Sucker Punch is a catastrastroke

Zack Snyder's 15 minutes just might be over. He made a spectacular debut with 300, and it's been pretty much downhill since then. His career is perishing on the rocks of his unhealthy obsession with crappy graphic novels put out by DC Comics. If he doesn't get over this obsession, it's going to be all over, real quick like.

I don't want to mislead you in anyway: Sucker Punch is an unmitigated, unadulterated cinematic catastrophe. The only good thing I can say about it is this: They honed in on their target audience very sharply. I am sure that this movie will inspire every sex worker who has ever been committed to an insane asylum. There may be 20 or 30 girls living in the San Fernando Valley who will love this movie.

What about for you an me? Well... not so much.

I told my aunt that takes a heck of a lot of hallucinogenics to write a graphic novel like Sucker Punch.

"You don't seriously think they used hallucinogenics while writing it, do you?" she asked.

"Oh yes I do. I really do. I am sure magic mushrooms, peyote, Salvia-A, and plenty of LSD were involved in the production process. There is no other way to explain a chain-reaction of such bad ideas. There is no other explanation of how they could look at this pile of shit and think it was genius."

Folks, I want to level with you. I was a big fan of DC comics when I was a kid. I read everything they published. I stopped when I turned 14. This was a full decade before the graphic novel movement if of 1990s. My brother was reading comics during that epoch of history, and he collected many graphic novels. Some of the better ones, such as The Sandman, he passed over to me. I had little time for that stuff. I was finishing my degree at UCLA.

Later, as I started my career, and began to have free time and zero disposable income. I tried to read a few of these graphic novels for entertainment during that time. I found most of the 'books' to be rubbish. Pseudo intellectual, pseudo artistic, pseudo political, pseudo relevant, pseudo hip; they were mostly bullshit drivel. These were failed attempts by poor artists to try and achieve something great.

Probably the worst of them all was The Watchmen. I couldn't stop laughing when I heard Time Magazine elected this piece of shit to their top 100 books of all time. That was the end of their street cred. I now wipe my ass with Time Magazine. That's all it's good for now.

Regrettably, Zach Snyder doesn't agree with me. Evidently, he is deeply inspired by this drivel. He picked a good one in 300 to kick off his career. Then came The Watchmen. I consider that an epic failure. Now we have Sucker Punch. This is a catastrastroke.

The failure is not in the implementation. Rather, it is the inception. The story ideas themselves are crap. You can't polish a turd. No matter how well directed, a bad story is a bad story. If it ain't any good on the pages of the screenplay, it won't be any good on the screen.

The pitty is that Zach is a very talented director with very poor taste in material.

Sarah Polly for best actress (Oscar and Golden Globe)

I've been thinking about splice on and off all day long. I made an interesting Paella today, and each time I took a break to let it bubble, my thoughts seemed to return to this movie. It's that brilliant.

In particular, the character of Elsa Kast has intrigued me. Women critics and lots of actresses complain relentlessly about the lack of good quality female roles. Women seldom drive the action in movies. They are seldom the central figures outside chick-flicks and romances (which are themselves chick flicks). Numberous attempts to cast women in guy roles have produced stinkers. Witness the horror of Jessica Biel in the A-Team.

Well, here you go. This movie is what you've been waiting around for. Elsa is the character you've been pining away for. Sarah Polley got it done big time.

After 24 hours, I have come to the considered opinion that Splice is entirely driven by the character of Elsa Kast, and the performance of Sarah Polley. It is incredibly subtle how they get that across to you also. It's unstated. You must derive that by considering the way the plot develops.

When the movie begins, we automatically begin with the notion that Adrien Brody's character, Clive, is the key scientist in this operation. We presume that Elsa is Clive's sidekick. Like his brother, Gavin, Elsa is just along for a ride on Clive's wagon. She's there because she is his girlfriend.

That's just not true. Clive is a brilliant scientist, but he is no genius. Frankly, he is too bound by ethics and convention to be a genius. All geniuses are unconventional. Many are quasi-sociopaths. All you have to do is listen to Edward Teller speak during Trinity and Beyond, and you get that impression. Elsa is the genius. Clive and Gavin are riding her coat-tales.

So is Elsa a sociopath? Yep. She is all that and more, but you would never believe that upon first, second or even third meeting with her. She surprises even Clive, who is her mate in this life. This is where we get to the genius of her character design. Elsa's character is a composite of some of the most fascinating knowledge we have compiled in personality research.

