fine whine

Or, rather, the worst David Lynch movie I've seen all year

Dune isn't actually all that bad. It's just not that good.

Unlike, say, its protagonist, Paul Atreides. Who is only good, through and through, or his nemesis, the Baron Harkonnen, who is so thoroughly evil his skin bubbles with evil (or maybe it's just malicious pus) and he's so lazy he floats around everywhere with special effects. He chews up scenery and drinks the blood of his subjects, or anyone else handy with a convenient heart plug, or something like that.

They might as well have given him a black hat, too. Almost everyone in the movie has such clear-cut, obvious motives. But this is a David Lynch movie, you say. Where is the ambiguity, the perplexity, the strange? I'll get to that.

Permit me to admit up front that I've never read Frank Herbert's novel* of the same title (and possibly the same story), and that probably meant that I was going to be more confused or less interested than I might otherwise be.

In the end, all that matters from one source to the other is determining which one is the root of my complaints about the film. My guesses will follow.

First of all, and as I mentioned above, the sides are too simple. The House of Atreides is too good (the traitor is among them but not of them) and the house of Haddaddaddaway too bad. Where are the shades of grey? There's a total of one person who isn't necessarily aligned with who he should be, and even then it's beaten about our heads just in case we'd miss it.

Which is odd, considering all of the things that were left unexplained and not shown so blatantly, but I can't really say what I missed. I'm willing to bet this is from Lynch compressing and abridging Herbert's novel.

I didn't pay attention to all of the dream sequences. Here was the largest showing of Lynch's touch. Weird, jarring dream sequences that were either foreshadowing or far-sight, that served more to slow the film down and telegraph upcoming scenes (sometimes even afterward the characters would repeat the foreseen dialogue, just uttered 'live', in the ever present inner voices).

What was with all of the inner voices, anyway? I know a big difference between novels and movies is that in general, it's impossible to get in the characters' heads without the written word; in this film it was difficult to stay out of their internal monologues. I don't mind one narrator with the occasional voiceover, but to have every major character, on the good guy side, get his or her moment in the spotlight, makes me recall much more fondly the scene in Wayne's world where Mike Myers grabs the camera back from an Ed O'Neill character who is attempting to, literally, walk away with the movie, and Mike admonishes him that only he and Garth can talk to the camera. If only this movie had the same restraint. Maybe Dune should've been named Paul's world. Probably not. I'll blame Lynch again for writing us into the innermost thoughts of so many people, and not just Herbert for probably having some of the thoughts in the novel, too.

More annoying than the dream sequences was all of the magic and other mystical cop-outs for moving the plot forward. At the risk of spoiling them, I won't mention any. Probably more Herbert, again.

I don't know who wrote most of the dialogue, but I kept hearing mantras everywhere. So much of the dialogue sounds like they're reading it off of propaganda posters. Again, this is probably Lynch. Check out these examples: "Fear is a mind killer." "Moods are for cattle and loveplay, not for fighting!" "He who controls the Spice, controls the universe!" "My name is a killing word." "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." "Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." "And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!"

Well, probably not that last one. The movie, and probably the book before it, is filled with the requisite ridiculous lingo that litters many a 'great SF novel'. That last line above is the movie's final line, and it makes absolutely no sense unless you know what the Kwisatz Haderach is, and even then, there's no good explanation for why they don't just call the Kwisatz Haderach the Messiah or some other simple, not-fabricated noun. So much of the rest of it is made up, too. By the end I knew what "wormsign" was, but I'm still not certain what the whole "weirding" process entails, and those are just two examples brought to you by the letter "W".

In the end, it's visually interesting, technically impressive (for its time, by now the matte work looks quaint if not altogether dated), but all of the focus making things like the worms work right could've been spent working on making the story more fleshed out, or the dialogue more natural, or many other little fixes that are probably only with the years of hindsight.

