Yes, There’s a Small Thing After the “Mockingjay Part 1” End Credits

Mockingjay Part 1!

From the Hollywood adaptation trend that brought you all the Part Ones of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hobbit, and Twilight, it’s split-sequel time once again with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One. Its lean running time of 123 minutes, which includes roughly 15-60 minutes of visual-effects end credits, would suggest the complete finale to Suzanne Collins’ world-famous trilogy could’ve been translated into a single, epic-length film if dozens of pages’ worth of thinking, feeling moments had been deleted from the screenplay. Sure, why not whittle it all down to a more economical 154 minutes, the average run time of Michael Bay’s four Transformers movies? Less talk, more rock!

Meanwhile, the two-hour Fargo is adapted into a ten-episode TV season, and no one reacts with a facepalm. Critics find it in their heart to forgive and bestow glowing approval upon it.

Making extra movies doesn’t have to be a sin in and of itself. The question is, can they make the extra space worth our time and money? Or would you like to be the fussy producer who tells director Francis Lawrence, “I’m sorry, but we only want one film, so you’ll need to give us less Phillip Seymour Hoffman”?

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #4: Desert, Dessert, Cops and Flops

Last Action Hero!

Hey, remember when he was in movies? Good times, am I right? Oh, hey, there’s Schwarzenegger on the right, too.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: the recurring feature that’s me jotting down capsule-sized notes about Stuff I Recently Watched at home. In this batch: Aragorn, Ah-nuld, and two former teen stars — one all grown up, and one grown up only on the inside.

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Top 10 Best Scientific Inaccuracies in “Interstellar”

Interstellar!

The stars of Zero Dark Thirty and Gone Baby Gone spent months crafting an accurate portrayal of apocalyptic farm life.

[Courtesy Spoiler Warning. Plot points ahead.]

So you and your friends have turned Interstellar nitpicking into your new favorite spectator sport? You say you’re not content with forgiving the movie its flaws, or with engaging in the more challenging activity of brainstorming reasons why they’re maybe not flaws? Or you’re possibly dissatisfied because Christopher Nolan’s new movie barely passes the Bechdel test and only scores 1/3 on the Blackdel Test. (The latter is of course rarer and tougher, requiring a movie to contain (1) at least 2 black characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about anything except race. And a 1/3 is an amazing score compared to most other major-studio films.)

Internet users have had no shortage of axes to grind over the movie, and it’s telling that Interstellar has pulled in over $120 million at the U.S. box office without winning the #1 position in its first three weeks of release. It’s on track to become Nolan’s lowest-grossing film since The Prestige, possibly because everyone has been quick to dissect it and find faults since it doesn’t meet their narrow expectations of what a film about spaceflight should look like. Or everyone’s still bitter about The Dark Knight Rises. Hard to say.

Personally, I liked what Interstellar tried to do and appreciated what it accomplished, even if it may not become The Film That Saved NASA. I embraced it despite its problems, theorized why some viewers may have been overthinking it, and thought that some of its errors, omissions, and outrageous fallacies were actually pretty cool.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Best Scientific Inaccuracies in Interstellar:

10. Tom eating a giant dust burrito and exclaiming, “Mmmmm, farm-to-table dust!”
9. The tap-dance shoe-clicking in Anne Hathaway’s zero-G musical number
8. McConaughey insisting he needs to lose forty pounds
7. The ship slingshots around the black hole and reappears in the Enterprise‘s 1986 humpback-whale tank
6. Waterworld suspiciously free of the wreckage of Kevin Costner’s career
5. Reciting the same poem three times somehow does not summon the ghost of Dylan Thomas
4. Fifth Dimension ruled by a black gay female Mr. Mxyzptlk
3. Rocket fuel magically synthesized from used copies of Failure to Launch
2. Matt Damon in a movie without top billing

And the number one Scientific Inaccuracy in Interstellar:

1. God appears to the crew; reveals His true name is Oscar Consideration.

“Interstellar”: Space Enough at Last

Interstellar!

“Hey, kids! Wanna journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination?”

Not all of Christopher Nolan’s films are five-star masterpieces (here’s nodding off at you, Dark Knight Rises), but the foundation of new ideas that underpin each production guarantees we’re in for a unique cinematic experience rather than prefab Hollywood conveyor-belt product. Witness the debate-class spectacle that is Interstellar — one-half homage to 2001: a Space Odyssey, one-half admitted love letter from Nolan to his daughter bearing messages of hope, curiosity, science, human achievement, and the strength of intangible, immeasurable bonds that keep us connected even when we’re parsecs apart.

