Michael Moore’s neverending quest to dissect flaws wherever he finds them continues this October 2 with the release of his new documentary-type cinematic offering. The official line is that the flick will work through both the “root causes of the economic meltdown” and the “corporate and political shenanigans” that caused it. Fascinating. The bearded one set out to whip up interest with a typically inflammatory statement:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth, so they systematically set out to fleece the American people.”

As with all Moore movies, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it and fundamentally accept the premise of the argument. However, I’ll also find myself pitching popcorn at the screen when the whiny loudmouth blends a fact right into his opinion and pretends the two are one and the same. If there’s anything worse than someone who disagrees with you, it’s someone who shares your opinion but makes a crappy case for your side.

I really don’t know what to say about these clips. At this point Inglourious Basterds could be the most fun you can have with your trousers on, or a stinker of biblical proportions. I’m inclined to think it’ll be typical Tarantino-style fun, but it’s tough to judge from such short snippets of the movie. If the appropriate tone is established early on, these sort of scenes could work quite well. If not, I hate to think quite how awkward two hours of comic violence and ‘Allo ‘Allo-type accents will be.

Click “Read more…” below to see the clips in question.

This summer’s release of Whatever Works marks Woody Allen’s return to New York, where his most well-known and highly-regarded masterpieces take place. Since 2005, Allen has released four movies shot in Europe, and they came with a mixed bag of results.

The first three films from Allen’s European tour took place in London. For my money, and seemingly by general consensus, the best of these three was his 2005 release, Match Point. Match Point treads within many of the same territories as Crimes and Misdemeanors, my personal favorite Allen film, yet offers some interesting contrasts as well. Mainly, the writing doesn’t fit his younger characters as well and there is little humor. It does, however, do an excellent job of creating real suspense and is a solid entry into Allen’s library. Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream seem to be mailed-in efforts. The jokes seem like leftovers from his better films, the drama is not engaging, and the story lines are much less inspired versions of a topic that Allen has commonly visited.

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After X-Men Origins: Wolverine it almost feels like a good thing that this year’s summer lineup isn’t nearly as loaded with superhero films as that of last year. The genre just needs to sit in the corner and think about what its done after that gaping pile of horse shit.

Anyways, the day after I saw the latest X-Men installment, the comic book-based movie American Splendor came in my Netflix envelope and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Looking back through the last decade or so, it can be seen that several of the best movies adapted from comic books actually fall out of the realm of superheroes or Frank Miller’s heightened reality. Here’s a half dozen of my favorites meeting this standard:

American Splendor
An interesting movie with a whole lot going on at once. Paul Giamatti plays comic book author Harvey Pekar, who occasionally appears in the movie himself as both a narrator and interview subject (this blends much more seamlessly than one would expect). Pekar wrote in a style that I commonly associate with Larry David on Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, making points and jokes about situations that annoy him in every day life (the difficult co-worker, the slow person in front of you in line at the grocery store, etc.). It is an odd and witty little independent comedy filled with neat tricks and solid performances.

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With Watchmen due for DVD release in the not too distant future (and my not being here when the film hit theatres), I’ll take that as an excuse to bring up my biggest issue with Snyder’s interpretation of the source material.

Relax. This isn’t another lengthy diatribe about the squid.

I can almost hear the collective global sigh from here…

No, my issue with Snyder’s film is far more pressing. Because Watchmen was always a story relying heavily on Moore’s ability to extrapolate great depth from a character rather than straight-up action, that makes this cause for concern far more pressing. Rorschach.

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Readers of a sensitive disposition should be warned that I’m about to launch headlong into a fragmented, expletive-laden diatribe containing a number of unnecessary references to my genitalia. If you’re the type of lass or lad to add “[citation needed]” to Wikipedia articles, you’re probably better off skipping this one and finding something more wholesome to do. I hear people used to go outside in the days before the interwebs, so that might be an option.

