Robocop 2014

At first  I thought MGM decided to mock their famous Lion with a bizarre soundclip that replaced the trademark growl.

Turned out it was Samuel Jackson's Pat Novak. The guys's pre-broadcast mouth calisthenics that produced all that sound. It's there where I concluded Jose Padilha's remake of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven classic was a different entity altogether. 

Like the 1987 incarnation, the upgraded version never fails to underscore media's role into molding the public to puppets dancing to the tune of the most powerful corporations. That of course, and the neverending romantic theme of every successful fairy tale about the ages-old question of what makes us all human. 

The over the top R-18 violence that made the 1987 version so compelling was toned down for a more PG-friendly version this time. OCP is still the evil corporatation, and in place of the 'Old Man' we have a Steve Jobs-like CEO named Raymond Sellars. I never really liked Michael Keaton before The Other Guys but his performance in RoboCop made me a fan. The guy managed to make the character a very likable villain. Along with Jackie Earle Haley's mercenary and company military tactician and Jay Baruchel's goofy marketing executive, the film had all the makings of a very compelling movie by virtue of its villains (no Clarence/Jones but equally good) but somewhere in the middle the entire thing goes...level.

It's not that the movie was bad. In fact it's good---if it didn't have the specter of the original hanging around the back of your head to compare it with. The story and the overall direction of the new one is totally different in tone and even in story than its predecessor. That alone is reason enough why the movie is an excellent stand-alone entity on its own. I guess my major gripe about it is that the main character somehow lacks the charisma and bad-assness you'd expect from it. Granted that it's somehow a major improvement over the original considering it can move faster and has a whole lot more sophisticated access to technology and weaponry. I can't blame the actor (Joel Kinnaman) if that was how the character was written. You just can't empathize with it enough. Desensitized? Probably.

Had it not been for Gary Oldman's character, the film would have been a total waste.  Dr. Norton is the moral and humanist center of the story. They detached it, because RoboCop seems to be more like a machine in this version despite his human memories being intact.

There are a lot of allusions to the original other than the shared similarity of the characters' names. In place of the notorious 'Directive 4' we have the red band. Still a powerful tool to remind our hero that he's still just a product and still in the mercy of the company that made him. Good action/drama film overall. If only you haven't seen the original to compare it to. You just can't avoid it.

Re-Animator: Why more films like this should be made

It's a bit embarrassing to admit that I just saw Re-Animator (1985) for the first time last Saturday. 


One of the most popular and must-see cult classics of all time. It's up there with The Evil Dead, The Return Of The Living Dead, and Braindead (Dead Alive) in the honors section of this type of genre. That small group of films that exploit all fear of cadavers and turning that fear and trepidation into a potent mixture of schlock, gore, and black humor not commonly seen in more mainstream Hollywood drivel these days.

Prior to seeing it I have already seen and are familiar with most of director Stuart Gordon's movies. Mostly adaptations of HP Lovecraft's shorts, that were given unique film treatments. Gordon has a knack for transforming Lovecraft's stories---difficult reads I must admit; given to long, drawling narratives that rely all-too heavily on the reader's own imagination---into compelling films that have so much visual impact that it lingers with you even after a while when you first watched it. 


The first film I saw was his 1987 adaptation of From Beyond, Lovecraft's take on stimulating the pineal gland via a machine called a resonator, which enables people to see otherworldy creatures existing in another plane of existence or dimension not readily visible to man's average senses. That was also the first film I saw frequent Gordon collaborator Jeffrey Combs, who played the tragic protagonist Dr. Crawford Tillinghast who eventually had his pineal gland pop out of his head like a gross, bloody insect antennae with a mind of its own due to the constant stimulation and exposure to the machine.


For an 80s horror film, it stood out from the rest that jumped in on the whole slasher craze that swept the horror genre. It's Lovecraft, for one. The late author's fascination with interdimensional existence, beings, as well as the Elder Gods and the notorious Old Ones gave rise to the Chtlulhu Mythos that no more than a few members of the society actually believe to be true. Add in Gordon's natural talent in conjuring celluloid shock material that include morbid sexual fetishes, gore, and humorous/shocking ways of watching people get killed. That was put into good use again with the lesser-known but equally disturbing Dagon (2001), this one an adaptation of the author's Shadow Over Innsmouth---about a race of hybrid human/aquatic creatures that worship one of the notorious deities allied with Chtlulhu that resides in the black abyss of the sea.


