Secure Immaturity

Yesterday I traveled with a few friends to Phoenix’s version of Comicon (imagine San Diego’s numero uno Comicon and decrease it times about 10). It is the third convention I’ve been to (Comicon ‘07 and Wondercon ‘08 were the other two) and I have to say it was quaint and quite enjoyable. The show floor was fairly large and unlike the other two cons, I did not attend any panels. But the existence of cosplayers and dressed-up folks was quite high and my friends and I enjoyed living vicariously through the brave souls who made Master Chief and Bumblebee costumes from cardboard and willingly appeared in public.

The convention was placed at an odd epicenter of social constructs: the con took place at Phoenix’s convention center which is basically right next to US Airways Arena, where the Suns and Lakers were playing Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals. Smashed together in a small space was dressed to the nines geeks displaying homemade Penguin, Joker, and Deadpool costumes (with guns) and very orange (or yellow) basketball fans. It was almost like high school again. . .us vs. them. I had legs in both pools and tried to decide which way to go. In the end, comicon was my destination and it was a blast.

Anyways, without further ado. . .the pics:

Pretty self explanatory. This is the sign that says where we are. Moving on. . .

Semi-Contributor Tony (and by semi I mean ‘hasn’t contributed shit to the website save these pictures and an essay, like, three years ago’-Contributor) stands with some off-duty storm troopers (do I have to capitalize storm trooper AND pay royalties for saying them)?

Tony was taken to the hospital a few minutes after this photo because he challenged Honky Tonk Man to a friendly match and was shortly paralyzed from the neck down after consecutive blows from the ‘guitar shot’ and the ’shake, rattle, and roll’. It should be noted, Honky Tonk Man is 57.

Continue Reading »

I would have posted this sooner but I was gone all day. When I heard Dennis Hopper died (from a Twitter feed on ESPN of all places) I didn’t know how to feel. I wasn’t necessarily a huge Hopper fan I wasn’t emotionally connected to the man like I was Jack Lemmon (I cried the day he died) or similar actors. But it did hit me that Hopper seemed liked one of those people who COULDN’T die. . .ya know? It just seemed like he was larger then life and thinking about him dead takes a few moments of thinking.

Anyways, I was a big fan of some of his smaller roles VERY early in his career (Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, etc) and was, of course, in awe of his mainstream performances (Speed, Hoosiers et al). Hopper was one of those actors that could really star in a pile of dogshit but then appear in something amazing and never be looked at twice. He was a quality actor who didn’t always choose great projects. . .but he was never second guessed. He brought the goods.

So tonight, in my mind, I’m runnin’ the picket fence for ‘ol Denny tonight. We’ll miss you!

The sequel. . .it has seemed for generations that they are the surest thing in the movie world: acting, writing, directing. . .they vary. . .but sequels are forever and despite the fact that sequels generally suck, there is always that one time a sequel works and, god forbid, goes beyond the call of duty and actually improves the first picture. Luckily for all of us, Iron Man 2 manages to not only be a good sequel but, in many ways, a better picture then the original: Iron Man (which, in reality, was kind of like two movies, Iron Man: Origins and Iron Man: Goofy Villain Fight).

I can probably say, with ease, that Iron Man 1, while excellent, had some boring stretches, had some low points, and lacked some direction. It also had a wussy villain (and I’m sorry to all the Jeff Bridges fans out there. . .he did fine but he was just dumb). Iron Man felt like a pilot, I guess, because at no point did you ever think ‘this story is really working’. It was an origin story. . .with some good humor and decent action. . .that really, in the end, did nothing but introduce a man in a suit. That’s a lot of time to do one thing.

Iron Man 2, bizarrely, feels like another television episode. It is undoubtedly cinematic (the visual effects and cinematography are off the charts good) but it manages to give you the intimacy of television with a big budget and lots of explosions. But to get back to my original point: the sequel is superior to the original and it is mainly because there are actually places to go both with character and plot. There seem to be problems in which there are actual consequences and there are, unlike the first one, character arc. Oh, and like any good TV show, there are about nine main characters making their mark on this ‘episode’.

