I really was gonna try to stop writing Watchmen stuff for a while. and I really was gonna stop forcing rock song lyrics that I enjoy down everyone's throats...

but then it occured to me that the lyrics to one of my all time favorite hard rock songs damn near sums up Rorschach's world view ... and my own:

Ænema by Tool:


Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this

Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of

Freaks here in this hopeless f---ing hole we call LA.
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any f---ing time. Any f---ing day.
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay.

Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.

Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.

Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this

Silly shit, stupid shit...

One great big festering neon distraction,
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied.

Learn to swim.

Mom's gonna fix it all soon.
Mom's comin' round to put it back the way it ought to be.

Learn to swim.

F--- L Ron Hubbard and
F--- all his clones.
F--- all those gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.

Learn to swim.

F--- retro anything.
F--- your tattoos.
F--- all you junkies and
F--- your short memory.

Learn to swim.

F--- smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
F--- these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.

Learn to swim.

I'm praying for rain.
I'm praying for tidal waves.

I wanna see it all come down.
Suck it down.
Flush it down.

Great track from a great metal album. (Yeah, I know that Tool and a number of their artsy fartsy fans argue that Tool isn't metal, man, so don't label 'em. Tool is metal. Shut up.)

Labels: Music, Watchmen

I've geeked out on Watchmen for too long now and I'm sure my handful of readers are sick of indulging me. I'll try to make this the last post on the subject.

I got the book back out tonight and looked through it again. It's really even better than I remembered. Seeing those panels and reading those words again really brought back how much I enjoyed that book the first time I read it a few years ago.

With all this focus on Alan Moore, I hadn't thought about the art of Dave Gibbons and how important it is to the impact of the book. Flipping through the book tonight I was struck by so many things I'd forgotten, like all the symmetry in the panels of the issue that focuses on Rorschach's origins. And how good Tales of the Black Freighter is. And I'd forgotten that, in the comic, Ozymandias seems like an authority figure instead of a nerd. Matthew Goode was all wrong for the role. They may as well have cast Macaulay Culkin as to case Goode.

While watching the film I'd had this vague impression that Rorschach's origins had been toned down and cleaned up for mass consumption, but I couldn't really put my finger on what was missing. I found it tonight. It's this speech, Rorschach's summary of his world view:

"The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reasons later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. Existence is random. Has no pattern, save what we imagine after staring ait it for too long. No meaning, save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children, not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

Yeah, that Rorschach ... always clowning around. God (or whatever) bless him. As bleak as he was in the movie, the real thing is so much bleaker. Gotta love it. And I gotta give Alan Moore his propers, too. Maybe he is a putz who takes himself too seriously and rains on everyone's parade ... but Watchmen really is absorbing and intense.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

Synopsis

In an alternate reality, the America of 1985 is radically different from what we remember. Super-heroes are real, and they've been ostracized. Richard Nixon is still President. And the world stands on the brink of nuclear war unless the super-heroes it has rejected can (or will) save the day.

Pros:

• Visually stunning.


• Jackie Earl Haley.

Cons:

• It's a mess.


• Conveys nearly nothing of what's so great about the comic book.


• Pervasive blue penis.

Generally:

3 on a scale of one to five. Neither terrible nor great.

Extended Review:

The massive hype surrounding the Watchmen movie has been, for many of us, the biggest thing since last year’s Presidential election. So many questions, considerations and fears. How faithful will Zack Snyder’s adaptation be? Is it even possible to make a movie of such a ponderous comic series? What about all the nudity and cursing? What about the SQUID? Oh, for the love of God, what about the SQUID!!

Alan Moore, writer and co-creator of the Watchmen comic book series, never misses a chance to take himself oh so seriously. Moore has disavowed the movie adaptation of Watchmen, and there’s certainly a contingent of Moore loyalists who’ll either skip the movie, or else they'll see it and trash it simply because of Moore’s strongly stated belief that the movie shouldn't exist. So sayeth Alan, so sayeth all of us... that will be a popular sentiment among many.

Not that I’m unsympathetic to the idea that Watchmen simply doesn’t make sense as a movie adaptation. I said I didn’t think it was a good idea back in October of '06. Part of what makes Watchmen special is that it’s a comic book about comic books and about comic book readers. Remove these characters and this story from it’s original medium and you lose a lot of the subtext.

