Super Mario Beats It: The Lessons of NYCC 2010

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JA from MNPP here. New York's Comic Con went down this previous weekend in the massive Javits Center here on the island of Manhattan, and if you were there amongst the stacks of dusty Fantastic Four comics and shiny samurai sword replicas and Jason Voorhees masks you might've seen me wandering around in a glassy-eyed stupor. Every Comic Con I've been to breeds the same overstimulated dullness - within a couple of hours my pupils dilate and seeing things like a ten-foot tall Orc tickling Wonder Woman just starts to seem normal. This happens every day! Still, a couple of things stood out this year and I shall now document them.

10 Random Things I Learned at NYCC This Year

01 Girls really like the Silk Spectre costume - Or maybe it's that they know the boys like seeing them in the Silk Spectre costume - either way, I saw about twenty different ladies wearing the slutty bumblebee ensemble from Zach Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's seminal comic book. The film hadn't come out yet when the last Comic Con happened here in NYC - in 2009 NYCC happened in February, while they moved it into October for 2010 (a permanent move), and Watchmen came out in March 0f 2009 - so I don't remember seeing the costume last year, but it was literally - literally! - everywhere you turned this time around. Does this make Malin "Baby Girl" Akerman a geek icon?

02 Danny McBride's a trooper - The panel for David Gordon Green's Your Highness was at the geek-freaking hour of 10:30am on Saturday. Keep in mind you've got at least an hour's wait to even get into the building at that hour, plus with the commute there... needless to say it took me some effort to drag my bum there, but I did. Then I heard through the press-vine that McBride & Co. had been partying hard until the wee hours of morning before the panel and I felt a little less super for my own efforts, since I'd been in bed by 11:30. James Franco seemed dazed, but Danny McBride was firing on all cylinders. Funny man.

And the footage they showed from the film, while definitely geared to the Comic Con audience - Natalie Portman's thong! Puppets smoking from a bong! (hey that rhymes) - was every ounce the bizarre mish-mash I could've hoped the film would be. It looks terrific. I don't entirely understand David Gordon Green's directing career, but it's been a pleasure watching it play out so far.

03 Geeks will stand in a very long line to watch a commercial - This is nothing new to Cons, I've seen it at every one I've gone to, but it always baffles me. The fine folks behind the upcoming release of the Alien Anthology, as they call it, had a booth where they'd close you up in a sleeping pod and right up in your face was a TV screen and it'd show a bunch of clips from the four Alien movies with some sound effects echoing in your ears. The end. And yet the line never stretched less than fifty people long! I suppose the T-shirt they gave you that cleverly stated "Want A Hug?" had something to do with it, but still. (I totally did it anyway, and I cherish my T-shirt.)

04 The family that geeks together, is adorable together - I wish my parents had dressed me up like a Jedi or Baby Yoda and taken me to these sorts of things. So I could immediately fall asleep. Damn you, parents!

05 In The Thing, There Be Tentacles - While I'm still unsure about a prequel to John Carpenter's brilliant 1982 film, itself a remake, the trailer for Matthijs van Heijningen Jr's film - which has made its way online in an exceptionally shaky, hand-held version - had a couple of quick glances of their take on the plant-animal alien monster things and they did excite this nerd's senses. Although only glimpsed, they look right, which in this era of lousy CG was a concern. Now let's just hope they can nail the right paranoiac tone needed too.

06 Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer are pros at this - I can only imagine how many of these events these ladies have entertained at this point, but the dynamic Battlestar Galactica duo had the audience eating out of their palms. They have a terrific rapport - they are apparently great friends in real life - and joked that they're waiting for the reboot of Cagney & Lacey to come along to showcase it. I would watch that.


07 But Michelle Forbes is scary - I don't care that she told us she's nothing like Admiral Cain in Battlestar of the maenad MaryAnn on True Blood or [insert the name of every character she's ever played] and that she's really a hippie-type in real life - there's a reason she's successful for playing harsh ladies, and she made me nervous. I had to keep checking to make sure everybody's eyes weren't going all black, because with all due respect the audience at a Battlestar Galactica panel at Comic Con is not the audience I want to be having an orgy with.

08 M Night Shyamalan, amiable dude - I defended M Night for a very long time, well past when most people had bailed ship - I liked The Village, and I liked parts of Lady in the Water - but the one-two punch of that book about him and The Happening (shudder) kind of killed any arguments I could make anymore. So I only sat through half of his panel by happenstance, in order to get a good seat for the panel following him (on AMC's The Walking Dead, which looks epic by the way). But he came off really well! It was for the 10th Anniversary of Unbreakable, a terribly underrated film, and you could tell he really loves the film and that its negative reception put him into a bit of a tailspin. He came alive showcasing the storyboards for the train scene at the start of the film - you can say a lot of things about him, but I don't think you can argue about the meticulous craft on display. And he was fascinating to watch in discussion of that.

