I'm now at the age where a bunch of my friends have kids, which means that they no longer have time to go to the movies. That sounds like a horrifying reality that I want no part of, even though I do want kids eventually. It's a conundrum.
A few of my parent-friends (among others) have told me that they often don't listen to our Daley Screening podcast because they haven't had a chance to see the movie in question, which doesn't really make for an enjoyable listening experience. We initially tried to combat this by doing movie news stuff at the top of each episode, but eventually it just meant that episodes were approaching two hours in length which is a tad unwieldy and perhaps a bit daunting.
Problem solved!
Introducing the Daley Planet podcast, a spin-off of our original Daley Screening podcast. That's right, we're splitting up the podcast into two discreet branches. The Screening will continue to discuss new releases and some old throwbacks in great spoilery detail, while the Planet will focus entirely on the latest news, rumors, casting and trailers in the world of movie magic. We're still playing with the format a bit and working on some recurring bits to include, so if you have any suggestions (for either podcast) leave them in the comments below.
The good news is, because I don't want to pay double the web hosting fees, subscribing to our podcast feed either on iTunes or on SoundCloud will get you access to both shows as they become available. I'm trying to work out a more routine release schedule too; since we typically record on the weekends, I'm shooting for Planet episodes to be come out on Mondays and Screening episodes to come out on Wednesdays or Thursdays. We'll see how it works going forward. Some weeks we might only do one show or the other, as scheduling requires.
Check out our first episode below, in which we talk about Simon Pegg writing the next Star Trek, Tom Hardy's potential replacements on Suicide Squad, and the impending resurgence of The X-Files.
We were all very sad to see Edgar Wright depart Marvel's Ant-Man movie, but when Kevin Feige closes a door, Working Title opens another, more British door.
Deadline is reporting that Wright's next movie will be Baby Driver, a film that seems destined for a better title. Apparently Wright has been working on the script for some time, whereas the title was slapped together haphazardly. The project must be decently developed at this point because Wright's frequent producing partner Nira Park and the chaps over at Working Title have this thing on the fast track (to a better title).
No word on whether or not Simon Pegg or Nick Frost will have any involvement but I kind of doubt it at this point. The Cornetto Trilogy is brilliant and finished. I suspect that all parties involved understand the value of moving on to explore new artistic avenues, although that doesn't preclude a reunion tour of sorts a few years down the line. In fact, one seems almost inevitable, but only when Wright, pictured above contemplating a less dumb title, is good and ready.
There's also no word on the film's plot. According to Mike Fleming at Deadline, "The project...is described as a collision of crime, action, music and sound." I describe that sentence as a collision of words, punctuation and grammar.
"There comes a time where you have to go forward, not backwards."
Well, we've arrived at our destination.
I still remember the first time I saw Shaun Of The Dead at the Kendall Square theater in Cambridge at the beginning of my senior year of college. Zombies had become fashionable after successes like 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn Of The Dead, so the time was perfect for someone to jump in give us a clever new riff on the genre. I think I expected Shaun to be more of an outright parody, but what I got instead was so much better, using the familiar zombie touchstones as a backdrop to tell a smart and clever story about taking responsibility and embracing adulthood. It helps that Shaun is also one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I will never forget the moment when Shaun accidentally pushes the shopgirl onto the umbrella stand and she slowly pulls herself up to reveal a hole in her stomach...and Ed slowly winds his camera. I laughed so hard I literally fell off my chair.
I have an equally special place in my heart for Hot Fuzz. My younger brother was visiting me in L.A. and he got really sick that day, but he stuck it out like a trooper and went to the movie with us anyway. I grew up loving the sort of buddy cop action movies that Wright is playing on with Fuzz, so it's hard for me not to love Nick Frost's Danny Butterman and his obsession with the likes of Point Break and "firing two guns whilst jumping through the air." Plus Danny and Nicholas Angel have some of the greatest homoerotic chemistry I've ever seen on film. In a way, Edgar Wright's first two movies have always gone hand in hand for me; Shaun starts out as a play on zombie movies and slowly morphs into an actually great zombie movie, whereas Hot Fuzz actually plays things pretty straight for a while before its insanely great finale where Angel finally embraces all the action movie tropes he'd previously dismissed and, consequently, makes all of Danny's dreams come true.
Having now seen The World's End twice, both times as a full Cornetto Trilogy triple feature, I'm mostly struck by just how different it is from its predecessors. The film addresses many of the same issues as Shaun and Hot Fuzz, particularly life in a small town and letting go of childhood, but World's End moves along a much darker trajectory. Pegg's Gary King is an absolute dick, unlikable on almost every level and yet somehow still charming in a greasy sort of way. He's a man who is totally unable to let go of the past, desperately trying to relive the best night of his life when he and his high school friends tried and failed to complete an epic, twelve stop pub crawl in their hometown of Newton Haven. While his friends have all grown and matured, Gary is still stuck in that moment, wearing the same clothes and driving the same car with the same mix tape in the cassette player. For him, that night was the pinnacle; he was leaving high school, he had his best mates and a load of booze and drugs and the whole rest of his life ahead of him, full of potential glory. But that glory never materialized and Gary simply has no idea how to cope. That's a feeling with which I can keenly identify. I think back to my high school and college days and it felt as if the world was mine to conquer, with unlimited opportunities to make my mark on humanity and achieve greatness. But as time marches on those possibilities are slowly whittled away until I'm left with only the consequences of the choices I've made, some regrettable but most having worked out for the best. Still, as I commute back and forth each day to an uninspiring job with little potential for personal or professional growth, it's hard not to lust after the promise of youth and the strange mix of opportunity and invincibility that only comes when you're 18 years old. In that way, I feel a sort of kinship with Gary King, even if he is a complete twat.
