been some attempts to update the show's basic 2-D style for contemporary audiences, but it's generally kept in the background or at the height of action sequences. It's "The Simpsons," but smoother and drawn with greater attention to detail.

- Not getting all meta. There's an opening sequence, recreating the opening sequence of the show but BIGGER because this is a HOLLYWOOD MOVIE, two or three self-referential jokes in the film and some extra gags thrown in during the credits but that's it. It's not a musical or an adventure story or a crazy chase. In fact, the plot unfolds exactly as an episode would - even starting with a misadventure that only somewhat relates to the main plot. (In this case, Grandpa revealing an omen and Homer obtaining a pet pig.)

It doesn't try to bring back every classic character or revisit locations from much-loved episodes. They've just ported the show into movie form, and basically made a 90 minute "Simpsons" episode with better animation. Done and done.

Doing Hard Time

This is the craziest piece of dumbassery I have read in some time...

A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.

Terry Lee Alexander, 20, unsuccessfully fought the charge, which had been brought by a female Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy who saw him perform the sex act in his cell in November.

The dude was ALONE in his jail cell jerking off, and for that, they're adding 2 months on to his prison sentence. I'm not sure what's more egregious in this case...The fact that prisoners who are doing 10 years in jail are expected to just go all that time without pleasuring themselves or the fact that the taxpayers of Florida had to pay for a masturbation trial.

In reaching the guilty verdict, jurors found that an inmate's jail cell is ''a limited access public place'' where exposing oneself is against the law.

Okay, I'm officially confused. Is there a lawyer in the house?

How can this law be consistently applied? If taking my clothes off in my jail cell is considered indecent exposure, does this mean I can't change in my cell? What about going to the bathroom? It'd be illegal for me to do THAT in a public place (say...the Sears Home Appliance Department), but I figure, in the relative privacy of a jail cell, it ought to be permissible. 10 years is a long time to hold it in.

The sole witness in the case, BSO Deputy Coryus Veal, testified that Alexander did not try to hide what he was doing as most prisoners do. Veal saw him perform the act while she was working in a glass-enclosed master control room, 100 feetfrom Alexander's cell. There was no video tape or other witnesses.

She sounds fun!

Alexander's attorney argued that the prison cell was a private place and that what Alexander was doing was perfectly normal.

''Did other inmates start masturbating because of Mr. Alexander?'' McHugh asked Veal. ``Did you call a SWAT team?''

''I wish I had,'' Veal answered.

SWAT Team? Because he was touching himself? This thief has already been locked away from everyone he knows and everything he loves for a decade. (Not that I'm defending armed robbery or anything). Now, he's being penalized for pleasuring himself? Is it our goal, as the society that has chosen to lock him in jail, to humiliate and degrade this man, to strip away his dignity as punishment for his crimes? Because that's the only conclusion one can draw from the decision to prosecute this case...

Veal, who has charged seven other inmates with the same offense, insisted that she was not against the act itself -- just the fact that Alexander was so blatant about it. Most inmates, she testified, do it in bed, under the blankets.

Anyone else think this woman might have some issues of her own going on? She couldn't look away from that particular monitor for a few moments? She has to charge Spanky with a crime?

Defense attorney Kathleen McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never done that particular sex act.

No hands went up.

Exactly.

Here's the crucial part of the whole article, to me:

While most prisons deal with such an offense internally, Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne -- and Miami-Dade Corrections officials -- are hoping to curb the practice among inmates by prosecuting them.

Janelle Hall, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Corrections, said that while no charges have been brought against inmates, the department is working with State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office to discuss prosecution of such ''egregious'' cases in the jail.

''It has been a hot topic so to speak in our department,'' Hall said. ``In those cases that are egregious, where there is some sort of intent to deliberately expose themselves, those cases will be reviewed further in the courts.''

Wowzers. As I see it, there are only two possibilities here:

(1) The men and women of the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections are perverts who sit around in their comfortable offices all day discussing the masturbatory habits of male prisoners

OR

(2) This is a deliberate, pre-meditated attempt to humiliate prisoners, by charging them with a crime for doing something people do all the time, in and out of jail.

And last I checked, attempting to humiliate people is wrong, even if they committed a crime a few years back.

Also, I'd just like to point out, for the record, that Scooter Libby is at home tonight, and I'm sure he would be masturbating with impunity if he wasn't a withered old troll capable of attaining sexual arousal only by sending thousands of American troops into the direct path of IED's for no good reason.

(Link graciously provided by Andrew Sullivan).

Tonight, on a Very Special Crushed by Inertia...

A friend just IM'ed me this amazing clip from "Facts of Life," where Tootie and Natalie come home with a bag full of bongs. It really needs to be seen to be believed...



Clip courtesy of Jezebel...

Just Press Play

I was all set to write a post about how the one benefit of iMeem over SeeqPod is the ability to create and embed playlists. But...well...


SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

This is a bunch of stuff I've been listening to all week. I first grabbed a few songs by Everthus The Deadbeats because their name references perhaps the single most obscure line of dialogue in The Big Lebowski. (Woo says "Everthus the deadbeats, Lebowski" to The Dude after peeing on his rug). The only one that I still listen to is this "Some Terry's" one, but I've been listening to it a bunch. Something about that real sing-songy conclusion...I found it annoying at first, but it has really grown on me.

I saw some of these bands/musicians live this week. Sonic Youth played their entire "Daydream Nation" album as well as half of their most recent LP, "Rather Ripped," as an encore. (This track is the first on "Rather Ripped" and was, to my mind, one of the show highlights, along with "Total Trash.") It was a really cool show. I had seen SY live a few years back at All Tomorrows Parties, but I'm pretty sure they didn't play any "Daydream"-era songs.

My one complaint about The Greek is that, if you're sitting kind of far back, it's not really loud enough. I mean, this isn't Spinal Tap. I don't need to be blown out of my seat. But I don't know...I never really feel drawn into the show when I'm there; I've been in venues where you sit much further back, but can enjoy a richer, fuller sound. (It's gotta be The Greek, because I had the same exact feeling after seeing Belle and Sebastian there a while back, though I grant they're not ever going to be the loudest band).