What are those tidbits of knowledge?

1. That there is no line between genius and madness. Rather, there is an intimate connection between these two. Just about every genius has been cracked in more than one way.
2. Madness is often genetic. We discover gradually through the course of this movie that Elsa isn't kidding when she says her late mother was crazy. We see subtle facts that clearly point out that Elsa's mother was clinically insane. Unfortunately, we see plenty of little things that indicate Elsa may well have inherited a good chunk of those genes.
3. All geniuses are unconventional... unconventional to the point of being antinomian. Antinomian to the point of being sociopathic.
4. Most intriguingly, Elsa is a great example of the banality of evil. She fearlessly engages in incredibly dangerous things, without worry, without care, without concern for greater world consequences. However, she seems otherwise normal and brilliant. It is far too late in the game we finally come to a full realization that she is really dangerous in a really subtle way.

To make this character real and believable, you need one hell of a performance from a very good actress. Well, they got it, and I think she should be rewarded. I think Sarah Polly should win both Oscar and the Golden Globe awards. If SAG wants to give her the Actor, I am totally down with that.

Spice is hardcore science fiction

I just returned from seeing Splice. This is a serious piece of science fiction. It is not really a horror movie. As such, I need to lead off with my normal prolog about SciFi.

The overwhelming majority of people who have ever passed through this veil of tears have been illiterate and innumerate. They could not read, write or do elementary arithmetic. Without these foundations, there was no way to proceed on to more advanced subjects such as biology, or from there to genetics. They could read work on developmental psychology, or works by Freud. As such most people 'just don't get' true science fiction. They are frequently left out in the cold by it, and they never understand it.

To make matters worse, all kinds of weird shit gets classified as SciFi. If you look at the top 250 SciFi movies of all time, you will see some weird shit on that list. Things like "Back to the Future" and "The Incredibles" would not appear on my roster of SciFi movies. Netflix has Walt Disney's Dragonslayer listed as a SciFi movie. I have no idea why.

To understand Splice, you would need some familiarity with all of the following things:

1. An understanding of basic biology.
2. An understanding of animal life cycles.
3. An understanding that the drive to optimize inclusive fitness is the fundamental force driving all species behavior.
4. It would help if you understood that many coral reef fish change sex during their lives. This is just part of their natural biology.
5. It would help if you understood a little something about DNA, base pairs, and gene splicing.
6. It would help if you knew genetic engineers are currently splicing all manner of DNA together. They boast they can put a fish eye on a wasp if they want too. It's just base pairs man!
7. They are making custom organisms that crank out common drugs such as human insulin, used by just about all diabetics today.
8. It would help if you understand Freud's Oedipus and Electra Complex.

Ergo sum, we know most people can't really track with this bold screen writer. This is why there are some fairly stupid comments posted about this movie over at RottenTomatoes.com. Litterary and movie critics study how to make things rhyme in iambic pentameter. They rarely study science.

Although I am tad uncomfortable saying this, I must say that I think it is the most important piece of science fiction I have seen in a hell of a long time. I knew without question, as I walked out of the theater, that I had just seen a SciFi classic that will be just as watched 20 years from now as it is today. This will be a constant reference point for a lot of future works.

Warner Brothers, Dark Castle and the director Vincenzo Natali must be congratulated for making a masterpiece.

With that said, this movie is pretty... ehm.... hardcore... for the lack of a better term... although it isn't exactly hardcore. This movie boldly goes where angels fear to tread. This is a movie which dares to answer the question: What is worse than Lebron James catching his Mom and Delonte West in flagrante delicto?

It is not gratuitous when it does so. There are serious reasons for every move the screenwriter make. Every crazy twist in this plot is well setup and makes sense in the context. Some very, very smart critters worked on this screenplay.

This is a cautionary tale for scientists, and a bit of a warning for the rest of us, about the dangers of cross-species gene splicing and the creation of new species on the basis of human DNA. I would dare to tell you that this movie is far more prescient, far more plausible, and far more important than much more celebrated literary works, like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.

Fire away if you want, but I say this is a real Frankenstein with serious scientific grit, fully updated for our current age.

I found this movie intensely fascinating. It was horrific on a much more intelligent level than most movies are. It builds suspense and tension very intelligently. It was plenty horrified by the end. This is a brilliant piece of work.