But among all of Gordon's outputs, Re-Animator has got to be the most widely known and, to some of the squeamish members of the society, reviled. It's the kind of R-18 film where even adults are driven to nail-biting discomfort, specially when that famous cadaver with the severed head decided to molest a woman in some of the sickest ways a celluloid zombie could ever think of.


It starts off with the introduction of Herbert West (Combs), a medical student kicked out of a European school for his radical theories on brain death and re-animating dead tissue via his special re-agent formula he discovered with a deceased mentor. he transfers to the fictional Miskatonic University Medical School where he met and befriended the other half of the film's two protagonists, student Dan Cain (Dark Justice's Bruce Abbot).

Jeffrey Combs as the notorious Herbert West, re-animator

What follows is the standard partnership between the brilliant, but weird partner and the other grounded, mediocre, and more socially popular one. It was only a matter of time when both people's experiments on re-animating cadavers goes out of hand (like what happens to all horror movies that involve 'experiments') and the fun really goes into overdrive. 


For one thing this is not the typical zombies the George Romero school of zombie-making has taught us. And that's how I view and expect to see how reanimated corpses would behave. Gordon's corpses are different in a way that they are also deadly homicidal monsters but not with the same motivations as standard zombies (sorry, living dead) usually do. The Walking Dead, this isn't.


But for all its gore and ample shocking footage of violence, the most surprising aspect of the film is its ability to make you laugh and cringe at the same time. Mostly in the space of one frame. One second a character does something totally hilarious like bumping over things while holding his own severed head, and the next moment become an evil diabolical mastermind that rivals all other film villains in existence. Not to mention adding a lecherous side to the heavily-cliched portrayals of the living dead.


It's over the top entertainment, for sure. But it won't reach cult status if it wasn't any good.

A nightmare, alright

I held off watching the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street for a variety of reasons. One of which is Michael Bay being attached to the project. And the other, most important point: Why bother?


It's always Hollywood and its endless fascination with remakes. There's always an enterprising studio exec in there somewhere, with a bright idea that probably goes somewhere along these lines: "Hey! Why not reboot an 80s era blockbuster to fit today's braindead audience who has no chance of seeing the original despite the presence of Google and man's innate nature to go looking for things? Let's save them from that 'looking' and make truckloads of money while we're at it." 


If the studios are doing it to explore artistic reinterpretation, then Michael Bay is a modern day Fellini. 


The thing about remakes is that 9 times out of 10, most are simply sub-par, and dreadfully inferior versions of the original work (see: Psycho, The Ring). Unfortunately 'Nightmare...2010' is no exception. 


Remakes do unimaginable harm than good to almost everything, especially on movies that require suspense and rely heavily on the viewer's apprehension and uncertainty about what character will die on the next sequence.


And on a horror-thriller at that. What's the point of watching a 'thriller' if you already know what happened to every major character? For the new generation to be familiar with a 20+ year old celluloid boogeyman? Has spoonfeeding really degenerated to this?


There's the hype of it being the more 'serious and less comical interpretation' that is guaranteed to give you more scares than the original. That Jackie Earle Haley's Freddy Krueger is a lot more brutal and scary than the original Robert Englund version.

Freddy, 2010 incarnation

That would have been very promising except that Freddy is not Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Dour, silent killers with no sense of humor.

Freddy's appeal on the other hand, is in the various creative ways he toys with his victims. Always in that nasty sadistic toying and humiliation before going in for the kill.In a lot of ways "Nightmare..." is not exactly a 'horror/slasher' film than a curious fascination on how Freddy will come up with new ways to dispose of his prey.


One memorable sequence in an early installment had him transfer a teenager as a playable character in a video game he was playing. Or a woman bring eaten face-first by a television set. Or Johnny Depp being swallowed by the bed and regurgitated as a bloody mass of pulp back to the ceiling. Horrifying at first, but then you realize it's a movie not meant to be taken seriously.