I'm thinking it's not just me, because during the show (while the band was taking a little breather, I should add), a guy sitting in front of me asked me to stop talking. (I was, at the time, summarizing this week's "Hell's Kitchen" for the benefit of my brother Jonathan). You KNOW a concert's kind of hard to hear when people are actually asking their neighbors to shut up at an outdoor amphitheater! There could be a guy smoking crack right in front of me at an outdoor amphitheater and I wouldn't say anything. #1 rule of large-scale event attendance: mellow out and let everyone do their thing and enjoy themselves.

Anyway, even better was the John Vanderslice/Spoon show at Little Radio in the heart of Downtown LA's gorgeous Warehouse and Dumpster District. This was a tiny little not-club (I believe it's an Internet radio station by day) that was packed densely with about 300 people and a shitload of free Dewar's (the event's sponsor).



The chance to see not only a big band like Spoon but an acoustic set by Vanderslice in that kind of venue was worth the sweltering, inhuman heat. (No ventilation + bright stage lights + 300 human bodies = teh suck). I actually felt bad for Britt Daniel during the show - he was trying to sing and play guitar while sweat literally streamed down his face. They still played for 90 minutes...It was awesome, especially the epic rendition of "My Mathematical Mind" off their previous album.

Posted Without Comment

Courtesy of TMZ

SeeqPod...Totally Blown Out...

SeeqPod just somewhat blew my mind. iMeem is kind of nice...but like I said before, those :30 second clips were pissing me off. SeeqPod is a similar idea, only rather than relying on public-spirited individuals to upload full songs, it just searches all the mp3s already out there and plays them right in the search window PLUS it lets you embed what you've found!

I tend to test music search engines with "Sebadoh" for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe it's because they're not totally obscure, so it doesn't feel unfair, but it's going to rely on a bit deeper catalog than most big, popular artists.



SeeqPod found a BUNCH of results immediately. Okay...how about something a bit more recent. Like, say, that Bat for Lashes single "The Wizard" I discussed a few days ago...



Bam! Done!

What's that? Does it have any old school hip hop?



iMeem's got some catching up to do. In fact, pretty much every other mp3 site on the Intar-Web has some catching up to do. This thing rocks...



I can't stop.

Stardust

I don't know how much they paid Robert De Niro to play gay pirate Captain Shakespeare in director Matthew Vaughn's unfortunate big-screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Stardust, but unless he's now one of the five richest men in the world, it wasn't enough. It's humiliating for an artist of De Niro's caliber to flounder around in lame shit like Analyze That, sure, but Stardust is another conversation entirely. We're no longer discussing his reputation as an actor; that battle has been fought and lost, long ago. Now he's starting to sacrifice...and I say this not to insult the man, but out of real concern...but he's starting to sacrifice his basic human dignity.

I was literally, without embellishment, embarrassed for De Niro throughout his mercifully brief role in Stardust. I don't want to give too much away...but at the same time, I don't want you to see this movie...so I'm torn. Suffice it to say that the key joke around which De Niro's character is based SUCKS. He's asked to inhabit a degrading, mincing stereotype that's completely beneath Neil Gaiman, Matthew Vaughn, Robert De Niro and most of all the American and British moviegoing public. I actually feel like I am a worse person for having seen De Niro in this film.

Even if the remainder of Stardust was a work of genius, under no circumstances could the final product warrant any grade higher than a B-. Like failing to stick the triple lutz, this is just the kind of error that will mar an entire undertaking.

Krazy Krossdressing Kapt. Shakespeare is the most unfortunate float in the Parade of Incompetence called Stardust, but many other examples could and will be provided.

Most bad Hollywood films are a failure of vision - some mediocre but easily marketed ideas thrown together lackadaisically to produce something cheap, moderately entertaining and disposable. Stardust doesn't have this problem. It has plenty of interesting, fun ideas (most of them, I'm assuming, taken from Gaiman's book, which I have not read). Flying pirates who bottle lightning, telepathic unicorns, witch rivalries, wisecracking ghosts of slaughtered princes, undead swordplay...Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman definitely had the raw materials for at least a passable fantasy-adventure film.

They simply have no idea what to do with them. Any of them. At all. Every one of these concepts, and dozens of other possible avenues for amusement, are squandered, wasted and ignored. At times, such as the atrocious Ricky Gervais cameo, I could tell the movie was trying and failing to be funny. But for much of the film's midsection, there didn't seem to be any jokes at all. Just situations that resemble other films, but don't build to anything. Vaughn's film plods along toward an inevitable storybook conclusion for 2 hours and even its protagonists don't seem to actually care. They just mosey around the wilderness in silly outfits because that's all there is to do in these movies. You walk around, you ride some horses, you discuss prophecies, you have a sword fight and you cash your check. Bada bing, bada bang, bada boom, learn from the pros, kid.

The result is a movie that clearly aimed for the inspired silliness of The Princess Bride or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but plays like a high school production of "Fellowship of the Ring" on opening night. A lot of recognizable characters, scenes and concepts, but jumbled together, performed in an awkward, halting manner and entirely unconvincing.



Okay, so, the set-up...150 years ago, in England, a guy named Tristan (Charlie Cox, the human embodiment of a double Nyquil shot) tries to hit on his cute neighbor Victoria (Sienna Miller) by promising to fetch for her a falling star. She agrees to marry him (this being the 1800's and all) if he can return with the star by her birthday the following week.

So Tristan crosses the magic wall separating England from the magical fantasy-world of Stormhold in search of his star, which itself turns out to be a beautiful lady named Yvaine (Claire Danes). In Stormhold, I guess, stars are not balls of gas at all, but beautiful ladies that hang around in space...but glow. And are magic.

Danes, stepping into the Jeff Bridges role, is really really terrible in this film. (If you laughed at that sentence, Welcome to Dorkville...Population: You). I mean, Yvaine the Star Woman is not by any stretch a sensational role...don't get me wrong...The "rules" governing her behavior and her situation aren't very clear, and thus I found it kind of hard to relate to her. Is it fair to ask an actress to simultaneously play scared, angry and bored? Isn't that kind of contradictory?