World's End features a very different structure from Wright's previous films, but it's sort of a requirement of the story he wants to tell. Shaun and Fuzz both actively play with the audience's expectations, which is part of what makes them so sharply effective. While Shaun and Ed remain in the dark about the growing zombie infestation until the last possible moment, the viewers are picking up all sorts of hints and nods in the background of the action or in the irony of the dialogue because we're aware that we're watching a zombie movie and we therefore know what's coming. Fuzz does the same with the tenets of buddy cop movies, so that we're laughing even though the characters are being deathly serious. That element is distinctly absent from World's End simply because the characters have to actually get to the small town of Newton Haven and then spend a bit of time there before the film can make that sharp left turn into robot/body snatcher territory. In fact, it takes about 20 minutes before the gang makes it to The First Post and another 20 minutes before the "blanks" (their name for robots) actually assert themselves into the story. There's nothing wrong with this structural shift and in fact I was quite enjoying just watching the five friends bickering and giving each other shit in a way that's very reminiscent of my own high school buddies. But for the serious Shaun/Fuzz fans out there, it is a little bit jarring, as is the decreased use of one of Wright's signature visual flourishes, the quick-cutting series of closeups that Darren Aronofsky referred to as "hip-hop montages" in his own work.
Okay, now let me stop and make one thing very clear:
This movie is FUCKING HYSTERICAL.
This is by far one of the funniest releases of the year, neck and neck with, appropriately enough, Seth Rogen's This Is The End. But The World's End is funny in a completely different sense of the word. I saw the movie a month ago at the Brattle and I saw it again this week at the Boston Common and I laughed just as hard (if not harder) the second time as the first. Part of that comes from the astounding number of layers and running gags present throughout the script, which are so dense and which come at you so quickly that there are many bits I didn't fully appreciate the first time through. My favorite is probably the "selective memory" joke, although there's also a great joke about theoretical band names as well as a long running debate about what to call the robots, in which Nick Frost gets a single line that I don't even recall hearing the first time through but which absolutely DESTROYED me on the second viewing. Not only is the dialogue clever as shit, but there's also an astounding layer of physical comedy throughout the numerous fight scenes. It's easy to see why Simon Pegg suggested I watch Legend Of Drunken Master, since all of the combat was so masterfully choreographed by Brad Allen of the Jackie Chan stunt team. The first fight, a five on five brawl in the men's room, as well as a later fight in which Gary is desperately trying to drink a pint while beating up a swarm of blanks both display a keen mix of both laugh out loud hilarity and bone-crunching blue carnage. The actual design of the blanks creates some fantastic opportunities for not only amusing visuals when they get damaged, but also some great fight moments - characters are frequently beating up the blanks with a severed mechanical arm that will suddenly turn on them and start fighting back, and there's one blank who swaps some limbs around in a way that both looks silly and makes for a memorable battle.
Here's the other thing: twelve pints in the course of a few hours is a LOT of booze, especially for a group of middle age guys whose days of serious drinking are long behind them. That means that the further into the film we go, not only does the sci-fi insanity increase, but so does our heroes' blood alcohol level, until they're not only stumbling and mumbling about the town, but they're also forced to form and execute some form of coherent plan for dealing with a terrifying menace while getting completely hammered. The idea that the guys would continue the pub crawl after learning the truth about Newton Haven makes no sense to the sober audience, but for our blitzed heroes it seems like the only logical course of action. There's plenty of comedy to be had along these lines and Wright smartly mines all of it, until eventually Gary finds himself trying to logic to robots to death like some kind of shitfaced Captain Kirk. It's marvelous.
There are a few movies that I've made a point to watch more than once before writing about them, (notably Star Trek Into Darknessand Man Of Steel) but none have made me appreciate that decision so much as The World's End. Wright and Pegg are masters of creating films that reward second and third viewings, building jokes that can only be appreciated once you know how things will play out. In Shaun, characters are constantly saying things that describe the ultimate fate of whoever they're talking to. ("Next time I see you, you're dead." Or my personal favorite, "If you want to live like an animal why don't you go live in the shed?") In The World's End, the opening flashback that depicts that fateful night 23 years prior also perfectly mirrors everything that will happen when the boys return to Newton Haven. And the last ten minutes of the film, which are COMPLETELY bonkers, is so packed with visual gags I still feel like there's more for me to discover.
As a final note, let me just describe my full viewing experience for you. The wonderful Brattle theater hosted the Three Flavours Cornetto Triple Feature at the end of July. I found out about the event a few weeks in advance, so I made sure that when tickets went on sale at 3:00 PM, I had my tickets by 3:01. Good thing too, as they apparently sold the place out in under five minutes. It was only later, after I had returned from Mexico, that I learned that Wright, Pegg and Frost would actually be in attendance for a Q&A, so suffice it to say I was pretty giddy. The movies themselves were great, but the Brattle really went above and beyond to make the night into something memorable. I made sure to purchase a "Virtual Pub Crawl" ticket which entitled me to a specially selected beer for each film.
Shaun Of The Dead featured Zombie Killer Cherry Cyser, which I found to be far too sweet.
Hot Fuzz was paired with The Bollocks, mostly due to the constable on the label.
And The World's End came with a bottle of the appropriately titled La Fin Du Monde, which was my favorite of the three brews.