It may look as if women are the target of my manifold aspersions, but the truth is that they’re ultimately not the cause of the problem. For every talentless actress on screen, there’s a schmuck-ass dude in a suit who gave the go-ahead to cast her, more often than not due to an inability to differentiate between her talent and her talents. As a result, nearly every other movie is spoiled by tepid efforts by vapid bints with shiny teeth but not enough skill to floss with.

Enough is enough. After enduring this particular brand of bullshit for the entirety of my movie-going life, I’ve decided to start naming names. This, I trust, will bring an end to the trend of trotting out lame-duck actresses as if we won’t notice. If history is any precedent, there’s nothing more powerful than a meandering rant from a no-name blogger. If you care to check back in a couple of days, I’ll be writing an article that should eliminate poverty by the end of the month.

Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba has the cold, dead eyes of a shark, and the acting abilities of the same. Actually, scratch that. A shark would, at least, be capable of nailing the role of a shark. Jessica Alba, meanwhile, is a young, beautiful woman whose sole responsibility in any movie is to be eminently effable. Her lazy, lobotomised delivery, however, makes my penis very, very sad. You may think my dick irrelevant to the discussion, but since it’s firmly in Jessica Alba’s target audience it’s actually a valid arbiter of her performance here.

Gwyneth Paltrow
While I have no qualms whatsoever about calling Jessica Alba a dud, I’m only about ninety-nine percent certain that Gwyneth Paltrow is a shitty actress since I can’t entirely rule out the possibility that her being the biggest hippy-ass gasbag on earth has coloured my perception of her on-screen efforts. I can normally separate the actor from the character, but having spent a good chunk of my teenage years in Britain (where this pain-in-the-posterior now resides), I was so inundated with reports of Ms. Paltrow’s newest foolish thoughts that it was impossible to put her idiocy aside. Not a week went by that the tabloids weren’t adorned with a headline in the following format:

Gwyneth Paltrow: Uninformed Opinion about Something; Educated People: That Chick Ain’t Right

Here’s a specific example:

Gwyneth Paltrow slammed by experts over shampoo cancer claim

…and another:

Paltrow’s blog under fire from Hindus

With such egregious asshattery in mind, I may be prejudging Paltrow and branding her a crappy actor in spite of movies attesting to the contrary. Still, I seem to remember thinking she stunk even before she started flapping her lip, so I’m fairly happy leaving her on the list.

Meg Ryan
Her fucking face doesn’t move. This is a relatively major malfunction for an actress. In many ways we should consider her a heroine for overcoming such a crippling shortcoming to sustain a lucrative acting career. She’s like a modern-day Helen Keller, only instead of being born deafblind, she was tragically struck down in her thirties by multiple Botox-related accidents, which she repeatedly paid for.

Kirsten Dunst
How do you make Spider-Man uncool? Seriously, how? Answer me, Dunst, because you did it. They have now released a full three movies about a kid from Queens who was bitten by a radioactive spider and subsequently became one of the baddest son-of-a-bitches on earth, and I have yet to be struck by any impulse to see even a second of them. This is entirely the fault of Kirsten Dunst, who, like Freddie Mercury, has the unusual ability to display a number of her teeth even with her mouth closed. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, she is not one of the greatest entertainers of her generation, and I don’t wish she wasn’t dead.

Jennifer Aniston
I know that if you were looking to actually do stuff rather than read about it, you wouldn’t be on the internet right now. Still, I hope you’ll take part in a little exercise I’ve devised. First, take the thumb and forefinger of either hand and pinch the tip of your nose so that the flow of air is restricted. Now attempt to imitate the low, humming sound your refrigerator makes. The noise you are now producing is all I hear whenever Jennifer Aniston is on the screen. Occasionally she’ll emit a high-pitched “Ooh!” and flap her hands wildly, and this is an indication that she has made an adorably klutzy goof and that we are expected to laugh. I invariably decline to do so. Aniston has all the charm and verve of the mild fungal nail infection that forced me to wear swim socks in the pool for much of third grade.

