E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
Found this movie on cable last night, watched the opening minutes and, next thing I knew, I was in for the whole ride. And an interesting one it was!
Vincent Moon (Ice-T) summons a very large group of criminals, killers, and general no-good-nicks to a just built -but until these criminals arrive deserted- prison on the verge of being opened and tells them the place has been locked down and, before the day is done, they must fight their way through each other until only 3 are left. The prize for survival? 10 million dollars.
Following telling the group this, boxes filled with all manner of guns/weapons are thrown at the group’s feet. Then, boxes full of bullets.
Let the games…begin!
Mean Guns proved a fascinating watch. Pre-dating the film version of Battle Royale (a film which, in turn, one could argue “inspired” The Hunger Games) by three years, it is a stylish (!) “B” action film. There is plenty of death but nothing I would consider terribly graphic. There’s also great use of music and clever direction, along with at times very humorous dialogue, which keeps you into the film despite its obvious low budget.
What I also liked is the film doesn’t really have a single “protagonist”. For much of the film we’re essentially following two groups of combatants. The first, primary group, consists of -eventually- four people, two men and two women, led by Christopher Lambert’s on the edge Lou. Mr. Lambert, as usual, brings it to the table. He’s one of those actors who, even in terrible films, is always worth watching. While his presence may suggest he’s the “hero” of the piece, the filmmakers wisely keep his motivations closely guarded until the end.
Within that group is also Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), the one woman who doesn’t appear to fit into the scenario at all. She isn’t a killer and, it would also appear, isn’t much of a criminal either.
The secondary group we follow consists of two hitmen whose banter is quite humorous and who, in time, link up to a female criminal…one who is very wily even if she spends most of the film without a weapon.
I don’t want to give away too much more but I will say this much: The film’s conclusion provides a good reason for why this whole exercise was initiated by the seemingly deranged Vincent Moon and, further, gives us an ending that makes a twisted kind of sense.
Unlike Battle Royale or The Hunger Games, these group of “contestants” are far from an innocent bunch so we are not shocked or horrified when they fall…and yet there is no denying we also -perversely- root for one or the other’s “success” even if we know they are ultimately almost all very, very bad people.
Considering this is an almost forgotten film, I was surprised by Mean Guns. It ain’t Citizen Kane but it is an enjoyable action flick.
During their ultimately very short career as a band (hard to believe between the release of their first album, Please Please Me in 1963 and their last official release, Let it Be in 1970), The Beatles revolutionized Rock ‘n Roll.
Seven years. An astonishing twelve albums (Including 1969’s Yellow Submarine, which was more like 1/2 Beatles and 1/2 producer George Martin album). Add to that a very large number of mind-bogglingly good singles, now collected in Past Masters Volume 1 and 2. And they also found time to write songs for other bands/artists.
Truly an incredible burst of creativity, given how many of the songs produced during that short time were absolute classics.
Another fascinating thing about The Beatles was their evolution. The early Beatles music owed a clear debt to the 1950’s rock scene but in and around the time of the release of Help! (1965) it was clear things within the band were changing and their musical direction, in my opinion, soared.
I happen to be a fan of the second half of The Beatles’ career more than the first, though there are some great songs to be found in the early going. With Help!, The Beatles displayed some early examples of that second stage brilliance. Within that album, which was actually a soundtrack plus for the film of the same name, you find such tracks as You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Ticket to Ride, and Yesterday, among others.
Their follow up album, 1965’s Rubber Soul, is considered a stone cold classic and the one that follows it, 1966’s Revolver, is considered by many the all-time best Beatles album ever. (Incredibly, they would follow that album in 1967 with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).
There are those that consider Rubber Soul and Revolver a “double album” that just happened to be released as two separate albums and I can’t argue the point.
Focusing on Revolver, that album featured some very strong works by the band, including such classic songs as Taxman, Tomorrow Never Knows, Yellow Submarine, and She Said She Said (one of my all time favorite Beatles songs).
