[sic]

So my main beef — quite literally — with Iron Man derives in the first couple scenes when Tony Stark is safely back on U.S. soil after having been held prisoner by terrorists for long enough to McGuyver Iron Man 1.0 and kick their collective holy-waring ass. The first thing he does is turn to his colleague in the limousine that’s ready to whisk them away from the freedom bird that brought him back to his homeland of Southern California and he says that the first thing he wants is an “American cheeseburger.” In the scene immediately following he emerges from the limo to a bunch of news cameras and reporters and his driver hands him… a bag that just so happens to prominently feature the Burger King logo.

Seriously Mr. Stark, a Whopper is the best you and your crew could do? Not that I don’t put BK near the top of my fastfood burger list, but hear me out. When one of the richest most successful and powerful men in the world returns home to a hero’s welcome after miraculously surviving three months of captivity at the hands of extremist goons in the rugged and isolated Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California mountains of Afghanistan, he could pretty much snap one finger and contract TV’s Extreme Home Makeover team to build and equip him a burger stand in about an hour, and with the other finger staff the grill with the finest chef in all the land while simultaneously having a pound of the finest and freshest Angus or Kobe beef delivered.

If not something that over-the-top, at very least hit an In-N-Out or Tommy’s — or better yet, the resurrected Mo’ Better Meatty Meat Burger goodness of Indulge Cafe at Pico and Redondo.

But instead, in this movie that begs me at every turn to willingly suspend my disbelief, I’m expected to swallow that the best that could be done to fulfill this man’s first desire was a warmed-over Whopper? Snagged from the drive-through no doubt? Gah!

With the exception of some other petty issues, this is pretty much the one thing in the entire motion picture that jerked me back to the reality and screamed of product placement.

Those other gripes deal with:

1. Director Jon Favreau’s cameo scenes as Tony Stark’s bodyguard — was that really necessary?
2. The whole unrequited love thing between Stark and Penny — yawn!
3. The climactic finale seemed decidedly not quite fantastic enough — more please!

If you haven’t already figured it out, the shallow extent of such peckings means I thought the movie rocked.

P.S. And there’s a reason to sit through the credits — all of them.

1. Roland Emmerich is the director.

2. Roland Emmerich is the writer.

3. Roland Emmerich is the producer.

4. No one in the industry has the balls to tell him to stop it. Instead he’s all “I have this great idea for a movie that I want to manage on every level because I’m Roland Emmerich” and Hollywood’s all “That’s gonna make $100 mil easy!”

5. Case in point: “The Day After Tomorrow,” which Roland wrote, produced and directed and was already bad enough but then he had to go ahead and CGI in those marvelous ravenous wolves who had escaped from a lifetime in captivity at the zoo but somehow did not die in the flood/freeze because apparently they were smart enough and not terrified enough in their new unfamiliar surroundings to get inside a building and hang until it was safe to come out. But apparently they were too stupid to feast on the countless corpses strewn throughout the city because they instead starved themselves into a frenzy with a preference for live prey, mainly Jake Gydsinthehall.

6. Yeah yeah I know, he also directed “Independence Day,” which was a rollicking good movie twelve years ago, but he blew all the capital accumulated from that blockbuster when he exec-produced craptastic stuff like “Godzilla” and “The Patriot.” And no it’s not unpatriotic to not like “The Patriot.”

7. Someone was smoking crack and a lot of it — probably Emmerich — to imagine that saber-toothed cats were ever ever ever t-h-i-s big:

8. I mean seriously, what a tool to have these cats standing somewhere around six feet tall at the shoulders with a head sized three times that of the average hominid of the day? Please! But typical that Emmerich couldn’t work with a life-sized smilodon and had to go and create his cgilodon, no doubt for the drama. I can just hear him having a fit yelling at the CGI team to “Make zee cats beegah!”

9. And no the humans aren’t pigmies. Nice try.

10. In fact: “Smilodon was the largest saber-toothed cat. It was a fierce predator about 4-5 feet (1.2-1.5 m) long and 3 feet (0.9 m) tall. It weighed about 440 lbs (200 kg). It was a bit smaller than a modern-day lion (Panthera leo), but much heavier. — Enchantedlearning.com

11. Let us now turn our deficient attentions on the skills of the ancient architects that exist in Emmerich’s funked up imagination. Strictly speaking they just did not build elaborate shit like this at the beginning of The Holocene:

12. Especially if the assumption (why start now?) can be made that the continental location of the film is ancient South America (the home of terror birds — surprise: somewhat realisitically rendered! — and the aforementioned saber-toothed cats). Or maybe it starts in South America but this tribe globetrots to the Gobi Desert via the land bridge that spanned the Bering Strait? That’s quite a hike!