Now that I’ve seen the film, I think I was pretty much correct. Watchmen the movie offers stunning visuals, one very good performance (more on that later) and a tight, complete story. It even has a better climax than the original story (sorry, squid-lovers). What it lacks is the sense of immersion and immediacy that made the book so special. The movie showed me a world with real-life super heroes. The book took me into that world. If Watchmen the book was quality escapism... the kind that really takes you somewhere ... then Watchmen the movie is just a postcard from Zack Snyder: "Having an AWESOME time! Wish you were here!"

And don’t get me wrong, I’m no Mooreophile. I've read and heard a lot of what Alan Moore has had to say and I think the guy is an asshole. And an overrated asshole at that. Watchmen is the only thing he’s turned out that I think is actually any good. Some people are still upset that League of Extrordinary Gentlemen, based on a Moore title, was a crap movie. Well, guess what? It was a crap comic, too. Garbage in, garbage out.

Zack Snyder’s movie is not crap. It isn’t a bad film. But there are issues. It isn't Snyder's fault that, at this point, it's nearly impossible for anyone to see the film without preconceived notions. And Snyder really has tried to turn out something worthwhile. But the fact remains that this story just doesn't work outside of it's original medium. It's not an action-filled story, but Snyder has really upped the action for the screen. Other bells and whistles (the CGI, the new and improved climax) are nice, but they don't make up for what the story loses in translation. I almost feel disqualified to review the film simply because I've read the book. And I'd also be inclined to disregard any review from a movie-goer who hadn't read the book. This is a real greased-pig of a film. It's hard to get hold of it.

If you do go see it, you'll probably leave the theater with mixed emotions. You’re certainly going to enjoy some really artful visuals. And you’ll enjoy a wonderful performance by Jackie Earle Haley as Rorchach, the most interesting character in the book and in the movie. Haley's performance is the one and only thing that I think completely brings an element of the book to the screen. He leaves the other actors in the dust with the work he does here. But, then again, he did get the plumb part.

What you won’t get if you go see this film is any sense of what makes the comic book series so special to fans.

So, should you go see it? Sure, I guess. It’s at least as good as 51 percent of the other stuff in the multiplexes right now. Just don’t go in expecting The Dark Knight, because this ain't that kind of comic book movie.

And don’t go in expecting to see the film and then understand why so many people love the book. If you want to get a sense of that, the only way to do it is to read Watchmen. The book itself is something I can recommend without any reservations at all. It really is very, very good.

Frank Zappa once said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. He was right. You just can’t convey any sense of what music is in a conversation. With Watchmen, Zach Snyder is dancing about architecture. The final product is interesting, mostly enjoyable, odd, occasionally frustrating, sometimes nonsensical, too long and nowhere near long enough. It’s a mess, but to be fair, it’s an often glorious mess.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Watchmen

I saw Watchmen today. I think I had the worst possible reaction: I thought it was OK.

If I'd thought it was great I'd have had a good time writing the review. If I'd thought it was terrible I'd probably had even more fun writing the review. But it was neither great, nor terrible. It was only OK.

It's really hard to motivate myself to write a review for a movie that was just OK ... but I'll try to write something at some point this weekend.

Labels: Movies, Watchmen

I'm really narrowing my scope with this. To give a crap about this item you'll have to be:

• A comic book geek in general


• A Watchmen fan in specific


• A political junkie


• A non-leftist (libertarian, conservative, whatever)

Yesterday I called Rorschach a hard right-winger. Today I found an article by Brian Doherty written for Reason Online that argues that Rorschach is really an objectivist.

Doherty sees Rorschach the same way I do, but argues that the character is more politically inclined to the Ayn Rand point of view:

Rorschach would deliver (justice) as a personal, individual judgment; breaking what bones needed to be broken with his own hands, not from a world away with indiscriminate techno-gimmicks and no sense of actual individual guilt. The opposition between Rorschach and the villain is easy to read as that of individual, true justice versus the state's collectivist version. In every single war ever waged, governments make the kind of moral judgment that Watchmen's villain does, and the movie and comic, with Rorschach's help, make us wonder whether those decisions that governments and superheroes often make really are tolerable. Rand would have been proud.

It's a good read. Go check it out.

Labels: Movies, Politics, Watchmen

The more I anticipate an upcoming movie, the more likely it is that I'll be working the 3-11 shift when it comes out, making it basically impossible for me to see the movie in it's first week of release.

That's the case with Watchmen, a movie I've looked forward to for a long time and probably won't see before the end of the week or beginning of next week.

I've read some reviews, including a couple by favorite bloggers, and based on what I know about these guys I feel certain that I'll react to the movie in much the same way that they have.

My big concern ... the thing that will make or break the movie for me, is whether or not Zack Snyder's production get the characters right.