Continue Reading »

When I heard Pandorum was coming out I was intrigued. When I saw the trailer for it I was no longer as interested. Though it is unfair to judge something before you see it, Pandorum looked like yet another Supernova (*shudder*), Event Horizon (*double shudder*), or Jason X (Oh God help us!) and, even though I didn’t know any better, I applied that wretched trilogy of terror (all have three things in common: 80s slasher horror elements, space, and suckiness) to Pandorum and, like most of the population, ignored it.

And I am proud to say that I really regret not seeing this one on the big screen. . .because unlike films of it’s ilk (Event Horizon being the poster child I suppose: that being an abandoned ship filled with ambiguous evil), Pandorum does it’s damnedest to be as mind bendingly enjoyable as possible. In fact, and this might be why it failed, Pandorum WANTS you to think it’s a humdrum run-of-the-mill horror show because as things progress you’ll slowly start seeing things in  a different light.

The basic plot goes as follows: Lt. Bower (Ben Foster) wakes up from hyper-sleep virtually alone on a massive starship called Elysium. None of his flight crew is with him save for the late arriving Payton (Dennis Quaid). Bower and Payton, due to memory loss from the sleep, can’t remember exactly what they are doing on this massive spaceship and why it seems to be broken down. Bower, an engineer, decides to explore the ship and determine it’s origin and what happened to it, encountering many different intriguing (to say the least) discoveries along the way. Meanwhile, Payton, all alone near the closed off bridge, deals with his own sanity and the possibility he is sick with Pandorum, a disease of the mind from space travel.

Pandorum has the brilliance to blend about 900 different genres into it and make it seem flawlessly connected. At some points, the film becomes a simple haunted house story. Later it becomes a psychological bender. It adds monster horror (sorry to spoil it), Armageddon horror, and ultra-ultra-violence as well as the hint of a conspiracy! Pandorum has it all and it is all presented in a masterfully produced package of claustrophobia, second-guessing, and intensity that few horror films can pull off without being gimmicky.

Continue Reading »

In the long (okay 21 years), successful (I consider five good years as successful. . .okay, maybe not), storied (more negative then positive but storied nonetheless) history of my Orlando Magic, there are a few years I consider dark and murky where due to either high alcohol consumption or plain ‘ol simple denial I forget almost every aspect of what happened. The 1999-2000 season is one of the three season I remember nothing of (the first being 1991-1992 when I first started watching pro ball and the Magic and 2000-2001 where I think I got laid for the first time I decided to, temporarily of course, take down all my posters of Darrell Armstrong and Andrew DeClercq, and put up Farrah Fawcett, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Pamela Anderson posters instead, to represent three different decades of hotness. . .it figures I’d remember the 2002-2003 season in which we lost 19 straight after starting the season a blistering 1-0).

During this ‘rumored’ 1999-2000 season, openly gay player John Amaechi, the writer of the book Man in the Middle, played what was arguably his best season though, as you’d expect, at the time, he was very much in the closet. His book manages to describe what was a financially successful life but was personally heart-wrenching. I probably don’t have to explain to many of you that in the United States, being gay isn’t exactly embraced. John, a man of much pride and unafraid to share his opinions, hid one of the most important aspects of his personality from almost everyone and, as a result, lived a lonely and paranoid life.