And while the Brattle tried in earnest to provide us all with Cornettos, it turns out that Cornetto is owned by Good Humor, who does not allow the sale and distribution of that particular brand here in the Colonies. So instead we got the Cornetto's American cousin the King Cone, or as the Brattle called them, "Faux-Nettos."
Wright, Pegg and Frost were in terrifically good spirits, especially considering that they had just flown in that morning from Austin, Texas where the Alamo Drafthouse had thrown a similar event. They gave us some great insights into the film, including how they chose to deal with ideas like the individual vs. the collective ("It's our basic human right to be fuck ups!") and living in perpetual adolescence ("It's actually easier to deal with aliens than the fact that you're old or the town is shit."). They also hilariously dispelled one fan's notion that Shaun was secretly full of Deer Hunter references, an idea that seemed to stem primarily from the fact that Shaun eventually wears a red headband. Pegg even told the story of how he and Frost first became friends: they were out to dinner with a group of people and Frost was at the opposite end of the table, playing with the salt shaker and imitating the beeping noises of the little black wheeled droid on the Death Star that Chewie sends skittering down the hallway. Nobody else knew what he was doing except for Pegg, who described the feeling by singing, "Take My Breath Away."
So my hat is off to the Brattle for putting in the extra hard work to make it a stellar night, and thankfully The World's End is more than deserving of their efforts. This is easily one of my favorite movies of the summer and something that I simply cannot wait to own and watch again and again and again.
Fingers crossed for a badass Cornetto Triogy box set on Blu-ray.
--------------------------------------- Title: The World's End Director: Edgar Wright Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Rafe Spall Year Of Release: 2013 Viewing Method: Theatrical - Brattle Theater
"Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?"
Alright, so this one is a bit of a cheat in that I watched it over a month ago, but it was part of the Brattle's Cornetto festivities so I'm counting it anyway. You see, not only did the Brattle program the Cornetto Trilogy triple feature, but they also took it upon themselves to select an "Alternate Universe Cornetto Trilogy" on the preceding day - three films that acted as spiritual companions to Edgar Wright's three part comedic genre opus. So yes, I spent back-to-back days at the Brattle watching a double triple feature.
Two of the films I was already very familiar with, but I'd yet to see either of them in a theater. First up was the one I was most excited about, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. If you're unfamiliar with this absurdly quotable New Zealand zombie gore-fest, man are you missing out. Dead Alive was a favorite of my high school A/V Crew, a movie that we had in our library of VHS tapes and played frequently after school or between classes. It's the tale of Lionel, a wimpy guy whose wealthy and overbearing mother gets bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey (rendered in grotesque stop-motion animation) and quickly morphs into a sort of zombified demon corpse. However, feeling guilty because she was attacked while he was on a date with the local shopkeeper, Lionel decides to hide her and an increasing number of victims in his basement while attempting to care for them so word doesn't get out around town. The film is equal parts disgusting and hysterical, utilizing buckets of blood and viscera splattered every which way until every inch of the frame is dripping red. The practical effects work is cartoonishly charming and by the time there's a demonic infant on the loose that is clearly a little person running around in baby pajamas and a rubber mask, I defy you not to have fallen in love with Dead Alive while simultaneously marveling that this is the same Oscar winning Peter Jackson who gave us the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
In lieu of Hot Fuzz, we were treated to one of Danny Butterman's favorites, Michael Bay's Bad Boys II. It's hardly what I would call a "good movie" and I probably would have preferred Danny's other action classic Point Break (directed by fellow Oscar winner Katherine Bigelow) but I understand the choice. While the tale of an FBI agent undercover with a gang of surfing bank robbers in U.S. President masks is easily the better flick, it lacks that buddy cop dynamic that's such a crucial component of Hot Fuzz. Still, if you're a fan of utterly mindless shoot outs and vehicular destruction on a massive scale, it's hard to top Bad Boys II.
Finally, our World's End surrogate was the 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers starring Donald Sutherland and Donald Sutherland's giant hair as a health inspector who discovers that people are becoming replaced with vacant, dead-eyed alien replicas. I remember reading Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters as a kid and hearing numerous comparisons between the two - there was even a film version of that book that also featured a much older Sutherland. In Puppet Masters the aliens are actually parasitic creatures that use humans as hosts, so I was somehow under the impression that Body Snatchers was the same, but the truth is far creepier. The film's fantastic opening depicts the alien organisms traveling through space "on solar winds," entering our atmosphere and blanketing the earth through condensation. The world's plant life is covered in alien tendrils that soon sprout flowers capable of duplicating sleeping humans through giant pods. The whole thing is actually played fairly subtle for a while, with omnipresent webs of wispy tendrils often visible in the background even before we start discovering the pod people. And the actual pods themselves are really fun to watch; at one point Sutherland falls asleep in a rooftop garden and we see a Sutherland-faced flower fetus taking shape next to him.
Jeff Goldblum is there doing Jeff Goldblum things, as is familiar "that lady" Veronica Cartwright, probably best known as "Not Sigourney Weaver" from Alien. But the one who really threw me for a loop was Leonard Fucking Nimoy as a famous psychiatrist. I have big love for Nimoy (a fellow Boston native) due to my many years as a Trekkie, but I'll admit that I'm largely unfamiliar with his work outside the context of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I know that after Star Trek went off the air in 1969 he had some trouble shaking off the image of Mr. Spock in the public consciousness, despite experiencing some moderate success with two seasons of Mission: Impossible. He even wrote a book called "I Am Not Spock", a title which helped foster the misconception that he actually hated Star Trek despite the fame it gave him. I understand that impulse as an actor, as success in Hollywood can often be a double edged sword. Once you gain notoriety for a role as iconic as Spock it becomes hard for audiences to accept you as anything else - they're just sitting there watching you in another movie thinking, "Hey look, that's Spock!" Within that in mind, Body Snatchers was kind of a brilliant move for Nimoy at the time. The heavy sci-fi subject matter and the fact that he's playing a largely cerebral psychoanalyst actually makes those Spock associations work in his favor, and when his character makes a dark turn late in the film it gets even better - now he's Evil Spock! Body Snatchers is the last film Nimoy made before returning to Starfleet in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and in a way that's kind of a shame. I'm curious where his career might have gone and what kind of movies Nimoy would have made without Star Trek to fall back on. He eventually got into directing (Three Men And A Baby!) but that stemmed largely from his success helming Star Trek III and IV, the latter of which was the most successful Star Trek movie of all time until J.J. Abrams showed up.