Since I'm gonna talk about my take on the characters, be advised that there may be spoilers below.

The movie's source material, of course, is a comic book. And like most or all comics, the story involves some broad charactures of classic personality types. But since Watchmen is a comic book for grownups, the archetypes aren't the usual kind. Watchmen is about the kinds of people that comic book readers grow up to be. Scott Nehring dismisses the source material as "another leftist whine fest about how sucky the world is," and I certainly see where he's coming from, but I don't quite agree. I don't think the story itself necessarily shares the perspective of it's characters. The story is colder than that, and told more clinically, and it keeps a certain distance from these characters. None of them are really portrayed in a particularly sympathetic light. I get the impression that Alan Moore wasn't really trying to advance any given political agenda so much as simply comment on those of us who are motivated to action (or inaction) by our own world views.

Of course, everyone has a different take on the story, and your perspective is as valid as mine.


My take, based on my own perspective and my own attitudes, is that Ozymandias is the villain of the story, and one of the worst villains in all of comics, given his typically liberal world view. Ozymandias sees humanity only as a whole. Individuals and the rights of the individual never enter the picture. Consequentially, Ozymandias is willing to sacrifice human life on a large scale in order to move the world toward what he sees as a higher plain of existence. He simply sees himself as someone who knows what's best for the world. Individual people, superheroic or otherwise, are nothing more than pawns he can enlist, manipulate and/or kill in order to advance his own cause. Ozymandias sees people as a hive and himself as the beekeeper. It's a perspective he shares with people like Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Rorschack, a characture of the extreme-right-wing point of view. Rorschack believes in one thing and one thing only: his code. In many ways he's very much like Ozymandias. Both of them deem themselves fit to determine who should live and who should die. Both of them look down on the huddled masses around them. The difference (and it's a huge one) between Rorschack and Ozymandias is that Rorschack is focused exclusively on the individual and not at all concerned about what's best for the whole. Rorschack hunts down the bad guys one at a time and kills them, dishing out his own brand of justice as it fits his code. His absolute refusal to compromise is both his Achilles heel and the source of his strength.

What makes Rorschach more sympathetic than Ozymandias is that Watchmen gives us a great deal more of Rorschach's back story. His cynicism and inability to relate to people were formed in a terrible childhood full of abuse and neglect. Whereas Ozymandias sees himself as moving toward perfection (and nearly there), Rorschach lacks even the simplest ability to assess himself and his behavior. Rorschach is who he is because he never had a choice.

The dynamic between these two characters is the heart of the story, especially with regard to Rorschach, the only character who's given any emotional resonance. If Zack Snyder screwed up that element, all the CGI and slo-mo action sequences in the world won't save the movie. And if he got it right, the movie might just be something special.

Standing above and beyond these two extremes is Dr. Manhattan, the movie's God figure. Having become omnipotent because of a science experiment gone awry (this is a comic book, after all, and comic book conceits are part of the story), Dr. Manhattan feels removed and separate from humanity. This God of the world of Watchmen possesses all knowledge; he knows when the world will end and how, and the weight of that has driven him into an almost catatonic apathy. If Watchmen is making a statement about God, it is not that God has stopped caring about humanity because of our sinfulness and selfishness. Rather, the theology of Watchmen might simply be that God doesn't care because it isn't in God's nature to care. Genuine concern about the people around us is a product of hope, and hope comes from uncertainty. Therefore, real certainty destroys hope and makes altruism utterly meaningless. Watchmen seems to be a story in praise of doubt, the great motivator.

The other characters in Watchmen are more disposable, in my view. Night Owl II and Silk Spectre II both inherited their status as superheroes and neither of them are particularly happy about their lives. Neither of them are particularly sympathetic, either. If there are two characters in the novel who really qualify as liberals who whine about how much the world sucks, it's these two. Especially the second Silk Spectre, the most poorly realized character in the story. She's a simple parody of every self-obsessed Jerry Springer guest who spends every hour obsessing over parent issues and excusing herself from honoring her commitments. Silk Spectre II isn't the villain of the piece, but she is far and away the hardest to give a damn about.

And then there's The Comedian, the anarchist of the group. The Comedian is sometimes interpreted as the right-wing opposite of Ozymandias, but in my view that's incorrect. The Comedian isn't a right winger, he's simply an opportunist and a nihilist. Whereas Rorschach and Ozymandias both adhere to specific belief systems, the Comedian adheres to nothing. The book gives him one and only one moment of genuine humanity; when confronted by Silk Spectre II about his attempted rape of the original Silk Spectre, The Comedian expresses genuine regret. It's a brief but important moment in the character's development, and it's the only thing that keeps him from becoming a totally stereotypical comic book villain. Still, even with that single moment of clarity, the Comedian never becomes a compelling character and really represents little more than a destructive force of nature that the other characters must respond to.

