The World's End, the Final Flavor in Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy. Flavor, Beer.

But that particular flavor can be tasted in all three films in the Three Flavors trilogy, with other spirits spritzed throughout.  Each of them, from Shaun of the Dead forward, lays out the spread.  The details differ greatly, both in the genre mixed as well as the personal hangups laid out.  Edgar Wright's films are genre romps, there is no doubt.  But those are just the stages set.  When it comes down to it, he's a keen observer of the human condition and uses the magical stages of the fantastical genres to look into the human soul as only they can.

Our current subject, The World's End, sets this particular stage, with a man  reminiscing about what he sees as good times past, his youth when he was the cock of the walk, if he does say so himself.  Gary King (Simon Pegg) is sitting in an encounter group sharing with an audience is regret upon recounting a night where he and his crew attempted the Golden Mile, a pub crawl that saw them visiting twelve pubs, having a pint at each.  Things went south.  So, Gary wants to get the band back together twenty years later and have another go at it.  From the glimpses we see in Gary's life, he's manipulative, inconsiderate and not very nice.  He has temper issues, substance abuse issues, some darker events are alluded to and he is stuck in the past.  His friends have moved on and they aren't either glad to see him when he comes waltzing back into their lives to manipulate/guilt them into returning to their small British town.  They've gotten on with their lives and have left him behind.  Especially his former best friend, Andy Knightly (Nick Frost) who, at first glance, wants to send him right back out he door he came through.  But Gary is persistent and the five are back together to try to recapture lost youth.

But they discover something else entirely.  This is not the town they left.

Some have said this may be the closet we see to Mr. Wright directing an episode of Doctor Who.

They may be right.  But the spooky stuff going on in small town England are the secondary show to the inner journey of our heroes.  As they quaff spirits and their psyches loosen up and all the debris starts shaking loose, they begin to confront each other and their issues more openly.  When the alienesque shenanigans start up, that just gets them back to the essentials when the beer and issues take a back seat to survival.

Funny how imminent death can sometimes clarify and simplify things.

This is, in many ways a darker, sadder, more layered film, compared to the previous editions in the trilogy.  The visual action joke hooks are there, but they are almost sad nods.  Lightening the mood briefly for those who can recognize what they are, before we get back to the shadows in which we now trod.

The World's End, not always a "good time".  But a great film that is ultimately about growing up and facing life squarely.  And being better for it.

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder, Or This Talky Thing is Pretty Cool

Kevin Smith is a wordsmith.  The language is the tool through which he transcribes his creative expressions upon the world.  Since he made Clerks, his journey has been to perfect his medium of expression.  It is interesting that he began his journey in film.  Film is primarily a visual medium, yet he is not primarily a visual guy.  He admits his particular weaknesses, too, though I don't see that they have to be looked at as weaknesses.  He has a keen eye for life and the inner journey of people, emotionally, spiritually, and can wed the language into a spiraling dance of the sacred touching the profane in all those places where the human animal ooohs and aaahs in ways that we all recognize.  Coupled with lots of geeky references, of course.

This is just more of Smith in front of audiences and tracking his journey as a public speaker.  Rather than being seen at a series of college auditoriums, he is seen at two city amphitheaters, the first being in Toronto where he admits to his love for all things Canadian and talks more and more about usually Smithy type things.  The key one is where he goes on about being associated with comic book properties and you hear his rationale as to why he never will do one.  He regards himself as too impatient to be a good action director, where you have to be supremely visually detailed with an eye to repetition and perfection.

But...he still thinks of Ranger Danger, his own space opera creation, so never say never.

Just a quicky...

It has been a very long time since I posted here.  In fact, before my Gettysburg review, my last entry had taken place before I deployed to Afghanistan.  But I am back.  I see I have even been getting visits in my absence, and that is after neglecting this blog for years.  If I get that attention after letting lie dormant, here's to a wrapping up of 2013 and bring in 2014 with a plethora of blogging goodness.

This is the Voice of Stone.  Can you hear me now?

TNT's Gettysburg and It's Relevance to Today

It is almost like something is conspiring to prevent me from writing this review, an overview of TNT's Gettysburg, a four hour plus epic, with an epic cast (Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger, etc) about an epic event, the battle that pretty much decided the conclusion of the American Civil War.  The war would drag on for two more years after this, but the conclusion was all but foregone.  As is mine, that even though I have lost two previous versions of this blog, I will see it to it's conclusion, because I simply must.