I would like to recommend this movie to everyone, but I know that not everyone can or will understand this movie. I hope some gene splicers will have a look at this film and give it some thought.

Will Anybody Watch the Watchmen?

CNN just published an interesting piece called "Will Anyone Watch the Watchmen?". You can read it here.

There are two potential answers to this question:

1. Not if they're smart
2. They will but they know it isn't going to be good. They are just doing it to be part of the social conversation that will rise out of this film.

So, I was an avid comic book reader when I was a kid, as was my younger brother. Between the two of us, we have about 10,000 books in storage. Although he was still actively reading in 1985, I was not. Neither of us read this graphic novel until just recently. Both of us had similar thoughts about this book. They go like this:

1. Vastly, vastly, vastly over-rated
2. Fucking stupid costumes.
3. Fucking stupid character names.
4. Fucking weak super heroes
   
5. The emphasis on personal depth and psychology is highly strained. It is not worth the number points critics assign for this material
6. Totally a product of Cold War fear of Nuclear War.
   
7. Mostly a false prophecy of the Left during the Reagan era.

On New Years Eve, 1985-1986, I attended a big thrash metal bash in San Francisco. Metallica, Megadeth, Metal Church and Exodus were all playing the Civic Auditorium. It was a blast. The concert didn't end until 1 or 2 in the morning. It was 1986 by then. As I walked to the Bart station to ride home to Concord, I spied a funny bumper sticker on a crappy Volkswagon Bug. The sticker said "Reagan '84, Nuclear War '85". I laughed like hell. By that time, the sticker was officially a false prophecy. It was typical of the hysterical San Francisco hippies of the time.

Well folks, The Watchmen is a bumper sticker just like that. It is basically a prophecy of atomic doom, and a bitter polemic written against Ronald Reagan. The objective of the book was to stir up pasificism in hearts of comic book readers like me, who voted for Reagan. It failed. It strikes me as hillarious that they have chosen to make this movie around an out-dated political rant, 21 years post-Reagan and 20 years post Cold War. I have no idea in the world how they can make this cold-war hysteria relevant today.

One wag said "Easy, just substitute Bush II for Reagan and you've got it!" Ehhh... When the movie opens a few weeks Obama will have been president for a couple of months, so you don't got it. I guess the hysterical hippies don't keep track of current events too closely.

Worse, I have never seen such preposterous implementations of already horrid costumes in all my life. The character design in this graphic novel was downright horrid. The movie guys have decided to revel in it. They think it is fun. When I saw the production notebook film, cold shivers ran through my spine. I saw visions of hundreds of millions of dollars, burning in a bond fire, during a time of economic crisis, when major studios can go bankrupt. That wouldn't be good for my town of Los Angeles.

Not since the 1960s Batman staring Adam West have I seen such cheese. That Batman was very successful, albeit a guilty pleasure for most. That one succeed because it was extremely camp. Everybody was hamming it up, and playing it tongue in cheeck. It worked because it was comedy, and the people took it that way. Unfortunately, Watchmen is being made as a serious graphic novel should be. They have delusions of greatness, seriousness, psychological depth, and political importance. This toxic mixture of stupid character design and serious themes just can't work in movie. There are reasons why so many considered this graphic novel un-filmable, and a non-movie candidate.

I want to go on the record clearly here: Watchmen is destined to be one of the biggest motion picture catastrophes in Hollywood history. I am talking about a disasterpiece of cinema. It is going to fail. It will live in infamy. In a certain sense, this movie is already a failure. Warner Bros footed the bill for this film, and wound up in a legal squabble with Fox, who now owns the rights to distribute it. This is a legal train wreck has already spoiled any potential profits that might come from this film.

The best outcome that Mr. Snyder, Fox & Warners can hope for is something like King Kong 2005. That King Kong made a lot of money, as all other King Kongs have, despite the fact that it was long and borring. It was profitable, and it more or less sunk Mr. Peter Jackson's career. Anybody noted that he hasn't been seen or heard from again? I know there are rumors of him producing several films. But he has been inactive for almost 5 years. The movie is not remembered well. Have a look at this as just one example. Rumor has it that Mr. Jackson has been sulking over the poor reception of his pet project.

I hope Zach Snyder does not do the same after Watchmen tanks. He made a truly classic film in 300. I would like to see more from him

If Watchmen turns out well, I will eat my words, but I fear not.