If the movie gets these character complexities right, it ought to be enjoyable. I'm not sure, though, that it will find the kind of audience that movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight enjoy. Most comic books are about larger-than-life heroes and tales of daring-do. Watchmen offers comic readers something different. If you've read so many comics that you're a bit tired of heroes who are always heroic and villains who actually see themselves as evil, Watchmen is a breath of fresh air.

My hope is that the movie will provide that same paradigm shift for fans of comic book based films.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

I'm looking forward to Watchmen probably more than any other movie in 2009. The advance marketing gives me the idea that the movie will faithfully convey the comic book's themes and atmosphere, and I just can't wait to see it.

Hat tip to Scott at Good News Film Reviews for tipping me off to the new marketing website for the movie, a website that features profiles of the movie's key characters, including the masked vigilante Rorschak:

the twelve issues of Watchmen are full of fascinating, fully realized characters, and my favorite by far is Rorschach. Now that's not to say that I identify with Rorschach, just that I think the character is compelling and that he steals the story.

Rorschach is a vigilante with serious emotional issues related to his godawful childhood and his loveless way of life. This "superhero" is more Travis Bickle than Batman, and he represents as much potential danger as the criminals he hunts and kills.

What separates Rorschach from other fictional madmen like Bickle is that Rorschach sticks to an iron code of right and wrong and he won't compromise or yield. His madness is stoic, not manic... and Alan Moore developed Rorschach so well that the character's perspective is accessible and sometimes even sympathetic. For me, the real test of Zack Snyder's movie will be how well he brings Rorschach to the screen.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

A review of Soylent Green at Good News Film Reviews started me thinking about films set in a dystopian reality. There have been quite a few, and the ones I've seen have ranged from brilliant to absolute crap.

Merriam-Webster defines a dystopia as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Dystopian stories are often set in an imagined future of our own world. The story-teller often wants to send a message about the type of future we might be headed for if we don't change our ways.

Is there a firm set of rules for how to make a great dystopian movie? Probably not. But I'll offer a few suggestions, anyway. For what it's worth...

• Make sure your story makes at least some sense...
  

  Terry Gilliam got so caught up in his futuristic vision while making his early film, Brazil, that he forgot to write a story. Brazil is a mess, full of bold visuals that don't have much impact because they're practically devoid of context. The film does hint at the talent Gilliam would display later (and futher down this list), but it was ultimately a meaningless, frustrating mess.




• ... but, then again, pure eye-candy can work, too.
  

  The Matrix doesn't have much to offer philosophically. It's nominal at best in terms of story. The plot has something to do with a world where machines use humans as batteries. The reality we experience every day is an illusion created by those machines. Whatever. The reason The Matrix works is because the special effects are amazing. The Wachowski's sent a clear signal about the film the minute they cast Keanu Reeves. This isn't a movie about story, character or acting. It's just a big cinematic theme-park with enough on the screen to hold any viewer's attention. In later sequels the Wachowski's made the mistake of trying to convey actual ideas. Turned out that they didn't have any.




• Don't stray too far from your acclaimed source material.
  

  In 1992, P.D. James published a wonderful science fiction novel entitled Children Of Men. The novel is both immensely entertaining and deeply thoughtful; full of interesting riffs on science, theology and the human condition. Unfortunately, Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film adaptation scrapped the novel almost completely, disregarding all the major themes and even 75% of the story. Not surprisingly, the movie was a flop.
  
  By contrast, Zack Snyder's upcoming movie version of the popular Watchmen comic books is generating a tremendous buzz because it is said to stick to the source material in both style and substance.
  
  Both Watchmen and Children Of Men are distopian stories that hinge on an alternate version of our own recent past. And both books were successful because they were very well crafted. So why would a studio "option" one of these books and then almost entirely disregard it? How does it make sense to abandon nearly every element of the very material that drew the attention of the film-makers to begin with? It doesn't make sense. The movie makers behind Watchmen apparently knew that. Too bad about Children Of Men




• Cast Charlton Heston as the lead.
  

  OK, so maybe that's not practical. But movies set in a dystopian future were a specialty of Heston's. Some of the dystopian tales that featured Heston were very good. Well, at least one of them was; the first Planet of the Apes is as smart and fun now as it ever was. Soylent Green (mentioned above) retains a certain worthwhile quality in spite of the fact that, in retrospect, a lot of it is just cheesy. And then there's Omega Man, which really wasn't any good but did inspire a successful big-budget remake. So working with Heston, at the very least, did lead to reinterpretation.




