Boorman's Excalibur: Glorious Medieval Fan Fiction

I was intrigued by John Boorman’s Excalibur (specifically the VHS cover) and was curious to see the conception to death history of King Arthur because that's always fun. Honestly, I've never been clear on the specifics of how Excalibur and the Round Table knight’s Holy Grail fit into his legend outside of cartoons. The film also flaunts a cast with budding stars, Helen Mirren (enchantress Morgana), Patrick Stewart (Knight Leondegrance), Liam Neeson (Knight Gawain), and a few others so I went for it. Shortly after the film opened with the obligatory fight scene, when Uthur Pendragan is given the sword Excalibur from an ACTUAL protruding arm of the Lady of the Lake, I thought, “oh boy, this is cheesy.” Then to ominous wailings most unholy like a Tan Dun orchestra, when Uthur floats his horse over a fog vouchsafed by Merlyn’s magic to ravage (when this word still has meaning) Duke Cornwall’s wife, I felt some irritation of lactose intolerance. There was even a burning, soft-core porn style fire engulfing the rape scene. Yet, I found myself spellbound by the dramatic speeches and campy humor of Nicol Williamson as Merlyn, and by the magic of Riff Track-worthy moments, I’ve learned new ways to be enchanted by cheesy films. If only Keanu Reeves were able to perform with Williamson’s Shakespearean diction, imbibing every ounce of his education from Speech and Drama studies, then My Own Private Idaho would’ve been less of a bore.

Pre-CG innovations, making movies was probably more fun when you think of Monty Python films and specifically the use of coconut shells in Monty Python and the Holy Grail to imitate the sound and presence of horses they lacked the wherewithal to obtain. Considering the set catastrophes of Apocalypse Now at the same time as the making of Excalibur, it’s not so bad when Arthur’s gallant jump from Leondegrance’s castle walls to take down Uryens is offset by the blatant horse trampling he suffers in the process. You can’t help but wonder how long the cameraman had to wait for the shot of a crow eating a corpse’s eye (sheep’s eye I discovered) or how Morgana (a sexy young Hellen Mirren) didn’t choke on the fog machine set up in her mouth or where in that pagan universe they got that superimposed massive, red sun at the end. “AT THE END OF DAYS, MEN WILL LOOK UP IN FEAR TO ONE GLOWY POLKA DOT OF A SUN!” Despite the mess of rain and mud, Boorman set up beautiful landscapes with scenes of wild nature, green filters, and dark wastelands reminiscent of T. S. Elliot that tell of the age from the death of Merlyn to the coming of Christianity.


It’s also refreshing that throughout the film’s Seventh Seal sort of apocalyptic atmosphere and in between Lancelot and Guenevere’s Twilighty stares (which they consummate with the mosquitoes), there’s a surfeit of Williamson moments of comedic aloofness. Lacking the pointy blue Disney cap, he more than complements his overall ridiculousness with lines like, “Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you’ve tasted it what do you really know?” and “When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.” You sort of wish he could’ve been around (and real) to meet George Bush. Though, it’s not as if Merlyn is beleaguered by great standards of articulacy by the rest of the cast as Arthur heroically quips, “I was not born to live a man’s life but to be the stuff of future memory” and Perceval defines the reigning moral for King Arthur as “you and the land are one” (perhaps a pre-sage of early environmentalism).

Excalibur can’t boast of sound plotlines, transitioning from one piece of the legend to next through the use of sin-drunken myopic characters and shallow trickery by Merlyn (exploiting Morgana’s pride to coax her into fogging up her son’s battle camp is weak). However, this film is glorious medieval fan fiction with a soft-core sexiness.



I am curious what will come of John Boorman’s Excalibur remake by X-Men director, Bryan Singer…

Doctor Who

English men are more charming when they drop in unannounced into a gal’s home from one of these (my bf isn’t cool enough without the latter).


As much as I love Steven Moffat, trigger of my impish hostility towards cemetery statues, shadows, and creepy library books (mind the children), Neil Gaiman’s season needs to get underway like the "Voyage of the Damned"! Not that Matt Smith is half bad, though he’s just not half as interesting as monologue wonder boy, David Tennant.

One day, I’ll fathom why this show is so awesome despite its episodic adherence to the same story arch. Here’s my reductive outline of the series:

1. Episode after episode of English folk toeing the line before something/someone absolutely ordinary (relative to their time setting) is pod-snatched by aliens and chaos ensues. Or Daleks/Cybermen hover over in hoards and chaos ensues. You get introduced to many flighty, feckless protagonists to be saved by the Doctor and your imagination-lackluster kids have more perfectly mundane or insane things to be paranoid about.