There is another song on this album, Eleanor Rigby, which many consider one of the more unique -though still incredible- Beatles songs.
Hunter Davies wrote this article and presents a piece of an interview he conducted with Paul McCartney (the song’s primary writer) soon after the song was released about what went into the making of it and its possible meanings:
For those unfamiliar with the song (shame on you!):
A very fascinating article which, in a way, shows just how quickly things came together for The Beatles and how they -there was more of a sense of collaboration then- would knock off a song together.
Found this very funny article over at Kotaku.com in which the author notes with considerable amusement the various explanations for this “Awkward Anime Image”:
At first glance, it doesn’t look like much but there is plenty wrong with it and some of the “explanations” for how this image might be “right” are hilarious…
When I heard someone had described The Expanse books (to date there are 5 in the series and a few novellas) as a “science fiction version of Game of Thrones“, I knew the authors of the books must have done somersaults of sheer joy. (The novels are listed as being written by James S. A. Corey which is the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) .
It wasn’t all that long ago that some critic stated the then first appearing Twilight books were the next “Harry Potter”-type must-read series and you know where that went.
I haven’t read the books but I have, finally, seen the entire first season of the Sy-Fy Network produced The Expanse series and…
…I’m torn.
On the one hand, the series features many elements I really admire in good sci-fi programming: A sober handling of the material. A complex (but not complicated) plot. Good special effects. Appealing -for the most part- characters.
And yet…
Having seen the ten episode season, I’m left liking it enough to justify giving a second season of the show a try while also being curiously unfulfilled.
The Expanse imagines a future society some two hundred years from now wherein humanity is divided between three solar system locations: Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. The relations between those on either settings is very strained and it appears war is almost certain to come.
We start the series with an intriguing mystery: A woman we soon find named Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), is trapped within a spaceship and manages to break her way out of it, only to find the crew within all dead and a very strange crystalline structure growing within the ship.
From there we are presented the three main leads/groups:
On Earth we follow the political machinations of Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who works for the U.N. and worries recent events have pushed Earth and Mars on a course of war. However, she’s suspicious and careful…she doesn’t want to advocate war without first investigating what is causing the perceived Martian aggression and whether it is real or not. Mrs. Avasarala is also a political animal who is not above betraying her dearest friends in the search for the truth.
In the Asteroid Belt space station Ceres, Detective Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) is tasked with finding Julie Mao. We follow the cynical Miller around the station and while doing his work and find there is plenty of corruption and general human wear and tear to be found out in space. Ultimately, Detective Miller finds himself more involved in this case than he thought he would be.
Finally, we follow the crew of the ice trawler Canterbury as they pick up their latest load of ice and are heading back to port when they receive a distress call. The Captain and most of the officers fear the call is a fake and that Space Pirates (or worse) await them and therefore chose to ignore the signal. However, James Holden (Steven Strait), the just promoted Executive Officer of the ship, forces the Captain’s hand (without anyone else knowing) and the Canterbury sends a small rescue ship with Holden within it to check the distressed ship out.
It turns out the distress signal was a ruse and a mysterious vessel appears. It fires upon the Canterbury and destroys it. Because of the Canterbury’s debris field, Holden and the other four officers within the rescue vessel manage to evade the attackers but are left stranded in a nearly destroyed rescue vessel. They believe the Martians were to blame for this provocative act and, when they are eventually picked up by a Martian Battleship, they fear the worst.
However, it turns out the Martians didn’t destroy the Canterbury. It soon becomes very clear someone out there wants Earth to think they did.
Can war be averted? What is Julie Mao’s role in this mystery? And what is that strange crystalline material that took over her ship?
Most of the questions are answered in the first season of The Expanse but just because they’re answered doesn’t mean they’re resolved.
