And Then There Were Ten...

Fans of The Dark Knight who gnashed their teeth over its exclusion from the race for the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2008 can take some solace knowing that, apparently as a result of the outrage, the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences has expanded the field of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. As a result, this year, whereas those of us who follow the annual Oscar nominations would usually see a slew of art films with the token mass-appeal movie thrown in for good measure, now there are ten nominations which seem to be split evenly among the "blockbusters," or movies which have grossed over $100 million, and those which haven't. A lot of other bloggers who chose to voice their opinions around the time the nominations are released basically divided the ten among those the Academy among those who the Academy wanted to nominate and those they felt they had to nominate.

What do I think? Well, not that it really matters in the great scheme of things, but people take the Oscars a tad too seriously, more than they deserve, and this little episode is proof of that.

The expanded field is both a blessing and a curse; on the one hand they allow the Academy members to include deserving films that would otherwise be on their "almost" lists, but on the other hand, it creates a tendency towards "tokenism."

That doesn't strike me as much of an issue with films like District 9, which nabbed a slew of technical nods and even one for best adapted screenplay, or Up, hails from regular Oscar-bait-house Pixar, but considering that The Blind Side, a film I haven't seen, has as its ONLY other nomination one for Sandra Bullock's acting in a lead role, I smell an attempt to fill a quota. That just feels wrong on several levels, because either now the Academy is trying too hard to please the all-important TV audiences that keep their program relevant, or are showing absolute contempt for those very audiences by choosing films that, without the expanded system, basically wouldn't get the time of day from the Academy. So they're either pandering excessively to or showing their disdain for the general public. Either way, I don't see this ten Best Picture nominee system catching on too well in the long run.

Of course, that's just me.

But hey, if it means Iron Man 2 will be able to snag a Best Picture nod next year, maybe it'll be worth keeping around for just one more awards season...

Why the Environment-Friendly Blockbuster Film is an Oxymoron

Back when WALL-E was in theaters, apart from enjoying the film itself, I took additional pleasure from readings its mostly glowing reviews. One review, though, which seemed contrary just for the sake of it, made a scathing commentary on the hypocrisy of Pixar for pushing some anti-capitalist, tree-hugging agenda despite the fact that at the time the film was released Disney's partners and licensees were busy hawking tie-in products that were unabashedly profit-oriented like toys and t-shirts (my kids each have one of the latter). The toys, as I understand it, didn't sell real well and are now presumably gathering dust in bargain bins or warehouses. In short, they'll probably turn out to be a lot like the junk WALL-E had to compact and stack for 700 years. Now, the fact that such tie-in products exist is arguably not attributable to Andrew Stanton, who created the story and characters, but to the studio's marketing arm. While it's unfair to criticize the film based on the actions of the suits responsible for selling it, that doesn't mean Pixar or Disney deserve a free pass. The fact remains that on some level they greenlit the attempt to sell useless junk based on a film that precisely decried the effect that the long-term accumulation of useless junk could have on our planet. After the merchandising phenomenon that Cars turned out to be (with new lines still selling almost four years after the film was first released), it's not hard to see why the suits at Disney would try to sell products based on their film, but there does seem be something highly contradictory or paradoxical about hawking consumer products based on a film that seemed to condemn excessive commercialism.

This, I believe, is a genuine problem facing well-intentioned films that nonetheless require the capitalist system to get off the ground. I think it's also a problem that the studio that financed the openly environmentalist blockbuster Avatar had to deal with; to hedge its bets on the gargantuan budget, Twentieth Century Fox probably sold off as much of the film as they could to sponsors and licensees. I've seen the McDonald's tie-in toys and have read about the existence of Mattel-manufactured toy line (though mercifully I haven't seen any of it). I'm fairly certain that there are (or at least will be) such other products as t-shirts, video games, and novelizations (or comic-book adaptations) to boot. While the film decries the abuse of forests, the suits marketing it chop down trees to print books about the film.

Of course, this has no real bearing on the story or James Cameron's vision but as in the case of WALL-E there's something distinctly off about a movie saying "save the planet" while it is accompanied by dozens of tie-in consumer products, that will, upon their disposal, undoubtedly add to the already near-catastrophic pollution problem we are currently facing.

I still remember the absurdity of the attempts to cash in on the unique financial juggernaut that Titanic turned out to be; there were talks about a planned TV series or miniseries that would be set before the sinking. A sort of "prequel TV tie-in." By its very nature, Titanic was not the kind of film that would lend itself to any kind of sequel so people tried (and failed) to find other ways to make money off its mammoth success.

Avatar, with its fantastical worlds, colorful characters and creatures and cool-looking mechanized villains, is ripe for "toyhood," with one of the most exploitative capitalists in the business, Mattel, taking on the license (though high-end collectible manufacturer Sideshow Collectibles reportedly has some really cool stuff in the pipeline). Fox could have gone straight to artisans like Sideshow and maintained some kind of integrity by shying away from mass-market products as opposed to limited production but again, to guard their gargantuan investment they went for the cash in Mattel's pockets.