• Character first.
  

  What's the point in telling a story about society gone bad if the story isn't relative to it's audience? Terry Gilliam recovered from Brazil with 12 Monkeys, a dystopian story that kept it's focus on it's characters. If you really sit down and examine this story about time travel, deadly viruses and underground revolutionaries, it falls apart. The reason 12 Monkeys doesn't fall apart ... the reason it is, in fact, very good ... is because the story is primarily concerned about the relationship between Bruce Willis as a man who says he's from the future and Madeleine Stowe as his psychiatrist (and eventual lover). Willis manages to give one of his best performances here, in fact. The movie's conclusion is highly improbable, but also highly emotional. Only well after the closing credits do you have time to reflect that the story didn't really make sense. But it doesn't matter then: You've already enjoyed the movie.




• When in doubt, animate.
  

  For years there's been speculation about a possible live-action remake of Katsuhiro Otomo's animated masterpiece, Akira. Sony, in fact, is said to have scrapped a planned live action version of the film only after the budget topped $300 million.
  
  Personally, I don't see any reason to make a live action version of Akira. In fact, I think it's a bad idea. Part of the reason that Akira is such a good film is because of it's brilliantly surreal imagery. A good film-maker can put all kinds of strange images in an animated film and convey exactly what he has in mind. Over the course of Akira's two-hour running time there are giant, menacing teddy bears, mysterious, floating telepathic children, and a character who's mutating arm seems to be on the verge of actually absorbing the whole universe. It's compelling stuff in Otomo's animated world. But those same images in a "real world" setting would probably seem perverse ... or random ... or, worst of all, silly.




• Bring the funny.
  
  

  Dystopian tales don't have to be all gloom and doom. The idea of a reality that darkly parallels our own can make for great satire. Mike Judge knows that, and his 2006 film Idiocracy is a smart, brazen laugh riot. Idiocracy imagines a future of diminishing returns, where the stupid people have simply outbred the smart ones, and everyone on earth is an absolute moron. It seems implausible, but Judge's points are sharp and resonant. After all, it isn't that big a leap to go from "Thank you for shopping, have a nice day" to "Welcome to Costco, I love you." And is it that hard to believe that a society that could put a living action figure in California's Governor's mansion might eventually put an American Gladiator in the White House? Not at all. Idiocracy laughs in the face our our unavoidable, stupid doom.




• The Lucas Factor.
  
  

  A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, George Lucas made a series of films about wars, rebellions and republics. The films are set in a world that is comparable to our own in many ways. There are six movies in the series. Only one of them is worth watching at all. That one was directed by someone other than Lucas.
  
  You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Labels: Movies, Watchmen

Lots of big, scary news today.

Man, I'll be glad when I go back to work (this coming Monday, God willing) for a number of reasons. One of them, the reason that's on my mind right now, is that when I go back to work I won't be sitting here all day and night watching the cable-news talking heads and clicking every link at Google News and getting the living crud scared out of me.

Today there's all kinds of bad news. I think we can all agree that the world will probably come to an end by about 6:00 PM this evening. I just hope there's time to finish dinner first.

Here's some of the news stories that I'm freaking out about:

• Russia is acting a fool
  
  This is no joke, man. This is real, this is scary crap.
  

  A roll of explosions at a Russian-occupied military base this week sent a clear Kremlin message to Georgia about the frailty of its infant military and its prospects for NATO membership.
  
  The Russian army destroyed a hoard of Georgian arms and ammunition captured in a brief war that saw Georgian forces scattered, their bases seized and equipment carried off.

  
  I really thought the days of Russia just rolling over little neighboring countries was over. Maybe the whole world thought those days were over and that's why nobody seems willing or able to respond. And I don't blame 'em; I'd hate to be the guy in charge who had to make the decision to attack the Russian army, even if they are on another country's soil.
  
  And then there's the Poland thing:
  

  Russia issued a harsh response on Wednesday to the announcement of a deal between Poland and the United States to base part of a U.S. missile defense system on Polish soil.
  
  "Russia in this case will have to react and not only through diplomatic protests," Russia's Foreign Ministry said...
  
  (Russia) scorned the decision to base a battery of U.S. Patriot missiles in Poland, saying it would provide no protection against any "imaginary Iranian danger".