13. Oh wait they have boats — sailboats!

Fancy-pants double-sailed aero-sleek America’s Cup winners, not the wimpy single-sailed variety whose first recorded use by the Egyptians didn’t take place until 6,000 years later.

14. Whether the good guys make a long journey or not there’s no way the above-pictured fort/fight scene takes place in Malta, which in fact, a Google search reveals is where the temple of Hagar Qim is — the oldest free-standing structure in the world at 3,600-years-old. It’s about 400 years older than the wonderous Egyptian pyramids.

15. It might be tempting to defend the film with a potential scenario that coulda happened to explain the absence of any ruins. Like maybe uh… maybe there was a large-but-not-too-large meteor that impacted directly upon the above-pictured Elks Lodgian-style fort in 9,800 BC or maybe 9,754 BC, totally destroying its existence and stuff. Yeah.

16. No. But spoken like a true Emmerichian. Congratulations.

15. Having beaten the historic inaccuracy of this movie to death you probably want me to just clam up and willingly suspend my disbelieve like all the other teenagers this type of pap caters too, but my disbelief is far too valuable to just hang it up so cheaply. I can do it for “The Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars” or any of the Narnian Chronicles (the password is: fantasy), but if you base a movie in a real place on a real planet with creatures that existed in a certain way but then just go and make all sorts of shit up to suit your needs, well then excuse silly old me for expecting that reality to be delivered somewhat authentically.

16. And besides all that, it’s PG-13. I hate PG-13.

(click to quadruplify)

This morning my friend and fellow IAAL•MAF’er Manny and I scouted out next Saturday’s Watts Happening II Ride down to the 54th Street location of the horrific SLA/LAPD shootout of May 1974  and back where we arrived just in time for Mama’s Tamales to be open for a bite.

Getting back home a bit after the noon next on the agenda was a bike ride with Susan up Sunset to the famed and fabulous Vista Theater for the $5 bargain matinee screening of “There Will Be Blood” (which while being some powerful filmmaking and acting I’m still trying to decide if I actually liked or not).

On the way out I set the cam on a low wall in the back of the auditorium and grabbed this three-second snap to show why it is one of my favorite places to see a movie.

Color this Sunday afternoon football-free and art awesome: Susan and I are gonna get on our bikes at noon and head downtown to catch the 1 p.m. matinee of Cloverfield at the Laemmle’s Grande on Fig. After that we’re gonna scoot on over to the Central Library to catch the last day of the Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles photography exhibit. And then as if that weren’t enough we’re gonna pedal over to MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary space to take in the Murakami show. From there we just might roll up to Olvera Street for margaritas and a late lunch/early dinner at La Golondrina before deciding whether to bike back or to hop a bus home.

Am I exaggerating in the headline? Maybe a little, but in watching Charles Burnett’s 1977 Killer of Sheep (IMDB link) last night I was extraordinarily moved throughout this strangely compelling and haunting film about life in mid-1970s Watts — equally so by the evocative music choices that complement it.

If the soundtrack is not available I’m going to hunt down the MP3s and make my own. Here’s a screensnap of the music involved (click to triplify):

I don’t know what came over me, but a couple minutes of my life just went blank. Last I remember I found the info on LAist as to when and where the hiiiiiiiiiighly anticipated new “final cut” of Blade Runner was playing and having never seen one of my favorite films of all time in any of its six previous incarnations on the big screen the next thing I knew I was picking up a confirmation off the printer for the purchase of two tix to for one of the afternoon showing this Saturday at the Landmark Theater on Pico Boulevard.

Whoa. And I say that in full Keanusian context.

Why not see it at night? Well, Susan and I are more of the matinee moviegoing types. And maybe we’ll suffer a smaller crowd afterwards for burgers at the nearby Apple Pan (where I’ve never been — what kind of Angeleno am I?).

PS. I always — always! — cry when Roy dies. In fact I get choked up just thinking about that moment in the film. When Batty lets go of the dove and it flies upward into the rain as he expires like a spirit going to heaven? Aw hell… get me a tissue. Rutger Hauer deserves a lifetime achievement Oscar for those few seconds of unparalleled acting excellence.

Want tix? Go here. It opens Friday.

To beat the heat yesterday Susan and I adjourned to the Sunset Laemmle 5 (in the crapalicious mall they tore down Schwab’s for) to see Julie Delpy’s Two Days In Paris largely because Susan and I spent two days in Paris (actually three) last May, and I gotta say that any of the two-day combinations of our three days there totally kicked ass over the two days Delpy and costar Adam Goldberg spent there.