09 According to Frank Darabont, Zombies are the new Vampires - Which seems like an odd argument to make, right? The last decade has seen every iteration of zombies you could ever imagine - it's not like they need to make a comeback to be the hip thing. I get that he was selling his Zombie TV Show, and it does look terrific. But isn't it really Frankenstein Monster's time to shine again? I want sexy Frankenstein, dang it. (Yes, SNL got there already.)

10 You haven't lived until you've seen Super Mario dancing to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" - This one is self-explanatory, and true. You might not know it's true. But then you see it happen, and you understand its truth. The fundamental sort.

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Watchmen Review (Time Being Relative)

Who watches the Watchmen? A lot o' people even if not quite as many as projected

If time is relative, as Einstein and Dr. Manhattan, a fictional blue god and one of the Watchmen, like to tell us, than it’s never too late for a Watchmen review. In our opening-weekend-only film culture that’s usually a sin. But if the filmmakers are asking you to return, fear of second weekend box office drops hanging over them like a mushroom cloud, another round of reviews should also be encouraged. Time being relative...

It is today and you are reading this review. It is March 6th, 2009 and you are sitting in the theater watching the Watchmen. It is 1986 and the first issue of Alan Moore’s Watchmen is in comic book stores. Director Zach Snyder is twenty-years old and studying painting in London. It is eight minutes from now and you have finished reading this review. You are commenting. It is the 1990s and the movie is in development hell. It is March 6th 2009 and you are sitting in the theater watching the Watchmen. It is tomorrow and you are returning to The Film Experience to read more daily updates. You are still annoyed by something you read the day before.

Watchmen is based on a comic book cum graphic novel from the 1980s. It takes place in an alternate version of our earth where costumed vigilantes (i.e. superheroes) have been outlawed unless they’re working for the government. The Cold War still rages with Russian and American leaders ready to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust should the other side look at them funny.

One of the few active heroes “The Comedian” is murdered and the members of the disbanded superhero group “The Watchmen” realize they’re being targeted. But why? They’re retired.

Plot descriptions leave Watchmen wanting because it’s so many things: a book of ideas, a visually compelling oddity, a product of its time with cold war paranoia encased wittily in spandex, and a meta-deconstruction of the superhero genre: What makes superheroes tick? What kind of a sicko would someone have to be to put on tights and beat criminals up as a hobby? Would man’s inhumanity to man eventually break their spirit? What would happen when they hit middle age?

You’ve seen other films that ask these questions in the service of comedy or spectacle (The Incredibles and Hancock spring to mind as recent variations) and violent heroes are nothing new either (Wolverine, The Dark Knight, etc...) but the influential Watchmen had a hand in all of this. The current psychoanalytical angst-ridden view of superheroes was probably a natural result of Marvel Comics brilliant move in the 1960s to shift the genre away from DC's godlike heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman) to those who were decidedly less super under the mask (Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, etcetera). One could argue that Watchmen was the brilliant apotheosis of that evolution.

Minute Men: Compelling history in graphic novel form. Unwieldy backstory in movie.

It is 2009 and there’s finally a film version of all of this. And I mean all of this. Barely anything save The Black Freighter (a comic within the original comic) has been jettisoned even if it’s only squeezed in with a quick edit here or there. The resulting movie is inevitably cluttered and overlong, making one long for a miniseries to do it justice or more merciless scripting. It’s pleasing and disappointing, exciting and dull. Fans of the comic book will enjoy seeing the characters finally come to life (I know I did) but might not learn anything new through this living. The visual effects and art direction are beautiful but to what end?

The source material wasn’t deemed unfilmable for so many years for its visuals but for the density of its storytelling. Watchmen’s original power was closely tied to its medium: paneled storytelling, the long form storyline and chapter construction, the very language and history of comics. The movie is not tied to its medium: the power of motion, streamlined narrative arcs, the distilled humanity of acting and the language and history of cinema aren't well leveraged.

The actors embodying the anti-heroes are hemmed in in this bookmovie (boovie?). Jeffrey Dean Morgan is appropriately vile as The Comedian, Patrick Wilson is game for the sad sack Nite Owl and Matthew Goode is slightly amusing in his total superiority as Ozymandias the smartest man in the world, but there’s precious little depth. Silk Spectre II has the most to offer the movie, emotionally speaking, but Malin Akerman seems disinterested in her material. She delivers all her lines in the same vaguely negative if not quite whiny fashion. No wonder her super powered lover Dr. Manhattan, embodied by impressively creepy and intimidating CGI and Billy Crudup’s face, is drifting away from his humanity. She’s his tether to Earth? Mars looks better all the time! Jackie Earle Haley tries hard as Rorschach, a fan favorite, but this isn’t an actor’s film.