  
  Holy friggin' crap. "Imaginary Iranian danger?" NATO is on board with this missile defense system, this isn't some kind of shady deal between the US and Poland. Man! It doesn't seem very long ago that the common enemy of Islamic terrorism was going to strengthen the relationship between the US and Russia.
  
  Thankfully, the memory of oppression by the USSR seems to be pretty strong in Poland:
  

  In a clear swipe at Russia, Poland's President Lech Kaczynski on Tuesday said his country would not give in to threats over its deal with Washington to deploy US missile silos on Polish soil.
  
  "No-one can dictate to Poland what it should do. That's in the past," Kaczynski said...
  
  "No-one should be afraid of this (missile plan), if they have good intentions towards us or the rest of the West," Kaczynski said.

  
  It's good to see that Poland is willing to poke back a little bit.
  
  This is bound to be part of the reason that McCain is actually polling ahead of Obama. Americans know McCain and know that he's had Putin and Russia figured out all along:




• But McCain shouldn't get too comfortable
  
  There's increasing noise about McCain picking Joe Lieberman as his running mate.
  
  Look, I like Joe Lieberman. I really do. He's a "hawkish" liberal, one of the last of his kind. It's nice to see that there are still a few realistic liberals out there. Heck, to tell the truth, I toyed with the idea of supporting Lieberman's presidential bid in 2004. But when push comes to shove, there's still one issue that rules the day: Joe Lieberman supports abortion on demand and I won't vote for a pro-abortion-on-demand ticket. Even a partially pro-abortion ticket.
  
  If McCain picks Lieberman, I'll stay home in November. I won't vote at all. I hope that other pro-life conservatives will sit this one out, too. If the GOP softens on abortion, we will need to send a strong message. Betray the pro-life contingent and you lose our vote. And you can't win without us.
  
  I'd rather skip the election and feel like I'm letting Obama win then vote against my deepest beliefs. Abortion-on-demand is the moral scandal of our time. There can't be any compromise on this issue.



• The Watchmen debacle
  
  There's some sort of power-struggle going on between 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers about who actually owns the rights to make a movie based on Watchmen.
  
  What this means, in a nutshell, is that Zack Snyder's potentially worthwhile film adaptation of "the greatest comic book of all time" might be delayed from release:
  

  Twentieth Century Fox’s war with Warner Bros. over rights to Watchmen has sparked fan outrage across the Web following a published report that Fox is seeking to prevent Zack Snyder’s $100 million-plus comic book adaptation from ever being released...

  
  Of course, this isn't going to cause Snyder's movie to be shelved forever. There's too much money to be made from it. The studios will figure out a way to fix things so that all the invested parties get a slice of the pie. Even the article I linked to acknowledged that.
  
  But you know how things go when the Lawyers get involved. The Watchmen movie might not be released in March, as originally planned. We might have a year to wait, maybe even longer.
  
  Hey, it's small potatoes compared to Russia, Georgia and Poland. But it still sucks.



• DMB sax player LeRoi Moore dies
  
  I enjoy the Dave Matthews Band's music, and LeRoi Moore has done some sax solos that were, in my opinion, the best thing about some of their songs. I didn't even know that the guy had been severely injured in June in an ATV accident. And now he's died:
  

  The band went ahead with a scheduled concert in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening and dedicated the performance to Moore...
  
  Hours after Moore's death, Dave Matthews told the audience at Tuesday's concert that his bandmate "gave up his ghost today," adding: "and we will miss him forever," according to the Orange County Register newspaper.

  
  That just sucks. And that's all I can think of to say about it.



• Big, scary tower
  
  This photo of the giant skyscraper they're building in Dubai probably isn't scary to most people ... but in my current frame of mind I can't look at it without seeing the Eye of Sauron on top of it:

  

  Found this at Geekologie.





• The Mojave marketing trickery
  
  Microsoft has launched a big campaign to try to ease consumer fears about Vista and get people to buy their latest floundering OS.
  
  Don't believe a word of it. Vista sucks. Sure, you could take a bunch of people who've never seen Vista and let them spend twenty minutes pointing and clicking on a Vista-installed notebook and convince them that the OS is top notch. But that's not proof of anything and it's not intellectual honesty. It's salesmanship. It's the same thing that enables used car salesmen to get people to drive lemons off the lot.
  
  I'm writing this from a Dell PC that runs Vista. I've been an unhappy Vista user for months now. Vista crashes all the time. Programs lock up, fail to load, and don't run properly in Vista every day. I have constant networking problems with Vista; it's pure hell keeping my LAN and Internet connections working from this computer. Vista has lots of bells and whistles, and it comes with a really cool looking Mahjong game. But other than that It's a total lemon compared to the previous, vastly superior Microsoft XP operating system.