 

Englund nailed the character's brilliance, nastiness, and most of all, amusing sense of humor and the acerbic kiss-offs that's noticeably missing in Haley's version. Not his fault---a good actor---but what can you do with a character that is so familiar and embedded so deeply in the pop culture landscape people practically know him as how Englund played him? 


They already started with Freddy vs Jason, a fun and satisfying fanboy celebrity deathmatch fantasy came true. Whatever these studio heads are smoking for them to see things like this and resort to the abominable stance of doing a remake, ought to be very expensive.


I wonder how that Fright Night remake is gonna pull it off.

'No'

The last time George Lucas  decided to improve the aspects of his original trilogy, fans (by this I mean people who loved the original set from 1977-1983) were outraged as to why he even bothered with 'fixing' something that isn't broken in the first place.


I had no problem with it at first. This was a chance to see the originals in the theater, the way they were meant to be seen, anyway. 


The only one I was lucky enough to catch on its original theatrical run was Return Of The Jedi in 1983. I was 4. Didn't even know what I was watching was the last part of an epic trilogy. Just that it completely blew my mind, specially those humming lightsabers and how bad guys can actually redeem themselves in the end. 


The earlier films, I watched repeatedly on the VCR. 


The 1997 special editions had, as was previously reported before they opened, some pretty good upgrades and additional scenes that were previously envisioned by Lucas back in '77 but was unable to do so due to the limitations in special effects technology then.

CGI Stormtroopers on CGI dewbacks absent in the original version

That was okay as far as I'm concerned. Who would not want a little additional refurbishing or addition to the landscapes you practically knew even in your sleep? As long as it did not interfere with the story or any major character's presentation.


What raised the red flag for me while watching it in the theater, particularly on A New Hope (Episode IV), was the scene where Han Solo was confronted by one of Jabba The Hutt's henchmen (Greedo). In the original '77 version, Solo shot the villain first.


On the upgraded version, the scene was played out in a way that made me suspect a defect in the movie reel they were using. There was an awkward shift in Solo's head that made it look as if he evaded Greedo's blast first, and fired his own to kill his nemesis. 

Turns out Lucas did not want him to look too ruthless by firing off first.

That scene turned everyone's favorite smuggler/gunslinger from a badass, tako-no-shit kind of person to a boy scout with a tough exterior. Whatever convoluted sense of morality Lucaswanted to impart on the Solo character, totally destroyed how people knew him.

For starters the character really is unlikeable. At least at first. He's supposed to be the balance to the all around good guy country boy hero in Luke Skywalker. You're supposed to view him as an opportunistic scumbag until the end when he turned out to be a great person after all. 


What's even more puzzling is that this is hardly one of the 'technological setbacks' Lucas kept complaining about that he wanted to improve. This is already about changing characters'  motivations and actions. 


It happened again in The Empire Strikes Back. Several key changes in the dialogues were noticeable. A bid for political correctness, most likely. Whatever 'upgrade' Lucas did in the effects department were surely eclipsed by the new things old characters were saying. In other words, the brilliant screenplay of Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan were not spared from the 'refurbishing'.  


But the worst part of it in the best part of the film as well.


This time in the climactic fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Bespin's Cloud City. 


In the 1980 version, instead of giving in to the temptations of power his father promised him if he turned to the dark side, the young warrior from Tatooine chose death by quietly jumping off the small platform he was holding unto. 


In the 'improved' version, Lucas decided to insert a long girlyman scream as he was falling to the chasm. It also sounded distrurbingly similar to the Emperor's own freefall screams when Vader threw him to his own death in Return Of The Jedi.

Gone was the brave freedom fighter who defied the lures of power. In its place was someone who was probably about to go on traipsing in to the dark side for all we know, and just slipped.

Even Lucas realized how stupid the move was and decided to remove it in the subsequent DVD releases.

But what really is infuriating about all these changes is how the guy's obsessive drive to 'perfect' the materials that practically does not need it as far as fans---the real owners---are concerned. Even that kind of motivation or drive is forgivable. At least that shows you the depth of the man's dedication to his art.