Although at the time, somebody must've wondered why they'd spend so much time (and money) on a special effect like the blocky personal shields, only to revisit them once later in the film, and in a rather inconsequential moment. Or was somebody being clever, setting us up to think that this neat and useful technology would be used for good (or evil) later. Instead, it was just tossed aside, no doubt so another epic dream/drug flashback could be shoehorned in.

An epic, Dune certainly is. Interesting, it isn't so much. I gave it some thought, and decided it was no worse than Waterworld, though certainly no better. It's about the same level for combining high-concept ideas with high-profile talent, but forgetting to add in rhyme or reason. Interesting effects alone don't make the journey interesting if you already know at the beginning where you're going to end up.

* While that in itself is rare for me, I moreover do not plan on ever reading the novel (and by extension, its sequels). Nothing, not one thing, in this movie convinced me that I'd have any interest in the book.

Permit me to again point you toward All Consuming. While it allows members to designate books, albums, and movies as "worth consuming" or "not worth consuming" (or, neither, though that's not the way it's supposed to work), but that two -state system (well, three) isn't enough for my tastes. Some stuff is not not worth consuming, in my opinion, but I'm not so fond of it to actually claim it to be actually worth consuming.

I'm not willing to commit, I guess.

But some stuff I watch and read and hear is, in fact, well worth watching or reading or hearing, and I'm not afraid to say so. So that's when I use the easy-to-use tagging capabilities of the site, and have tagged such master works "fantastic". That link leads to a list of some twenty or so of them, and I'm working on a way to find all of the others. I've added Batman begins to the list (so bowled over by it as I was by it), and it's just one among a good many other movies and books that I've enjoyed consuming recently.

So I'm still not playing favorites, but I'm willing to show some favor and shower the superlatives. I may yet develop a heirarchy, from "crap"* to "adequate" and so on, up to "excellent" and with "fantastic" or perhaps something superior at the top. But not today. I'm willing to pick just the topmost for now.

* And you can find a list of the ones I deem to be "crap" in a similar, easy fashion. Like clicking "crap" in the previous sentence, or this one.

I've found a movie more deserving of the "worst I've seen all year" honors than High tension, much to my chagrin*.

House of 1000 corpses just did not appeal to me. Much the opposite, in fact.

I'm not so prudish or of such high standards as to be offended by the film, but many a time it came very close to doing just that. Mostly it was just disgust and annoyance that would characterize my reaction, and then apathy. I didn't pay much attention to the middle and last bits, just because I didn't care about the people on screen, wasn't interested in the gore or impressed by the effects, and could have done without the weird video effects interludes/jump cuts that littered the whole thing. Whatever technical merits it may have had weren't enough for me to overlook all of the other demerits, and I suppose it is a failing of my tastes and preferences that I couldn't enjoy the misguided attempts by schlock-rocker Rob Zombie in what is probably a labor of love, well regarded by its cult of fans. I'm just not among them.

* If not for the fact that this could well keep the title all year, I'd consider adding a "worst movie I've seen all year" list for the rest of the year, implemented as a simple blog or some such. I may still, since it's really just laziness so far keeping me from doing it. I've contemplated the idea since the first half hour of House of 1000 corpses, and started browsing around for appropriate PHP scripts to use, but soon got distracted even from doing that.

Without a doubt, Batman begins is the best movie I've watched this year.

Boy, that joke never gets old*.

It's very well done, and puts most, if not all, of the recent superhero films to shame. Chris Nolan and David Goyer spare us many of the conventions the previous incarnations have inflicted on the moviegoing public: the delightful but hokey 'POW' 'BAFF' and 'ZOWIE's that lent the '60s TV series its camp and charm, overly gothic Gothams, plastic nipples, blacklit and neon-clad street gangs, K-car police cruisers, ridiculous villains and pithy one-liners, and Danny DeVito. Gotham resembles a normal city, albeit with more shadows and a train system redolent of art deco and the so-called Silver Age of comics art. But plausibly so. Could it be a subtle dig at Spiderman 2 with its elevated train action sequence? Probably not.

