Pixar has always been sort of like the homeschooled Asian kid in a spelling bee: They’re so fucking good at what they do you sometimes wish they’d slip up JUST so you can know they’re human. Pixar just kept making masterpiece after masterpiece, and people – myself included – started to wonder if it wouldn’t be “nice” to see them blow it ONCE just to see what that would look like… and then they made a wretched piece of shit called CARS – the 2nd worst talking-automobile movie of the century. Talk about a monkey’s paw moment, eh? “Okay guys, you’re human after all. That’s nice… but please don’t ever suck again, okay?”

Fortunately, Ratatouille was a welcome return to form and now we have Wall*E; so far the best American film of 2008 and… dare I say it? Maybe one of the best science fiction films EVER. That ain’t me fishing for a blurb, kids, I’m serious. We’re talking 2001, Metropolis, E.T., Day the Earth Stood Still here. It’s THAT FUCKING GOOD.

Having managed to literally cover the planet in garbage, we’re informed that the entire human race took off for a five-year space-vacation during which time an army of robots called Wall*Es were supposed to clean the place up. As we open, it’s clearly been A LOT longer than five years and only one Wall*E remains. He’s still dutifully collecting and stacking trash, but at some point he started developing a personality. He collects shiny trinkets, watches a Betamax tape of “Hello Dolly” to memorization and… well, he’s lonely as all hell. So when a mysterious girl robot named Eve shows up, he’s immediately smitten and makes impressing her his new prime-directive.

This first half of the film is, as you’ve heard, amazing filmmaking. No dialogue save for a few of the robot’s limited beeping, it’s all told by gesture and physical-acting by two profoundly non-human characters. We’re basically watching the “romance” blossoming between what are essentially a baby garbage-truck and big flying Ipod… and it’s sweet and moving as all HELL, that’s filmmaking right there.

Eve, however, is no ordinary robot – she’s a probe, sent by a still-spacebound humanity to seek signs of flora and fauna on Earth… and when Wall*E inadvertently helps her accomplish this, they wind up wisked into outer space where Wall*E and we learn what’s become of humanity it what it now seems has been 700 YEARS away from home.

A lot has been said now about the second half of the film, and it’s supposedly “radical” environmental message. The “new” humanity, we learn, have been living in a mechanically-automated utopia for so long they’ve de-evolved into a species of perpetual giant babies, robbed both of the capacity and desire for self-reliance. There’s no missing the broad satiric swipes at couch-culture and Wal-Mart, but that’s where the much-ballyhooed “edge” ends and why I’m calling BULLSHIT on the so-called “conservative” culture-critics who’ve opened fire on the film.

Guys, really: There’s not ONE mention of oil, carbon footprints, fossil fuels or global warming. None. The big “eco-disaster” is LITTERING. Are you really going to seriously tell me that “don’t litter” is now an unacceptably partisan message for a CHILDREN’S FILM? For fuck’s sake, it’s not even really about consumer goods or corporate greed – the humans are enslaved by their own unwitting sloth, having lived for generations in a system of cradle-to-grave automated care with no demand to fend for themselves – it’s about rejecting utopia for self-sufficiency – so-called “right-wingers?” THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE YOU’RE DAMN WHOLE IDEOLOGY!!!

Honestly, at first I was bracing to be disappointed by this second half. The ads have done such a good job keeping things secret, I was thinking it might be possible that the humans would be the BAD GUYS of the film – perhaps with sinister plans for Eve and Wall*E would have to thwart them and maybe it’d end with Wall*E blasting these useless fleshbags out of the sky and heading back to repopulate Earth with his lady. I mean, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of humanity from day to day, you may have noticed. THAT’S an ending I wanna see in a cartoon.

But it became clear pretty quickly that that wasn’t where they were going. Nope, as it turns out Pixar has an optimistic view of humanity, and imagines that the incremental anarchy Wall*E’s mere presence fosters on the starship can serve to wake up their dormant spirit and drive them to reach for their own potential. One character is so captivated by a few crumbs of DIRT from Wall*E’s wheels that he googles his way through human history and is eventually seized by the desire to become a farmer. Wall*E just wants to win the girl, but fate – and Pixar – have cast him as nothing less than the inadvertent savior of the entire human race.