2. The Doctor (our “Gentleman and a Scholar”) and his lady (most likely) sidekick skid in from their prior time leap with the TARDIS. His assistants act as his inquisitive “Watsons” through which he explains the whosit and whatsit to the audience. He resembles not so much a Doctor and more so an alien bounty hunter and in some instances an ambulance chaser of heroic credo since the aliens often seem to anticipate him. His school teacher crush in Human Nature precociously inquired whether anyone would have died if he simply had not arrived.

3. Distracted while the Doctor is busy wiping the galactic floor with aliens or some other stock adversaries like the “Dark Messiah” Master, the “Elderly” Time Lords, or (any housewife will break it down for you) the kitchen-appliance assembled Daleks, you don’t ostensibly notice how this time travel series is devoid of history. Yet admittedly, H. G. Wells was more liberal with his futuristic settings and rinky-dink space gadgetry as well as per popular reception.

4. Because this is still a children’s program, the Doctor doesn’t leave a bed-scattered pile of groupies like James Bond and seems oblivious to his lovelorn female TARDIS-fluffers. The result, broken secondary plotlines of romantic intrigues aside from his rumored wifey. River couldn’t be more femme fatale even without her red hyper-pumps that would make Eddie Izzard proud. As intriguing as it may be that she is keen on the Doctor's many faces, she does get a tad Edgar Allan Poe repetitive with her crow-sinister refrain, “Spoilers”.



5. Christmas Specials.

6. The Doctor wields his sonic screwdriver in the manner of James Bond. And it works like a universal remote control. But just like a remote control, it only works on electronic devices… and alien lifeforms.

7. Television programs work well when the main characters best multitudinous situations and obstacles but essentially the character is sustained as originally introduced (some development/improvements permitted). For the Doctor, many different men played this specific Time Lord over its long history. As much as you can write their personalities into the Doctor archetype, he’s never quite the same because these are totally different actors! Yes, we see past the dandy accessories. Even with the converse sneakers…or bowties!

8. There are tense “take my hand” or “trust me” junctures aplenty between the Doctor and his assistants (and on occasion, tertiary characters), and surely the lass of limited options will take his word if it means survival. Though, just as often as not, the Doctor will be wrong and the assistant will find him/herself MacGyvering their way out of a critical conundrum. *Cough* mulligan.

9. The Doctor occasionally very nearly talks very vicious monsters/adversaries to death.

10. The show usually ends with a Joss Whedon style Doctor vs. alien confrontation after a timely (hah) game of tag (mind the flying objects or conspicuous CG laser beams). And, more often than not there are fatalities. Dum dum duuuum!

The A-Team (2010)

In his review of Joe Carnahan's 2010 The A-Team remake, a troubled film nearly 15 years in the making, Roger Ebert writes of his difficulty in sustaining any interest in this, an action movie where the central element -- the action -- is so cartoonish and unpredictable as to leave the film boring and unengaging. Here he strikes upon a problem prevalent in several recent films, and not limited to the action genre.

Take Guy Ritchie's latest effort, the WB revamp of the Sherlock Holmes franchise. Genius though Holmes's detective work may be, we are left unable to follow any of it, because the film has set no sure rules for itself. We have to take everything for granted, including the possibility of Holmes's level of intelligence -- he knew, for instance, that breaking that water pipe would cause the giant saw to stop working simply because he did, and through no clues that the audience is able to follow. Iron Man 2 suffers from a similar fault: its "look! sciencey stuff!" sequences are so pared down to appeal to the lowest possible common denominator audience that they make the premise of the original film seem positively realistic. Even the plotting and dialogue of Transformers felt subtle and nuanced compared to its unintelligible and mildly racist sequel.

The new A-Team falls into the same category, unfortunately: all the humanity is sucked out of a promising remake in favor of loud, dizzying, unfollowable action. As a result, the potentially potent mixture of a great new cast and a healthy respect for the source material feels completely wasted. Indeed, it's hard to think of anyone who could have better reincarnated the A-Team: Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith leads Bradley Cooper's Face, Sharlto Copley's Murdock, and Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson's B.A. Baracus, all of whom carry on the spirit of the TV show, while also looking remarkably like the actors in the original program. Cameos from the original cast are also sadly bungled, with Dirk Benedict appearing on screen for all of 2 seconds.