Thus, to get its message across, Avatar or any other hyper-expensive film with an environmentally-oriented message must use the very system it condemns. Though this is an understandable and necessary evil, I still can't quite wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

Maybe down the line such films can be funded the same way Barack Obama's presidential campaign was; through grassroots fund raising of some sort, then maybe we could get some solid message-oriented work from creators who didn't have to sell a little bit of their souls to get their films made.

The Future of Film?

Anyone who's ever seen a movie where the characters watch three-dimensional holograms pop in front of them like a couple of the Star Wars movies must have, at least at one point, wondered what it would be like to watch something like that instead of the normal flat images one sees on TV or on our movie screens.

While we aren't exactly there, 3-D films, as I understand it, are supposed to bridge the gap between this world and that. Hollywood currently has at least three major proponents of the new 3-D movement that started earlier this millenium. George Lucas, whether or not the 3-D images in his Star Wars films were his not-so-subtle endorsement of the format, has often talked about re-releasing all six films in the format. Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis, since abandoning live-action film making for motion capture films, has released all three of his movies in 3-D or IMAX 3-D format. James Cameron has been quoted as having said something to the effect that we experience life in 3-D, and that it makes perfect sense that we should experience the movies in such a way as well. While I certainly don't begrudge them their passion, especially considering that between them they have over a hundred years of filmmaking experience, I'm not yet a hundred percent sure I share it.

I've only seen two 3-D movies, after all. I suppose I'm glad I missed the 3-D movies of the 1980s (and of the 1950s) because from what I've heard they wouldn't have given me a whole lot of enthusiasm for the format, especially the horror movies. The closest I ever got to old-fashioned 3-D was a comic book, and apart from the novelty of it, it was not the least bit impressive. The red and blue glasses basically robbed the comic book of most of its color.

My first experience with the format, A Christmas Carol, was, to be honest, not an entirely pleasant experience. I liked the movie and some of the 3-D effects, but walked out of the theater with a headache. Also, it cost significantly more than it would have in 2-D and in truth, as entertaining as the 3-D effects were, they did nothing to propel the story. Based on that experience and on my sister's feedback from Up, where she basically said it didn't add anything to the overall story, I wondered if some of the internet haters were right all along and that 3-D really is nothing more than a fad.

That changed with my second 3-D movie experience: Avatar. I've written about this film here and elsewhere (apeltala.multiply.com) so there's no need to belabor the point that I had a great time.

The point, though, is that suddenly 3-D made sense to me. I have yet to see the film in any other format (or more than once, for that matter) but when I walked out of the theater, apart from not having a headache, I was convinced that had I not seen the film in 3-D IMAX, the experience would have been somehow diminished. I certainly won't attempt to pass this off as any kind of gospel truth but if nothing else, I've been convinced that I've just seen a glimpse of how the future of film should look.

Of course, I can't ignore the fact that IMAX 3-D is just too expensive to watch on a regular basis, but it is a cold hard fact that the experience is not one which can be replicated by any mainstream home entertainment system and therefore, barring the financial concern, gives a compelling argument for steering clear of the bootleg DVDs and catching movies in the theaters.

Maybe not every film will look quite as good as Avatar did in IMAX 3-D, but every medium and every format needs a benchmark. Also, there's a lot of room for improvement on Avatar's storytelling angle, so maybe we'll soon have a filmmaker dazzle us with both a scintillating story and dazzling effects. Peter Jackson pulled it off not too long ago, after all. I find myself eagerly awaiting Tintin, and would gladly save up for the 3-D version if there will be one. Such is my faith in both the filmmaker and the format in its current incarnation.

The future of movies looks pretty bright to me.

When Pocahontas Turned Blue and John Dunbar Became a Paraplegic

I'm gonna say this right up front: I absolutely loved James Cameron's Avatar. I still remember walking into Titanic eleven years ago expecting the most moving, profoundly romantic experience I could have had at the time and walking out thinking "ehh." I experienced no such disappointment with Avatar, and it wasn't even necessarily because my expectations were lowered.

I think the comparisons between Avatar and works like Dances With Wolves, John Carter of Mars and even Pocahontas began the moment the story was disclosed to the general public. I suppose it didn't help that not everyone was sold on the way the fantastical aliens populating Cameron's new world, Pandora, looked. "Thundersmurf" became a popular internet slur for them. In true fanboy fashion, the bashing commenced though thanks to the fact that I actually had things to do this time around I didn't bother to indulge my usual masochistic urges of reading message board after message board full of venom.

Like I posted some months ago, this was probably Cameron's first ever brush with internet fanboys, and I wondered how he, or the studio backing him, would take it, even though Fox is no stranger to internet brickbats. They didn't really seem to give a shit what the usual "basement dwellers" had to say.