Still, Danes could not be more aloof or distant as Yvaine if she were starring in a remake of Persona. For the first half of the film, she's arguing with Tristan despite not appearing to actually be mad, and then she pulls a 180 and falls in love with him without ever once appearing to give a shit. At any point during the film, Yvaine could have said, "This planet sucks, I'm outta here," turned into a star and disappeared forever and it would not have seemed out of place.

I don't know if Gaiman's book made any more sense on this front, but I'm not sure I get what Yvaine is, why she's here or why she's doing what she does. At first, she's focused entirely on returning to outer space or something, but she also craves love, attention and warmth in order to retain her starlike brilliance or whatever.

But this is even more description than you need. I'll keep it simple. She's supposed to be an embodied star, right, that fell from the heavens to earth accidentally when a dying king (Peter O'Toole) tossed his ruby necklace skyward. (I wish I were just rattling this off as a joke, but it's the actual plot of the film). So you'd think that being on Earth would be a new and exciting experience for her, and we'd get some Daryl Hannah in Splash kind of scenes with the mythological woman exploring our familiar world.

But after years of watching Earth from above, Yvaine's entirely nonchalant about being an embodied human on Earth. You'd figure, even if a star knew what Earth was all about, it would be a considerably difference experience to come down here in a woman's body and walk around, meeting people and falling in love and having adventures. Rather than Hannah in Splash, the Danes performance here reminded me of Michael Jordan in Space Jam, who wanders into the Looney Tunes Universe without registering the least inkling of surprise or alarm. "Hey, Bugs Bunny...what are you doin' here?" That's about where Claire Danes is at in this film.

The only character I found even remotely appealing was Witch Queen Lamia, played by Michelle Pfeiffer with some actual relish and personality. The best shot in the film is Lamia's rapid transformation from an old hag into the only somewhat-old Michelle Pfeiffer, which is funny and even kind of sexy. I'll admit, I did wonder why a witch casting a youth spell on herself would turn into the middle-aged version of Michelle Pfeiffer. Shouldn't it have been Fabulous Baker Boys Michelle Pfeiffer? Or even Scarface Michelle Pfeiffer? I mean, we are talking a realm of sorcery and magic. (I'm making fun of Pfeiffer a bit, but she's the only one who really commits to this world and her character, and she gets almost all of the films best little jokes and moments, so I really appreciated her presence. She gets more laughs out of an arched eyebrow than 2 hours of quipping spirits and effeminate sky sailors could muster.)



Anyway, Lamia is after the Star Girl because she wants to cut out her heart and eat it, thus permanently restoring her youth-ish beauty. The last-living son of dead king Peter O'Toole, the evil Septimus (Mark Strong), is after the Star Girl because she's wearing his father's ruby necklace, which he needs in order to establish his rule over Stormhold. Tristan needs the Star Girl so he can prove his love for cruel taskmaster Victoria. And so all manner of poorly-shot swashbuckling, poorly-conceived shenanigans, poorly-written banter and poorly-executed effects sequences ensue.

The effects work, as you can probably tell, really bothered me. Either Vaughn lacked the resources to realize the story as it existed in his head or he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. De Niro's flying pirate ship just looks silly (and particularly unimpressive on the heels of ILM's work on the Pirates franchise). There's none of the scope or majesty of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films (this is much more reminiscent of the forgettable Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe). Lamia's "magic" effects are particularly dire - her outstretched hand oozes a glowing green mist that looks like something out of a "Tales from the Crypt" re-run.

Lamia at one point has a "witches' battle" against Ditchwater Sal (Melanie Hill). I bring up this scene for two reasons. One, it represents a common and peculiar motif of Stardust: showdowns between two antagonists, neither of whom has garnered any sympathy thus far with the audience. Two, Vaughn's finished footage perfectly recreates the dailies from the Harry Potter/Voldemort showdown in Goblet of Fire, before they added the actual effects. Vincent Price and Boris Karloff have a duel in the 1963 Roger Corman-directed comic spin on The Raven, and I swear to you, it looks cooler than the Sal-Lamia faceoff in Stardust.

I had a similar reaction, overall, to Matthew Vaughn's directorial debut, Layer Cake. Not in terms of shoddy effects work, but just the feeling that he was grasping at something considerably out of his depth. Twice now, Vaughn has attempted a recognizable genre (in the case of Layer Cake, the hard-edged British crime film) and rendered it without grace or style, utterly failing to make it his own. This is never a good thing, but working with specific sub-genres that a lot of other directors do particularly well (like dryly funny crime movies or postmodern fantasies), Vaughn's kind of asking for trouble. Perhaps he should start with something less ambitious? This kind of irreverent, idiosyncratic material, straddling the line between children's adventure and satirical comedy for grown-ups, can't be the easiest thing to pull off, and it's only the guy's second film. Perhaps a nice buddy road movie might be more his speed?

iMeem Officially Works!

It's actually kind of cool. I upload mp3's, they host them, then I can put them up on my blog. Not 100% sure what they're getting out of it. (There's a few ads, but isn't this a really expensive proposition, to host all this content?)

I mean, I have no real intention of joining their "social" community, as I can never seem to get really into the whole online social community thing, despite spending 140 billion hours a week online, which isn't even possible.

So it's just like a free hosting service, really, but as such, it's actually quite a nifty one. I notice that most users don't actually bother to upload their own music. (I should add, I am only uploading free, legal mp3's that I have downloaded from Official Band Sites or legit mp3 blogs, and I think iMeem actually polices for people uploading pirated music.) You can, if you so choose, just browse from songs on iMeem and add them to your profile, but unless the record company gives the A-OK, you just get :30 second clips.

So most people's iMeem profiles suck, because it's just a sample of a song, not a song. And who the hell wants to save song samples or share them with friends? My iMeem profile, however, will eventually be kickass. Right now, it's just two songs. Here's the second one. It's an awesome live collaboration between post-folk oddball Final Fantasy and Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon.

Take a Gawk at the Weird Side

I've been listening to this song all day. Let's see how well this iMeem thing works:



It's a band called Everything, Now!, off their new album "Bible Universe." I'm thinking about buying the album just because I can't get this one song out of my head. My Old Kentucky Blog tells me it's a wacky concept album about a suicidal kid named St. Backbone who finds himself in an alternate dimension. Interesting...

Here's the band's official site if you also want to pick up the whole album becuase this is such a cool, catchy song.