Labels: Microsoft, Movies, Music, News, Politics, Watchmen

Scott at Good News Film Reviews has been reviewing film trailers, and I've enjoyed that. I've enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I'm just going to shamelessly rip it off and review the trailers for some of the movies that I'm interested in.

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Choke

Choke is one of my favorite Chuck Palahniuk novels, simply because the book made me laugh out loud, frequently, and so hard that my sides literally hurt. Having said that, Choke isn't for everyone. The novel is extremely obscene, totally profane, blasphemous, and insensitive to the differently abled. I can not believe that someone made a movie out of this novel. But judging by the preview, it looks like they stuck to the book very well. I'll be catching this in the theater this October. If it even provides a glimpse of the warped world that Palahniuk conjured up in his novel, it oughta be a hoot.

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Watchmen

For a long time I was totally opposed to the idea of adapting Watchmen for the screen. Watchmen is probably the finest example of everything that's great about the comic-book medium. Besides, Watchmen is ultimately a 12-issue comic book title about comics themselves. You just can't translate that to the screen. Having said all that, the preview looks pretty good. I'm glad that Zack Snyder directed this thing. 300 made Snyder the go-to guy for movies based on "unfilmable" graphic novels. If this movie conveys even a little bit of what's so damn awesome about the source material, Snyder will probably become a demigod to fanboys (like me) everywhere.

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Man On Wire

OK, here's the thing: I bet you that Man On Wire is a really good movie. I love documentaries, and this looks like one of the most compelling, remarkable, interesting ones of the decade. But while I sat here watching this preview I was HOLDING MY BREATH AND GRIPPING THE ARMS OF MY CHAIR IN ABSOLUTE TERROR. So, yes, I think that Man On Wire will be a good movie. I don't plan to get anywhere near this film. I just couldn't watch it if I had to.

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The Rocker

The Rocker is from director Peter Cattaneo, who's 1997 film The Full Monty was funny, warm and totally enjoyable. The Rocker stars Rainn Wilson, and I think he's a total riot as Dwight on The Office. But, judging from the preview, this looks like a huge, pointless turd of a movie and I don't plan to sit through another second of it.

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Burn After Reading
(Red Band trailer, language warning)

Last October I posted the trailer for No Country For Old Men and said that I hoped it represented a return to form for the Coens. Well, No Country... was the best movie I saw in 2007, and it might be the best movie that Joel and Ethan have ever done. A year after that masterpiece the Coens have readied Burn After Reading. Judging from the previews, the new film looks to be a farce in the Big Lebowski, Oh Brother... tradition. I enjoyed Oh Brother and Lebowski is my third funniest film of all time*. So my hopes are high for Burn After Reading.

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*That "fifteen funniest films of all time" list was put together for film geeks before Borat, a movie that easily goes in my top five somewhere.

Labels: Movies, Watchmen, You Tube

UPDATE, AUGUST 2008: THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ZACK SNYDER'S WATCHMEN MOVIE!!

I'm adding this update in August, 2008. My data tracking shows that this post is by FAR the most popular post at SouthCon as of now. After the Watchmen trailer was made available for public consumption a lot of people must have hit the net looking for Watchmen movie info, and a lot of them are ending up here.

So what you need to know is that this post was written BEFORE the current Zack Snyder Watchmen movie was in progress. Originally, the IMDB page I linked to featured bare-bones information. When I wrote this post Zack Snyder wasn't attached to the film ... at least as far as I knew. There is NO information here about that movie. This post is just a personal blog post, and I'm just some hillbilly ranting about how much he loves the book and about someone else's hypothetical cast for a hypothetical Watchmen film.

And, for what it's worth, I think Zack Snyder's movie looks like it ought to be pretty good. I still don't think that any movie could convey everything that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons put on the printed page. But I do think that Snyder's film looks like it's going to be good fun.

And now, the original post from October, 2006:

• Who'd Watch THIS Watchmen?
  
  Not me, that's for darn sure.
  
  You might know that they're making a movie out of the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comics classic Watchmen, and I'm dead set against it. It's just impossible to convey the experience of Watchmen in any way other than actually reading the story in the medium in which and for which it was produced. Period. They might as well try to make a movie out of Dali's Persistence Of Memory.
  