And y’know what? IT WORKS! And I was right there with it! As the blimp-shaped descendants of humankind slowly regain the concepts of conversation, contact, love and individuality… the film’s secondary story (we’re still ALWAYS first-and-foremost with Wall*E and his quest to rescue Eve) becomes the kind of celebration of humanity rising to the occasion that you usually only get from old war movies. This is a film that genuinely believes that WE are as inherently good and capable as Wall*E is, and while it was running I was really feeling the vibe.

So, yeah, there’s a blurb for ya: “WALL*E! It’s so good it made me STOP hating my fellow man for a whole 90 minutes!”

FINAL RATING: 10/10

http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN2341233220080623

This is incredibly difficult.

Not difficult to believe, no. Not by a longshot. Anyone who’d seen Carlin interviewed or performing during the last few years can’t be surprised by this news – the man, after all, called his (as it turns out) next-to-last HBO Comedy Special “Life is Worth Losing.”

The difficult part is finding a way to say what I want to say about the man WITHOUT dipping into sentimentality, piety or (worst of all) psuedo-spirituality. He’d HATE that. The best way I can think of is to stay on-topic.

Of the artists and entertainers who’ve influenced my worldview and my own manner of self-expression, I don’t think any of them were a STRONGER and more tangible influence than Carlin. Watching his HBO specials, introduced to them by my parents, were the first time I ever really got the notion of how hugely important and beneficial it could be to truly UNDERSTAND language.

Carlin was part of an explosion of new-breed comedians that came up in the 60s and 70s, his influence often compared to that of Richard Pryor. He “broke through” largely on the strength of his seminal work, the infamous “seven words you can’t say” routine. It was packed with shock-value and attention-grabbing sarcasm, but at it’s core it was the first shot of what would become the bedrock of his art: Language-analysis as comedy. He would get onstage and not ONLY pontificate hillariously on all manner of subjects taboo and mundane – but also take his own material apart piece-by-piece; exploring the meaning of words, their use and misuses and (best of all) what the MISUSE of a word had to say about the mindset and even AGENDA of the person misusing it. For me, this was a revelation: Words weren’t just powerful – they could be WEAPONS. Properly mastered, studied and respected, language itself could be a sort of mental/verbal martial-art… one could literally tear an opponent’s argument apart or even turn it against him simply by knowing the weapons – the WORDS -more completely than he did.

Just about the whole of modern “topical” comedy and satire can trace itself back to him – had there never been a George Carlin, there would be no Daily Show, no Colbert Report, no any of that. But he never rested on his laurels, and never seemed to grow content. Most comedians, hell… most ENTERTAINERS, period, who start out “edgy” tend ton soften as years go on – he never did. It seemed as though the longer George Carlin spent among humanity, the more aspects of it he found to infuriate and disgust him… and the more ways he found to turn his fury and disgust into humorous release. Most people who are “radical” in youth come to change their mind about “the establishment” once THEY ARE the establishment – he never did. The comic who’d slammed ‘the man’ and the Vietnam war in his youth would in old age slam grown-up ‘liberals’ for changing “shell shock” into “operational exhaustion” as a way of marginalizing and ignoring Vietnam veterans.

I will miss him. I will miss being able to hear his take on the events of the day. We will now not have the chance to hear what the Last Angry Man of comedy has to say about Barack Obama’s bullshit-dripping idealistic self-help stump speeches, or John McCain’s “is-he-effing-kidding??” ressurection of “victory with honor.” We haven’t just lost a comedian, we’ve lost one of the greatest American philosophers of the 20th Century.

I’ve gotta find a mechanism to get these done sooner than two to three days AFTER seeing the movie… though, given the boxoffice, it doesn’t sound like anyone needed ME to tell them not to see this.

Let’s get one thing straight: I LOVED Ang Lee’s “Hulk” for what it was: An art-piece that came closer than almost any other attempt at visualizing the dreamlike pace and offbeat drama of superhero comics. Taken on it’s own merits, including it’s ambitious symbolist themes and Nick Nolte’s brilliant Kinski-esque bad guy turn, I consider it to be a singular pop-art masterwork.

