Zombie Column: Man of Steel

Evan was in town this past weekend, and due to extenuating circumstances (like, our city got nice and flooded), we were able to take in a movie after church. We decided on Man of Steel (over This is the End and World War Z) and dragged Amy along with us, because of course we did.

Honestly, I can’t remember what most of the trailers were. Pacific Rim, maybe? White House Down was the first, and Evan called that as we entered the theatre, so bonus points for him. I think I got the others, though, so I’m not entirely sure who wins that round.

Anyway, the movie opens with a mother giving birth, while Russell Crowe helps. I’m not entirely sure he should be around any births, since he might snap and start hurling phones at various medical personnel, but maybe that’s why he’s assisted entirely by robots here. After that, the movie shifts into a fairly long action scene. General Zod (Michael Shannon) leads an insurrection right before Krypton blows up while Jor-El (Crowe) sends his son to Earth. This is totally how every movie should start. Way over the top action scenes with a ton of explosions to get us invested in it.

Then the movie slows down a lot, but by that time we’re already hooked. It spends about an hour letting us get to know Clark Kent (Henry Cavill, whom we recognize from Immortals, but that’s about it. He’s my kind of guy, though – he almost missed the call from Zack Snyder because he was busy playing World of Warcraft) while he gets to know himself.

Eventually the action starts back up, again in tremendous manner. Say what you want about Snyder, but he can sure do special effects. They’re almost Bay-ish in their size, intensity, and frequency. I didn’t really have any quibbles about the action, just a question. If two invincible beings face off, can one defeat the other by punching? Has punching ever been the answer to invincibility? Has punching ever been the solution outside of movies, TV, and boxing? Not that that’s a small sample, mind you. Right now I’m going through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there’s an awful lot of punching of immortal beings. Some kicking too, just to mix things up.

Well, tangent over. One thing I really liked about this movie is the number of people I recognized. You’ll probably know Amy Adams as Lois Lane, and Kevin Costner as Pa Kent, and possibly Diane Lane as Ma Kent. And Morpheus – sorry, Laurence Fishbourne (but really, will he be known as anyone else?) – as Perry White. There’s also Richard Schiff (Toby from The West Wing) as a military scientist, and Michael Kelly (Mark Snow from Person of Interest) as a reporter from the Daily Planet. I mean, his character in the credits is Steve Lombard, but he’s pretty much the guy at the Daily Planet who’s not Morpheus. Oh yeah, Christopher Meloni’s in it too (from one of the Law & Order spin-offs. Also, the really ugly guy from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle).

There are some jokes in here, but not a lot. The music is suitably heroic, but not quite to my tastes. I would have put slightly different chord progression in there, but Hans Zimmer is beyond reproach at this point, so you may as well pick up the soundtrack if you like his other stuff. I’ll stick with Audiomachine.

That’s pretty much my only quibble. The movie is fantastic from beginning to end. Not even the douchebag who answered his phone (twice!) could spoil it. Definitely a theatre movie for me.

Eyes on Spies

So, I’ve got spies on the mind. Firstly, it’s because I just got through Covert Affairs. It’s about a newbie CIA officer played by Piper Perabo. I got into it mainly because I was charmed by her guest starring on Go On (a tragically cancelled sitcom) and because it’s on USA, and I’ll watch just about anything from them (seriously. Covert Affairs is the 5^th show from them I watch regularly. It’s a good thing it’s cable, because trying to keep up with 24 episodes for all those shows would take up waaaaay too much of my time).

Secondly, it’s because Burn Notice (another USA show) is back on the air. Burn Notice is about an ex-spy, and takes great pleasure in pointing out how spies actually do things, as opposed to how they’re portrayed to do things in movies (Covert Affairs tends to go the movie way, not the realistic way).

Thirdly, it’s because I finally caught up with the Edward Snowden story this morning. Or at least, what I think is the Edward Snowden story. From what I can tell, Snowden used to work at the CIA and then leaked information to some newspapers last week that the CIA has been monitoring the internet and cell phone calls. Now he’s in Hong Kong.

Firstly, about the phone call monitoring – HOW IS THIS NEWS?!? I mean, not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but the NSA has been doing this for years. They monitor calls, and certain key words trigger closer scrutiny. Any useful information would be shared with the FBI (for domestic matters) and the CIA (for international matters), and if they’re feeling really nice, they might even share it with other countries (for a quid pro quo, of course, because that’s how the intelligence community works).

About Snowden himself? Guy’s a douche. He promised not to reveal secrets, and then he did. He gave his word and then broke it. I don’t mind that he had a moral dilemma about it. That’s fine. That’s what your conscience is for. But you can’t share information you got there. That’s against the law, and depending on the nature of the information revealed, possibly treason.