Body Snatchers obviously had a huge influence on The World's End. The idea of aliens who show up and replace/imitate humans is hardly special to Philip Kaufman's 1978 film, which is itself a remake of a 1956 film starring the great Kevin McCarthy, who also appears in this version. But the specific imagery of Kaufman's iteration is unmistakable in the third Cornetto film. The last shot of Body Snatchers is probably the single most memorable image of the whole film (I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, because it really is pretty great) and it's something that Wright utilizes throughout the film as the robots' signature attack move.
The Alternate Universe Cornetto Trilogy was a perfect warm up act to the main attraction, and part of what inspired me to ask Wright, Pegg and Frost for more viewing suggestions at their Q&A the following day. Looking back, I'm really glad that I did, as a week of movies that so clearly helped shape the minds of those three talented Brits really gave me a whole new appreciation for The World's End on my second viewing. None of these movies are requirements in order to enjoy the final flavor of Cornetto, but if you have the time and the opportunity to give some of them a look, I promise it will only enhance your experience.
--------------------------------------- Title: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Director: Philip Kaufman Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy, Kevin McCarthy Year Of Release: 1978 Viewing Method: Theatrical - Brattle Theater
"We took a secret vote. We're not leaving. We're never leaving."
This might seem an odd choice for Cornetto Week, but not only was The Big Chill explicitly called out as an influence by both Wright and Pegg, it also played as the matinee feature before the Brattle's Cornetto triple feature. The first act of World's End largely centers around Pegg's Gary King rounding up his childhood friends and convincing them all to return with him to their home town. Most of them haven't seen each other in years and the way their relationships echo or differ from those of their younger selves is not only what drives much of the action, it's also some of the strongest stuff in the film. It's easy to draw a parallel to the similar group dynamic in The Big Chill, however the entire time I was watching the film, my thoughts were pulled in a slightly different direction.
I have two groups of very close friends: there's the guys I went to high school with and there's Noteworthy, my college a cappella group. Fortunately we all stay in touch pretty regularly - the high school guys usually get together around the holidays when people are home visiting family and the college folks actually stage a Noteworthy reunion in a different location every year. Now that we're all entering our 30's, we're also finding new reasons for everyone to get together. Two weeks ago I traveled to New York for the wedding of my high school buddy Rob, while the Noteworthy crew has now seen four members get married and one baby born, with another arriving in about two months time. These are always joyous occasions and whenever I spend quality time with either group, I always find myself overwhelmed with a sense of comfort and bliss to have everyone in the same room once again. But the time is approaching when that simple pleasure will no longer be possible, and we'll find ourselves gathering to bid a final goodbye to one of our own.
Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill depicts just such on occurrence, as a group of seven now-grown college friends attend the funeral for the eighth member of their clan after he commits suicide. The group ends up spending the weekend in a large summer house, taking stock of their lives while falling into the old patterns and rhythms that forged their bond of friendship all those years ago. Old wounds are reopened, unrealized affections resurface and that which had gone unspoken is finally given a voice. It's not a film where a lot "happens" but nonetheless it's lovely just watching the chemistry between characters as disparate as Kevin Kline and Glenn Close's married couple, Tom Berenger's mustachioed TV star (likely modeled after a Magnum P.I.-era Tom Selleck), Mary Kay Place's lawyer with a ticking biological clock and William Hurt's impotent, drug-fueled misanthrope. The weekend becomes a delicate tonal balancing act; one moment everyone's dancing around the kitchen while cooking dinner and the next they're all stoned on the couch, searching for meaning and reason in their friend's shocking suicide. Fortunately it's a stellar cast, each of whom are able to handle these dramatic shifts and make them feel totally natural. There are some things that don't entirely work on screen, among them Kevin Kline's southern accent, the weird resolution of Mary Kay Place's baby dilemma and Meg Tilly's entire character. But for the most part these feel like minor speed bumps in what amounts to a strong character piece with an almost impossibly great soundtrack.
But it's hard for me to watch this movie without feeling a sense of dread, that it's only a matter of time until I'll be in an identical situation. I recently found out that a girl who was in the class behind me in high school, a girl I was friends with but hadn't seen in years, had passed away from melanoma. Shockingly enough, she's actually the third member of that class to die since graduating a little over 11 years ago. That's a fact I can barely wrap my head around, but it's also something I should probably start getting used to. Granted I'm sure there will be many more birthdays, weddings and babies than there will be funerals in the next decade or so, but slowly, imperceptibly the tide will turn. A car accident, a cancer scare, a sudden heart attack...these are the things that come without warning and, quite frankly, scare the hell out of me. What will it be like when these people who I've always considered to be family are suddenly no longer around? How will that change the dynamics between those of us who remain? As I mentioned, my two circles of friends still get together fairly often, but will that make it harder to easier to cope when one or more of us is gone? It's hard to say, but it's also hard for me to imagine any of these people not being in my life anymore.