Still, upon watching the film I understood why none of the story or "Thundersmurf" revelations even mattered. I think it was genius, in fact, of Cameron and the film's marketing team to get that stuff out of the way as early as possible because none of it really give the audience any idea of what the movie is all about, and that is the realization of a world beyond imagining.

Cameron's Pandora, the new world he created, is the star of Avatar. Its hills, mountains, trees, birds and bees, all of which is both familiar and new at the same time. In terms of environments, I've only ever seen such visual innovation in a Hayao Miyazaki movie, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, but that was hand-drawn animation and was, by comparison, not nearly as challenging to render. That world did not face the challenge of making the viewers believe that what they were seeing was real. Cameron basically took the massive proceeds and virtually unlimited street-cred he'd picked up from Titanic, and cashed it ALL in making this unbelievable feast for the senses.

The consensus on this film is that the story is weak but the visuals make up for it. That, I feel, is an oversimplification. While I will readily concede that the story is not the most original ever to be written, it could have been done a lot worse. Titanic, for all its Oscars and accolades, had its fair share of truly rancid dialogue (and in fact its screenplay was conspicuously snubbed by the Academy back then) but down the line nobody seems to be complaining. Somehow, what Cameron had achieved back then with the digital sinking ship and the massive production, managed to overshadow what he had not, and in my humble opinion, that happens to be the case here.

Avatar comes across as a largely visceral experience when, like its main character Jake Sully, we are introduced to Pandora in all of its untamed glory. It's enough, for me, that he establishes the reason why human beings would want to despoil such splendor, and the science behind the titular avatars. As caricatured as the evil corporate types and their redneck henchmen may seem, we as a race would be sadly delusional if we refused to acknowledge that such people actually exist in real life. Life is not as simple as "humans are bad, while nature is good" but the themes in Avatar definitely remain relevant, no matter how heavy-handed their application may be. Seeing what corporations and the need for profit has driven people to do on this planet makes their actions in Avatar completely believable and as they ravaged Pandora I, for one, felt genuinely saddened because like I said, Pandora is the real star of the movie.

I remember feeling lousy during the first hour or so of Titanic with all of its uplifting music, bright lighting and the digitally-rendered version of that magnificent ship plowing through the Atlantic because I knew well beforehand that it would all end in tragedy. In Avatar In contrast, I could not be quite so sure what Pandora's fate would be even after it was all over (yes, there is the possibility of a sequel). Pandora is a world I wanted to survive, and I think that was what made the movie for me.

The debate on the merits of this film, I'm sure, will go on and on, which I think will be a hallmark of this film's greatness, i.e. that it is and will continue to be talked about for years to come, but to my mind, at least, the debate is settled: for all its flaws, and there are several of them, this was easily one of my more memorable moviegoing experiences. Sure it unpretentiously borrows from Dances with Wolves and other works of fiction besides, but what it adds is something which must be seen to be believed.

The Cathartic Appeal of Wolverine

I was never much of a Wolverine fan. I always connected more with Spider-Man's teenage angst or Batman's tortured soul. I even liked Iron Man's constant conflict with his inner demons better. Wolverine, to be fair, has his own share of inner demons, it seems that more often than not, they triumph as he slaughters people on pretty much a regular basis. I have an entire trade paperback (which my wife bought) consisting of stand-alone issues, every one of which features him killing someone or leaving him to his death. I also have the first half of the Mark-Millar-penned "Enemy of the State" in which Wolverine also kills a hell of a lot of people (to be fair, at first it's while he's under the influence of Hydra, but he also does plenty of killing on his own). I appreciate some stories told starring him, but he's never held that much appeal for me.

Till now.

The Maguindanao massacre has, by now courtesy of cable news and the internet, shocked pretty much the world. The fact that it happened at all is bad enough but that no one seems to be able to do anything about it feels ten times worse. Though the adult in me is appalled by what happened and hopes for the best but not expecting much, the eternal adolescent in me still fantasizes about what I could have done had I been a superhero on the scene.

I have no interest in being a Superman or a Spider-Man and basically stopping all the bad guys in their tracks and saving all the victims, or in being a Batman and basically roughing up the bad guys but only up to a certain point.

No, I conceived of a Wolverine fantasy, this time, which involved me being in the thick of things, taking all of the bullets those bastards have to offer while opening up their intestines, cutting off their limbs and severing their arteries. Killing them simply wouldn't do; if I had the power to take as much abuse as Wolverine does in his most tenacious incarnations I would not content myself with stopping those animals. No, I would inflict the maximum amount of pain imaginable.

I would let them shoot me, riddle me with their bullets and gain the impression of superiority in arms and force and when I'd lulled them into that sense of security I would attack and watch their bravado melt into horror as they'd realize they were completely helpless to stop me, even with all their guns. I'd destroy their weapons with my adamantium claws, in some cases with their limbs attached, to remind them of how useless they are against me. I would cut them in places where they would bleed out severely enough to die but slowly enough so that they could take in just how conclusively they've been routed.