I had originally planned a top-ten feature, but I fear that any further discussion of these infuriatingly dull dolts will result in my developing a peptic ulcer. Drop a comment in the box below to let me know if you think I’ve been unkind to any of the millionaires mentioned above, or if there are any notable names missing from the list.

Today I thought I’d touch on a light hearted topic, plenty of deeper stuff for other times. The nice, light, easygoing world of comic book adaptations, unless you’re geektacular like me, in which case there’s not too much light-hearted about it at all. I was wondering when and how this became a genre, because that’s what it seems to be these days. Just out of interest I thought I’d jot down the names of every single comic book adaptation that I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen them all – a rare and uncharacteristic non-geek admission), and I came to 44. Forty-four. To put that in perspective, that’s the total number of films Woody Allen will have released come July when Whatever Works comes out. Including compilations, unfinished works and shorts, Alfred Hitchcock directed 67 in total. So 44 is a pretty staggering number considering more than a few have the reputation of not being particularly good… oh, Dick Tracy… make that 45. I Guess Woody will have to finish another to break even. So since we have a fairly big trough to pick through, I thought I might trawl through the dregs and marvels (or DCs), the hits and misses, the Elektras and the Dark Knights, and everything in between.

Superman – The big hitters (clichéd – even naming it this makes me feel boy-scoutish)
Where else to start but the Batman franchises? They’ve been just about the most solid producer of quality films to date (excluding the catastrophes which occurred once Joel Schumacher sank his talons into the franchise). Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are must-sees in the genre and clearly worthy of a spot in any reputable top ten list. The original Superman of Christopher Reeves is just iconic to the genre, but if I were to pick one for my must-sees stack I’ll take a grab at Superman II. And while we’re talking sequels better than the original, slide in X-Men 2 to boot. Singer had that second movie to develop the characters and introduce Brian Cox as Stryker, and it all came together. Not to mention a reward for the fanboys that was as subtle as we’ve seen, with an allusion to the prospect of Phoenix to come.

Green Lantern – Big-time stars with a significant flaw (damn you, yellow!)
In the comic book adaptation world, that pretty much straight-up describes Iron Man. That film is mint up until the final conflict - amp up the final showdown with Iron Monger. The two Hulk movies belong here for very different reasons. Ang Lee’s Hulk seemed a tad too cerebral for popcorn audiences and as a result, despite the emotions being fully developed between father and son Banners, the ending seemed a bit out of place. (I’m personally not a huge fan of being constantly reminded that THIS CAME FROM A COMIC BOOK, SEE? SPLIT CAMERA PANELS, SEE? COMIC! GOT IT?!? as Ang Lee chose to present it, but that’s likely just personal preference.) As a result of the “Grr, Hulkfan brain hurt, me smash… no, me not return to cinema and tell friends no bother either” response to the first, we saw Incredible Hulk become the story of a man’s inner turmoil of trying to contain a hideous CGI plot-less slugfest. And that was just the off-screen stuff with Norton trying to keep some depth in Louis Leterrier’s blob-brawl.

Watchmen was shot about as honestly to the source material as you could get without the film being three and a half hours long and requiring an intermission (with a glaring Rorschach exception, coming soon), although I’m not entirely sure why this couldn’t be a real epic anyway. That could just be my own nerdish bias showing again, though.

Batman – Pretty amazing stuff from a mere mortal
When I think of a quality comic book movie with a paltry budget I immediately think of The Punisher. No, not that one (although Drago can terrify criminals without even making an appearance), the Thomas Jane/John Travolta micro-budgetPunisher. It was not only a solid comic book movie, but restored the action genre to the golden days of yore with stuntwork, explosions and an actual plot. These three things have gone missing in recent years, and call me nostalgic, but at times I long for more than just two massive CGI blobs beating the crap out of one another. For those times I can just slap in Punisher (or more than likely another good ol’ action movie like Die Hard or an Ahnold special) and relive the memories. Honestly, since Thomas Jane pulled out of Punisher: War Journal I’ve gone from concern to complete apathy. A History of Violence was another solid, well-paced graphic novel adaptation; don’t go in expecting a blockbuster, but it’s decent. Going back and looking at the period-piece, The Rocketeer is another solid movie with some solid performances.

