Random Double Features and the Nerd Report Gets Booked in the Face!

Not too long ago, my good friend Scofe and I were hanging out and we decided to watch a couple of movies. As the guest at my abode, I allowed Scofe to make the choice of two movies to watch. Normally we tend to pick movies that go together, but for some reason he selected Robocop and All the President's Men.

They went together surprisingly well, and while tone, genre and subject matter were completely unalike, we both saw that each film commented on the society of the time in a similar way; one was a satire of corporate culture, the other an expose of political corruption. Both issues were dominant issues of their times.

Having enjoyed the pairing, I decided to start a new feature here on The Nerd Report; the Random Double Feature. I've assigned each movie I own with a number between 1 and 330. Every so often, I'll be asking for a couple of numbers from readers, and then I'll watch the movies and see how well they match up or if watching them together results in a fever dream of insanity!

Our first selection comes from a buddy of mine named James who selected 58 and 131, which corresponds to......Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess! Feel free to watch along with me; my thoughts on our inaugural Double Feature will be posted on Sunday, September 1st!

To facilitate future instalments of the Double Feature, I'm also announcing that you can now follow the Nerd Report on Facebook! Click on that thar link and you'll be taken to the FB page where you can "like" it and thereby help give sustenance to my ravenous ego!

I'll be posting all things related to the Report via that page, and it gives people who want to a venue to give feedback about the blog, and participate in reader driven features such as Random Double Features. You can also shoot me ideas for future stories and I may or may not ignore them, because, again, my ego can reach Cthulhu-like proportions.

Viddy well, little brothers and sisters. Viddy well.

Ben Affleck is the New Batman, and Why You Shouldn't Worry About It

Earlier this evening,  news came out that Ben Affleck will play Batman in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman film, to be directed by Zack Snyder and co-star Henry Cavill.

And the Interwebs went bat-shit insane. Pardon the pun. There were some people in the Twitter-verse that had good things to say, but there were also people that seemed to regard this as a sign of the end times. Including my wife, whose irrational hatred of Affleck actually scares me sometimes.

I'm a pretty huge comic book fan. And I'm a pretty huge movie fan. And so I have no qualms suggesting that everyone CALM THE FUCK DOWN. Seriously, take a breath. Now allow me to go into why I not only don't mind the news of Affleck as Batman, but actually think it could wind up being awesome.

"Elysium" Review, or How to Blow a Good Concept in 1 Hour and 50 Minutes

Like the last competitor in a marathon, Elysium crosses the finish line of summer a bloated, sluggish and disappointing mess. It's a film with a complex, timely and vitally important issue at its heart, namely the growing chasm between the wealthy and every one else. The problem lies in writer-director Neill Blomkamp's handling of this issue, an approach that is so shallow that we never get much beyond "rich people are bad and why can't we be fair to everybody".

This normally wouldn't be enough to sink a movie. There's been a lot of very good science fiction films that examine complex issues in a superficial way. Hell, most of Star Trek is celebrated for that very approach. But where those other films succeed and Elysium fails is that the story itself is sloppy, filled with plot holes and contrivances and populated by two-dimensional and cliched characters.

In the future presented by the film, Earth has become vastly overpopulated, the ecosystem destroyed by pollution and over-consumption of resources. The wealthy have fled to an immense orbiting space station called Elysium, where they live in splendor and have access to an array of marvels, including medical capsules that can cure you of any illness or defect. The remainder of humanity live in squalor on Earth. The film seems to suggest that the people live in some sort of totalitarian police-state, controlled, I guess, by the people on Elysium. It's not really clear.

Trailer Park - Movies For Grownups Edition

Welcome to another edition of trailer park, where I roundup some interesting new trailers for upcoming movies. This time out, we're looking at movies for grownups. Is it just me or does it lately seem like American films are only capable of putting out movies for teenagers and/or people with the attention span of Quentin Tarantino on cocaine (so, I guess, regular Tarantino, then).

Anyway, it's a relief to see summer winding down and some more adult subject matter coming to the fore.

Like David O. Russell's next film, American Hustle:

A few thoughts: Man, the 1970s had a truly godawful collection of hairstyles, didn't they? I mean seriously, what the hell are those things on Bale's, Cooper's and Renner's heads? Also, I get that Jennifer Lawrence is a sex symbol (I don't see it, personally, but whatevs) but when did Amy Adams get crazy stupid hot? Remember Doubt? Still, I really like David O. Russell's films, and this is a pretty damn strong cast.

Next up is Ben Stiller's remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty:

This is based on a short story by James Thurber, and it was already a classic film starring Danny Kaye. Some people will cry foul, and proclaim we should never remake classic films, and these people will probably have never seen the 1947 version. It's a good film, but by no means sacrosanct. And I much prefer Flirting With Disaster and Greenberg Ben Stiller over Meet the Fockers Ben Stiller, and this looks like the former, so I'm looking forward to it. We need more fantasy for adults, and I don't mean Game of Thrones.

Next we have Martin Scorsese's latest attempt to win Leonardo DiCaprio that Oscar, The Wolf of Wall Street:

First off, how do we live in a world where Jonah Hill has an Oscar nomination and Matthew McConaughey doesn't? It's nice to see McConaughey wake up and start making good movies. After that Surfer, Dude movie, it was like he hit rock bottom and said, "I have to put on a shirt and start actually acting again."