Once the last of the gunmen had breathed his last I would then behead them, gather up their heads, drive over to the mansion or nightclub or office of the person who sent them and drop each and every one of them at that person's doorstep. And after taking another hail of bullets from the personal security and after maiming and killing the entire cadre of personal security I would stand right in front of the people responsible for masterminding the would-be murders, have them look around at the carnage, tell them I'd be watching them, and then walk away, leaving them in a sea of their goons' blood and entrails. I would leave them with fear of God in their hearts and a pair of soiled pants.

And then, when they'd thought I'd gone, I'd sneak up behind them and kill them anyway.

I'm not Wolverine, so I obviously would never get to do any of those things but after the brutality in Maguindanao it was the first time I had ever wanted to do them, even in my mind.

Back When Marvel Wooed Hollywood...

I don't know if anyone remembers this but many years before his death last July, Michael Jackson already met the Grim Reaper, albeit in the pages of Marvel Comics' Longshot miniseries, where he got blasted to smithereens while filming a television show on Mojoworld. I'm sure a lot of people do remember how preoccupied Marvel was with being fashionable back in the '80s (among other time periods), as perhaps best exemplified by the jeri-curled Beyonder who faced off against the Marvel Universe in Secret Wars II, and the perpetually mullet-haired Longshot himself.

But way before Blade, the first successful movie based on a Marvel Comics character came out in 1998, Hollywood was Marvel's wet dream. It was all over their comic books; whether it was fans or writers coming up with their own personal lists of who they'd like to see playing Spider-Man (with names like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt getting mentioned more than a couple of times).

It's a different world now, one where Disney has bought Marvel (for a steal, in my opinion) precisely because of the power its properties wields at the box-office, where Hugh Jackman was made a star precisely because of his appearance in the X-Men movies, which remain his highest-grossing films to date, where people like Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds and even Robert Downey Jr. campaign avidly to play Marvel characters, in some instances not even for very much money, and where studios holding the rights to Marvel films prior to the Disney acquisition scramble to make more because they don't want to lose them. Yep, it's a different world, one that more than makes up for the snubs of Marvel roles by the likes of Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, for the several aborted attempts to realize Marvel projects, one of the most notable of which was Tom Cruise's failed Iron Man endeavor at the beginning of the millenium, and even some of the creative misfires that did make it to the screen like Daredevil and Ghost Rider.

The buzz for Iron Man 2 is at a fever pitch right now and it still makes me feel all warm and tingly inside that the first one is widely regarded as the film that re-launched the career of Downey Jr., an actor whose work I have always admired.

The best part of all this is that even for this tantrum thrower, the best is yet to come.

Hip to be Square.

I love the recent film 500 Days of Summer. With the exception of the cornball narrator I love just about everything about it from the writing to the acting to the music.

As strange as it may sound, one other thing I love about this film is that apart from an e-mail message which the main character, Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) receives from Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), there is no mention of any technology anywhere in the film that could possibly date it. Nobody texts, nobody tweets, nobody has a myspace or facebook page.

Tom dresses like a prep-school kid from some eighties movie, shops for Ringo Starr albums, is a huge fan of the 1980s TV series Knight Rider (not its tepid 21st century revival), and dances to one of my favorite Hall and Oates songs. He is, apart from being my kind of guy, the anti-hipster, a character who, to borrow a phrase used by renowned film critic Richard Corliss, is joyfully, defiantly anachronistic in his pop-culture preferences.

In Tom's delightful dance number to the 29-year-old Hall & Oates song "You Make My Dreams," he basically flips the bird at putrid, trying-hard movies like He's Just Not That Into You which love to scream out at the audience how up-to-date their script is with trends and technology. "Look, our characters have myspace pages! They text! They tweet! Aren't they the shizz?" Probably, but the minute these little technological quirks have gone the way of the dinosaur like the pager did, thereby ceasing to have any contemporary cultural relevance, so will those little references. It irks me that Iron Man makes reference to myspace, which has already been supplanted by facebook, as I understand it.

To my mind it's pure foolishness for filmmakers, unless they're working with a story that deals directly with technology like 1992's Sneakers or 1998's You've Got Mail, to make references in their films to extant tech, especially if the story can be told without it.

It's like the difference between Pixar movies and many Dreamworks films; with all of their pop-culture references, the Shrek films will one day be dated back to things like The Matrix or the first Spider-Man film, while most Pixar films, with the possible exception of Cars (which is dated by the models of the newer cars involved like a Porsche 996 Carrera S and a Ferrari F430) will truly achieve timelessness, especially films that feel neither here nor there like The Incredibles or Finding Nemo.

It's a given these days that audiences have woefully short attention spans, as products perhaps of the MTV generation. It's been over a decade since a movie has spent more than five weeks as the number one film in America (James Cameron's Titanic) and so the quest is on to find something that people watching movies will latch on to.