In fact, this is part of the reason the first season of this show left me so unsatisfied. We’re given this weird and interesting mystery and in the end we kinda/sorta know all the players but we’re still left wondering why all these elements are put into place.
There are also a host of little things that, for me, didn’t work as well as the show’s creators thought they would. For example, I never felt the fevered need for Detective Miller to push push push in resolving the mystery of Julie Mao. His character is probably the most cliched one in the show, your “cynical” detective who suddenly finds he cannot let something bad just go by. Perhaps because of the fractured nature of the storytelling Detective Miller’s change never felt natural.
Further, when another character tells him he pursues the mystery of Mao so feverishly because he’s “fallen in love” with her, I shook my head. By the show’s climax it felt like the show’s creators were indeed trying to prove this was the case but to me I never felt that to be the case. The storytelling here, in the end, was rather weak.
As for U.N. envoy Chrisjen Avasarala, her story never quite ties in as directly as that of Miller and Holden, who actually join forces together at the show’s climax. While it is true she is seeking information that relates to the behind the scenes elements that caused Mao’s disappearance, I felt her scenes were never as clever or engaging as those of Miller or Holden.
Finally, with regard to Holden and his motley crew, they proved to be the most interesting characters in the story but even their story line had some issues. I can buy they head to the derelict and witness the Canterbury’s destruction and narrowly escape the same fate but what follows proves harder and harder to swallow. I don’t want to get into too many SPOILERS here, but suffice to say mega-destruction follows in Holden and his group’s wake and after a while one couldn’t help but admire their incredible luck in avoiding annihilation so many times.
Finally, and as mentioned above, we really aren’t given much of a story resolution here. The first season of The Expanse feels like a prolonged introduction to events and people but ends without us knowing all that much as to what the heck is going on. Sure, we find out what Mao was up to. We find out what happened to her. But we don’t know any of the “whys” here and that’s frustrating. What’s up with the crystals? Why do certain people want there to be war between Mars and Earth? Why did they do what they did on Eros station?
It’s frustrating to spend nearly ten hours on a show and still have no idea about so many things.
Despite the negatives enumerated above, there was still enough intriguing material to warrant my catching a second season. I just hope we’re given more answers than were provided in the first ten episode arc. Otherwise, I might just give up.
After the incredible rendition of the National Anthem at this past Super Bowl, I was curious to see/listen to Lady Gaga’s tribute to David Bowie at yesterday’s Grammys.
The current music scene, to me anyway, is akin to watching a foreign movie without subtitles…For the most part I don’t understand it at all. (Get off my lawn!!)
After the show was nearly over I headed to YouTube and found the Lady Gaga tribute in its entirety (this morning, however, I’m seeing the tribute has been washed from YouTube and, instead, we get plenty of reviews of it).
My thoughts on what I saw?
I didn’t like it much. In fact, I shut it off after a couple of minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, I know Lady Gaga put a great deal of effort into the production and she certainly tried hard to get as many of Mr. Bowie’s “hits” presented in bit sized fashion as quickly as she could. It is also obvious she has a great deal of admiration for Mr. Bowie. I’ve always felt that she, and Madonna for that matter, are among the artists who most directly copied/adapted David Bowie’s evolution of style into their acts. Though they may have copied Mr. Bowie in that respect, they also brought powerful songwriting/singing skills to the mix which allowed them to not just copy Mr. Bowie’s style but also find their own and soar in their own directions.
Having said that, the Lady Gaga tribute was…it was cheesy.
That word screamed to my mind as I watched all I could handle before turning it off after a minute or two. Despite the great makeup and clothing and computer graphics what you had was basically a “best of” version of David Bowie’s hits/styles and it felt too curt and rather…depressing.
By giving us small samples of his songs while changing clothing every few seconds to mimic some Bowie style, it felt like we were getting some Vegas version of Mr. Bowie’s career. It was not unlike seeing Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees do The Beatles in the dreadful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band movie.