What it ISN’T, however, is an especially compelling narrative. While it fit with Lee’s fresh take on the concept to present a Bruce Banner blown about by the winds of fate who ONLY ever takes charge of his life as The Hulk – it didn’t precisely make for compelling drama and it certainly wasn’t the sort of audience-friendly actioner Marvel was going to want as one of the support-beams of it’s new joint-continuity buildup to “The Avengers.” And so here we have this “reboot” which presents itself more as a sequel to an imagined “more conventional” version of the first one.

Predictably, “The Incredible Hulk” (I’ve always liked the adjective in there to help separate him from all those other Hulks who are merely credible) opts to answer the criticism of Lee’s film as too talky and introspective by charging hard in the opposite direction and being as terse and surface-oriented as it can be without outright becoming a Marvel themed fireworks display: Bruce Banner is on the run, trying to cure himself of the Gamma Poisoning that causes him to morph into Shrek whenever his pulse crests 200. General “Thunderbolt” Ross is chasing him, hoping to weaponize The Hulk, and to that end he injects hardcase soldier Emil Blonsky with WWII-era “super-soldier” chemicals that eventually turn him into an “anti-Hulk” named The Abomination. Ross’s daughter Betty is also Banner’s former girlfriend, and is pretty torn up about the whole thing. That’s about it this time around.

The film takes this fairly bare outline and barrels ahead with it from action scene to action scene, always cohesively but with precious little downtime to deal with characters or expand on the story – though it does find time for a great scene in which we’re reminded of the Hulk’s childlike nature when he get’s into a (literal) shouting-match with a thunderstorm. This straight-on pacing isn’t a major flaw, but it does leave one with the sense that a more complex film has been whittled down to the bare essentials.

When the film DOES take a time-out, it’s usually to drop hints at Marvel’s ambitious plan for a united continuity: Off the top of my head, Doc Samson, Captain America and SHIELD all get direct or indirect nods; and those rumors you heard about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark showing up for an Avengers-teasing cameo were spot on.

I will say that I’m given to wonder if all this fan-service won’t eventually baffle the larger audience. For example, the secondary plot of the film concerns Banner’s attempts to contact an internet pen-pal who’s helping him research a cure. The film twists itself into a pretzel to keep us from seeing him or knowing his name, and when he turns up it’s just Tim Blake Nelson as a well-meaning mad scientist. Now, fans are going to go apeshit because his name is Samuel Stern whom they all know will be transforming into Hulk uber-enemy The Leader at some point… but I can imagine some audiences will be a little perplexed as to what the point was of all the secrecy. At the very least, there’s enough of a tease as to his probable fate in there to at least give non-fans a basic idea of where he’s going, and Nelson couldn’t be more appropriately cast.

Another thing I like is that they aren’t sheepish about the whole “names” issue: Hulk refers to himself in the third person when he bothers to speak at all, and The Abomination gets handed his new nickname in a manner wholly consistent with the 50s monster movies the Hulk franchise has always emulated. I’ll never understand why, out of all the weirdness there is to grapple with in adapting comics, filmmakers tend to get so hung up on twisting the script around to over-explain why these guys give themselves (or are given) elaborate monikers – Am I the only one who gets the sense that, if your someone who’s gonna get hung-up on the illogic of someone branding himself “The ::Insert Color:: ::Insert Animal::” before embarking on a supervillian career, you probably aren’t going to go see these movies in the first place.

One hopes there’s a longer, more character-driven version waiting on DVD, but at present “The Incredible Hulk” is a welcome actioner and easily the best monster movie to play theatrically since at least “The Host.” You get your giant-rampaging-ogre money’s worth, and as a bonus the promise of all this paying off bigger down the road – seriously, the degree to which this film doubles as a “tease” to both it’s own hoped-for sequels AND the Iron Man and Avengers followups is really kind of amazing. Reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Being bored, pissed off at work and generally not up to much reviewing. I did find time, however, to take a shot at doing a review of “Sex and The City” in video form, which appears below. If this works alright I may do some more of these. They’ll be shorter and less analytical than the Game OverThinker bits, by design, but hopefully as much fun to keep doing. Lemme know what you think:

P.S. A review of “Kung Fu Panda” is one entry down, went up about an hour before this one.