If by this point you still care, the plot is a convoluted mess, too. It basically establishes an origin story for the A-Team, an elite group of humorously snarky and impressively apt welders who also happen to be Army rangers. One of them is legally insane, but he's the only pilot they can find, plus he's funny, so it's OK. They meet in Mexico and have a helicopter chase sequence filled with many pithy one-liners. Genesis story over, we are told of their many successful (and presumably humorous and action-packed) missions together, before the film drops us "40 missions later" in Iraq.

There, after a mission gone wrong, the team is set up for a crime they didn't commit by evil "Jersey Shore"-esque commandos who wear matching sunglasses and matching spikey haircuts and matching black polo shirts with popped collars. They promptly escape from maximum security stockades, regroup in scenes you've already seen in the trailer, and attempt to clear their names. Jessica Biel's PG-13 sexiness, senseless action, and obviously impossible stunts that break the laws of physics and reason all follow.

A lackluster score by Alan Silvestri rounds off this disappointing film: apart from the remix of the original TV theme tune, the soundtrack resembles more what would be written for a SyFy original TV-movie, than something created by the man who scored the Back to the Future trilogy.

Nevertheless, you have to give the movie some credit: it fails to be original, while also failing to pay homage to the original, and that's an impressive feat, indeed.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is remarkably unremarkable for a Guy Ritchie film.

Gone are the interchangeable sets of heroes and villains who, equipped with impenetrable accents and conflicting motives, populate the intricately interwoven plots of Ritchie's other films to date. It feels almost as if Warner Brothers, wary of losing control of a newly minted franchise, held Ritchie back: "Now, make it cool, but easy to understand." Indeed, the plot, about a secret masonic society's attempt to take over the world with dark arts, is easily forgettable. The most innovative sequences are Holmes's occasional mental flash-forwards, which don't exactly complicate things. Holmes, unlike Snatch and Lock, Stock, will require no repeat viewings.

The plot isn't the only part of this film that is cartoonishly simple. Stylistically, it bears more resemblance to 1986's The Great Mouse Detective than to any of Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries. With his slicked-back hair and hulking great coat, Mark Strong's evil Lord Blackwood is even a dead ringer for the cartoon antagonist Professor RATigan (get it?). Although it was impressively rendered, the Victorian London geography is also about as badly bungled as it was in National Treasure 2: in a crucial scene, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) runs from Parliament to the partially constructed Tower Bridge (a good hour's walk) in a matter of seconds. For a film whose main character relies on precise details, general history is also somewhat misrepresented -- the bad guys declare that "civil war has made America weak," and yet the story is set around 30 years after Appomattox.

Nonetheless, all these are just nitpicks, and in no way detract from the enjoyment of seeing Robert Downey, Jr steal another role. He is excellent as the preternaturally perceptive and invariably scruffy eponymous hero, and effectively returns Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, MD back to his roots. Downey creates a Holmes all his own, emphasizing the mental agility, pugilist pastimes, and black moods of the famous detective, all found in Doyle's stories, but tweaked here to attract an audience indifferent to Basil Rathbone's traditional Meerschaum pipe and Deerstalker hat. Holmes's reclusiveness and genius are explored, though, without mention of his cocaine-addiction, probably to keep the PG-13 rating. Jude Law is also perfectly cast as the soon-to-be-married Dr John Watson; his dialogue with Holmes is the best, sharpest, and most well-written part of the movie, and fails only in its own relative scarcity, lost amidst the fight scenes and chase sequences.

Although the plot lumbers, it adequately throws the heroes into new and interesting situations frequently enough that we don't notice; although the style feels neutered, there are plenty of slow-motion fight scenes set to a great score by Hans Zimmer to make up for that. The performances, if under-used, are pitch-perfect. Yet, the film is still a bit of a mess. Why?

Two reasons. First, it surprisingly fails to deliver a Sherlock Holmes we can relate to. His detective work suffers for its implausibility, because the movie has set no rules for its universe, and has given us no way of keeping up, both of which make following Holmes's observations a pointless exercise. His deductions are therefore based on clues which are understandable only to him, and so the audience is forced to trail along, trusting that everything will eventually make sense after a predictable and disappointing "I'm-telling-you-things-you-already-know" scene of explanation. The perfect cast feels wasted on the poor execution of a muddled plot.