Man in the Middle met with some controversy when it was released. . .most notable being NBA legend Tim Hardaway coming out and saying what amounted to ‘I don’t like fags’. . .but has mostly been kept under wraps. Due to Amaechi’s limited playing career and the NBAs impressive knack for sweeping problems under the rug (as well as, I suspect, a much more open culture. . .Amaechi played in the 90s and early 2000s whereas the book was written in 2007) his revelations didn’t really impact the NBA as much as some would have hoped. I once read a very interesting article in a UK soccer magazine that brought up some interesting stats. Since one in every eight (or something like that) of people in Europe are gay why isn’t it feasible that the a small group of soccer players, something like 3,000 in Europe, contained a few gay men due to national statistics? As Amaechi points out here in his book, in regards to the smaller group of NBA players, Charles Barkley was noted as saying that there was at least one gay player in EVERY said locker room. And Amaechi has partially written this book not to point out ‘who is gay and who isn’t’ but rather WHY being gay in this group is something not recommended.

Continue Reading »

I was at the Diamondbacks-Dodgers game the other night (for the DBacks fans out there. . .it was the one with the bad pitching. Okay, well, that described EVERY game but it was the one where the clearly tired starting pitcher, whose season ERA is 7.01 or something, walked Ethier of the Dodgers to load the bases for. . .um. . .Manny Ramirez. I don’t have to tell you what happened) and filled out my official All-Star ballot and sent it on in. Here were my picks:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

1B- Carlos Pena, Tampa Bay Rays
2B- Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox
3B- Miguel Tejada, Baltimore Orioles
SS- Jason Bartlett, Tampa Bay Rays
OFs- Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners; Ryan Sweeney, Oakland Athletics; B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay Rays
C- Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins

DH- Jose Guillen, Kansas City Royals

NATIONAL LEAGUE

1B- Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies
2B- Dan Uggla, Florida Marlins
3B- Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants
SS- Stephen Drew, Arizona Diamondbacks
OFs- Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers; Justin Upton, Arizona Diamondbacks; Raul Ibanez, Philadelphia Phillies
C- Miguel Olivo, Colorado Rockies

I have always had a rather romantic view of Japan and I am both ashamed and somewhat okay with admitting that at the same time. Often, especially when we grow older, we see things for the grey that they are as opposed to the simply black and white. . .but with Japan, my childhood blinders remained on up to the present day (and I have yet to visit Japan). The most recent book I read, Tokyo Vice, does not, in any way, try to DETER anyone from visiting Japan but it, quite effectively, turns it over and shows that on almost every level, it isn’t all flowers and rainbows.

Author Jake Adelstein, who has been referred to by everyone who saw me in possession of the book as ‘the guy that was on NPR that one time’, was a reporter in Japan for 20+ years and in this book he chronicles some of the highlights of his career: starting with his innocently dopey escapades applying for his job all the way up into the literally life-threatening moment when he tried to take down one of Japan’s most powerful yakuza gangsters.

The book is perfectly set up to show a young, brash, often arrogant but very intelligent gaijin (foreigner in Japan) who rises through the ranks of the very structured and pyramid-based newspaper system. Adelstein literally starts by typing in sports scores. . .and as time, and chapters, goes by, he begins to elevate his position until he is one of the head honchos on the police beat in one of the wretched areas of Tokyo. Along the way he grabs very colorful characters and contacts who, until the end, play a part in the long storyline of his career. Add an almost tragic element to the story and you have a potential modern-crime masterpiece.

Continue Reading »

4-0! GOODBYE ATLANTA! GOODBYE JOE JOHNSON. . .YOU SHAME MY LAST NAME! ATLANTA, HOPEFULLY YOU WILL LEARN FROM THIS BECAUSE I WANT TO LIKE YOU! BRING ON CELTICS/CAVS!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED IN T-MINUS 8 WINS!

AND NOW A CAMEO FROM YOUR EDITOR:

I actually over-planned Val Kilmer Week. I picked out eight movies for seven days and now that the final day approaches, I realized I have to skip one in order to do the other ‘more important’ one (you’ll see on Sunday). Anyways, the one that is going to get left in the dust is one of my all-time favorite films directed by David Mamet called Spartan and it stars, alongside Val Kilmer, Derrick Luke, William H Macy, and Kristin Bell. Below is my original review I wrote back in September of 2008 here.