Here’s a classic case of form getting in the way of function: “Kung Fu Panda” has a story, script and set of vocal performances that make for an ideal quick, no-frills comedy cartoon. Match those elements with the energetic leaness of Anime or the askew anarchy of the “house styles” of Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network animated faire and you’d have a nigh-perfect kiddie actioner. Unfortunately, here said elements have been paired with lush, intricate, expensive-looking 3D computer animation… and it just doesn’t really fit. The animation is all gorgeous, and the attention to aping the look of authentic Chinese fantasy/action films is admirable, but it doesn’t really “go with” the light slapstick of the overall peice – the film actually OPENS with a traditionally-animated sequence, and it works better visually than the rest. It’s like getting David Lean to helm a Three Stooges short. It doesn’t really make the movie BAD, just not as “complete” as it might’ve otherwise been.

Set in a version of ancient China populated by anthromorphic animals, it’s the story of Po the Panda (Jack Black) a chubby oaf who works in a noodle shop with his father (James Hong, brilliantly cast as an excitable duck – you read that correctly) but dreams of becoming a martial-artist like The Furious Five; the local superhero team trained to protect the region from danger by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman.)

The Furious Five include Mantis (Seth Rogen,) Crane (David Cross,) Viper (Lucy Liu,) Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Tigress (Angelina Jolie.) Though Po carries on at some length about their various legendary adventures, we gather they mainly exist to act as a last line of defense against Tai-Lung (Ian McShane) an evil Snow Leopard who has mastered kung-fu on a nearly supernatural level and will destroy the entire land – if necessary – in his quest to steal a sacred scroll from Shifu’s temple. When word comes that Tai-Lung has escaped from prison, the Furious Five assemble (along with the rest of the village) so that the temple elder can annoint one of them The Dragon Warrior – a hero of prophecy who will be given the scroll and become the ultimate weapon against the coming danger. Coincidences (or are they?) conspire, you may have guessed, so that the chosen warrior ends up being none other than Po.

So, yes, it’s a broad send-up of “chosen one” kung fu flicks; with animal-ized versions of all the attendant training montages, epic confrontations and heroic poses. The average six year-old will be able to plot out, beat-for-beat, where it’ll go from the moment Po is “chosen” on (and kung-fu devotees with see most of the dramatic twists coming) along with everyone else. The good news is in the details, specifically the voice-acting. It’s interesting to see Jolie cast – even vocally – as a character who ISN’T defined by sex-appeal for a change, while James Hong is a revelation as Po’s over-eager father. McShane isn’t given enough screentime, but credit the film with making Tai-Lung a 100% full-on heavy who always looks to pose a very tangible threat to the good guys. He doesn’t joke around, has no off-kilter personality quirks, he’s just dangerous. The unquestionable highlights, though, are the scenes where Po good-naturedly bumbles his way through Shifu’s Shaw Brothers style training regimen.

No classic, would be a lot better using different animation, but a lot of fun.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

Review will not spoil the BIG secret of the movie, but you’ve been warned regardless.

The thing about the Indiana Jones movies is, aside from the original “Raiders of The Lost Ark,” none of them have been ‘necessary.’ This isn’t like the “Star Wars” franchise, where each installment adds new information and beats to a continuing larger story – “Raiders” was a complete stand-alone film with nothing left undone or unsaid, and thus ALL the subsequent returns of the character have been essentially superfluous. “Temple of Doom” and “Last Crusade” don’t really have any (major) greater-truths to reveal or broader continuity to flesh out – fine films in their own right they may be – they exist simply because Indiana Jones and his world are fun to revisit.

Keeping that in perspective has been on my mind since it was first announced that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford were going back to the character one more time. It’s not so much a lowering of expectations as it is an honest assessment. The now-legendary sense of deflation fans felt as the “Star Wars” prequels unfolded had to do with a genuine drop in quality: The original SW trilogy were both grandly-mounted films and the foundation of one of the great modern pop-cultural mythologies – a standard the prequels simply failed to live up to.