  Anyway, I was looking at action figures on the internet tonight ('cuz I'm just so white and nerdy) and I saw some custom crafted comic book action figures at this page, including a pretty cool Rorschach from Watchmen half-way down the page. Wendy asked me what I was so excited about and I told her that I'd just come across a Watchmen action figure, which led to a little bit of question and answer about Watchmen.
  
  Yes, guys, my wife is into comic books. Read that sentence again and weep. This is known as playing the nerd trump card.
  
  Anyway, we were looking around the net for other Watchmen stuff and I came across the following hypothetical Watchmen movie poster… a piece of "fan art" … which made me recoil in horror:
  

  

  
  So, here I sat, yelling "NO! NO NO NO! NO NO NO NO NO!!! at the monitor. Not only is making a movie based on Watchmen a terrible idea, but this is the worst combination of cast, director, music, and everything else.
  
  First of all, as opposed as I am to the movie (have I made that clear?), I'd much rather have Zack Snyder directing it than that washed-up hack Shyamalan. These days, nobody can ruin a movie like Shymalan.
  
  And having Radiohead do the music for a film based on Watchmen is like proposing that … oh, I dunno… that Flava Flav do the music for a film based on The Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a total WTF proposition.
  
  The actors are all wrong, too. The only one I'd accept is Michael Douglas as Captain Metropolis, and that's because he's such a minimal and unimportant character. Ed Harris as Dr. Manhattan? Who in the world would buy that? Look at Ed Harris in that picture. He looks like some kind of blue serial killer. Come on. Dr. Manhattan is a cerebral, detached, post-human godlike being. He shouldn't seem like he's about to rip your throat out, and Ed Harris (God bless him) couldn't tell you to have a nice day without coming off like he wants to rip your throat out.
  
  Mel Gibson is all wrong for the Comedian, too. The Comedian is a psychopath. Gibson, in that poster, looks like Dabney Coleman. Catherine Zeta Jones as the Silk Spectre is just dumb. She can't act. She just can NOT act. Hope Davis might work as Silk Spectre, but, then again, I don't want a movie made from Watchmen, so, really, nobody would be right. John Cusack would just be a silly choice as Nite Owl II, and I can't for the life of me figure out why he's leading this informal fan pole for the role.
  
  Ralph Fiennes is an awful choice for Ozymandias. For one of a thousand reasons, that character has to be older. Maybe Mel Gibson could pull that role off. He could probably put across the character's megalomania. Maybe he could play Ozymandias and then Bruce Campbell could play The Comedian. He's leading for that role in the fan pole anyway. Not that he'd ever get the role... and not that I actually want the movie to be made. The only proposition here I could even consider is Edward Norton as my favorite character in the title, Rorschach. Other than that, this poster is really just a good iconic summary of how terrible the idea of filming Watchmen is in the first place.
  
  And, speaking of Watchmen, if you know the story and you know the characters, and if you know my politics, you're probably not surprised to find out which character I apparently scored as in a "Which Watchmen Are You?" test.
  

  Which Watchmen character are you?

  You are Rorschach. You are a crime fighter who believes that no crime should go unpunished and you will go to any means to bring justice to the world. But you might be slightly insane. Take this quiz!

  
  
  I'm fine with all that... but I resent the words "might" and "slightly." I also resent the fact that this quiz is really short, really lame, and I'm considering using my current obsessive knowledge of Watchmen to put together a better one while it's still fresh in my mind.




• Reverend Bob Said What?
  
  I don't know who the Reverend Bob Harrington is, but when I read what he'd said about The Simpsons at Bulletproof Bracelets, I got a little miffed:
  
  

  "Their father has replaced his faith in the Lord with the love of money, which is the root of all evil … They don't represent American standards and certainly not Christian standards."

  
  
  Then I realized that he was talking about the father of Ashlee and and Jessica Simpson … not Homer Simpson of The Simpsons. So I got over it.



• PCs And Macs
  
  There are basically two kinds of computers. Apples, or "Macs" … and PC's, or "actual computers." The following look at Macs is courtesy of A Golden World.
  




• Politics N' Such
  
  A few political items I enjoyed today:
  
  
  • Rich Lowry finds the good side of the Mark Foley scandal: finally, the Democrats are concerned about somebody's sexual conduct!
  
  
  • Ann Coulter is usually shrill, but also usually good for a couple of laughs. She's figured out what Foley's real problem is: He's a closeted Democrat.
  
  
  • Boy, there's just nothing that makes my day quite like the site of a bunch of aging, dying hippies at an anti war protest. Go, hippies, go! Go to the nursing homes! They already have bedpans with your names on them!

Labels: Media, Movies, News, Politics, Watchmen, You Tube