And, second, never have I been more disappointed by a trailer spoiler. We were promised a scene with Rachel McAdams in a corset, damn it!

Whatever Works

Larry David is Boris Yelnikoff, a curmugeonly former physicist who whiles away his remaining years complaining while eating with his impossibly tolerant friends, complaining while drinking San Peligrino, and complaining while teaching chess to "inch-worm" middle-schoolers, until Evan Rachel Wood's Melodie St Anne Celestine, an innocent waifish runaway from Plaquemines County, Mississippi, arrives on his doorstep, asking for a place to sleep.

So begins a comedy of culture shock and clashing values, and probably the most useless film of the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Woody Allen fan -- that's the problem. There's nothing new here.



The script is a rewrite of a dusty draft sitting around since the seventies (and it shows, despite the occasional Obama reference), the story is a rehash of several old plotlines, and the characters we've all seen before. So, if you're into Allen, you've already seen the depressive panic attacks about the meaninglessness of life (Hannah and her Sisters), the sometimes jarring monologue narration style (Annie Hall's Alvie Singer), the mentor/lover relationship of an older man with a precocious young girl (Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan), and so on. And if you're not into Allen, I just named three far better ways of introducing yourself to his work.

Whatever Works still works, though, despite these obviating self-plaguarisms. Most of the jokes are well-timed, and Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr both deliver strong performances as the Celestine parents, both fish-out-of-water in the big city.

Larry David's Boris is, surprisingly, the weak point of the film. His genius is never established enough to warrant our toleration of his jaded cynicism, and David seems to struggle at times with Allen's dialogue, which somehow would have sounded more natural coming from the elder actor. And Henry Cavill as the British travelling minstrel (he sits in his houseboat all day and plays his flute, apparently) who woos the married Melodie comes off as a totally creepy stalker, rather than as the (intended?) sweet romantic.

Ultimately, the strength of the writing and the optimism of the refreshing, if rather heavy-handed, final message make up for the film's shortfalls, and leave Whatever Works an intelligent and funny summer comedy, which in turn left me jonesing to rewatch Michael Caine's brilliant performance in its superior sibling.

Cloverfield

I did not get sick at Cloverfield.

This is surprising, because I have gotten sick 1. on a ferry crossing the placidly calm East river, 2. in an indoor pool, 3. during my third viewing of The Bourne Ultimatum, and 4. during church (which isn't even moving at all).

The film is meant to seem like it was shot entirely through a home-video camera, an illusion attempted by jerky movements and blurry zooming, but successful only in producing audience members retching from vertigo or laughing in disbelief. Surely, real amateur cameramen could have framed a shot much better and far steadier, without sacrificing any realism or immediacy?

Although I guess the characters were all supposed to be annoyingly rich yuppies, hours away from a much-needed caffeine-fix in a latteless Godzilla-ravaged New York, so that probably explains the shakiness well enough.

Anyway, I avoided getting sick by unfocusing and just letting the film do its thing; incidentally, this strategy is also necessary for enjoying Cloverfield's plot. Rob is going to Japan, and so his friends have thrown him a raging all-night party in his 100,000 sq. ft. Financial District apartment. There's some misplaced humor, some loud music to fill out the soundtrack CD, some whining about a girl, and then the lights go out. The rest of the film plays out in pretty much exactly the same order as the trailer, but only about twice as long.

A Monster has attacked Manhattan, toppling buildings, shedding scary spidery things, and generally leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. It also impressively chucked the Statue of Liberty's head towards the camera from an impossible uptown direction. Now Rob must both risk his life and defy the laws of physics by walking from Spring Street to 59th Street (in 10-12 minutes), directly into the Monster's path, to rescue his ex-girlfriend Beth.

There is a lot that director Matt Reeves got right. The snippets of TV news, the eerily 9/11-reminiscent building destruction, pandemonium on the streets, and onlookers snapping cellphone camera pics of all of the above: these scenes strike as resoundingly honest as such scenes could. The whole homemade, first-person POV aspect, while sometimes sickening and always annoying, is still pretty cool, as is the "US Government Property -- Classified Tape" bookend.

Nonetheless, the Monster is pretty disappointing, even borderline forgettable. Its spidery offspring do make people's heads explode I guess, which is always neat. Although exactly where this thing comes from is never explained (space? the posters claim "Something Has Found Us"), JJ Abrams has posted a lot of fake sites to the intarweb to spread origin-story gossip. I refuse to look at any of it, because I prefer to remain blissfully unaware of all but one possible source: the egg in Madison Square Garden that Matthew Broderick didn't destroy. Give this theory a try, it's quite satisfying.