CRANK UP THE VIOLENCE LEVEL?

From the AP via Huffington Post:

Marine: Beating of Iraqis Became Routine

A Marine corporal testifying in a court-martial said Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after officers ordered them to "crank up the violence level."

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testified Saturday at the murder trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas.

"We were told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, testifying for the defense.

When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: "We beat people, sir."

Lovely. Way to win over those hearts and minds.

Seriously...let's all give the surge some more time to work. If you figure each full-bodied American soldier can personally pummel 6 Iraqi adults senseless per day, imagine adding 20,000 new soldiers! That's 120,000 Iraqis who will get their asses kicked, thereby allowing freedom to spread...somehow.

Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.

Lopezromo said the suspected insurgent was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad," and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system.

Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony.

Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial.

Okay, now, let's stop for a moment even considering the impact of having roving bands of American soldiers wandering around Hamandiya looking for individuals to torment. Let's ignore the ramifications of having our military seize men that have been released by the Iraqi judicial system because, like, they totally heard that this guy was Disney's Prince of Jihad or something...

Let's just consider these soldiers. These were probably pretty normal people when they went away to war. Oh, sure, one of them may have been a psycho all along, like Penn in Casualties of War or whatever, but it's doubtful that all of them simply had a criminal mindset when they first landed in country. This is what happens when you send people into these kinds of chaotic warzones for months and then give them crazy, insipid orders like "crank up the violence level."

And now the rest of us will have to live with and amongst this madness forever. Now, I'm not trying to insult the men and women of the American military; this is totally not their fault. They signed on to do a job and had no idea of the rank incompetence and bloodthirsty amorality of their elected representatives and appointed superiors. But the fact is that this war has created a generation of Americans who are now cold-blooded, vicious murderers:

Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong with what Thomas did.

"I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I see it as killing the enemy."

He said Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.

I gotta spell it out for you?

Thomas' attorneys have said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallouja in 2004. They have argued that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents.

Honestly...this is a really tough call. I mean, we clearly expect soldiers to be able to turn their impulse to kill on and off. If you're in some kinds of wars, it's not that difficult. When in battle, kill. When hanging out later, don't kill.

But in Iraq, where you're constantly being shot at without warning? After an officer has just told you to generally be a lot more violent with Iraqis? We're asking a lot of these soldiers...Too much. Way way too much. To the point of ridiculousness. It's one of the 100,000,000,000 good reasons to end this war, ASAP, which of course George Bush would never do because it might make him look stupid. And, folks, he can't have that.

Lopezromo said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified.

"If somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice," he said.

He was totally VC al-Qaida, I swear!

On the Bass...Derek Smalls!

There really aren't words for how awesome this is...so I'm just going to show it to you...



As far as I'm concerned, Live Earth did its job merely by making this moment happen. I still say the Tap should have played the Tokyo show instead of London. They have a huge Japanese following, you know.

Still, Hubbins-Smalls-Tufnel reunion aside, this whole Live Earth thing strikes me as a bit silly. I mean, I believe global warming is a considerable problem, and I'm even willing to go along with the whole "we all have to do our part" thing.

But there wasn't much of a purpose to this concerts. I'm not sure the public needs to constantly be reminded of the reality of global warming. Most reasonable people are already convinced it's real. What we need is real decisive leadership on the issue and actual workable solutions. That's what's missing. Nothing is happening right now because the rich white guys who make all the decisions aren't yet convinced that saving the Earth is the right one. Once they have no other option but to change...say, they are forced by legislation, or plain old public outcry...then we'll see some real action on this issue.

Asking people to fill up their tires so they can get one extra tank of gas per year out of their car is ludicrous to the point of insulting the general public. That's obviously not going to save any planets, even if millions of us take Chris Rock's advice and do it immediately. Come on...

Bob Geldof, creator of the original Live Aid concert, feels pretty much the same way.

"I would only organize Live Earth if I could go on stage and announce concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations," he goes on to say. "They haven't got those guarantees, so it's just an enormous pop concert or the umpteenth time that, say, Madonna or Coldplay get up on stage.

"I hope they're a success. But why is Gore actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody's known about that problem for years. We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming."

I pretty much agree. The whole thing came off a bit sanctimonious. I mean...of course Cameron Diaz and Sting can make thoughtful decisions about their carbon footprint. They're friggin millionaires. Millionaires get to make all kinds of interesting decisions about things that non-millionaires take entirely for granted. Like, "what kind of cell phone should I get?" vs. "which crappy cell phone that comes free with the plan will I grudgingly accept?"

Also, obviously excepting the Tap's performance, the performances I saw yesterday were kind of sub-par. I was enjoying The Police's "Message in a Bottle" until Kanye came out halfway through and started talking over it. (There's a thin line between freestyle rapping and mumbling some shit whilst a band is playing, and Kanye was walking directly on top of that line.) This is really a shame, both because the reunited Police actually sound pretty good (except that one moment where Sting's voice totally gives out) and because it's a perfectly chosen song for the theme of this concert.

Witness the tragedy:



No, no, no, no, no...

I mean, I like rapping. Even freestyle rapping...sometimes. But "Sending out a message in a bottle/It says we need a new tomorrow..." That's just retarded. He even stoops to "wave your arms in the air like you just don't care" at one point. Then there's a series of "yeahs!" and grunts while the Police are playing a song! Be quiet and let The Police play, would you? It's just disrespectful, really.

Actually, there's a larger issue at play here. Rap in a rap song is very good. Classic rock in a classic rock song is also very good. But quite unlike chocolate and peanut butter, these are two great tastes that fucking taste like shit together. No one should ever interrupt a classic rock song with a bit of rappin' in the midsection. Witness Linkin Park.

And if that's not compelling enough evidence for you, an anecdote. In high school, I saw the Steve Miller Band play live at what was then called Irvine Meadows. (I believe now it's the News Corp. Presentation of the Verizon/GE Memorial Cheez-It Park, Brought to you by Bank of America. Or something.) Halfway through "Fly Like an Eagle," they brought out some poor bastard to spit some hot fire. "Fly...like an eag-le...into the sky..." It was horrible. I was hardly a huge Steve Miller Band fan, then or now, but I was still traumatized. As if "Abracadabera" weren't a significant enough crime against humanity...