The effects work is top notch, with only minor missteps in with swooping swarms of bats and scary, shaky POV effects shots, but in each case they get the job done. The miniatures work with the new Batmobile is exemplary, and the entire chase sequence is equally cool and engaging. The characters are interesting and believable, and the actors portraying them do a fine job doing so.

That said, I have some minor quibbles. Batman's voice sounds a bit odd at times, as though in persona he's taken up a carton-a-day smoking habit or is deliberately trying to sound tougher. Or maybe the Gotham air's more abrasive the faster you breathe it, and he probably takes in his share of bugs and airborne particles whilst swooping through the streets. At least he talks out the front of his mouth. Katie Holmes, on the other hand, doesn't. She's apparently always been inflicted with this odd sideways-speaking bit, and it's only the more distracting when she's got those big closeups. I don't recall seeing it in Go and wherever else, but this is also the biggest role I've seen her undertake so far.

Gary Oldman, on the other hand, speaks like, well, a native, however one of them is supposed to sound.

And then there's Michael Caine. I realize that there are few British actors available for the Alfred role (Michael Gambon and Patrick Stewart being the first two I would name, followed by Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen) but couldn't he have been coached to sound a little more, oh, Jeeves-like**? He's got his same accent from Goldmember and The Italian job and even The man who would be king, and I can't imagine Alfred ever uttering "I figger..." the way Charlie Croker or Peachy Carnehan would 've. Michael Gough certainly never did, and as the one stable feature of the previous recent features he had always performed admirably.

I am, of course, overlooking the fact that Christian Bale is, in fact, Welsh.

Based on what I know of his preparation for other movies with eleven or twelve letter names (The Machinist and Equilibrium), I don't doubt that he brushed up on his close combat skills, effort that is all but wasted due to the incredibly quick editing of most of the fight scenes. Nolan's a relative newcomer to action (more than was in Memento, at least), but if they let him helm the inevitable sequels, I'm sure he can only get even better.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing him try.

* Just like the "Remember, you're [whatever]ing for two," with which I chide my pregnant co-worker, about once a day. Comic hilarity every time.

** Having recently watched some of Jeeves and Wooster and re-watched Gosford park I think I can recognize the stereotypical British butler/valet/manservant diction. Stephen Fry, of course, isn't nearly old enough for the role, but he could've helped Michael knock out some of the cockney here and there, I'd think.

That honor goes to High tension, or as it is known in its native France, Haute tension.

Vive la difference.

Anyone watching it expecting to see something different would likely end up as I did, disappointed and annoyed. At the risk of giving too much away, it's about a woman who brings her friend (who fantasizes about her...) home to meet her family at their country home, and the carnage that begins when a large stranger appears and doesn't let up until the last few moments of the film.

I suppose it's a technical achievement in this day and age of CGI effects to have a film supposedly done all in-camera with splattery, gory fake blood, but that really just makes it a stunt, not something necessarily worth watching. If I were a fan of the genre, I might call it a refreshing return to form, or a sentimental slasher or even some sort of retro masterpiece, except that it's no masterpiece.

Against my better judgement, I'm not going to ruin the ending* but failing that, I don't have much else to say about this movie. It's stylish, but I can't help but see parallels to other movies. The most prominent, though undoubtedly the least intended, is the whole spooky truck bit which seems to be lifted from Jeepers creepers, except that it was a major (driving) force in the plot in that film, and here it fulfills a throwaway cliché, the car chase that would be requisite if it were an action movie. I suppose the slasher genre has its car chases, but I don't recall much gore in Bullitt or (either) Gone in 60 seconds.

Going back, I only have one unanswered question that doesn't make sense (beyond the normal suspension of belief) but I'm not really interested in watching it again to see the subtleties. There are dead people, but this is no Sixth sense.