Please understand, I’m not a Lady Gaga “hater”. I’ve heard some of her popular songs on the radio and, frankly, like them for the most part even though I’m hardly into today’s music “scene”. I also recall hearing her on Howard Stern a while back, singing a couple of her songs with only her piano to accompany her and was blown away by how good she sounded. Hell, as I mentioned above, I absolutely loved her National Anthem rendition.
As anyone who’s read this blog should know, I’m absolutely fascinated with the concept of self-driving vehicles. I firmly believe that they are coming and while people may express some skepticism or hesitancy toward them, in the end this will be the future of cars/trucks.
In fact, I further believe people will no longer actually own a car, that we will travel to work or on vacation by “renting” a car via an app on our cellphone (or whatever equivalent service we use). This self-driving vehicle will pick us up and take us to our destination and when we need to return home we call up another such vehicle and it takes us back.
All the while, we’ll be in the car reading our paper or playing on our tablet/smartphone.
Anyway, Elon Musk, head of Tesla, offers a great interview for Fortune magazine regarding the future of self-driving cars. He offers his predictions regarding when Tesla cars will be self-driving…
The NBA is currently on its mid-season All-Star Break and one of the events it features is a “Celebrity” Basketball match. In the match, Arcade Fire’s singer Win Butler’s team won and in the interview following the win, Mr. Butler, who is Canadian, tried to talk about Canada’s Heath Care system and how in this election year -I can only imagine he was heading in this direction- people should educate themselves on the many positives of this system considering many of the Republican candidates have already promised to dismantle the Obamacare system.
I say I can only imagine that’s where he was going because Sage Steele, the lady interviewing Mr. Butler, cut him off as if he were in the middle of yelling out a string of obscenities…
It’s been pointed out that Ms. Steel is a registered Republican and has in the past tweeted/talked negatively about Obamacare, which certainly explains her so sudden cutting off of Mr. Butler all the more.
Others might argue why, in an event meant to entertain, should Mr. Butler be given time to talk about something political and which doesn’t have all that much to do with Basketball.
To which I would say: How many times have you seen “entertainment” events and had the athletes interviewed after the fact mention God or Jesus or some charity they’re working for? These things, too, often have little or nothing to do with the game.
Even if Mr. Butler had said something I might find offensive -say, “Elect Donald Trump…he isn’t as batshit crazy as he appears!”- I would have shaken my head and probably thought a little less of Mr. Butler as a person but it wouldn’t have changed my opinion of his music or made me bemoan the fact that he won this All-Star Basketball game. Further, had the interviewer cut him off just as he started as Ms. Steel did, I’m thinking I would have been just as offended as I was with Ms. Steel’s actions here.
To Mr. Butler’s credit, he acted like your stereotypical Canadian and didn’t call out Ms. Steel for her boorish behavior.
Jeeze, give the guy a few seconds to say what he wants and don’t inject yourself into things so quickly and wag your finger at the man you’re interviewing (“But we’re talking about celebrity basketball and not politics”), Ms. Steel.
If he isn’t cursing or acting like a complete jerk, there is no reason to make yourself look like one.
I have to say, as I was reading the article I kept thinking this was simply some kind of ruse, that the man who had amnesia about his past just couldn’t have had it, that he was fleeing some kind of familiar relationship he no longer wanted any part of and/or had a second “life” with someone else he preferred.
It reminded me of one of the segments of a Zucker/Abrahams’ forgotten comedy creation, Our Planet Tonight (1987), which itself was a parody of the 20/20, 60 Minutes, etc. news shows. In it we have a report on how these two twin brothers were separated at birth and yet live such extraordinarily similar lives while -supposedly unknowingly- also lived in the very same town and in very close proximity to each other.