Well, I will say this; the answer to that remains to be compelling, relatable characters and a great story.

The trashy He's Just Not That Into You, with its "look at me" references to myspace and texting may have made more money than the infinitely superior 500 Days of Summer this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if, years from now, when people start making lists of truly great romantic comedies of the new millenium, that little movie with the guy who didn't text or tweet were to appear on all of them, with the other film basically being consigned to oblivion.

WHY Aren't Anime-Based Movies Selling?

The first movie I ever watched that was based on a Japanese anime or manga series was Christophe Gans 1995 film Crying Freeman, starring Mark Dacascos, which I genuinely enjoyed even though I had not watched the original series or read the original comic books. The last one I watched, just last Saturday, was an adaptation of the seminal anime/manga classic, Astro Boy, who was created by the so-called godfather of animation, Osamu Tezuka. In the case of Astro Boy I had watched one of the TV series starring him (there have been three, one in the 1960s, one in the 1980s, and one that ran about three or four years ago), and I still enjoyed the film, shortcomings notwithstanding.

I've noticed, though, that the reception of Joe Public all around the world (with the exception of Japan) has not quite been as warm as mine was of these two movies, or of anything based on anime or manga in general. Three of Hayao Miyazaki's films, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle and now Ponyo, have all made very decent box-office, the vast bulk of it in Japan and Korea, but have otherwise made very little impression on the global box-office.

Films like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Speed Racer were the kind of flops that could lose studio executives their jobs (and quite possibly did) and the aforementioned Crying Freeman never even made it to theatrical release in the United States. Considering how badly the current Astro Boy film is doing in theaters, it may as well have been sent straight to the DVD shelf. And the less said about 20th Century Fox's Dragonball, the better.

This is strange because judging from things like comic book conventions and amateur comic book drawings of fans all over the world, one would think anime is one of the most popular media out there, a global phenomenon. Heck, the word anime isn't even Japanese; it's French for "alive."

Why, therefore, do so many people outside of the Land of the Rising Sun ignore anime feature films, or feature films based on anime? Is it some residual resentment left from World War II? Is it a general global inability to digest Japanese pop-culture (a thesis which the success of movies like The Ring would debunk, I'm sure)? I'm curious.

It's really quite a shame as there are quite a number of good works of anime that, with the advances in today's technology, could be adapted pretty well with the right people behind them. We're talking about an industry that is capable of bringing books, plays, comic books, toy lines, video games, television shows and even blasted theme park rides to the big screen with resounding success. The successful and profitable translation of anime to the big screen shouldn't be as big a challenge as it has been for the last several years (though I'm really not crazy about the upcoming Akira adaptation, as I feel it is a classic that should be left alone).

Come on, Hollywood! Bring me my Robotech!

A Nice Little Dream

For the last month or so I've been quite stressed about one thing or another, and today I was able to get at least one source of stress of my chest by finally conducting a direct examination I'd been dreading for several months; I was prepared and I articulated my questions well and in an objection-proof manner.

I had something, though, that helped me get through that direct examination, as nerve-wracked as I was, besides the usual preparation.

Last night, I dreamed about my best friend and the godfather of my firstborn, Jay Tan. Here's the thing; it wasn't even one of those dreams where he was alive and walking and talking. No, he was pretty much as dead in the dream as he is in real life. But there was something special about this dream.

In this dream, I and several other people were gathered to watch several performances based on work Jay had done. I caught a stage play and an animated short film (though of course I cannot remember the story of either) based on stories he had written.

Now, as far as I know Jay did not write fiction as a hobby. He wrote ad copy for a living, and was quite the songwriter and occasional blogger, but he didn't do a whole lot of fiction, so I'm pretty sure that the notion that he would be honored for his works of fiction was basically a product of my own mind.

But I loved the idea of Jay being cherished after his death even by people who didn't know him in life. I loved the idea of celebrating his creations even after the funerals and weeping and the regret. I loved the idea that he had achieved immortality in the eyes of not only the people who loved him but the people who loved his work.

I once decried a line from the Ridley Scott film Gladiator uttered by Maximus, the Roman general played by Russell Crowe: What we do in life echoes in eternity. I found it an expression of utmost hubris and a failure to acknowledge that we are all part of a bigger plan. In view of this dream, though, it's not quite so bad as I thought; being immortalized through one's work is something that's nice, as is the thought that the things one does could even survive the demise of an entire species.

I love the thought of Jay living on in things like his work, and I certainly hope he does. Maybe the guys who have hold of his songs could publish them somewhere...

The Return of the Rom Com

Two romantic comedies this year have managed to make a splash at the U.S. box office, He's Just Not That Into You and The Proposal. I utterly despised the former and was mildly entertained by the latter, but in any case I'm glad they're back because as far as I'm concerned they simply don't get old.