Finally, for no real reason, "Girls on Film":

Future Unrentables: The Hitcher

As if to allay any concerns that there might be something worthwhile about it, The Hitcher remake opens with an animated rabbit being crushed into roadkill by a passing car. The effects on the rabbit are so hideous, so plainly fake, that it destroys any possible surprise the splatter moment may have had. We know something horrible will happen to this computer-generated rabbit because otherwise they would have used a real rabbit.

Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton (I don't remember either character's name, nor could I provide even a sketch of their background or personality) are starting off on one of those wild n' crazy young person road trips. You know, the kind of debauched coming-of-age journey, typically accompanied by screechy pop-punk, that always seem to lead nubile 20-somethings into these desert-encircled pits of hell in these movies.

It takes director Dave Meyers approximately 2.5 minutes of road trip to get Sophia Bush into her underwear. (Naturally, she has to change in the car.) Under normal circumstances, would be a good sign. But this is a remake of The Hitcher we're talking about here...It would take the entire female population of Van Nuys undressing simultaneously to save this shitkicker.



Sophia and Zach have a not-hilarious run-in with a gas station redneck who relates to them the charming story behind his lazy eye. (He was attempting to milk a donkey. Ba-zing!)

Then the titular Hitcher, played by Sean Bean as part of his ongoing World Tour of Shitty Genre Films, shows up needing a ride to a motel. There's absolutely no attempt to play said Hitcher as anything but a maniacal villain. He's creepy from Minute #1 and within four minutes of his introduction in the film, he's taunting the heroes with a switchblade. It's all handled in an extremely perfunctory manner. Zach and Sophia don't really even seem that surprised when Bean goes all mad-dog on them. "What? You're a serial killer! Oh, man, and I thought we were just giving a ride to some guy! Geez, leave it to me, you know?"

There's no thrill or intensity to this "reveal." Finding out that Bean's a total psycho is a revelation on roughly the same level as finding out Indiana Jones is handy with a whip.

Once Bean has threatened the lives of both heroes and they have managed to successfully kick him out of a moving car, Zach realizes they should "probably call the cops." Too bad the Hitcher has come away with his cell phone.



After a couple fake-out is-it-a-dream-or-isn't-it sequences, our heroes spot The Hitcher enjoying a ride in a family station wagon, causing them to freak out and crash their own car! In the middle of the desert! With a Hitcher around! Not to mention those Hills Have Eyes mutants and Sig Haig in clown make-up! So, in a delicious irony, the Hitchees have become the Hitchers! See how they did that?


That's interesting writing!

Zach and Sophia run into a hyper-religious family that The Hitcher has taken the liberty of butchering. They make a vain but valiant attempt to get the dying brood some medical attention, and of course get implicated themselves in the killings.

What's weird is, Zach and Sophia seem really upset to see the police, even before they know they're being set up to take the fall. They've just had their lives threatened by a maniac who proceeded to brutalize an entire family on an open stretch of road. I'd think, after this kind of experience, seeing the police arrive would be a welcome relief, even if it occurred to you (unlikely) that they might suspect you for the crime. Besides, other people have seen Sean Bean. He's not Keyser Soze or anything. They have every reason to believe the cops will listen to their story.

Instead, their initial suspicions turn out to be correct, and our heroes get railroaded by the cruel American justice system (which as we all know, is unfairly prejudiced against attractive, economically-secure white kids).

"It wasn't me, it was The Hitcher! Or possibly the One-Armed Man!," they plead, but to no avail. I'm starting to realize that this film has an extremely short attention span. No sequences or events really last beyond three to five minutes. A new obstacle presents itself, then The Hitcher kills everyone except the heroes, off-screen, then Zach and Sophia run away to be moderately creeped out another day. It's like the entire first season of a Chris Carter TV series compressed into 80 minutes.

So before long, these two are implicated in the murders of a nice Christian family and an entire police station worth of cops, which has got to be some kind of felony. The Hitcher was apparently able to slay a dozen or so officers in a matter of minutes. In a John Carpenter movie, that kind of mass slaying's gonna run you at least a couple hours, so you know this guy's good.

The guy from that "Boomtown" show no one watched shows up as a sheriff who's hot on the heels of Sophia and Zach, though he's skeptical that they were acting alone. Neal McDonough...he's old skool...he's a cop...He says things like "You've gotta be five-finger fucking me!" Full respek.

At this point, it's totally ridiculous that Zach and Sophie wouldn't turn themselves over to the cops and try to explain everything. Obviously, running away makes you look guilty, dumbasses! Instead, they wait to get caught and then try to explain. Oh, and then, in a carefully plotted masterstroke, they pull a gun on the cops. You know what? These two deserve to get taken down. The Hitcher's doing a public service, stopping two idiots before they can mate.

There's a big car chase between Zach and Sophia, The Hitcher and some police cars set to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" that's, to my surprise, not entirely reprehensible. It's easily the best scene in the movie, though I have to say it looks exceptionally fake. If Michael Bay had shot it, I'm sure it would have cost $80 million more and included a lot of shrapnel bits flying directly at the screen, but you know...it's not bad...

The big action-y chase stuff also kind of moves the film out of the realm of horror and into the realm of camp andexploitation. If they had gone more whole-heartedly in this direction from the beginning, The Hitcher would have been far more watchable.

Instead, it's a cop-out. Meyers sets up lurid exploitation scenes only to cop out immediately. We move in on Sophia Bush in the shower, but quickly cut away to a TV showing Hitchcock's The Birds. (What's with that reference? I don't get it...) Bean climbs atop Bush like he's going to rape her, but then passes on the idea for no apparent reason. I guess he felt it might make him too unlikable to the females, 18-25...

So rather than wanting her sex, Bean decides he wants Sophia to kill him, preferably in front of a bunch of police, so she will be implicated even further, which at this point doesn't even seem possible. Things go from bad to worse, and both The Hitcher and Sophia end up in the custody of Sheriff Buford T. Justice Neal McDonough. I won't reveal Zach's fate...but he won't be taking any more zany-young-person road trips any time soon.