The upshot of the skit/pseudo-news report (if you haven’t clicked above to see it, you should!) was that there were no twin brothers and the man they were following was in actuality a bigamist with two different wives/lives who, now that he was being investigated for this show, had to pretend mightily he and his “other” were twins. The hosts of the news show hilariously miss all the evidence right in front of their face that points to the fact that these men are one and the same, including how they use the “same type of car” or “work in the same place” yet how, in the reporter’s words, hadn’t once crossed each other’s path!
Toward the end of the episode, the reporter wanted to bring the “twins” together to meet and it was hilarious how “each” twin stated that they didn’t want to meet just yet that they had to digest this information and didn’t want to traumatize the other.
Hilarious stuff and, yes, I was thinking of exactly that when I started reading the above article. I suppose that’s the cynic in me.
Anyway, my cynicism was quickly banished when I found out the man who had this extended amnesia is mentally disabled and has an intellectual development of a 12 year old. While I would be suspicious if a perfectly “normal” man made such a wild claim, it makes more sense in this case that this developmentally disabled individual wouldn’t have the capacity or desire to make such a thing up.
Which makes the story, and the fact that this man and his family will finally be getting together, nothing less than heartwarming.
Stop me if you heard this before: I found out about Sicario shortly before its release and was eager to see it in theaters but couldn’t find the time until–
What’s that?
Oh. Ok, moving right along…
So I finally got to see Sicario via the magic of home video. I was very eager to do so and heard plenty of good things about the film. In fact, as of this writing it has an astonishing 93% positive among critics and an equally impressive 86% positive among audiences according to Rotten Tomatoes.
While watching the film, I was impressed with many things, from Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer (the film’s protagonist), Benecio Del Toro’s mysterious -and deadly- Alejandro, and Josh Brolin’s Matt Graver, a good ol’ boy spook.
I was engaged with the film but as it played out and, especially when it reached the end, I found myself curiously unimpressed with the totality of the venture despite so many reasons to recommend it.
To begin there are at least four action/suspense set pieces within Sicario that are nothing short of terrific. One occurs at the beginning of the movie (and quite a bit of it can be seen in the trailer below), a second at a border crossing, a third involving a tunnel chase eventually leading to a high level drug lord, and the fourth at the movie’s end.
Really great stuff. And yet…
As good as those elements were and as I said above, when all was said and done I felt the movie could have been so much better.
So I wondered what was it that made the film not quite work for me.
I think a part of the problem was the use of such familiar and well-established actors in so many roles. In some ways their appearances (and I’m not even mentioning the likes of Jeffrey Donovan, Victor Garber, and Jon Bernthal) proved somewhat distracting and took me away from viewing this film as “real”. The established actors in the lead roles, too, had me anticipating the film would never get too terribly “dark”. Sometimes established actors are loathe to go too far out of a certain comfort zone.
Perhaps I’m not explaining myself very clearly so I’ll use the following example:
A number of years ago I saw the Swedish film Insomnia (originally released in 1997). At the time I didn’t recognize any of the actors, though since the movie’s release Stellan Skarsgard has made inroads in American films and is now a more familiar face.
The film, which involved a corrupt police officer that either accidentally or very much on purpose killed his partner while lost in a fog and on the hunt for a serial killer. Our protagonist’s partner’s death was not insignificant: The partner, it was revealed, was about to turn our protagonist in to the Police Internal Review Board because of the many shady and illegal things he had done. After his partner’s killing, the film follows our could be/might be evil cop as he continues his hunt for the serial killer. He does this while facing the inevitable Internal Review Board hammer that’s about to come down, the serial killer whose victims keep popping up, and the Northern town they’re in. In that town and during this time of the year a day lasts weeks and the sun shines near constantly and our increasingly fragile lead cannot get any sleep.
As I watched Insomnia, I didn’t know where it was going or whether our protagonist was truly evil or regretted his action(s) or some wild combination of the two. This great unknowing added to the movie’s tension and made us wonder just where we were going.