However, marketing ploys are another thing. Specially on specialty products like this you know for a fact are held in high esteem by rabid fanboys who'd automatically gobble anything remotely attached to the series.

Insanity for your art is one thing. Butchering a beloved piece of work to sell more of it, is another.

A few days ago news about the Blu Ray version of Return Of The Jedi caused another stir when a leaked footage of the scene in question was seen by most fans. 

Perhaps Mr. Lucas felt slighted about the negative reactions to Vader's prolonged "NOOO!" in Revenge Of The Sith, that he decided to rub it in by letting the iconic character at it again just to get even.

Or maybe he's just being magnanimous by offering audiences countless options on how they want their Star Wars served. Like a twisted version of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

In any case, if there's any Lucasfilm movie that badly needs a major overhaul, it's Howard The Duck.

Why The Social Network is the best film of the year

Or the decade.

For the simple reason that Facebook---or pisbuk, as some of my colorful acquaintances lovingly call it---has taken control of every aspect of your life.

Even Friendster---that archaic incarnation of all things revolving around the spectrum of social networking has not conjured the kind of rabid following and dependence from people not unlike substance abuse and chain smoking the way Facebook did. I joined it with no real intention of actually spending any time toward it but MY HEROES ABILITY happened and it was all downhill from there. Underestimate the site at your own risk.


Even networking peers like Twitter and MySpace haven't successfully tapped into the collective sensibilities of all types of social strata, culture, and interests of the entire planet. Which makes the guy who came up with Facebook one of the most creative geniuses the human race has ever produced. A broad generalization, but I'm sure many will agree.


And that is what the entire movie was all about. But it was as much a story about Facebook's inception as that of highly talented individuals willing to sell their soul and screw each other over for profit. It's no more than a movie about Facebook than "SAW" is about a handyman tool.


Mark Zuckerberg is not a very likable person; at least if the way he was portrayed in the film and popular media is to be considered. But like most visionaries and innovators, a generous heaping of talent and imagination is apparently balanced by, well, let's just say being a 'people person' is not part of the package. 'Asshole' was a generally agreed-upon trait the guy's detractors were fond of throwing at his direction; and the real person the movie was based upon even went on record with a surprisingly civil statement about only wishing the filmmakers hadn't done a picture about him while he was still alive. Who could blame him? While the movie obviously painted a very 'human' side of the guy, pretty much everything else successfully painted him as an unfeeling and calculating manipulator capable of rivaling any reptilian entity in the planet.


David Fincher (SE7EN, Fight Club) managed to pull off an ambitious subject matter that would have been abysmally catastrophic had it fallen into the wrong hands. That it's a film where dialogue and a few shots of those rare 'Eureka!' moments Zuckerberg had in starting off the soon-to-be gigantic site, his Machiavellian strategies, and his different lawsuits are the only foundations to keep you interested and engaged instead of the kinetic action sequences, sappy teenage love scenes, toilet humor and CGI eye candies that are the staples in crafting movies for an audience who is increasingly devolving into a mass that's adapting the attention span of a housefly.

Another big revelation was Trent Reznor's involvement in the project. Another artist who I am confident can't do anything wrong. From ear-splitting anthems like 'Happiness In Slavery', the eerie soundscapes he did for the sound design of iD Software's Quake, to the gentle and ambient tunes off 1999's The Fragile and 2007's Ghosts I-IV, the guy is a walking incarnation of a modern musical renaissance man. He and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross created the music that enhanced the film's potency. Not that the NIN frontman is a relative newcomer to the film scoring scene; some of the early remixes of songs  from The Downward Spiral was also used in Fincher's SE7EN. And now it looks like Reznor is going to be nominated for the Oscar for this recent project.


Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg, while clearly played to suit the celluloid medium and probably a million times as obnoxious as well as interesting as the real deal, comes off as one of the best anti-heroes to have come out of the last decade. Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is up there with the likes of Travis Bickle, Gordon Gekko and Tony Montana.

Asshole? You bet. 

But he's still a billionaire, and he's the CEO bitch.

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In praise of B-movies

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