Now, it goes without saying that some rom coms are better than others; not everyone can make something as compelling as Sleepless in Seattle, or As Good As It Gets or as laugh-out-loud funny as There's Something About Mary, and in fact the very makers of those films were not really able to follow up those films with equally strong work. Indeed, Sandra Bullock's The Proposal is nowhere near as inherently endearing as her own While You Were Sleeping was over fourteen years ago.

The good news, though, is that with recent films like 500 Days of Summer, it seems that there is a rising new generation of filmmakers who, while not necessarily hell-bent on replicating the magic between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan or Bullock and any of several of her rom-com co stars like Bill Pullman or Hugh Grant, want to take the genre to new places while paying plenty of homage to where it's been over the last several decades, which can only be a good thing.

Yessir, I love me a good rom com, and even though I've found most of them tepid lately with the exception of Summer, I'm glad they're still on the radar.

World Champions

When Michael Schumacher won his third world championship and his first for Ferrari in 2000, I had no idea it would be the start of an era, though I was as excited as hell. I had no idea that this would be the first of five consecutive titles for both the Red Baron and the Scuderia. Although the 2001 and the 2003 seasons were real nail-biters (with the 2002 and 2004 seasons being so boring I was actually happy when someone else would win a race every now and again) nothing ever quite beat the thrill of seeing Schumi pip title rival Mika Hakkinen to victory at Suzuka in 2000 through some very canny pit work.

The next Formula One season I would enjoy in the same way was the 2007 F1 season, particular the latter part, in which then new-Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen overhauled Lewis Hamilton's 17-point lead in two races to take the driver's title for the Scuderia. Disappointingly, Raikkonen was unable to repeat his success the next year, or the year after, but 2007 still felt like a classic.

These are old pictures of old cars (the first one a full nine years old while the second nearing two) but they bring back fond memories of some exciting sporting events.

Easy Targets from Whom Apparently Nothing Was Learned

About three years ago Marvel Comics published, as a kind of "dessert" to a twelve-issue run on Wolverine by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. a one-shot issue by Mark Millar and artist Kaare Andrews. It was set in WWII era Poland, and featured as its narrator a Nazi death camp commander who had a big problem in the person of a troublesome, hairy little prisoner who for one reason or another wouldn't die. It was an engrossing little tale and a rather entertaining one, even though it was rather predictable. It was a throwback to reading those Gold Key horror comics I used to read as a kid from my uncle's stash, both the vintage American ones and the local reprints. There was no real morality play at work, but Millar, clever little left-winger that he is, drew parallels between Nazi Germany and the Bush Administration. The Nazis were still very much the bad guys, but there was so much more dimension to them.

I'm quite keen on watching Inglourious Basterds and have enjoyed WWII movies from Saving Private Ryan to Enemy at the Gates, but after having followed the excesses of the Bush administration on the news for the last eight years it strikes me that Americans who take shots at the Nazis, especially the ones who were fond of propping up Bush and his policies on the Middle East, are really kind of like the people living in glass houses chucking stones.

For one thing, as evil as the Nazis and their actions were I think it would be far more intelligent to look at them from a historical perspective rather than a pulpy, puerile one. Films like the 2004 Austrian film Der Untertag (translated as The Downfall for English speaking markets), Conspiracy, that brilliant HBO movie with Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, and the TV movie Nuremberg which starred Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox took a much more matter-of-fact, if still inevitably dramatized look at history's favorite villains. They weren't just mustache twirling fiends bent solely on world domination (though they were admittedly the closest one could ever GET to that in history), they had genuine socio-politico-historical-cultural motivations and underpinnings in their grossly misguided actions. The idea was to get into their heads not just to condemn them all the more but to understand how a country can take a wrong turn in the way it views people.

People love to pick on the Nazis, which is fine, but apparently a whole lot of them have learned nothing from their downfall which was the product of, among other things, hubris and a fundamental misunderstanding of cultures different from their own. Sound familiar?

It was never just a fundamental question of who was right and who was wrong. I mean, if all imperialists and perpetrators of genocide are evil and should get their comeuppance, then how come the Native Americans who were either killed and/or corralled like animals from the seventeenth to the twentieth century are basically now living like squatters on their own country while the descendants of the people responsible are living it up? If the Nazis were tried and hung in Nuremberg for war crimes, how come no one was held accountable for the fact that at the outbreak of World War II, several thousand Japanese Americans were summarily rounded up without due process and chucked into internment camps?

I think entertainment featuring Nazis getting their butt kicked represents a comfort zone for Americans because it represents the last time they were really right about something and won righteous victories on top of that. From what I understand both the Korean and Vietnam Wars were both gray areas, the latter more than the former, with the former not yielding a clear cut victory and the latter being a tactical and political disaster with fallout that has lasted to the present day. Of course, the Iraq occupation remains a problem the Americans don't know how to solve. The sad thing was that in the 80s and early 90s the warm box-office reception of such gritty and unpleasant portrayals of the U.S. military in films like Platoon showed that Americans were comfortable with a sense of accountability for their mistakes, but with the consistent box-office failure of films trying to deal with the situation in the Middle East including stuff from the two Toms (Cruise and Hanks) it seems they've regressed quite a bit. "Neocon" indeed. Going back to WWII and torching Nazis and Japs they can easily say "yes, we were RIGHT to kick their butts," pat themselves on the back, and go to sleep at night.