Maybe it should have been. Watchmen is not an action comic. It thrives on ideas and the psychology (however bluntly defined) of its heroes. The film needed an actor’s director who could also handle the demands of a colossal technical project. Snyder is more than capable with the latter but his heart is with storyboards not actors (see also: 300). Faced with oppressive costumes, one note roles and dialogue insufficiently altered to flow in a different medium the actors choke. Their conversations have the distinct feeling of word balloons: dialogue in cages.

But it’s not just stiff acting and stop and start dialogue that gives Watchmen its weirdly staccato anti-rhythm. The action sequences, usually a highlight of superhero movies are a bigger problem. They actually do start and stop, refusing the potentially exciting momentum that action scenes can build and soar with. Where has the impressive Zach Snyder of Dawn of the Dead gone? His first film was relentless in its forward motion and growing sense of dread. Both were needed here.

At this point I should note a personal prejudice. I dislike slo-mo. It's my least favorite of cinematic action devices. It trips the "pretentious" switch in my head, as if the director thinks his visual choices so portentous that the masses require extra time to properly notice them. This technique can be useful if a director uses it in tiny portions for emotional punch or to convey something so inherently fast that one wouldn’t be able to see it in real time (Ozymandias’s swinging stantion attack is the one truly effective slomo moment in the film –we’ve been told that he can move with inhuman speed. We see it). Even if you don’t share my aversion, you’ll notice that Snyder has a limited arsenal of action tricks. Literally every fight scene in Watchmen uses slo-mo and frequently at that. Any film device constantly employed loses power and meaning.

It’s not appropriate to review a film based on its marketing but I do wish we’d stop hearing Zach Snyder referred to as a “visionary director”. He has made one remake (Dawn of the Dead) and two extremely faithful adaptations of visual work (300, Watchmen). He’s yet to reveal any particular visual ideas of his own. He may well have them but how would we know? Snyder’s latest adaptation prefers to function as a photorealistic recreation of the comic book. Watchmen the movie is ambitious in scope if not quite in cinematic design. To function as superbly as cinema as the comic did as literature, the adaptation would have had to have been a movie first and foremost. In its new hybrid form, all glories (and there are a few) are borrowed.

Movie: C
Comic: A
Movie if you haven't read the comic: I can't even imagine. D ?

Red Carpet Lineup

Post Oscars the the crowds are smaller but red carpets never stopped being walked on. So here we go with this week's sampling.


Maribel Verdú would like to know what it is with French actresses and The Film Experience. How about some attention for the Spanish ladies? Rupert Friend and Keira Knightley attended the opening of his film The Young Victoria (previous post). Rupert will be the love of Michelle Pfeiffer and Emily Blunt's lives this year onscreen. Offscreen he's still Keira's. They make such a beautiful couple but they're both so angular one wonders if they keep gauze and surgical tape on their nightstands just as a precaution. Cheekbones that kill.

Breaking news: Charlize Theron still hot, still knows it. Can we please have more Carla Gugino and Miranda Richardson onscreen? Come on agents, casting directors, producers etcetera. Use them (We discussed Miranda earlier). More on Carla next week since Watchmen opens today. She's playing Silk Spectre, the first. Speaking of... Malin Akerman is smirking at me. 'You can try to shove me off to the side Nathaniel but I'm coming for you. After Watchmen, I'll be everywhere. Like Megan Fox all over again.' I'm not quite ready to say uncle. We'll see how she does as Silk Spectre II. Was it just me or did Malik sort of blow that bitchtastic opportunity she had in 27 Dresses by playing it safe? That movie needed a dose of over the top villainy to give it some flavor.

We'll end with the stars of the sibling ex-con drama I've Loved You So Long, Elsa Zylberstein and the great Kristin Scott Thomas. They're pictured left at the Cesars (France's Oscars) last week. Elsa didn't ever get real traction for the supporting race here at the Oscars but in France she won the statue. Kristin was nominated for lead actress (as were two other actresses we adore Sylvie Testud and Tilda Swinton) but lost to Yolande Moreau in Séraphine which is about the french painter Séraphine de Senlis. That biopic swept the Cesars winning seven prizes. It isn't only the American Academy that loves the epic period bios. I'd say to expect this to be France's submission for next year's Oscars but for the fact that France always has an enviable supply of dozens and dozens of valid contenders.

My interview with Kristin is now up!