I don't know if it was Ted Turner, who is an avowed American Civil War buff and does have a cameo role in this film, or the material they were adapting, author Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, but the battle itself seems to be faithfully depicted.  Not the usual Hollywood amalgamization of characters and events in a historical adaption, nor the jamming in of elements that weren't a part of recorded history, like a love story or what not.  The closest they came to this is conversations between characters that seemed less for the characters at the time and more about summing up and sending messages to modern viewers.  One example of that would C. Thomas Howell's Thomas Chamberlain conversing with a captured Confederate soldier about the war and why they are fighting it.

The American Civil War is an event that hangs with us to this day.  And though many of us don't really give it much thought from day to day, all you have to do is look at the headlines of the day and see issues and events that still echo to those times, from race, to the culture of the states, to the size and purpose of government, the shots fired on American soil are still heard to this day.  The blood shed may have paid the price for continued national unity, but the conversation from that day still goes on.

And as long as we are talking and seeking solutions, this is not a bad thing.

Highlander: The Search for Vengeance

You know, I was tempted to be a smartass and title this column "The Search For a Decent Sequel", but you know what? That just doesn't seem right as a long term fan of this franchise. There are no more long suffering fans than Highlander fans. Since the original Highlander came out in 1986 and made such a cult impact, fans have been waiting for followups that would continue in that tradition, expand that universe and give what the fans of every franchise want, ie more of that feeling they got when they were first introduced to it. Highlander the Series did a wonderful job of that, but the films have been a hit or miss proposition, with none of them reaching the glory of the first movie. Frankly, some of them have competed to define the conception of cinematic "suck". Film school text book, when looking for the definition of suck in cinema, see Highlander 2 or (oh dear God) Highlander The Source (I'm a fan of the characters from the series and I had to see it for myself. Wanted so to like it...but just couldn't. Only the mercy of time has eased the pain somewhat).

So, when a film comes out that actually gets it somewhat right, it is a time for dancing in the streets for tartan wearing Highlander fans. Which brings us to our subject, Highlander The Search For Vengeance. I don't know what it is with this Clan MacLeod, but they seem to produce an inordinate number of these Immortals, men and women who walk the earth for ages and cannot die unless decapitated, sending their power and knowledge, their Quickening, to the Immortal that bested them. This is called The Game. The winner of the Game will be the last Immortal remaining, who will have all the power of all the Immortals, and he/she will receive The Prize. No one knows what that is.

This MacLeod is named Colin. His over back in the day was a woman named Moya. She was killed by a Roman general, crucified in fact, by this man, Marcus Octavius. Turns out Octavius is also one of these Immortals, and this turns out to be a pursuit through time, Colin focused in using his eternity to pursue and destroy Octavius. He doesn't even notice the world turning to utter crap around him, so focused is he on his vengeance. The world has become a place of rot and decay in the future, with fortress city-slums ruled by warring despots, who keep their subject in line with the promise of protection in return for their fealty. Colin wanders this post apocalyptic wasteland, dispatching the occasional Immortal, and then finds that Octavius is still around and ruling one of these cities. He has a plan for ultimately ruling the ruined Earth and looks like the poor mortals are going to not figure into his plan, not his subjects, not anyone else.

The small group of rebels opposing Octavius know he's up to something and try to recruit Colin to their cause, and slowly, surely, they begin to reach the man inside who gives a damn. And it could be the firey redhead rebel named Dahlia who is somehow very familiar.

"There Can Be Only One" is the famous catchphrase of the Highlander franchise. Some have said, considering the rocky history of the films that there should have been. But the series and films like this prove that when someone gets the "magic" of Highlander, there are still stories to be told yet. The original is in the process of being remade and much hope is held among the gathered ranks of fandom that this will truly rejuvinate the franchise.

Until then, watch Highlander The Search For Vengeance. Its pretty good.

The Land That Time Forgot/The People That Time Forgot...what to forget and what to remember

Remember those days when stop motion monsters of the Ray Harryhausen era were the state of the art in film SFC tec? And when they couldn't afford that, or didn't have the ability to integrate that footage with actors, they came up with paper mache constructions for the actors to react to? Ah...the days of cinematic innocence, and now that we live in the age of DVD, we can return to this and see it through our modern eyes.

Well, let me tell you, it comes difficult, post Jurassic Park. It takes some ability to suspend disbelief. I'm not one of those inclined to whine about special effects from the days of yore, as they work with what they had. No doubt, what we marvel to now will look quaint at best some years hence. But good movies don't rely on SFX to sell themselves. They tell a good story with interesting characters and the narrative transports the viewers, doing all the work. With our pair of films in this review, we've examples of both.