So soon (in the Philippines, anyway) we'll have a movie with Jews kicking Nazi ass and somewhere out there is even a comic book/strip featuring Jesus kicking Nazi ass and God knows how much other media there is out there featuring somebody kicking Nazi ass. Well and good, but if that's all they've got it's ultimately weak and meaningless fluff.

The greatest indictment of the Nazis would be to never repeat any of their mistakes.

Rediscovering my REAL First Love

A few posts ago I wrote about how I was slowly rediscovering comics and was, as a result, drifting a little bit away from collecting toy cars because of the expense involved as well as the hassles of storage.

Well, lately I've been drifting away from collecting anything in general because after years of false starts I've finally managed to get myself in a rhythm and to pursue my TRUE first love, not comics, not toy cars, not watching movies, but WRITING.

I'm glad for the blogs and the fact that I have to write for a living because at least my writing faculties haven't dulled. If anything, the fact that I've managed to get out there and experience life to some extent has given me a lot more to say. And the best part is that my writing now is kind of a release from my job. I don't write as a lawyer would. I don't think of arguments or cite precedents in support of an argument; I just write.

I have no idea if anyone else will find the stuff any good but for now it's enough that I'm writing for myself. I'm sick of writing about other people's work and commenting on things that are not only irrelevant to my life but to life here in the Philippines in general.

And to give myself a real target to hit: I intend to self-publish when it's done. Screw the whole "hunting for publishers" thing.

If there's one thing I learned from Pixar's Up it's that it's never too late to chase your dreams.

One of the Reasons Why It's Good to Take Pictures

This castle is wonderful. Apel built it maybe two or three years ago, but rebuilding it is no longer possible because being children, he and his sister have misplaced several of the blocks. I'll buy them more blocks some day, but it won't quite be the same. When he builds an even more magnificent edifice, I'll be sure to take pictures of that, too...

My Officemates

These fellas have kept me company through many a dreary workday.

One of them's Michael Schumacher's personal Ferrari FXX and the other's a Ferrari F40.

The Possibilities Are Endless...

Hehehe...stumbled on this site. The "Mouserine" is the only bit of original art but the rest are still just as fun...



Punisher meets the seven dwarves...



Spidey meets Wall-E...



and my favorite...

Lamborghini's Teutonic Cousin

More old car pics; this one's an Audi R8 in 1/18 by Kyosho; Audi owns Lamborghini and apparently shares components with them on a regular basis so a lot of this car was derived from the Lamborghini Gallardo (personally I like this better but they're both very good-looking vehicles).

Slayer of Exotics

This is a Nissan GT-R R35 1/18 by AUTOart. The real version of this car achieved quite some renown when it set a scorching laptime on the famed Nordschleife of the Nuerburgring, scorching the times of such highly touted sportscars as the Mercedes SLR McLaren, the Lamborghini Gallardo AND Murcielago, the Bugatti Veyron, and the Porsche 911. I took these pictures several months ago but was looking at them again and damn they look nice.

Looking Like the Cat That Got the Canary

Giancarlo Fisichella is a 36-year-old Italian Formula 1 Driver who started his career with Jordan F1 and who has gotten to drive for such teams as Benetton Playlife, Sauber, Renault and most recently Force India. Back in his day he was a highly-regarded figure in the paddock with even Michael Schumacher saying that given the right equipment, he would really shine.

All his life he's wanted to race for Ferrari who let him test drive one of their cars in 1995.

Until recently, Force India had gone for a whole season and a half without scoring a single championship point, until last Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix when he clinched pole position and finished a very, very close second to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

The bosses at Ferrari apparently took notice, and here's what happened...






I don't post F1 stuff here anymore but holy cow would you look at that grin. Like a kid on Christmas morning...

On Disney Buying Marvel and the Imminent Explosion of Many a Fanboy's Head

I was a little shellshocked to learn this morning that media/entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. intends to wholly acquire Marvel Entertainment to the tune of four billion dollars. Not being a shareholder of either I don't really have any personal stake except that of a fan.

From the financial standpoint the sale makes perfect sense in the current economic climate; Disney is a brand name that is probably the closest thing to recession-proof that an entertainment company can get these days, and as much as I've loved many of their comic books, and as much money as their movies have made over the last ten years, I don't think the same can be said for Marvel. They are basically doing this to secure their future, which has probably been thrown into doubt by all the madness of the last year or so. On that score, I'm quite happy Marvel has such deep pockets at their disposal.