The focus then switches to figuring out who this Hitcher guy is. We get an intense "interrogation" scene where Bean gets pumped for information. "I bet you liked killing those people...you sick fuck..." That sort of thing. I mean, does it matter who he is or why he did it? He's a crazy hitchhiking killer guy. Stop studying his psychology and lock him up! This ain't Criminal Intent, and Neal McDonough, pardner...you ain't no Vinnie D'Onofrio.

Following his sixth or seventh improbable escape attempt, I lost count, The Hitcher locks Sophia in a van and then blows it up, hoping to kill her in the process. He seems otherwise so willing to murder people face-to-face, real up close and personal like, it's odd that he would leave his main surviving nemesis alone in a locked van and simply assume the whole dying thing goes to plan. He's kind of asking for his last-minute comeuppance with that classic movie villain blunder...

Seriously, Are These Guys Insane?

Let's say, hypothetically, that Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have no conscience or moral center of any kind. I know...it's a stretch.

Okay, so putting aside all of the natural, human instincts that would make them realize that they must bring an end to the pointless slaughter of the U.S. occupation of Iraq...don't they worry about how they will be viewed by history?

I would think all public figures would have some awareness that their decisions have long-standing consequences, and would attempt to behave in such a way that future generations could benefit from their actions. Do these guys genuinely not care at all about such things? Is it just a completely selfish, more-power-more-money-NOW mentality, 24/7? I honestly don't know...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), returning from a visit this week to Iraq along with his pro-escalation partner Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), offered the following assessment of the situation in Iraq:

“The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations,” Graham said. “We literally have the enemy on the run. The Sunni part of Iraq has really rejected al-Qaida all over the country. We’re getting more information about al-Qaida operations than we’ve ever received.”

And then there's this...

As key Republican support for President Bush's Iraq war strategy begins to erode, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman today urged fellow lawmakers and the public to give the American military surge time to work.

"We've got to think not about the next election but the next generation," he told a Capitol Hill news conference. The U.S. military surge, Lieberman contended, has the enemy "on the run."

I mean...COME ON. At this point, lying to the American public about progress in Iraq is just MONSTROUS and shameful. It's beneath Joe Lieberman. And he's like a character from Salo to begin with, so that's saying something.

Random Music Videoness

A little Saturday night Ween...



And now, the real reason I've asked you all here this evening:



You have Sadly No! to thank for this.

To Whom It May Concern:

Dear Sir or Madam representing the Durex condom company:

This is in response to your announcement of 200 jobs in the exciting, growth field of professional condom testing. And I quote:

Durex said 200 adult Australians -- men and women -- are wanted to test a range of its condoms.

Presently, I live in the United States, but would be willing to move to Australia should one of these positions open up. While I would not say that I am an "expert" in this field necessarily, I do feel that my unique skills and abilities could be a tremendous asset to your firm.

While the successful applicants will not be paid, each will receive a pack of Durex sex products, a chance to win 1,000 Australian dollars ($857 U.S.), plus professional prestige, the company said in a statement.

I'd agree that this isn't so much about the money as the prestige. I'm not sure exactly WHAT effect having "professional condom tester" on a resume would have on a potential employer, but I would imagine it could only be positive.

Please consider me whenever you are holding your interviews/auditions. Personal references can be obtained for your perusal. Just not as many as I'd like.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Lons

Happy 4th of July!

And to celebrate all that makes this country great, here's our Gangster-in-Chief explaining why he had to give his convicted felon buddy a pass on going to prison. The judge's sentence was "severe," you see. I mean, we can't punish convicted felons severely. That's just not cricket.



Go America! USA! USA! We're #1!

Transformers

After the film finally exhausted itself, my friend Dean acknowledged the horror that is the Transformers movie, but added, "What else could they have done?" In a way, he's right. There was no chance a Michael Bay film based on a 30 year-old trinket-selling enterprise about outer space robots was going to be any good.

Of course, I knew this going in. The closest I've ever come to actually liking a Michael Bay movie was my relative acceptance of The Rock. And though I played with Transformers in my youth (I have specific memories of bringing Starscream with me to elementary school), I clearly don't have the intense and lasting fondness for these characters as some of my peers. So I was never really the film's target audience.

But still...one would hope that a Steven Spielberg-produced massively-expensive mid-summer blockbuster would have some kind of entertainment value, particularly for someone who harbors some degree of old-school nostalgia for the source material. Right? Is that really so much to ask? I didn't think Live Free or Die Hard would be any good, and it was a pleasant surprise. Fantastic Four 2 wasn't anything too terrific, but it was better than average for a Marvel adaptation. So it's not impossible to turn a wacky studio marketing gimmick into a reasonably solid entertainment.

Instead, CLEARLY and VIVIDLY uninspired by his source material, Bay has turned in his most ruthlessly irritating, nonsensical, loud, ceaselessly stupid, pointless, awkward and boring effort to date. I hated Transformers from pretty much the first minute, mainly because there is nothing at all to like.



Before we go any further, I'd like to stress this one point so I don't have to reiterate it in the comments 10 times. I have nothing against a stupid, fun action movie. Live Free or Die Hard is a very stupid action film and I loved it and I gave it a positive review.

Transformers is a terrible action movie by any standard. You'd think Michael Bay could put together a decent action sequence, considering that putting together such sequences is his profession and he's quite successful. But he's just fucking bad. This stuff about him making dumb movies that have great action scenes has always been a myth. He has no fucking clue how to put together a scene that's fluid, comprehensible, intense or exciting. There's just a lot of blurry busyness on screen followed by some explosions and then it's all over.

Bay's filming scenes here on a massive scale. The extended climax involves huge robots engaged in a ferocious battle royale on the streets and in the skies above Downtown Los Angeles. (Why do so many action scenes happen in Downtown Los Angeles? Don't any other cities have cinematic downtown areas?) It's a real shame that he hasn't mastered the basics of action film direction, because these scenes at least could have been salvageable. Once every 20 minutes or so, Bay actually manages, possibly via dumb luck, to assemble a cool shot, though it generally lasts about 3 seconds. I'd describe the film's style as chaotic visual noise, a lot of whooshing around and flying shrapnel designed to give the audience the impression of big-scale action going on without actually showing them anything at all distinctly. You could get roughly the same experience by lighting a large firecracker and holding it directly in front of your face.