Five years later and in 2002 director Christopher Nolan remade Insomnia. In the remake, he cast Al Pacino as the protagonist and Robin Williams as the serial killer. Though all the elements of the originally movie were used and the American film version was an almost scene for scene remake, lost in the translation was all that delightful tension of not knowing what our protagonist was up to.
Because we had Al Pacino in the lead, I somehow knew he would eventually be shown as rising above and, if not excusing, at least making amends for his many sins. I knew this almost instinctually from the very moment we first saw Al Pacino on the screen and therefore much of the original film’s tension was effectively gone.
With Sicario’s use of familiar, established actors, I kinda/sorta knew the film would not get too dark and, sure enough, it never did. Had the film used less well known/established actors, I suspect we would have a different dynamic and audiences would wonder what would happen when Alejandro and Kate finally confronted each other…instead of knowing there was simply no chance the director and actors involved would stray too far down a very dark hole.
I know it sounds like I’m blaming the actors for the film’s failing to totally turn me on and, further, it comes across as a disservice considering they played their roles quite well. Emily Blunt was very good in the role of an innocent who faces ultimate evil. Benecio Del Toro was equally great as a wolf in sheep’s clothing (loved the fact that he was in a white suit at the very start of the film, then in a later scene is shown removing it and revealing the black clothing below).
But facts are facts and, as I said, I simply could not see these well established actors veering wildly off the path and into a potentially pitch black conclusion.
So in the end, despite some very good scenes and overall good work by all involved, I can only give Sicaro a mild recommendation. You most certainly will not walk away hating the film, but you might, like me, wish it could have been more.
Gotta admit: I found the posting hilarious and when he linked to so many people/critics who have done just that, I couldn’t help but scratch my head.
Steven Spielberg has made many films, yet I never see people offering a “ranking” of his best films. Similarly, so too has Alfred Hitchcock and Ridley Scott and (the Gods help us) Michael Bay.
Yet with these directors we often simply get a quick listing of the “best” films they’ve made yet never an attempt to list them all as is the case with the Coen Brothers.
I tend to agree with Mr. Roth as to the why: The Coen Brothers have made just enough films to offer a listing but no so many that such a list is pondersome. Further, their films tend to follow the same general storylines (the Coens write their own scripts) and use roughly the same budget with each film. Thus, they do not have a “small” film followed by a huge “blockbuster” film.
I think there’s another factor: They make so many really great films that touch people in unique ways. Mr. Roth notes that many people have “favorite” Coen Brothers films but they may be different for each person. You may like Fargo best while your friend may find Miller’s Crossing the Brothers’ cinematic peak.
As for me? (Come on, you don’t talk about ranking Coen Brothers films without offering your own ranking, right?!)
While I haven’t seen all their films, of those I have seen my favorite is probably Fargo. Truly there has never been anything like it, an absolutely hilarious comedy whose subject matter/plot would have in any other reality been made into a terrifying, bloody crime drama!
I also enjoyed No Country For Old Men but found the ending really bizarre (to be fair, they followed the novel it was based on). I really liked Miller’s Crossing but was uncomfortable with the fact the Coen Brothers were essentially lifting without attribution the plot of Dashiell Hammet’s The Glass Key. I had great fun with Burn After Reading, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple.
After that…
Well, I liked The Big Lebowski until it got to that bizarre dream sequence and I felt the film kinda fell apart (though I will admit it finished very strong). O Brother Where Art Thou was ok but not my particular cup of tea. Same with True Grit. While I saw both Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy, I remember very little of either and therefore they obviously didn’t make much of an impression on me. The only other film of theirs I saw that’s left is The Man Who Wasn’t There. I left that film for last because to me this was easily the worst Coen Brothers film I’ve seen. It was, IMHO, a stupid, pointless reworking/mash up of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Lolita (I guess!). Boring, to boot.
Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
(For the completist out there, the Coen Brother Films I have not seen are:
Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Lewis, and the just released Hail, Ceasar!)