That's really what I found most unbelievable about Cloverfield: no one ever mentions that this thing looks a lot like Godzilla. That'd be the first thing I'd say. Well, after, "No, I'm not going to walk the subway tracks," and, "Screw this low-flying helicopter evacuation crap, I'm taking the PATH to Jersey."

Final verdict: ultimately unsatisfying, but undeniably cool.

P.S. But come on, "Cloverfield?"
Even IMDB's "Untitled JJ Abrams Project -- 1/19/08" was better.

I Am Legend

After a miracle cure for cancer mutates into a deadly rabies-like virus, Robert Neville (Will Smith) stays behind in a quarantined Manhattan, struggling both to find a cure and to survive in vampire central. As The Last Man on Earth (or so say the movie posters), Neville keeps his sanity by watching taped TV, constantly renting movies in an OCD-enhanced alphabetical order, and talking to animals and large dolls. I do all of these things already anyway, so I feel very well-prepared for the impending Vampire Holocaust.

Oops, sorry. I forgot -- we can't call them vampires. Maybe some copyright issue with 30 Days of Night or something. The closest they come to getting a collective name is the "Night Seekers," which sounds, apart from ridiculous, like a paperback by R. L. Stine.

Anyway, Neville roams the impressively rendered abandoned city streets, scrounging for food in scary dark buildings, broadcasting his distress signal on AM stations, walking through a lot of tall grass, and working on his various Apple computers with their "six redundant hard drives." He must be a pretty busy guy, since he found time to make enough money to own an apartment on Washington Square North, become an Army Lieutenant Colonel, study immunology, train to be a survival expert, and still had a few hours left over to somehow spread the deadly virus.

About 33% of this move is flat-out awesome; that accounts for half of the first two acts. The scenes of deserted New York are simply stunning. Long show-off shots of grassy streets -- abandoned Humvees barricading evacuation routes, forgotten Christmas decorations glinting eerily in the summer sun, crickets dominating the silent cityscape -- are the coolest ever put to film.

Add to that source material by Richard Matheson (writer of some of the best Twilight Zone episodes) and some superb acting by Smith, whose portrayal of a man as burnt-out as the cars lining his street dominates the potentially overpowering computer-created scenery and drives the film forward, and you've got one hell of a formula for a successful movie.

Nonetheless, the night-time sequences, and pretty much all of the final act, resemble a jam sandwich dropped into the body cavity during open-heart surgery: a bloody unfortunate mess. The pale, all-CG vamp� Night Seekers are more silly than scary, and their rendering somehow resembles that of cut-scene bad guys from 90s PC shooters. They are about as unrealistic and unneccesary as the wolves from The Day After Tomorrow, and serve much the same purpose: to jump out and scare you without causing any real harm to anyone.

After a tense sequence with infected hounds (who are conveniently allowed out earlier than infected people are, although I'd be more worried about squirrels, personally -- there are a lot more of them, and they are already evil enough), Smith hits an emotional high point that only serves to show how crappy the rest of the movie will be by comparison.

The addition of two new survivors is a pointless move, as one of them does nothing but gets scared and hide, necessitating his rescue. It's a cheap move to motivate a flagging script and, like a jab of adrenaline to the heart of a dead hooker, fails to resuscitate it.

By this point the previously small plot holes are ripped open into gaping bloody wounds by digital fangs. Where did they get all of these shiny Ford trucks, outfitted with winches and brushbars and KC lights? How does Anna drive into and out of Manhattan when all of the bridges and tunnels have been destroyed? Why can't the Infected figure out how to kill deer or work a can-opener, if they can set an elaborate trap? Why can't they just swim off the island? How can they bust through a steel door in 10 seconds but take 10 minutes to break one made of Plexiglass?

I guess none of this really matters. The central message of the film, as painfully apparent as the "butterfly" theme, is delivered via an unnecessary end-credit voice-over: Light Up The Darkness. This is very good advice: the daylight sequences of this movie were so spectacular, and the dark ones with the vampires so sucky, director Francis Lawrence should have just taken the Infected as read and stuck with answering the film's deeper questions, like couldn't Neville have just thrown the damn hand-grenade? How can a Mustang, with a solid rear-axle and no traction control, corner so well? How could Batman and Superman ever have a crossover?

If only they had listened to Bob Marley.