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Big Hero 6” End Credits

Big Hero 6!

We’re gonna go save the world just as soon as this kitty is sufficiently petted.

When The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009, fans on all sides wondered what sort of corporate synergy we’d see between the two in future projects. For the most part the companies have kept their logos in separate spaces, but Big Hero 6 represents the first truly co-op experience: a Disney animated film based on a Marvel property, albeit very loosely (whose creators, Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, later became part of the think tank responsible for Ben 10). Sharing between Disney and Marvel came easily to them this time, most likely because the characters had become instantly obscure and tossed in the back of the Marvel IP closet, upsetting maybe five or ten fans at most. If a reboot went wrong, they had nothing to lose.

Someone somewhere spotted them on a list, figured they were practically a blank slate, dusted them off, shined them up, upgraded them for a younger audience, deleted all the X-Men connections that got them published in the first place, and now here we are with the next Walt Disney Animated Classic — the all-new, all-different Big Hero 6.

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“Birdman”: Dancing with the Devil in the Broadway Lights

Birdman!

My expression most of the time while watching.

Two weeks ago we drove to the other side of the city to see Birdman in the only art-film theater in Indianapolis. I’m annoyed that it later opened more widely and is now showing at two theaters much closer to home, but there’s no use crying over wasted gas. Ever since then I’ve been struggling to translate my reaction into words that capture my enthusiastic response without being mere labels. There’s a scene about that, and it’s been bugging me ever since.

If you know the movie only from its elliptical ads, you’ll quickly learn Birdman is not slapstick superhero spoof. This isn’t Condorman or Superhero Movie with better effects and a more famous cast. Satire is one of the film’s numerous modes, but costumed metahumans and the summer action blockbusters they inhabit are just a couple of the many subjects facing the scrutiny of director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel), who’s more interested in deeper goals than in brainstorming cheap Batman jokes.

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #3: Histories Rewritten

Disney's Lone Ranger!

Coming next fall to The CW: Winklevoss and Wonka! They’re loose-cannon buddy-cops, hot on the trail of Mike Teavee and the Facebook Staff!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: the recurring feature that’s me jotting down capsule-sized notes about Stuff I Recently Watched at home. In this batch: an expensive tale about Massive Explosions of the Oooold West; an epic from the end of China’s Warring States period; a World War II short story about the time they almost killed Hitler; and an animated sort-of adaptation of a famous novel about an honorary teen pirate.

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“Horns”: The Devil’s Dues and Don’ts

Horns.

The protesters were right all along: Harry Potter is the Devil.

Horror is rarely my thing anymore, but Horns was a different, rarer event for me: a movie based on a novel I’d actually read. Checking out the original book was a natural leap since I was a fan of author Joe Hill’s comics series Locke & Key. I was also curious to see how his writing style compared to his famous father’s. (Summed up: Hill’s dark, rural underside doesn’t have his dad’s grandiloquent flourishes, but his lean-‘n’-mean approach is pretty propulsive nonetheless.)

My reaction to the novel was a bit mixed, but I felt compelled to check out the movie version anyway — partly out of curiosity, and partly because nearly three months had passed since I watched any 2014 releases (my last theater trip was for Guardians of the Galaxy) and I’ve been itching to see something new. And Horns happened to be available On Demand before its U.S. theatrical release on Halloween, so I figured why not. ‘Twas the season.

…and I have to mention it stars the Daniel Radcliffe, the Man Who Lived. That part’s important to some, I suppose.

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #2: Costumes and Scares

42: the Jackie Robinson Story!

Chadwick Boseman: a black hero in a white genre.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we launched a new recurring feature that’s me jotting down capsule-sized notes about not-new movies I catch at home. In this batch of Stuff I Recently Watched: two recent horror DVDs that were given to me for free, just in time for Halloween; one Shakespearean adaptation with a most unusual costuming approach; and one period-piece/biopic featuring an actor whose biggest starring role yet was just announced earlier today with much delightful fanfare.

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #1: Monsters Overseas

Moses!

Moses (John Boyega) parts the sea of critters in Attack the Block.

In my ongoing quest to scribble things down before they vanish from memory and personal history, for a while now I’ve been trying to coming up with a system for jotting down notes about the movies I watch at home. I normally limit my movie writing to new theatrical releases, indies On Demand, and Best Picture nominees during Oscar season, but I’d like to engage in slightly more notetaking for the fun of it — tracking what I watch as I go and recording my impressions in brief, not in 2000-word list-bombs. Once I’ve forgotten the entire movie six months from now, I can return to my previous capsule and remind myself whether or not it was worth remembering.