The two (now three) post-“Raiders” Indy movies are of a different breed: They’re romps; big showy collections of action and FX setpieces given a MASSIVE gravitas-injection by their connection to the original film… a summation that applies quite handily to the newest installment. I do suspect, though, that the nearly two-DECADES of wait between the previous sequel and this most-recent one may lead some to be expecting something that they really oughtn’t be – this just isn’t a series that’s going to lend itself to some final “deepening.” What we get from “Crystal Skull” is the same basic thing we got from “Temple” and “Crusade” – a cracking-good adventure flick with some excellent action beats, lifted from good to great by the presence of the iconic elements (hat, whip, snakes, John Williams’ score) from “Raiders.”

It’s actually surprisingly hard to “review” in any great detail WITHOUT getting into spoilers. Since the hype-machine was able to do all it needed to on the simple declaration that a new Indiana Jones movie was coming out, we’ve been spared the usual issue of having the whole movie given away in the trailers. Just describing what the titular Crystal Skull IS or what certain character’s relationships are would qualify as major reveals. Heck, the film’s OPENING SCENE involves the biggest moment of inter-sequel connectivity in the entire series, and segues moments later into a reveal that sends the story off in a direction so profoundly different from anything else in the series it’s rather jarring (honestly, I won’t be surprised if some audiences find how “out there” this installment gets to be just too much for them.)

In any case, the non-spoiler setup goes something like this: It’s now 1957, and Indy has spent the 19 years between finding the Holy Grail and “now” doing vaugely eluded-to military/spy work against The Russians. A few details of said work have garnered him the attention of Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, modeling this years hot new look for professional dominatrixes with movie-buff clients) a Soviet agent and self-professed psychic hot on the trail of a legendary Mayan artifact called “The Crystal Skull” in the hope that it can be turned into a powerful “psychic weapon.” Spalko’s harassments eventually put Indy into contact with young greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LeBouf) who was told to get Dr. Jones’ help rescuing his mother and a professor pal of Indy’s (John Hurt) both of who have been kidnapped by the Reds. From there on, Act 2 is combination old/young buddy movie and detective story as Indy and Mutt bond while chasing down clues one step behind Spalko and try to figure out what’s REALLY going on with the Skull.

After that, the MAJOR SPOILERS start up again force and don’t let up – but all you really need to know is that this IS an Indiana Jones movie and thus the third act is a series of extended action/chase scenes followed by a big light-show. The majority of it works tremendously, especially a multi-vehicle race/brawl and an appearance by some nasty insects; while some of it borders on the silly (a cliff-jump gag and a vine-swing scene are a bit much) but it’s never boring and the staging – while a bit too reliant on CGI – is top shelf. Nobody does this stuff like Steven Spielberg, nobody.

Thing is, there’s really no way of telling whether or not this film would be as much fun as it is sans the iconic characters and the music, but that’s not really a functional question. What it boils down to is that the film delivers another big, fun adventure with Indiana Jones. That’s the only standard it needed to meet, and I consider it met. Now go see it so you can find out all the stuff I couldn’t talk about.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

Uh… Wow?

Exclusive: ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ Trailer

So… Despite the fact that I unappologetically enjoy the two previous “Mummy” movies, the prospect of doing another one this many years later – Without Arnold Vosloo OR Rachel Weisz or even Patricia Velasquez returning AND the dubious prospect of seeing the great Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh (as the new Chinese version of The Mummy and the new Chinese version of The Person Who Tells Brendan Fraser About The Mummy, respectively) use up what a portion of what time is left of their physically-primed action hero years on a threequel from the director of “The Fast & The Furious” – didn’t exactly have me in an anticipatory mood.

…And then they did this trailer. Not bad at all. Hollywood, quick primer on how to get me to reverse my negatives about an unreleased movie: Rampaging Yeti? Three-headed Dragon?? Yup, that’ll do it. Also of interest – it now appears they’re setting Li’s mummified Chinese Emperor to be the builder of The Great Wall, which would make him (historically) Emperor Qin; i.e. the same figure Li’s character in “Hero” was attempting to assassinate.