On the other hand, I have no problem with the newspapers printing what he told them. They got the information fair and square, and broke no laws getting it. They’re not beholden to the government, so there’s nothing preventing them from revealing any secrets at all. It’s kind of their job.

Now, Snowden is in Hong Kong. After his identity was revealed (he actually outed himself), he checked out of his hotel, not to be seen since. He told the newspapers he was leaking information because he was worried about the rights of American citizens. Then he WENT TO CHINA, a land renowned for the rights of their citizens (“On this day in Tiananmen Square, nothing happened”) and their unwavering devotion to justice and law (*cough* copyrights *cough*). And of course, they would have absolutely no interest in the American Intelligence community. None at all.

If you’ll allow me one more bit of tin-foil-hatness, Snowden is either being made very rich, or very hurt.

Zombie Column: After Earth

What's this? A zombie column three weeks in a row? Am I getting back into movies? (no). Have I lost my mind? (yes). What's going on? What's going on is this is a coincidence. I got a sudden invitation to StarTrek a few weeks ago, which was awesome (about 87% as awesome as FF6). Last week as Fast and Furious 6, which we'd planned on seeing for quite a while. Then this past week my brother's family was in town for some regional church stuff, so my brothers and I took the chance to go to see a movie together. It's probably the first time all three of us have gone to see a movie in years. ThePhantom Menace may have been that movie. Ian and I share similar tastes in movies, but Duncan actually has movie-going standards (one of his favourites is 12 Angry Men), so it's not often that I can go to a movie with him and have us both enjoy the experience.

Anyway, we went to see After Earth. The big question Ian and I had going into it was if the power of Awesome (Will Smith) could overcome the power of Suck (the director was M. Night. Shyamalan). We tied the trailer game (Duncan sat out, because he pays attention to more important things than pop-culture. He's like, responsible and all). I got Thor, Ian got Percy Jackson, I got White House Down (I'm all in on that), and Ian got Grown-ups 2 about half a second before me. We laughed at the trailer, but Duncan astutely said "And now you've seen all the jokes in the movie."

After Earth opens with narration by Jaden Smith, telling the history of Earth. We left it, seeking a less polluted/warring planet, and landed somewhere else. Aliens came to kick us out by bio-engineering hunters that smelled the pheromones we exuded when we're afraid. A small cadre of warriors learned not to fear, and they fought back. The rest of us tried not to giggle at what a preposterous development that is.

I mean, come on. An alien race that can bio-engineer animals can't tailor a virus to kill us all? They smell our fear, but not our sweat or other excretions? Why can't they bio-engineer eyes (alright, eyes are hard). Ears, maybe? This just seems dumb. Also, why are aliens always so technologically limited? If they developed only 1% faster than us, they'd already be 140 million years more advanced than us (with a 14 billion year old universe). 5 million years ago, we barely had anything that remotely resembled a human. 200 years ago, we barely had electricity. In 140 million years, we could be pure energy. And yes, pop culture insists on aliens that can be fought with our weapons, that are within at most a few thousand years of us technologically. It's fairly limiting. And stupid.

Anyway, in an effort to get to know his son, Will Smith takes him intergalactically camping, only their ship malfunctions and they crash land on Earth. "Everything has evolved to kill us" he says, which I think is wrong. Firstly, not everything on Earth evolved to kill humans. Secondly, it's only been a few thousand years - how much could a species evolve in that time? Thirdly, humans have been gone for most of that time - how could animals evolve to kill missing prey?

Still, it's a survival story, and Jaden Smith does a good job of portraying waaaayyy in over his head. Will has a broken leg, so he's stuck in one place. Jaden has to trek to a broken part of their ship to retrieve and set off an intergalactic flare. Also, they brought along one of those animals that smells fear (it was supposed to be a military exercise), but it escaped in the crash, so they'll have to deal with that at some point.

That's pretty much the movie. It's not a great movie, but it's the not the pile of crap I expected. Ian thought the power of awesome outweighed the power of suck. Duncan thought the opposite. I thought it was a wash. The music was decent, there were a few jokes, but there wasn't a whole lot of action, there were scenes in there whose only purpose was to be called back to near the end of the movie, and the actors couldn't stick to their accent. I think it was supposed to be southern, but they kept on forgetting - "Oh yeah, my character has an accent" and so some scenes had it, and some didn't. Still, very good special effects (say what you want, but Shyamalan can do effects) and quite good scenery. But it's not enough to redeem this movie. Worth a look at some point, but it's only DVD quality at most. Probably free-on-TV, according to my rating system.