On to the first batch of Stuff I Recently Watched…

My Labor Day Weekend 2014 TV Marathon Report

Peter Dinklage!

Tyrion Lannister wishes you would go away.

I’m grateful every day to have a job that observes the largely superfluous privilege of Labor Day. I spent most of the weekend recovering from “con crud” and saving up energy and money for future chores and exploits. It was nice to have the time and excuse to make headway into my infinite viewing pile — with my wife’s blessing, no less. I’ll make a point of mowing the lawn some other week, just for her.

The weekend’s results, in no particular order:

* The Station Agent (Netflix): Before Game of Thrones, and slightly before his winning scene in Elf, Peter Dinklage starred in this 2003 indie, a low-key character piece about a railroad enthusiast who retreats to small-town New Jersey after his best friend dies and his model-train hobby shop is sold off. His attempts at hermitage are thwarted daily as life pushes other people into his path — a happy-go-lucky food-truck runner (Bobby Cannavale), a separated wife and grieving mother (Patricia Clarkson), a teen librarian with a secret (frequent Oscar nominee Michelle Williams), an unassuming young black girl, the backwater citizens who mock his stature, and Mad Men‘s John Slattery in a bit part as a disgruntled husband. Dinklage barely talks, letting his doleful gaze speak or deflect for him, but he slowly emerges from inner captivity as the tracks are laid for new connections to new friends, each overlooking the others’ outward differences and recognizing their inner wounds.

Right this way for the rest of the viewing schedule…

On Robin Williams.

Robin Williams

Aladdin. Dead Poets Society. Good Will Hunting. Good Morning Vietnam. Insomnia. Awakenings. The TV shows. The talk show appearances. The Academy Award. All the other movies, good or bad or awesome or regrettable, seen in multiple reruns on basic cable or seen only in their trailers.

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Guardians of the Galaxy” End Credits

Rocket!

Spoiler photo of Bradley Cooper from The Expendables 7.

The raccoon! The tree! The wrestler! The funnyman! The female! Together they’re the hottest new super-team in the Marvel universe, and you probably saw their first movie before I did! If so, congratulations on doing your part to turn Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the summer’s biggest success stories with a boffo opening weekend despite an unproven leading man and not one single popular hero on their roster.

If you didn’t see GoTG before I did…well, that’s what entries like this are for.

Right this way for more about that new movie that is NOT called “Rise of the Guardians”…

“Life Itself”: Ebert & Friends & Family & the Movies

Ebert!

A recently unveiled statue of Roger Ebert, seated outside the Virginia Theatre in his hometown of Champaign, IL. Photo by Anne Golden, from our 2014 road trip.

When film critic Roger Ebert passed away in April 2013, I wrote at length about the influence that he and his longtime TV debate partner Gene Siskel had upon my life. That entry is intro enough to explain why, when I heard there was a new documentary about Ebert, it was an obvious pick for my summer must-see list.

One contemporary peer labels Ebert “the definitive mainstream film critic”. Another, less charitable fellow in his field dismisses Ebert’s longtime TV career as doing their practice an injustice. (“Consumer advice is not the same as criticism.”) Several came together for the special occasion of Life Itself.

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These Aren’t the Guardians You’re Looking For

You’ve heard about that new movie that just opened in theaters this weekend, right? The one where Chris Pratt from Parks & Rec uses those hunky new abs he began sculpting for Zero Dark Thirty and puts them toward attaining leading-man status? And we meet the best CG characters since Caesar and Gollum? And there are about forty other characters you get to meet from the deepest corners of the Marvel universe?

If you believe 25% of my site traffic over the past two days, that movie is called…

Rise of the Guardians!

Rise of the Guardians!

On a related note, 25% of my site traffic is wrong. Right this way for more practical advice…

MCC Live-Tweeting: “Sharknado 2: the Second One”

Sharknado! Two!

Shark and Tornado. Tornado and Shark. Who’s the master and who’s the servant?

Because too many viewers patronized the first one! Thanks to America’s unreasonable groundswell of bemused support of the original Sharknado, Syfy and The Asylum felt emboldened enough to scrape together a few more quarters, call in some former celebrities for cameos, clear the browser cache in their visual-effects software, and make Sharknado 2: the Second One on purpose.