I've already experienced a small dose of this imminent future. Almost four years ago, Noteworthy experienced its first loss in the form of Matt Starring, a talented young singer/songwriter who also served as the group's musical director. Tragically, Starring died from leukemia at the age of 23. Every November the members of Noteworthy now celebrate Mattsgiving, where we don red Chucks and gather together in Boston, Los Angeles and New York to remember our friend who we lost far, far too soon. I couldn't be there for his funeral, something I've always felt bad about, so I've yet to live through the particular scenario that Kasdan brings to life, with the sense of fresh pain and immediate emptiness surrounded and sometimes hidden by laughter, music and a lot of drugs and alcohol. But it's coming. I can already start to see it taking shape over the horizon, like a foreboding harbinger of melancholy and overcompensation.
In the meantime, all I can do is look at the friends around me and savor every second of their company and camaraderie for as long as the universe will allow it.
--------------------------------------- Title: The Big Chill Director: Lawrence Kasdan Starring: Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, Tom Berenger, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place, JoBeth Williams, Jeff Goldblum, Meg Tilly Year Of Release: 1983 Viewing Method: Netflix DVD
"A boat can float on water, but it can also sink in it."
About a month ago I went to the Brattle theater for Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, a.k.a. The Blood And Ice Cream Trilogy. If you're unfamiliar, I'm talking about Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and the upcoming The World's End, all of which were written and directed by Wright and star Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and a delicious frozen ice cream treat. As an added bonus, the triple feature was followed by a Q&A with Wright, Frost and Pegg, who had all flown in from a similar event at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas the previous night. I'll have more on that experience in my write up for The World's End, (it was a goddamn blast) but during the Q&A I took the opportunity to ask the three comedy geniuses if they would each recommend a movie for me to watch and thankfully they were totally game. Well, except for Frost, who told me I should watch Andre, "the one about the seal." For the record, if I hadn't seen it multiple times growing up (it was one of my sister's favorites) I would have totally watched it.
I'll therefore be spending this week watching the films suggested by those lovable and hilarious Brits in the lead up to this Friday's release* of their comedic love letter to British pubs, The World's End.
This is Cornetto Week!
I had originally planned on watching Wright's first suggestion, Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky, but quite frankly I stopped watching after ten minutes because I was alone on the couch and I realized that this was a movie that begged to be seen with other people. So instead I switched to Simon Pegg's recommendation: The Legend Of Drunken Master, starring Jackie Chan as a headstrong student in the art of drunken boxing. Released in 1994, it's actually the sequel to 1978's Drunken Master, which bills itself as "the original kung fu comedy." I've never seen that movie either, but Pegg was adamant that I should watch the sequel, so I took him at his word.
Much like my recent lament of Eddie Murphy's downward career spiral, it can also be easy for us to forget why we all first fell in love with Jackie Chan. I still remember seeing Rumble In The Bronx with some friends in middle school and being absolutely astounded at some of the feats Chan pulled off. It's kind of like the first time I saw someone doing parkour: I had no idea that human beings really could do that! However, after the mainstream success of Rush Hour, Chan soon began starring in a plethora of super lame, uninspired Hollywood movies that seemed to neglect any kind of interesting storytelling in favor of "Jackie Chan doing Jackie Chan things." His jaw-dropping physical abilities continued to impress, but movies like The Medallion, The Tuxedo, The Accidental Spy and The Spy Next Door left a cloud of cynicism hanging over his career. Chan seemed willing to appear in anything so long as there was a paycheck attached, and even the promise of his top-notch martial arts skills and insistence on doing all of his own stunts couldn't outweigh the chore of sitting through these awful piles of crap. It was easier to just go back to his earlier films.
The Legend Of Drunken Master is a pretty perfect vehicle for Chan's particular blend of talents. The story is a little sprawling, starting with a simple accidental package swap and eventually turning into a revenge mission and a quest to protect striking workers while taking down a corrupt Western politician who's trying to steal historical artifacts. But at the heart of the movie is Wong Fei, a headstrong young man who has a penchant for fighting despite the wishes of his pacifist father. His preferred style is that of drunken boxing, in which the combatant always seems to be standing off balance and often looks as if he might fall over at any moment. Wong Fei is almost constantly fighting, whether for honor or for his life, and he utilizes a number of intricate moves with silly names like "drunk plays the flute" or "uncle stirs the wine barrel." Wong Fei calls out the moves in the midst of fisticuffs, but this narrated fighting actually pays dividends in the finale, as you watch Chan use those maneuvers and think to yourself, "Oh, that's the flute move!" But there's another level to drunken boxing. When Wong Fei is actually drunk, he essentially acquires superpowers, including increased strength and a higher tolerance for pain. This allows him to take on crowds of fighters in situations where he's hopeless outmatched and still emerge victorious. But there's also a tipping point: if he gets too drunk he loses coordination and can barely stand up, presenting some serious consequences to his incessant pugilism and a nice element of gravitas to his character arc.