* Lots of people get killed, in gory fashion, and then, before it's over, there's a twist. Or did I just give it all away?

So now it's 2006. Our plans fell through, and Jessica and the cat abandoned me so I rang in this year by myself (well, I suppose the people apparently detonating small explosives count too since they sounded awfully close).

Which isn't that big of a deal, anyway. It's just another night; one that divides the days dates are written with a twelve at the beginning and one number at the end*, and then dates with a one at the beginning and that old number plus one at the end. Big deal. I write about ten checks a year.

I watch a lot of movies, though, and tonight was no exception. First in the lineup was the 1976 Bad news Bears and, even though it maybe wasn't an out-of-the-park home run, it wasn't just a caught pop fly.

Enough with the baseball terminology. Thankfully the movie doesn't dwell in it, instead focusing on some well-played kids (even if they can't play the game all that well) and a surprisingly good Walter Matthau. He's an actor that has turned in many a good role (Hopscotch is one of the more underrated gems of the Criterion Collection) and here as a casual alcoholic he's just as good as ever. His changes of heart may be a bit sudden, but never as jarring as they might otherwise be in the hands of someone else. The kids, though, prove to be just as much up to the task, including an impressive Tatum O'Neal (who, in doing nothing impressive after Paper moon, may have been cast as the 'old pro' brought in to help out the amateurs in something of a canny, if unintended move), though many a fair-haired buck-toothed boy gets mixed up with another. The movie stands apart from other underdog movies for many a reason, and most make it worth watching. I may check out the remake sometime, just to see what seasoned vets like Richard Linklater and Billy Bob Thornton can do with the same material, but I'm in no hurry. This one's good enough.

To end the year on a more serious note, I next watched Woody Allen's Hannah and her sisters. This wasn't the first time I'd grabbed it at the library; I'd often checked it out but had lighter fare to watch first, or just wanted something less, well, less about three sisters and their romantic entanglements in New York City. But in Woody Allen's hands it's not nearly as bad as something sounding like that could be.

After all, imagine Nora Ephron tackling the same idea. Or don't.

The way Allen writes it it's touching, clever, intelligent and funny, and well worth watching. Almost every character is convincingly fleshed out, and Woody's neurotic nebbish has rarely been more believable. Michael Caine is a bit creepy as an adulterous husband, and it's difficult to pin down if he's playing an American or Brit or someone from somewhere else, for all that matters. In the end it's not about where everybody came from, but where they end up and how they get there that matters, and everybody, Woody and Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest and Sam Waterston and Michael Caine and Max Von Sydow (whose severe artist criticizes TV at one point, his comments no less timely now than they were then; the title of this post is a quote from the scene) and Carrie Fisher and all the rest make for a great movie about love and families and everything in between.

I split my viewing of it, however, to catch the yearly ball-dropping in Times Square. I'm no longer certain why I do this other than to know the correct moment the year turns, since my watches and clocks are all different. I don't care about the people on TV, don't watch the flavor-of-the-month performances and interviews before and after the drop, and don't want to think about all of the garbage littering the Square after the millions file out.

They mentioned that a literal ton (2000 pounds) of confetti was to be thrown on the crowd, they with their big balloons and streamers and promotional hats and stupid, stupid, stupid '2006' glasses, and I could see the few empty inches of pavement behind the announcers (somehow I ended up seeing Carson Daly instead of Dick Clark. The new year came anyway) already covered in garbage even before the climactic last moments.

And for what? Some of those people had been standing around since noon, and that's not even considering the travel time that most of them, out-of-towners, also endured. And without public restrooms, apparently. So they came all that way, and waited all that time, and they couldn't give a crap.

Har har. Happy New Year, for what it's worth.

* I refer, of course, to the dreadful 'month day, year' notation that has so caught Americans' fancy. Why, oh why, ask I, can't we use the much nicer, more logical 'day month year' that so much of the rest of the world uses?