So there's three movies coming out from mainstream Hollywood that at least try to cater to adults in the room, and they look pretty damn good. Hope to see you at the box office.

"The Wolverine" Review, or How To Claw Your Way to the Middle

Jackman shows us why he can never enjoy a candy bar.

It's been a tough summer. I mean, think about it. Have any of the movies, even the big hits, been beloved by anyone? Sure, we've had good movies (Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness) and bad (Man of Steel), but not one that has really stepped up and come to define the summer.

There's so much money invested into these films now that unless they make over half a billion (billion!) dollars, they are regarded as somewhat of a failure. Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel are certainly huge hits, but have they really come to define the summer in the same way that The Avengers did last year? Or The Dark Knight in 2008? I think the answer's no. The reaction to those films have been divisive enough that you couldn't really say that either is THE summer film of 2013.

Part of the issue is desperation. Blockbusters reek of desperation these days. You know when you go out for a night with your buddies and one guy keeps insisting, "This is going to be the best night ever!" and then you wind up eating a slice of pizza downtown at eleven pm? It's because you can't will an amazing event into being. And you can't manufacture a true blockbuster by just piling on the scale. You need to actually capture people's imagination with story, not just dazzle them with things going boom.

Am I implying that The Wolverine will be this elusive cultural blockbuster? No. Oh, no. It's not good enough for that. But it does have its heart in the right place in that it tries to put a good story at the centre of the film, rather than empty spectacle; a story that focuses on putting its titular character though some kind of journey, no matter how shallow that might be.

Comic Observations: Marvel vs DC - Round Two: Marvel NOW!

Ad for Marvel NOW!

In my last post, I began a two-part feature looking at the State of the Union for each of the big two comic publishers. I've been reading almost all of their output for a while now, and this article is an attempt to suss out which one is producing the strongest line overall, indeed which one has the strongest and most satisfying universe to offer and why that might be.

My final view on DC was of a company that may have some very strong individual titles, but that overall the line was seriously hampered by editorial interference and a lack of a cohesive focused direction. Does the House of Ideas, namely Marvel, fare any better?

Just like DC, Marvel has recently attempted to pull its line under an overarching banner in an attempt to pull in new readers and give a greater direction to its titles. Marvel has titled this direction Marvel NOW!, and like DC, relaunched a lot of their books in an attempt to inject some freshness. Marvel NOW! is far more nebulous than DC's New 52 reboot, but that's actually an okay thing. I know that sounds weird, given that I spent most of my last post slamming DC for its lack of strong direction, but hear me out.

Over the last few years, since Civil War in 2006, Marvel has been very smart in using their events to set up new status quos in which their characters operate. The events themselves have been successful to wildly varying degrees, but they almost always have resulted in a change to the Marvel Universe that can act as a launching pad for a slight variation in the stories, a slightly new world in which their characters operate. Civil War ended with Tony Stark's super-hero registration act taking effect. Secret Invasion ended with Norman Osborn stepping up as major force in the Universe, and created stories of how the heroes deal with that. Siege saw the end of Osborn's reign, etc. In each case, it's been about moving things forward. Yes, things often change back to more familiar settings because, hey, this is comics! But where DC's New 52 was all about wiping away continuity to go backwards and re-examine the characters' beginnings (for something like the third time in my lifetime), Marvel was about providing a launching pad for moving forward that doesn't need any rejiggering of continuities or erasing of anything that came before.

Comic Observations: Marvel vs. DC - Round One: The New 52

For a couple years now, I've basically been reading almost all of the output from the big two comic publishers, and after reading hundreds of comics, it's become clear to me which one is enjoying the greater renaissance, and which one seems to be rudderless.

Let's start out by looking at DC Comics.

Ad for the New 52

Back in 2011, DC was tying up their latest line-wide event Flashpoint. The story involved the Flash experiencing an alternate timeline, and then returning to a whole new DC Universe, merging elements from the classic DCU, the Wildstorm Universe and the Vertigo Universe into one, with a whole new timeline.

As a result, all DC books were cancelled and 52 new books were launched (hence the name "The New 52"). Some, like Action Comics, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc, would be relaunches of established titles. Some would be new titles, such as Mr. Terrific, Voodoo, I, Vampire and Men of War. All would take place in a new DCU with a different continuity, resulting in changes to characters' histories and appearances. Superman's origin was now radically different, with Action Comics initially dealing with his early days, and Superman dealing with his present day stories.

The problems were evident early on. First off, no one really knew what parts of which character's histories counted anymore or what differences there were between the old continuity and the new. Were Ma and Pa Kent dead or alive? Had there been a Wally West who was a sidekick to Barry Allen's Flash? Batman and Green Lantern's continuities (DC's biggest sellers at the time) were largely untouched, but that just made their stories more confusing. For instance, Barbara Gordon, who had spent over a decade in a wheelchair as the first major disabled superhero, was now back to being Batgirl, but had been paralyzed. We didn't know how she healed, if she spent any time in the super-hacker Oracle persona, if any of the Birds of Prey stuff counted, etc. Somehow, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne had all been Batman's partner within five years. Were they all Robin? All at the same time or one after another? No one knew. And as of this writing, we still don't know the answers to many questions, though some have been answered.