All of the combat is excellent, especially a scene where Chan and director Chia-Liang Liu take on about a hundred black-clad members of The Axe Gang, but it's the drunk scenes that really shine through. After guzzling down multiple bottles of liquor (or in the case of the final showdown, some kind of lighter fluid) Chan's face turns bright red and he beats the snot out of his attackers while juggling bottles and grinning like a buffoon. And despite all the inherent comedy, (and there is a lot of it) it still feels like Chan is trying to push the boundaries of fully-staged, onscreen combat. There are inventive scenes, like a fight with a long spear that happens underneath a train car, so that Chan and Liu are both hunched over the entire time. At one point Chan fights off a crowd of ninjas with a giant bamboo pole that gets shredded on one side and then tied off with a shirt, thus becoming a wire-wisk-like trap for any encroaching enemy limbs. The final fight takes place in a steel factory and Chan is not only set on fire multiple times, but he also literally crab-walks over a bed of flaming coals. And thanks to Chan's penchant for showing outtakes during the credits, we know that Chan actually did the damn thing and was then promptly doused by fire extinguishers.
It's easy to see the connection between Drunken Master and The World's End. Both movies feature a lot of fighting while drinking, with the heroes flipping bottles and punching bad guys while desperately trying not to spill their tasty beverages. In fact, at one point in World's End Nick Frost's character fights off a crowd of robots by using a small barstool as a kind of gauntlet on each arm, a move lifted directly out of the Axe Gang fight from Drunken Master. This is clearly a movie that Pegg, Wright and Frost have not only watched multiple times, but have totally internalized over the years, and it's easy to see why it would be floating right on the forefront of Pegg's thoughts when I asked for a recommendation.
I feel like there are probably more subtle nods and homages throughout the combat of World's End. I'll admit that I was probably paying a bit more attention to the sci-fi and comedy aspects of the film than some of the larger mayhem. But that's the great thing about movies: each one informs the next in new an interesting ways. I now can't wait to see the movie again with a closer eye on the fight scenes to see what else there is to discover.
*FYI, a number of theaters nationwide are also showing the full Cornetto Trilogy this coming Thursday, including the AMC and Regal Entertainment chains. If you're in Boston, it'll be playing at the Boston Common AMC (where I'll be for my second helping) as well as the Regal Fenway. Amazingly enough, tickets are currently still available for both theaters.
--------------------------------------- Title: The Legend Of Drunken Master Director: Chia-Liang Liu Starring: Jackie Chan, Lung Ti, Anita Mui, Felix Wong, Chia Liang Liu, Andy Lau Year Of Release: 1994 Viewing Method: Netflix DVD
"Is this who we are now? Because I thought we were explorers."
I'm done with J.J. Abrams's infamous "mystery box."
Let's get this out of the way right up front. It's Khan. We've all been saying he's Khan since Benicio del Toro was almost cast back in 2011. But Abrams and friends refused to acknowledge as much whenever asked, believing in this misguided marketing strategy centered around keeping the villain's identity a mystery. And yeah, that would've been cool if most of the English speaking world had spent the last few months convinced it was the wrong guy. In that case, the eventual reveal would have been shocking and made a real impact on the audience. But that's not what happened. As soon as everyone had worked out Benedict Cumberbatch's identity, Abrams and Paramount should have ditched the mystery box and been upfront with us: "Yeah, alright, he's Khan. But this Khan is different!" That at least would have been honest. Instead they chose to double down, telling us all that he was "John Harrison", which only further cemented everyone's belief that we'd be seeing Khan and annoyed people in the process.
Ironically, people have pointed out that Marvel actually played the villain shell game far more effectively with Iron Man 3. (Spoilers for IM3 too.) Everyone was so focused on Ben Kingsley's Mandarin that when he was revealed to simply be Aldrich Killian's puppet, audiences were truly caught off guard. Comparatively, when Cumberbatch growls, "My name...is Khan", the long awaited confirmation of the obvious lands with a wet thud. The parallel between Star Trek and Iron Man is ironic because in reality both movies are perpetrating almost identical bait-and-switch routines. It turns out that while Khan is certainly a criminal, the one who's actually pulling the strings is Admiral Robocop, who was secretly a militaristic asshole all along. It's hardly a shocking revelation, (especially since the very first announcement of Peter Weller's casting described him as another villain) but it certainly would have played better if most of the audience wasn't still fuming about being misled for a year and a half.
But this leads me to my biggest complaint with the movie: it's a waste of Khan. I always felt it was a mistake to revisit the character in the first place. The whole point of reforging the timeline was to give the filmmakers the creative freedom to blaze a new path through a familiar universe without being slaves to continuity. Immediately bringing back an old nemesis is dumb, especially someone as iconic as Khan. What's worse, they don't even use him intelligently! Khan is a genetically engineered "superman" who is always both the smartest and the strongest guy in the room. He's a master strategist, as ruthless as he is brilliant while also being charismatic as hell. What made him so memorable in Wrath Of Khan was seeing how that brilliance and charisma were twisted into mad vengeance after Kirk inadvertently banished him to a desert wasteland for 15 years. He may be a relic from 300 years in the past, but he's still always a step ahead. Doesn't that sound like a fascinating character?
Instead of all that, we get a guy with magic anti-death blood* who can punch hard.
No, seriously though. Like, SO HARD.
And he has no agenda of his own! Khan should be the evil mastermind, but instead he's just Peter Weller's attack dog that manages to break his leash. Khan attacks Starfleet because he thinks that Admiral Robocop killed his crew, and when he finds out they're still alive he manipulates Kirk in order to kill the Admiral and save his people so they can get back to the business of being badasses. He's a dick to Kirk, that much is sure, but Khan ultimately doesn't care about him one way or the other. Kirk's just a means to a very murky end. If it had been revealed that Khan was actually using Admiral Robocop all along for his own nefarious purposes...well at least that would have been worthy of the name Khan.