The movie started off striking a memorable chord, opening with the somewhat unlikely but loving couple stuck at the same taxi stand outside the Lyon train station we were stuck at upon our arrival. Goldberg goes on to elaborate about how picky Paris cab drivers are in regards to what fares they’ll accept, i.e.: if your destination’s too close they’ll refuse to let you into the car. He speaks the truth: trying to get a cab to the relatively close (par voiture) Hotel du Notre Dame where we stayed was a relative nightmare and ultimately cost us an extra 10 euros to some shady taxistand dude who “arranged” one for us.

But back to the movie, the first half or so of which for me was enjoyable enough for its quirkiness of “plot” and “characters” (and I use those terms loosely because there isn’t really much of either). Getting over the fact this was increasingly proving to be a vanity production (Delpy literally did everything and put her family in the film too) the other bothersome aspect was that the camera was always way too close to the actors as they spoke. Call us sentimental but for a film set in Paris, Susan and I were hoping to see a bit of the place, but other than Jim Morrison’s grave we couldn’t because all these giant talking heads kept getting in the way. And by the third act when the inevitable yet ultra-weird break-up occurs even the oddity of having an eco-terrorist come out of nowhere to set Goldberg’s character straight (before setting fire to a fastfood restaurant) falls flat and the movie soon wraps up with a reconciliation as ill-fitting as it is depressing.

And speaking of depressing: the aptly titled Darwin’s Nightmare. This 2004 documentary is a very difficult film to watch and has certainly generated controversy because of its alleged one-sidedness in sensationalizing the negative impact of globalization. Centering on the the Tanzanian town of Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria where the invasive and ecologically devastating Nile Perch fish is processed, the place is shown to be literally rampant with glue-sniffing orphans, prostitutes and abandoned men and women all of whom seemingly must desperately subsist on the rotting carcass leftovers dumped by the fish-packing plants that ship the fillets off to hungry Europeans and Russians.

The other edge of the sword — at least among those who consider the Nile Perch beneficial — is that the plentiful predator is actually a cash crop that has brought a lot of money to the region… but for how much longer?

From the Nile perch wiki page:

The Nile perch was introduced to Lake Victoria in East Africa, in the 1950s, and since then it has been fished commercially. It is attributed with causing the extinction or near-extinction of several hundred native species, but as Nile Perch stocks decrease due to commercial fishing, at least some of them are making a comeback. Initially, the Nile perch’s diet consisted of native cichlids, but with decreasing availability of this prey, it now consumes mainly small shrimps and minnows.

The fish’s introduction to Lake Victoria, while ecologically negative, has stimulated the establishment of large fishing companies there. In 2003 Nile perch earned 169 million Euros in sales to the EU. The long-term outlook is less clear, as overfishing is now reducing Lates niloticus populations.

Regardless of what side of the fish debate you might be on or what you might believe are the causes of such a degraded way of life, the film showed me a level of destitution and hopelessness among the local population that left me feeling entirely helpless.

Last Thursday I told about my 26-year-old, off-and-on search to see the film True Confessions. From reading various critiques both of the film and the long-awaited April release of its DVD, I wasn’t sure if it was worth such a long wait, but that didn’t stop us from popping it in the player and putting an end to the quarter-century delay Saturday night.

In the aftermath, I see the film as a product of three competing elements here. The first is the way the film wonderously captures the visual essence of Los Angeles in the 1940s. The second is the all-around perfect performances. From top to bottom the cast of actors deliver marvelous portrayals. The third is the actual plotline. While the first two dovetail quite nicely, the telling of the story never falls in line quite right and is what keeps it from being a truly great film.

It may be a cheap and easy shot to take but my theory for its shortcomings is one along the lines of the studio having final say about the film’s cut, primarily because its 1:48 runtime makes it seem like stuff got left on the cutting room floor for the sake of keeping things short.

There’s the subplot shoehorned in and centering around Burgess Meredith’s character that seems like something’s missing because as it stands it could have been excised entirely and comes off as almost inconsequential save for the fact that the desert parish exile Meredith’s character endures foreshadows what ultimately happens to Robert DeNiro’s.

Then there’s the late-inning revelation in the film’s final act to the disbelieving and unaware DeNiro when he’s told that he actually had previously come in contact with the murdered “virgin tramp” (the movie’s version of Black Dahlia victim Elizabeth Short), which just doesn’t fit given his character’s drive for power and attention to detail. With the sensationalized murder putting the poor girl’s picture all over the papers it’s just hard to believe he wouldn’t have recognized her as having been in a vehicle that coincidentally picked her up hitchhiking. It makes far more sense that he would have and then subsequently attempt some sort of damage control to prevent that connection from becoming public and threatening to destroy his ambitions… which it ultimately does.