Spartan (2004)

Spartan is, in my opinion, David Mamet’s masterwork as a filmmaker. Not as a writer but as a filmmaker. Val Kilmer plays a Secret Service agent who also trains with the military. Kilmer is the kind of man that the government doesn’t ‘know about’ but pays for his services in extreme matters when necessary. When a sex-slave ring operating in the US and Dubai unknowingly captures the President’s daughter (played phenomenally by Kristen Bell) thinking she’s just a normal girl, Kilmer and a new cold blooded recruit (Derek Luke) must get her back. Sounds simple but there are so many twists involved that the plot is not explainable without spoiling the fun. Per Mamet, the men in this film are cold and calculating and women, for the most part, are in the way, brainless, or a means to an end. In some ways the rescue of the President’s daughter isn’t about saving a girl but preserving a man’s pride. Kilmer is good as he usually is but other actors in smaller roles provide good turns (Ed O’Neill and William H Macy are two examples). Not for the squeamish and not for those looking for a hero, Spartan is a tour de force of intrigue and thrills. I highly recommend it!

VAL KILMER WEEK: Thunderheart

*there is a pretty comprehensive video at the very bottom that sums up pretty much all of Kilmer’s journey in the film. Just a warning: it will spoil much of the film, as will this review. Be warned.

Movies often want to have meaning and they often want to deliver an emotion or a philosophy through technical means and the motion picture. In the case of Thunderheart, the delivery fails while the message is clear: a man, trapped within his own body, finds his inner soul and his true blood. In this, Val Kilmer’s awkward starring vehicle, Thunderheart has a lot of impressive things to say. . .it just goes about it in ways that frankly aren’t that interesting.

I’m not always down for ‘originality’: sometimes an oft-used theme or plot type is acceptable IF there is new ground to explore. Thunderheart skipped the easy way (Indian cop and part-Indian, all-white man team up to solve a crime) and went the more difficult way: signs and portents. Thunderheart ends up being left to the audience’s interpretation but due to the material (Native American films are almost never seen by the mass populace) the movie comes off as trying hard enough but failing.

Val Kilmer is a white-bread, white-collar FBI agent thrown into the ‘wild’ north in the Badlands of South Dakota to do a quick in and out job murder mystery. In terms of the plot details, it gets a bit silly when there appears to be a minor government conspiracy and uranium tainting the water BUT, luckily, that is all background to Kilmer finding his inner soul. Kilmer, apparently, is part Sioux indian and his memories of his ‘crazy’ father (who was half Sioux) is spotty. In the beginning, South Dakota is simply savage country. . .and he longs for the suburbs of DC.

As expected he starts to tap into the heritage he has long repressed and even starts to uncover memories long forgotten about his father. His initial indifference to the Native Americans becomes an against-all-odds crusade to protect them from the white man. Kilmer doesn’t exactly go native but he ends up squashing his beliefs and his prejudice and defends something he is still not quite sure he believes in.

I’d like to say this was very powerful stuff but eccentric film director Michael Apted chooses to go with less explanation and more ambiguity with the images. While a noble and creative endeavour, it kind of alienates the audience. Kilmer is such a dick from the Establishment in the beginning that his slow realization of his true purpose is tough to root for. If things cut to the chase a bit faster, Kilmer’s character could have been salvageable. Instead he’s just kind of a dick at the end, not a full dick. Plus the film never really gives you a nice warm feeling inside at any point: Kilmer’s realizations seem just as troubling as his current life and the film is coated with a darkness that is impenetrable.

I suppose the saddest part is Kilmer himself. A lot of people recommended this movie to me and I tried to quell expectations as much as possible but, frankly, I found his performance rather forgettable. It was nice to see something uncommon for a Hollywood film (the film does an excellent job of not resorting to Native American stereotypes) and the cinematography was breathtaking (the film was filmed on location in South Dakota) but Thunderheart is just kind of something to mark off the list of ‘must see’ and put on the shelf, never to return.