That's the other thing. When it comes right down to it, Cumberbatch's character is really Khan in name only. Let's ignore the fact that he's magically gone from Hispanic to British with utterly no explanation. (Carol Marcus is also British in this new timeline despite having an all American daddy.) His entire backstory is told in such broad strokes as to become practically irrelevant. Khan was originally a major historical figure, the Hitler of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990's. (How did I miss those?) He and his genetically enhanced followers sought to cleanse the Earth of inferior beings, so they were eventually captured, cryogenically frozen and shot out into space. All of that should remain the same even in the new Abrams timeline, but almost none of it is mentioned. Instead, we get a phone call to Old Spock (I love Leonard Nimoy, but that shit is just lazy) solely to assure us that Khan is indeed the most evil evil who ever evil-ed. Essentially, if you're not a Trekkie and you haven't seen Wrath Of Khan before walking into this movie, Cumberbatch's character is just another asshole with nebulous superhuman abilities. We're not presented with a version of Khan that is in any way compelling in his own right or even connected to Ricardo Montalban's Khan in any meaningful way. (Cumberbatch has said that he deliberately avoided watching Montalban in order to make the character his own.) The fact that he's named Khan is just this side of an easter egg. Within the context of Star Trek Into Darkness, he's just a hired gun who's gone rogue. To extend the Iron Man 3 comparison, he's not even Ben Kingsley. He's James Badge Dale.
It's ultimately indicative of a seeming bewilderment as to how to treat both the original canon and the Trekkies in the audience. Both of Abrams's movies are jam-packed with references both casual and overt to people, places and events from the original continuity. But in this latest outing there's no sense of direction within the material. Writers Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof seem intent on keeping as many familiar elements as possible, but are then willing to fundamentally change them for no discernible reason. It's almost as if they were given a mandate that the movie must contain X number of Trek references "to keep the nerds happy" but no one actually cared about how they were used. At it's heart, Star Trek Into Darkness is about the struggle for the soul of Starfleet. In light of Nero's attack and with the Klingon Empire looming on the horizon, Admiral Robocop is convinced that the galaxy is filled with nothing but dire threats to humanity. He wants to turn Starfleet away from exploration in favor of pure militarism and Kirk gets caught in the middle. On the one hand he wants revenge for the murder of Christopher Pike, but he's got Scotty and Spock rightfully pointing out the legal and moral quandaries of executing an accused criminal without trial. And that could be a very compelling story in its own right! Some of my favorite stuff from DS9 came from the years when they were engaged in a protracted war with The Dominion, forcing Sisko and crew to make some tough choices while grappling with their own consciences. My point is, Benedict Cumberbatch's character could have been just plain old "John Harrison," rogue agent of Section 31 who seeks revenge against the superiors who betrayed him and it wouldn't dramatically impact the story. It doesn't require that he be Khan. You tweak a few minor details and the movie remains essentially the same.
In fact, it probably would have been better. If not for Khan, we certainly would have been spared the rehashing of one of the greatest death scenes of all time. The moment is telegraphed from a mile away and much of the dialogue is identical just to drive the point home. Reversing the roles might seem like a good way to alter the dynamics of the scene, but it's dramatically stupid. That scene is so effective in Wrath Of Khan for a number of different reasons, including Spock's simulated death during the Kobayashi Maru sequence which deflates the audience's expectations and the fact that the whole movie is about how we choose to accept death and growing old. The scene carries so much weight because Spock and Kirk are lifelong friends with an incredibly rich history together. In Abrams's riff, not only do the characters lack the bond that drives that scene, but we all know that Kirk's not going to stay dead, giving the scene zero dramatic stakes.** At least when Spock died, he fucking DIED. Yeah, he came back in the next film, but there's a difference between spending an entire movie showing just how far Kirk and his crew are willing to go (including stealing and then sacrificing the Enterprise) just on the mere chance that they can restore their friend, versus sending Spock on a five minute footchase atop flying cars. The only reason the scene works on any level at all is due to the talents of Pine and Quinto, who really sell the shit out of it. Quinto even manages to make the infamous "KHAAAAAAAAN!" scream work, at least to the point where the audience didn't immediately burst out laughing and/or groaning.
But why do I need to see all that stuff AGAIN? If I want to watch Wrath Of Khan, I'll watch Wrath Of Khan. Who wants Diet Khan when you can have the real thing? I'm sure the writers think they're putting their own interesting spin on this stuff, but it ends up coming off as disrespectful to the source material. I've long maintained that the reason I hate CBS's The Big Bang Theory is because, while it gets all the references factually correct, the series lacks any true geek soul. It always feels like a show written by cool kids with some kind of Nerd Wikipedia. Somehow the same feeling persists throughout Star Trek Into Darkness. When it's all said and done, I can't tell who Abrams is trying to play to here: he bends over backwards to insert Khan into the story and bases the entire marketing strategy around his presence, but then doesn't actually DO ANYTHING with him. They essentially reshoot one of the single best scenes in the entire franchise, but eliminate everything that made it so great in the first place. It's like he's somehow kowtowing to fans while simultaneously spitting in their faces.
This is hard for me to write, because I really, really wanted to love this movie. My lifelong love of Star Trek has been well documented and when it came to this summer's big releases, Star Trek Into Darkness was one of those flicks for which I had some seriously high hopes. (As opposed to something like Pacific Rim, for which I have seriously high expectations - a subtle but important distinction.) Abrams's first Star Trek is a movie that works in spite of itself. I love the meandering, philosophical approach of most of the original Trek series as well as the focused storytelling of the good (i.e. even numbered) Trek movies but, much like the last few Brosnan-era Bond films, the franchise had become bloated and stale. It needed a good kick in the pants and that's exactly what Abrams managed to do with his alternate timeline reboot.