I can’t imagine why anyone would write a straightforward review of this, not even if you were a paid TV critic, unless you’re keen to address the arguments for or against the concept of meta-grade-Z flicks. I see both sides of the debate over which is morally superior, mocking unintentionally bad films versus mocking intentionally bad films, but I opted out of the debate and launched into an evening of fun, carefree live-tweeting without contemplating my justifications or pondering the ramifications of encouraging Syfy’s agenda.

Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience. MAJOR SPOILERS ahead…

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”: In a World Where Apes Are No Better Than Men

Koba!

Toby Kebbell takes over for Claude Akins as the Koba of a new generation. So far I’ve seen no hardcore fans protesting the decision to change Koba from gorilla to ape.

Many of us here on the internet openly lament Hollywood’s fixation on sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots as their creative crutches of choice. Implicit in our grumbles is the broad assumption that all of those recycling methods are inherently bad by definition. We’re sometimes quick to forget within the space of 140 characters, for the sake of the snarky punchline, that such vehicles don’t have to be all bad. Their success rate is disappointing, but it’s far from 0%.

Last weekend, six of the top ten films on the box office chart were sequels. One was a sequel and a sort-of relaunch; one a sequel to a spinoff; one a sequel to a remake; and two were just plain sequels. And then there was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a loose do-over of 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes with the additions of one large MacGuffin and some expensive set pieces, any one of which probably cost five times Battle‘s miserly budget. Also, they smartly ditched the humans’ sci-fi B-movie costumes.

So Dawn is a sequel to a reboot and it’s a remake. Its pedigree is an anti-art hat trick. Somehow it’s also one of the best films of the summer.

Right this way for another trip to the madhouse!

First Pic: Gal Gadot IS Wonder Woman IN “Batman vs. Superman”!

Gal Gadot IS Wonder Woman!

Director Zack Snyder just shared the following image online from this weekend’s big San Diego Comic Con: the public’s very first look at Gal Gadot as the very first big-screen Wonder Woman, as appearing in next summer’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Frankly, Snyder’s trademark monotones aren’t doing her any favors. I can’t tell if her costume really is all leather-armor brown, or if it’s seven different Day-Glo colors of the rainbow but shot through an unappealing Instagram filter. The sword and warrior’s stance are nothing new to comics readers of the last three decades, but older folks whose Wonder Woman memories begin and end with Lynda Carter might be in for a bit of a shock.

Three more important questions remain to be answered in the months ahead:

(1) How’s her personality?

(2) Is her part an overhyped cameo or an ample supporting role?

(3) Will we ever see WW starring in her own film in my lifetime? Or is she doomed to play second-fiddle for the manly heroes, as if she were just a brawnier Lois Lane?

MCC No-Reason Live-Tweeting: “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”

Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance!

How much of this mid-transformation shot is CG and how much is the real Nicolas Cage? I’m not asking him. YOU ask him.

While my son is off living at college and my wife finds other things to amuse herself, my Wednesday nights have become one-man movie nights at home. I work an earlier shift that day, arrive home mid-afternoon, and watch stuff and things for a while. It’s a pleasure I’ve rarely afforded myself, as evidenced by the towering pile of unwatched DVDs and my slowly lengthening Netflix queue.

On Twitter I’ve not been one for constant live-tweeting, but a few months ago I spent one Wednesday live-tweeting my viewing displeasure of Batman and Robin at a friend’s suggestion. This past Wednesday I repeated the experience at absolutely no one’s suggestion with a fifty-cent Blu-ray rental of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Idris Elba, Ciaran Hinds, exactly one female, and Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage as the notorious Marvel antihero. Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience.

Right this way for another fun MCC exercise!

“Snowpiercer”: No Saints After the Apocalypse

Snowpiercer!

“Marvel Team-Up” presents Captain America and the War Doctor in Snowpiercer.

Sure, a bleak Korean sci-fi film based on a French graphic novel, delayed for months while studio heads squabbled over whether or not to delete nearly 20% of it before letting Americans see it, doesn’t sound like the perfect star vehicle for Chris Evans, cinematic hero of this summer’s Captain America: the Winter Soldier. It’s certainly not a vote of confidence that the Weinstein Company compromised by leaving it intact but downgraded to a limited-release run with minimal advertising. In the hands of an unkinder corporation, Snowpiercer could’ve found itself sentenced with immediate relegation to the Walmart $5 DVD bin.

Thanks to exactly one theater in all of Indianapolis, last weekend I had the chance to witness one of the darkest, riskiest, most thought-provoking spectacles of the year. Considering the competition is mostly sequels, I’ll admit that’s not saying much.

– All aboard for the Trip to Bountiless…->