And frankly for a film that’s about two brothers and the roads they took — Duvall’s into law enforcement and DeNiro’s to the church — I was left wanting to know more about how such disparate decisions came about.

Lastly, with the film bookended by a scene from the future and thus told entirely in flashback and wrapped up with something of a shoulder shrug at the end… all I can do is shoulder shrug at that cliché device as well.

Having not read John Gregory Dunne’s book from which the film is based I should shut up and put the title on my list (done) and read it before blaming any United Artists bigwigs for what may or may not have been included. But whether bad editing decisions are to blame or there were just storytelling depths that went umplumbed in the source material, the brilliant visual and performance aspects of True Confessions still make for very compelling viewing.

As to the DVD itself… very disappointing. There’s not a single feature to be found on the disc. No commentary track. No “making of” short. Not even the theatrical trailer. On top of that the transfer looks like it was made from a faded old print and the soundtrack’s in mono. I don’t have to read any book to know the ball was dropped big time for what was certainly a much-anticipated release.

There aren’t many movies that I’ve waited 26 years to see, but True Confessions is one of them. Released in 1981 starring Roberts De Niro and Duvall apparently to somewhat less-than-critical acclaim and based on the infamous Black Dahlia murder case, for reasons lost to me I never saw it during its run in the theaters. Then I never caught it on cable — if it even played there. Then when I got my first VCR in the mid-80s a cassette of it either flat out wasn’t made available or somehow managed always to stay out of my reach or beyond my recall.

With my first DVD player in 2000 interest in seeing it renewed… surely the film’s distributor wouldn’t fail to take advantage of this new format, right? Nope. In fact go figure: the DVD of the noir classic wasn’t released until this past April 17 (again with somewhat less-than-stellar reviews). But whether or not the long-sought film meets my expectations or fails in the attempt thanks to moving it up to the top of my Netflix queue, I’m finally going to be able to screen what I’ve been missing all these years.

My fellow Blogging.la contributor David Markland is psyched for the Star Wars Celebration beginning this Friday at the L.A. Convention Center, and wrote that he can track his desire to be a filmmaker back to when he saw the film and then the landmark “Making of Star Wars” special that aired on CBS back in 1977.

Which reminded me of the 2005 posts I wrote during the frenzy building for the release of the series’ much-anticipated final chapter about me actually being in that TV special. So climb aboard my flashback machine and let’s relive that glory:

April 7, 2005

With all the overblown obsession of all the people in line at the Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood planning to wait the 43 days until the next “Star Wars” film opens (but at the Arclight, not the Chinese), it got me kinda nostalgic for those good old days back in the summer of 1977 when my friend Luis DeJesus and I cut summer school at Le Conte Junior High to go see C3P0, R2D2, and Darth Vader get their feetprints enshrined in concrete in the famed theater’s forecourt.

And wouldn’t you know, the website of those geeks who are currently lined up there has an image posted of that very same event:

I kid you not, Luis and I were standing in the area indicated by the arrow, perhaps 12 feet or so from where the coolest droids and the bestest villian ever showed up to smoosh their tootsies in the Ready-Mix. We were in 13-year-old heaven!

The cool thing was Luis’ mom was working at 20th Century Fox at the time and had scored us each an authentic film crew tee with the distinctive logo on the front — which of course we both wore.

Later, after the ceremony was over and the crowd had dispersed Luis and I were trying to figure out a way to sneak in to see the film when a guy near the box office with a video camera called to us as we stood beneath one of the posters on the right side of the courtyard. We both looked over at him and he held the camera on us for a few seconds before saying thanks and moving on.

We thought it was just a local cameraman grabbing footage, but we later found out it was much bigger than the six o’clock news. Shortly thereafter, to capitalize on the fever the film induced, we heard of a “The Making of ‘Star Wars,’” a documentary that aired about a month later on TV — just after 8th grade had begun.

Of course I watched it, having no idea that near the end when the doc was wrapping up with an exploration of the merchandizing phenomenon the movie had become, all of a sudden there I was with Luis onscreen standing under the poster in our matching “Star Wars” t-shirts. In a blink we were gone, but it was enough for me to come to school (in the shirt, of course) and wallow in some short-lived celebrity from a steady stream of schoolmates who throughout the day would yell at me, “Hey! I saw you on TV last night!”

Man it would be so cool if I could get my hands on a copy of that old doc… but maybe I already have it. I should dive into the special features discs of the “Star Wars Trilogy” that Susan got me for Christmas… perhaps it’s in there. How cool would that be!?

Turns out four days later, bad back not withstanding,
it would be very cool, after the jump.

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