Venom – So bad they’re good
Sin City is a dark, gritty noir film which keeps to the original works of Miller (not telling anyone anything they don’t already know here). It misses out on my big-hitter list because I think it becomes a tad pretentious with it, and probably somewhat because I’m not the kind of guy who likes constant reminders that what I’m watching came from a comic book/graphic novel. I like graphic novels and I like movies, but they’re each their own medium. 300 was a big hit, put Snyder on the map to give him a crack at Watchmen, which was a visual masterpiece but which I couldn’t help but think was a little vapid. Apparently it had a lot of humour to it which people didn’t get (as Snyder claimed), in which case I’m just not on the same wavelength as Snyder. As a director it’s his responsibility to get people seeing what he sees.

Err… Domestic Violence Perpetrator… that sounds sort of like a hero… Don’t consider unless you’re taking your family (and if you are taking your family it’s quicker and less painful to just beat your kids)
These are what I live for. Critics feast on these as they inspire us to creativity and generally stand up to criticism as well as a haemophiliac in the Titty Twister. The name Joel Schumacher by itself is enough to make me twitch in memory of the agonizing death he subjected Burton’s Batman series to, first with Batman Forever, but most notably with Batman and Robin. I don’t even know where to start with Batman and Robin, but once I start I can’t stop (so to spare you all from reliving the horror, I won’t begin). The Fantastic Four movies copped a lot of flak, but as family films I think they stand up OK. At least, I maintain that they stand up a lot better than Spider-Man 3 (although most critics at the time seemed to disagree with me), which had a long list of issues. The film was too long to fit in the two villains; Kirsten Dunst needs to go the Gwen Stacy route of the comics; Venom was out of character for any continuity and had to be made so family-friendly that he probably would have best been left out altogether; the forgiveness fest at the end (which Raimi was smart enough to not try with Venom, whom he had to use as a straight bad guy who knows and accepts himself as a bad guy – which is out of character) was necessary for the younger demographic, but I’ve a feeling the ending played out better in people’s heads than what was actually on the screen.

Basically, this film has pretty much killed the interest of many in the series who have now been left disillusioned. It’s going to take some quality marketing to bring in half the box office of the first, which was extremely well anticipated. They’d also likely have to continue to pander to the younger audience somewhat to maintain the box office returns, so don’t be surprised if the Lizard isn’t a particularly dark villain (although probably still about as dark as Venom was portrayed as being), which is a tad disappointing because I think that’s where the character’s real potential lies. Seeing how much I’ve gone on about Spider-Man 3 makes me glad I didn’t start on Nipple-Suit Batman and Robin.

Abomination – OK, not a hero, but then arguably neither are these…
The less said about them, the better, so I’ll just roll off some name: Elektra, Ghost Rider, hell I’ll mention Batman and Robin. Then there’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which probably belongs here, although as a family film it just about stands up. It’s barely an adaptation and is probably the best evidence we have that Alan Moore does actually have the superhuman ability to curse films that he doesn’t want made. Production was marked by constant bickering between Sean Connery and the director. It retired Connery, and the director disappeared off of the face of the earth until just this year. Peta Wilson has only just started to return – she was hoping to use the film as the stepping-stone to the next tier of actresses – and damn near every other actor disappeared without a trace. Oh, and there’s a special place in hell for whoever was responsible for Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand. Brett Ratner, I’m looking at you.

‘Til next time, this has been Houndito Brigande, Lord of the Parentheses.