The Land That Time Forgot is originally a book by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. In it, we see the survivors of an allied vessel in World War 1 commandeer a German submarine. Through the machinations of the allies and Germans working to thwart each other, the submarine ends up going way, WAY off course and finding itself a long, long way from home. It seems to have stumbled across a lost continent of some kind. With the submarine low on supplies, both contigents agree to combine their efforts, rather than working at cross purposes. With the continent offering the best chance for reprovisioning the U-boat, they make their way through an underground river and find themselves in this new land. A new land that is full of very old creatures. The crew is immediately attack by plesiasaurs and other saurians. When they go on land, they find primitive proto humans and later, evidence of an ecosystem unlike anything they have known in their world. Then, the land itself proceeds to try to kill them.

The effects are a bit primitive, yes. But the characters, most notably American Bowen Tyler and German U-Boat Captain von Schoenvorts (who provides much of the science oriented exposition) are interesting enough to move the viewer along with the story, engage them, make them care.

Then we get the sequel, The People That Time Forgot. Tyler, one of the survivors from the first film, managed to get a message in a cannister back home. And friends come looking for him. But this bunch, with nothing but stiff upper-lippedness and what not, are not quite as engaging as the first bunch. There seems to have been budget cuts, as the dinos seem even cheaper than they were in the first film. Add to that, what we know now as incorrect assumptions about dinosaur physiology (like slow nervous systems), it all becomes harder to swallow. Now, old scientific assumptions about dinos, those can be forgiven. But the samurai who kind of show up out of nowhere with no explanation? And why are they working for Tor Johnson? Who is working for a volcano? The volcano had precedence from the first film, btw. Not Tor.

And the obligatory sexy cavegirl with beautiful breasts, nice hair, light makeup and shaven armpits.

Lovely vision...but why would a cavegirl use modern grooming? Same reason the women on LOST all remained well groomed. For some reason, women with hairy pits scare American sensibilities.

Ah well.

The Land That Time Forgot, decent pulpy fun. The People That Time Forgot, bring adult beverages and witty friends.

There is no "out there" in OUTLAND

Hello, my name is Junius. And I am a man with a high tolerance for stillness. In fact, I relish the quiet moments. Because in the quiet moments, you often find gateways opening to the "whys" of existence, that give you revelatory peeks at all that which lies underneath, around the corner, on the other side. Often, some of the best artwork does just this. It appears placid on the surface, but underneath, it is swimming with a swarm of meaning and enlightenment for those who are open, who are ready. Plenty of films that many think of as "slow" and "boring" are in actuality such films. They offer much, but they require you to go deep, rather than titillate you with surface thrills that are gone as soon as the scene has ended, if not soner.

And then, there are films that are genuinely, stultifyingly, utterly boring. Dull. Their underneath is just as listless, just as lifeless as their surface. Sleepwalking actors, dead metaphors, people doing it by the numbers, punching a clock and not much else. Surface dwelling people would just go to sleep or start texting. Deep people ask "why am I here?", and not in the metaphorical, spiritual or existential sense. They are wondering why they are wasting their time watching this drivel.

Which brings us to Outland. Basically, High Noon in space. Honest lawman comes to frontier town being menaced by criminal element. Lawman takes stand. Thugs come to take him out. Except it's in outer space. The town is Con-Am 27. The lawman is played by Sean Connery. The man representing the local corrupt power is played by Peter Boyle. The setting is the Jovian area of our solar system (Jupiter and it's moons, specifically, Io, one of the more interesting Jovian moons. But not even Io can liven up this dead movie.). How do you destroy a science fiction remake of High Noon? Easy when it's director AND scriptwriter Peter Hyams.

The film world is filled with a series of hack directors with a certain visual and technical verve, who make films that look good, but have no soul, no heart. You don't feel it. Hyams was one of the first of this breed. And make no mistake, Outland, visually, is a beautiful movie. It's old school model work that still holds up. It's settings feel real, feel physical. The bleak, spartan, decadent mining colony is a visual feast and totally believable. Technically, it is convincing as a science fiction film that isn't very far removed from where we are now. Except for the idea of people popping like balloons when exposed to a vacuum, there is very little to stretch credibility. And that's the whole virtue of the film. That's all. There is no sense of any of this mattering in any way. We have great actors who do their best with what they have, and they do well. But it does not emotionally engage. There is no real sense of this being a window into real lives, a real world. It is just a procession of high tech shadow puppets with their strings being pulled by very bored puppeteers. Beautiful puppets, but puppets all the same.

Outland, you did something very few do. You bored me.