I don't know why Bay's so terrified of establishing shots, or any perspective on the action that can give the viewer a clear and accurate sense of the physics and motion in the scene. The best action scenes are precise; they are in many ways about the spacial relations between the adversaries and the movement between them.

Bay's films are just about fast editing and off-kilter angles, seemingly designed to leave the viewer clueless as to what's going on. We never once, for example, get to see an actual car transform into a robot. We see bits and pieces of the shift, from underneath, from the side, from above, in slow motion, starting from underneath and then spinning around from above in fast-motion and then twisting frontwards in slow motion at a 90 degree angle in a reverse barrel roll. I'd call it showing off but it's not in any way impressive. Just frustrating.



If Bay had managed to throw in four or five great bits of action, I'm sure the agonizing banality of Roberto Orci's and Alex Kurtzman's screenplay would be a bit more tolerable. As it stands, the film's turgid, seemingly endless scenes of military jargon and atrocious "comedy" featuring geeky teen Shia LeBouf and his wacky living used car, feel like some kind of punishment. Jon Voight plays the Secretary of Defense in the film, but I suspect the whole project was executive produced by Don Rumsfeld. If screening this back-to-back doesn't get those al Qaeda bastards talking, nothing will!

The film's so bad, it flirts with Snakes on a Plane dumb-for-dumb's-sake territory at times. But Bay's just not a funny filmmaker (his movies always try for comedy and fall flat), and the "jokes" provided by this script could not be lamer if they were cut from a "Mad TV" sketch. Optimus Prime crushes a car under his foot and says "My bad." A weird little Transformer guy gets his head blown off and screams "oh shit" in a canned digital voice. Bumblebee leaks lubricant on to John Turturro's head from what appears to be a pee-hole. And so forth. Snakes on a Plane had four or five genuine, intentional laughs. Transformers...not so much...

The sub-Herbie Goes Bananas shenanigans go on for a long time. So long, I began to suspect that the film was going for loopy comedy, as if Bay had accepted hundreds of millions of dollars to make an elaborate campy farce, a send-up of his patented style of overblown summer action movies. Alas, no, at around the 90 minute mark, he gives the comedy a pass (along with several whole plot strands) and gets down to the business of incomprehensible fights between indistinguishable Transformers that have no personalities.

I'm even surprised at this, as it would seem to be the one guaranteed success of a big expensive Hollywood film adaptation, but the designs of the Transformers are just poor. Their faces are unappealingly squishy. They neither look believably mechanical nor are they expressive, thus failing on both fronts. And their bodies all look so similar, it's impossible to tell them apart during most of the action, particularly when they are grappling in close contact with one another. I had no idea who was fighting who, and who was winning, during the entire climactic battle, which is the only fucking reason to see this horrible piece of shit movie in the first place. At one point, main baddie Megatron dispenses with a Transformer by ripping him in half, and I had no idea who it was until the final scene, when Optimus Prime says a tearful goodbye to the fallen Jazz.

Does the film do ANYTHING right, you may be asking by now? Um...no.

A better question would be...what's more painful, Bay ripping off American Pie in a cruelly unfunny sequence in which Shia LeBouf's parents quiz him about masturbation OR Optimus Prime fumbling around a suburban back lawn in some kind of unholy nerd homage to Preston Sturges?

Well, okay, fine, the casting of Megan Fox represents some rare solid decision-making.



She's not any good in the movie. She's given a nothing character with no real reason for being there, and turns in a wooden performance. But look at her. She's gorgeous. At least there was something to stare at while all the extras were nattering on endlessly with bad movie military-speak.

"Get me Sat-Com on line. I need 3 R-92's at the PTV by 0900. Your go code is Echo Tango Echo Foxtrot November."

Scary Mormons and Even Scarier Non-Mormons

So I'm reading this Des Moines Register article about conservative Christians meeting with Mitt Romney (helpfully linked by Oliver Willis), and it slowly dawns on me that the whole country has gone completely fucking sideways...

Many conservative Christians are quietly nervous about Romney's religion and the issue surfaced as Romney opened his campaigning at a forum in Pella, about 40 miles south of Des Moines.

Mary Van Steenis asked Romney how he would ponder important decisions as president and which source of inspiration he would seek.

"Where would the Bible be in that process?" she asked. "Would it be above the Book of Mormon or would it be beneath it?"

I mean...the guy's running for President. It's an important job. But I don't see how asking the candidates for this job to evaluate the world's great religions makes a whole lot of sense.

This is a complete moron's version of a "gotcha" question, because there's no correct way for Romney to answer. We know he's a Mormon, so we know that he thinks The Book of Mormon is right-on and correct. And the woman asking the question thinks otherwise. But if he were to answer that her book is actually the A-#1 absolute primo bestest scriptural type book, like, ever, he'd be basically admitting he doesn't believe in his own religion. Lose-lose.

I mean...seriously...what does this question even mean. Couldn't you use BOTH the New Testament and the Book of Mormon to guide your prayers, if you were into that sort of thing? Does it have to be one or the other. You either dig Joseph Smith and the plate bullshit or St. Paul and the cross bullshit. Pick your side and run with it, Mittster!

Facing an unanswerably fucking stupid question, Romney comes up with his usual heaping load of dogshit, helpfully scraped off the back of his car after driving to the townhall meeting with the family pet strapped to the roof of the car.

"I don't know that there's any conflict at all between the values of great faiths like mine, like yours, like other faiths, like Jews who don't believe in the New Testament," Romney said.

"People of faith have different doctrines and different beliefs on various topics of a theological nature. But in terms of what it is we are going to believe and also based on our values for our country, I think we come from the same place," Romney said.

And that place is...Bugfuck Crazytown, Population: Most of America

The answer did not satisfy Van Steenis.

"I asked if you had to look to one source what would it be? He didn't really respond to that," she told reporters after the event. "This is serious to me."

Yeah, this is serious. This is some serious stupidity. Mrs. Van Steenis, whose name was just DESIGNED to be the first line of a limerick, is just intent on turning a Presidential Election into a Deity Beauty Contest. A person who insists on their President being part of their particular BRANCH of Christianity is deeply, deeply confused about what it means to be American, yet presidential candidates (well, soon-to-be-former Presidential candidates) go and play right to these people, telling them that their erroneous view of the fundamental principles of our society is justified. It's not! It's completely nonsensical!