From a creative standpoint, though, well, there's bit a lot of screaming on the internet in the last few hours about how bad that could be, some of it funny, some of it devoid of any intelligence, and all of it speculative, of course. The general consensus appears to be no consensus at all, with many people dreading Hannah Montana/Avengers crossovers and others cheering the prospect of Marvel/Pixar teamups.

For my part, I don't think Disney should mess with Marvel's publishing line, and I'd like to think that they won't; why change a formula that attracted them enough to buy an entire company in the first place? Basically, Disney knows next to nothing about the kind of comics that Marvel publishes, markets and sells, and Marvel has been doing a pretty good job of it over the last several years from a sales point of view, so I hardly think they'd mess with what works. Of course I could be wrong, but considering Joe Quesada, who is basically responsible for that very line has been among the first online to reassure the reading public of this, well I take some reassurance. Another potential plus from the impending relationship is that the prospect of Disney money might lure some creators over, though frankly I'm already quite happy with the stable that's already there. (Not like Jim Lee needs the money, but I'd still like to see him draw a full Spider-Man and/or Daredevil story-arc before I die).

So as far as comics are concerned, I'm reasonably confident that guys like Matt Fraction, Mark Millar, Dan Slott and Ed Brubaker will still be great writers and will continue to come up with great stories. Life as we comic book readers know it will continue, with a couple of possible perks as well in the form of new creators wanting in on the Disney money train.

On the animated front, I have to confess I have mixed feelings on the matter.

On the one hand the merger will mean that Pixar is to be Marvel's sister company. That prospect could blow up millions of fanboy heads as well, but in a good way. For one thing, Pixar could serve as a platform for Marvel's not-so-well-known-outside-comic-fandom properties that might not quite make the transition to the big screen, like the Runaways, who were recently announced to be slated for live-action adaptation but whose film could, development hell being the way it is, in reality take a looooong time to get off the ground, Doctor Strange, whose film has been in development hell since the 1980s, and the Guardians of the Galaxy as well as other cosmic characters like Mar-Vell and Noh Varr, to name but a few. And if they were by some miracle to get their hands on The Fantastic Four, well all of 20th Century Fox and Tim Story's sins will be forgotten if not forgiven. Of course, that's not likely to happen as all of the studios currently with deals to film or at least distribute Marvel properties, from Fox to Paramount to Sony to Universal, are now clinging to these contracts for dear life as they know how much money is on the table. In short, anyone hoping for a Pixar-made Avengers, Spider-Man or X-Men will be bitterly disappointed unless Disney is willing to make Paramount, Sony or Fox a whole lot richer. Fortunately, there are a lot of other toys for Pixar to play with; Marvel's library does consist of over 5,000 characters, after all. So the prospect of Pixar drawing on Marvel's library for future movies is something that is very, very good. As long as it's Pixar doing the animating and not the made-for-TV-mediocre in-house outfit Disney came up with that produced such execrable films as Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, back when Disney were afraid they'd lose Pixar, Marvel's properties should be in great hands.

As far as the TV/Home Video Animation front is concerned, though, I'm not particularly thrilled. Anyone who's seen Disney's truly dreadful direct-to-video sequels of their popular and acclaimed animated films like Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, and more recently Cinderella, not to mention the rather abominable TV adaptations of fantastic films like Tarzan, will know what I'm talking about when I say that Disney is capable of taking some great properties and milking them for every dollar they're worth and then some. It could be good, but it could also be very, very bad.

On the live-action feature film front, well, I'm kind of filled with dread. Films based on Marvel properties are clearly action movies and on that front Jerry Bruckheimer has practically been Disney's go-to-guy since the mid-1990s. Now Bruckheimer is responsible for producing a lot of action movies I've enjoyed over the years, from Top Gun, the first Bad Boys, Crimson Tide and The Rock, all of which he co-produced with the late Don Simpson, to the thrill-ride Enemy of the State, which remains one of my favorite Will Smith movies ever, Black Hawk Down, and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I also happened to enjoy the first National Treasure movie a lot, but I would not want any of my Marvel movies to be made with the same sense of flightiness. My rule about Bruckheimer of late, though seems to be that the bigger the movie, the worse it gets, as attested by films like Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and the two Pirates of the Carribean sequels. Most movies based on Marvel properties by nature, would have to be big, so that doesn't bode well for having Bruckheimer produce any of them. If Disney leaves folks like Kevin Feige, Avi Arad and Jon Favreau to their own devices, everything should be fine. Of course, like I said, barring additional buyouts, film properties like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Avengers (all part of Marvel's self-produced film slate) are still locked into Marvel's agreements with Paramount and Universal, the studios responsible for marketing and distributing the films, for better or worse.

I know this blog post is like a drop of water in an ocean of fanboy reaction but I'd like to conclude by saying that it's way, WAY too early to conclude that the merger means the end of Marvel as its fans know it. It's also too early to say if this is a good thing, though there are tangible positives already. Let's just sit tight and see what happens; the merger hasn't even happened yet, after all.