I really can't oversell just how miraculous that film's success truly was. The idea of revisiting iconic characters like Kirk, Spock and McCoy without Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly seemed like pure folly on paper, but Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and (surprisingly enough) Karl Urban all managed to charm the pants off of both diehard Trekkies and non-fans alike. Moreover, the script for that first movie is all over the fucking map, a result of going into production in the midst of the writers' strike and having to shape a fair amount of the story after the fact. Seriously, the entire second act of that movie is a mess; everything between the destruction of Vulcan and Kirk taking command of the Enterprise makes negative sense. But the cast is so charming and you're having so much damn fun that you barely notice until it's all over.
I wish I could say the same about Star Trek Into Darkness. (That title is still absurd. In the entirety of this franchise, the word "trek" has never and should never be used as a verb.) That's not to say the film is a total disaster. The opening scene is fun, if a bit braindead - Kirk fucking around with a race of primitives and stealing something solely because "they were worshiping it" is vintage Original Series, whereas Spock rappelling into a volcano is about six kinds of silly. And while lots of people complained about an underwater Enterprise, I'm more annoyed that the ship is constantly flying through planets' atmospheres. Starfleet ships don't land, that's why they have orbital spacedocks and are equipped with shuttlecraft. The Godfather III helicopter assassination scene at Starfleet HQ is a nice bit of action, as is the chase and accompanying shootout on Qo'nos (incorrectly spelled "Kronos" on screen for no particular reason) and Kirk and Khan's space jump. I would, however, like to request a moratorium on chase/fight scenes that take place in a shifting gravity field. Yes, it was awesome in Inception, but it was super-lame in Total Recall and just kind of dull here.
Pine and Quinto are both at the top of their game and Simon Pegg does really great work as Scotty this time around. Much like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, it's nice to see him actually get something to do in these movies. There isn't NEARLY enough of Karl Urban's Bones (a sentence I never thought I'd find myself typing before actually seeing him in the role) and Harold Sulu gets one really kickass moment before getting relegated to the background with a red shirted Checkov. (The look on Anton Yelchin's face when Kirk tells him to change shirts is pretty great.) I don't really have a problem with the Uhura/Spock romance. What I do have a problem with is that other than one staredown with a Klingon, Zoe Saldana doesn't do anything in this movie that isn't about their relationship. The woman has incredible screen presence and it's a shame to see her so stranded. Alice Eve is similarly wasted as Carol Marcus's Lingerie, although I suspect that the intention is to set up her love affair with Kirk in the next film. Benedict Cumberbatch is good because Benedict Cumberbatch is ALWAYS good, even in a role as ill-conceived as this one. And I'm always happy to see Peter Weller getting some work.
Star Trek Into Darkness is entertaining enough that non-Trekkies will have a blast while watching it and probably forgive the film's dumber moments. It's hardly the kind of thing that will put the franchise back in cryostasis (see what I did there?) and even with a somewhat disappointing box office draw, a third movie is assured. The film ends with the Enterprise heading out on its five year mission of exploration into deep space, a prospect which is still rife with intriguing possibilities. When Voyager premiered, I was excited at the prospect of a ship being stranded in the unknown, encountering all new aliens and natural phenomena. The sense of real exploration was one of the strengths of The Original Series and something that got lost as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine focused so much energy on familiar races like the Klingons and the Cardassians. It still feels very possible that Abrams is trying to set up some kind of huge conflict with the Klingons next time around. After all, they're a fan favorite who remain underexposed in this new timeline. But I'm hoping for more. I'm hoping for a story based on discovery, something entirely new from the established canon. I'm hoping for a movie that takes place way out on the galactic frontier, with Earth nowhere to be seen. I'm hoping for a movie that finally mines the wonderful threefold relationship between Kirk, Spock and Bones. I'm hoping for a movie in which Kirk actually wears his gold uniform shirt for more than 20 minutes of screen time, instead of constantly putting him in "cooler" looking uniforms and disguises.***
But most of all, I'm hoping for a brand new creative team next time around. The rebooted franchise has been defined by Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof. But Abrams has Star Wars to deal with now (which is what he always wanted in the first place) and those writers have plenty of other projects to keep them busy. They did the impossible: they brought Star Trek back from the dead, found a capable group of actors to take up the mantle and managed to inject a sense of real adventure into a franchise that most considered intellectual and boring. I'll be forever grateful to them for reviving my favorite thing in the world. But now is the time to bring some fresh creative energy to the table. I'm sure there are no shortage of writers and directors who would love the chance to come play in the Starfleet sandbox, so let's hand over control to someone who will really focus on strong storytelling. (I'm looking at you, Brad Bird...) All the moving pieces are already in place and there are an infinite number of directions you can take the Enterprise and her crew from this point on.
Let's try to avoid space whales.
*Bones injecting Khan's blood into the dead tribble might be the clunkiest moment in the whole damn movie. It's like that shot of the cook in Hunt For Red October, only less subtle.
**It's also ridiculous that Bones can't use the magic blood from one of the 72 other frozen people sitting in sickbay to cure Kirk from acute death. It could have been explained away in a single throwaway line of technobabble and the fact that they didn't even try shows just how little regard the writers truly have for the audience.
***I'm convinced that someone involved thinks the classic uniforms look "too silly." It's this kind of thinking that has superheros like Spider-Man and Iron Man constantly taking off their masks throughout their respective movies, and it's dumb.
--------------------------------------- Title: Star Trek Into Darkness Director: J.J. Abrams Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bennedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, Alice Eve Year Of Release: 2013 Viewing Method: Theatrical - IMAX 3D