Live Free or Die Hard

In the first Die Hard film, detective John McClane proved considerably brave, resourceful and tenacious, but he was also something approaching a normal human being. It's not really a slur to say that most cops are not this clever or good with a handgun, but McClane was still essentially a regular guy caught in an elaborate, over-the-top situation.

Live Free or Die Hard completes McClane's transformation into a comic book superhero. He's still played affably by Bruce Willis in, let's face it, the most iconic, memorable and appropriate role of his long and storied career. McClane perfectly fits Willis' persona - the odd mixture of jocularity and steeliness that makes Willis Willis - and he knows it, and he's clearly come to relish the opportunity to play an Ubermensch version of himself. But McClane no longer obeys the laws that govern the rest of us. He can survive pretty much anything, he's capable of walking off any injury, he never lacks for confidence or resolve and he's never too out of breath to issue forth some kind of witty rejoinder. He's Captain America without a shield.

Mark Bomback's script follows the Die Hard formula with exactness and precision. Elaborate terrorist plot disguised as anarchistic do-goodery turns out to really be an elaborate robbery. A member of McClane's family is kidnapped by efficient cabal of calculating villains. McClane has to rely on amateurs and outsiders for integral information and assistance. Wave after wave of bad guys (McClane openly refers to them as "henchmen" in this outing) are cut down in uncomfortable ways. Wisecracks are...cracked.

Surprisingly for such straight-forward connect-the-dots affairs, these films are dense enough to actually contain a variety of running gags. The way McClane's face becomes increasingly bruised and his clothing bloodied as the film goes on, the way all FBI Agents are named "Johnson," the incredibly serious, brooding right-hand man whom McClane always must face down at the zero hour, these references have piled up over the course of four films now.

Live Free or Die Hard doesn't reinvent or even change any of this material. It diligently includes it, and then heightens everything, taking a franchise that was already pretty goofy and tossing in a hefty doze of pretzel logic along with repeated and blatant violations of the physical properties of our universe. This actually works really well, though I had my doubts initially. I think it's probably the second best film in the series, after the first one.



The film doesn't really open all that well. We find McClane essentially stalking his daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), now a Rutgers student who hates her absent father. They have what's probably the longest conversation we've ever seen between McClane and a member of his family (they usually spend more time with their kidnappers than him in the films), and we immediately realize why there aren't more scenes like this in the other Die Hards. Cause McClane's family are not terrorists and are therefore boring.

McClane's about to go home, we can only assume to drink himself into a stupor, when he's called in at the last minute to pick up some hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long) who's wanted by the Feds. This simple errand naturally plunges John into the midst of a Fire Sale, the mythical hacker plot to interrupt America's entire technological infrastructure.

What begins with computer systems being invaded eventually turns into a full-scale blackout. No cell phones, no computers, no lights, nothing. The shadowy Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), rumored to have once been an agent of the federal government, controls it all from his secret hideaway.

So it's up to McClane and Farrell to find Gabriel and blow him up, soundly and repeatedly. And that's pretty much what happens for 2 hours. Every action sequence in the film is well-shot, fun, satisfying and also incredibly stupid and impossible. Just incredibly so. It would be insulting, in fact, if it weren't so entertaining. Today, someone explained to me that, theoretically, a busted fire hydrant could knock a helicopter out of the sky, but all I know is, even in the heightened physical reality of this film, it looked insanely fake.

I'm not even sure this counts as a knock on the movie, per se. In fact, if I had to take issue with anything, it wouldn't be the utter and complete disregard for the properties of our universe. It would probably be the "performance" from director Kevin Smith as a hacker-genius known as The Warlock. Smith's doing some kind of accent (his character's supposed to be from Baltimore, but I know some people from Baltimore, and they don't sound anything at all like this), but really he's just talking in a weird voice that's annoying and doesn't suit him, and it's completely distracting.

Justin Long fares a good deal better. He's actually a decent foil for McClane, nerdy and out of his element but not shrill or annoying. (I was never actually that huge of a fan of Samuel L. Jackson in the third movie, whose character was just so big and angry and in your face, so I appreciated how Long was willing to take a back seat to Willis when appropriate rather than trying to take over every scene.)

Likewise, Maggie Q gets in a few scenes as Gabriel's kung fu fighting main squeeze Mai Lihn, who has a really intense, brutal fistfight against McClane inside an elevator shaft. It's one of the film's best sequences, and I'm really surprised this scene in particular got through with just a PG-13. Seriously, this movie is violent for a PG-13. I guess if you don't show a lot of blood or guts or boobies on screen, you can get away with all manner of senseless death. Good to know.



Len Wiseman (aka Mr. Kate Beckinsale) did a surprisingly good job with Underworld: Evolution, turning what could have been a super-lame werewolf vs. zombie effects orgy into an entirely watchable Hammer throwback that actually used effects well to realize an alternate horror-movie reality. Now, he's surprised me once again by pumping yet more life out of what I had always kind of thought of as a stillborn franchise - one great movie followed by a few inferior sequels. This entry's clearly still not up to McTiernan's stellar, classic original, but it's even closer to that goal than McT's second try - the jokey and overlong Die Hard With a Vengeance - managed to get. And let's not even discuss Renny Harlin's woeful Die Hard 2. It never happened...Just repeat that to yourself...It never happened...

Thith Lookth Inthanely Awful!

Good Lord! I thought the License to Wed trailer portended the most foul cinematic crime against humanity of 2007, but this trailer for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium brings the horrible HARD. It's the film to beat for Worst of the Year, as of right now.



Dustin, Dustin, Dustin...I know you probably thought you were creating the next Willy Wonka, a beloved character to delight a new generation of children. Unfortunately, what you've got here is the latest incarnation of Robin Williams' obnoxious douchebag from Toys. Seriously, the next preview they make for this sure-fire abomination should just feature Dustin Hoffman, in a red bowler hat, standing in a wheat field, apologizing profusely.

(Thanks to Ain't It Cool News for pointing this out...I guess...)