grrgoyl | Entries tagged with christian bale

As promised, Ryan and I went out last night. I've noticed that my friends can be classified in one of two ways: those that agree with all sincerity and eagerness that getting together would be a great idea, and those who actually follow through and make it happen. Ryan falls among the latter, and I told him how much I appreciated it, because the first type is very annoying to me.

We went to see The Prestige, only because Saw III isn't out until this coming weekend and we couldn't wait that long to see each other again. But rest assured, we plan to see Saw as well. Oh yes, there will be sequels.

Before I get into the movie itself, a word on the audience. When we first arrived the place was empty, as I expected it to be on a Tuesday night. But then it began filling up with high school kids. The first couple of rowdy groups didn't faze me, but then more started appearing. I said to Ryan, "Don't these kids have school tomorrow?" He answered, "Fall break." What the....? Didn't they just start in September? Evidently nowadays kids go back to school in August. Imagine -- 2 whole months of school without a single break. The poor dears must be exhausted. Note: That there is good New England sarcasm. Why, back in MY day we went straight through, September to June, with a week off for Christmas and we considered ourselves lucky. No wonder kids are so damn lazy these days.

Anyhoo, the movie. I'll cut even though I really don't have much deep to say, and certainly no spoilers (well, there might be a few. So just to be safe).

( ::The Prestige:: )

By the end I was befuddled something awful. My confusion wasn't helped in the slightest by the way director Christopher Nolan plays with timelines, sometimes showing us the result of an action before the action itself; this device served him well in Memento, and he'll always have a soft spot in my heart because of that film, but here it just seemed to be covering up potential flaws in logic and leaves you with the feeling that if you don't get it, it's only because you couldn't piece together the actual chronology fast enough. Or perhaps this storytelling method was merely an illustration of the world of magicians, who depend so heavily on the art of misdirection. One thing I managed to take away is that those magicians are a sneaky lot and should not be trusted any further than one can throw them.

Jackman and Bale give very strong performances, and perhaps with sufficient extras on the DVD I could be convinced to buy it. 3.5 out of 5, since I suspect my problems with the story are all my fault rather than the movie's.

In addition, some thoughts on Lost (Season Two), ( ::again cut in case anyone cares enough:: )

Okay, I'm done.

Current Mood: hungry

A few months ago at one of Chris and Liana's parties, Chris and I drunkenly entered into an agreement to start a sort of movie exchange program ("drunkenly" obviously referring to Chris, not I). It seemed like a good idea at the time, before realizing what a disparate taste in movies we have. Apparently a mutual admiration for the Harry Potter franchise does not necessarily a good movie-watching match make.

The first movie he thrust upon me that very night was Hidalgo, which I had less than no desire to see. He owns this movie because he has a fetish for watching men on horseback (Wait, "fetish" sounds too sexual. Maybe I should say "soft spot"). I put it off for as long as I could, then with a resigned sigh forced Tery to sit through it with me one Sunday afternoon when we had absolutely nothing else to do together. I thought perhaps Viggo Mortensen would make it bearable, not that I have any particular thing for Viggo Mortensen. I discovered Viggo suffers from Orlando Bloom syndrome: I have little interest in him when he's not wearing an LOTR wig. I stayed awake only slightly longer than Tery. It was a disaster. I returned it to Chris via Tery so I wouldn't be forced to discuss my opinion face to face. I'm such a coward.

By his request only, I sent him Donnie Darko which he liked/was intrigued by enough to watch twice. Tery brought A Life Less Ordinary to a sleepover and he claimed to like this as well. She's also very keen to show him Shaun of the Dead, but my copy is Region 2, being the purist snob that I am.

She came home one day with his next selections: Reign of Fire and The Secret of NIMH. The first was for Tery, the second for me. Based on this, I doubt Chris has ever even talked to Tery about her tastes (or perhaps did it drunkenly and doesn't remember. Chris does an alarming number of things drunkenly). Expecting her to watch and enjoy a movie like Reign of Fire is tantamount to asking me to sit through a 6-hour frame-by-frame analysis of the Zapruder film; i.e., not in this lifetime, baby.

Because I'm so anxious to avoid having it be one-sided ("I'd like you to watch these movies that I recommend. However, I have no interest in watching the movies that you recommend") I decided to take one for the team. I chose this week while Tery is gone and after watching V for Vendetta for the fourth time to sneak them both in. Secret of NIMH I felt rather ambivalent about...mildly interesting, kind of slow in comparison to modern animated movies, and blessedly less than 90 minutes long. Done.

Last night I did Reign of Fire. I believe watching this movie has earned me a secure position of sainthood. See, I HATE Matthew McConaughey. HATE. Not like Richard Gere and Kevin Costner, who I think are terrible actors but generally tolerable as human beings. I have no problems with Matthew's acting abilities (primarily because I try to avoid watching movies that he's in). My hatred is purely personal. I hate his accent. I hate his cocky swagger. I hate how the rest of the planet was mass-hypnotized into voting him last year's sexiest man. First and foremost, I hate his massive, oversized cranium. Seriously. His head is entirely too large for the rest of his body, as this picture illustrates.

It's got its own weather system!

See how Christian Bale, with his more average-sized, proportional head, quakes in fear of Matthew's bloated skull, as any normal person would. No, this wasn't the slightest bit digitally altered. (and 50 points if you can guess the quote I put in the alt roll-over tag) Shaving it for the movie was a big mistake, as it only served to accentuate the enormous difference between his noggin and those of mere mortals. This was probably necessary, however, to give Matthew the needed edge to play the hard-as-nails Army commander; the minute the man starts growing hair, he becomes a spongey-headed, dandelion-shaped hippie that no one in their right minds would follow into battle against a dragon.

Yes indeedy, I hate me some Matthew. But I love Christian and hoped this would be sufficient to counteract the McConaughey vitriol. This might have been possible had the rest of the movie made even the slightest bit of sense.

( ::cut because I only talk in-depth about movies I passionately love or those I violently hate:: )

I was so convinced this movie was a steaming pile of offal I couldn't resist going to Amazon to see all the negative reviews. To my astonishment and confusion, people were giving it 4 and 5 stars (it overall received 3 out of 5, so some reviewers had taste). I can only assume these are the brainwashed souls that consider McConaughey's "Sexiest Man Alive" title to be fully justified. This seemed supported by one reviewer who expressed disgust at being misled into believing McConaughey had a starring role (a reasonable assumption to make when looking at the DVD cover, based on the relative sizes of the two actors' heads. But, I'm not convinced this discrepancy is entirely the fault of the marketing department):

"Matthew McConaughey is not the star of this movie, it's Christian Bale (two roles of which were as a psychokiller in the universally panned American Psycho, and as a JFK Jr. clone in the fairly awful re-make of Shaft. THAT's star power, baby! The new Batman will be trying to live down this fiasco as well)."

Yes, Bale is such an insufferable hack compared to the thespian genius of McConaughey. I'm ashamed to belong to the same species as these people.

Christian Bale + passably believable dragon effects - a plot without a shred of logic -------------- Matthew McConaughey = 1 out of 5

Tery owes me BIG time for watching this in her place. I think watching V with me will cover the tab nicely.

Current Mood: appalled

I'm not a big fan of the Batman franchise. The first two were good. The second two I have little to no memory of, so they must have sucked. But hope springs eternal, and this one had a lot going for it (for instance just off the top of my head, Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan).

More than just those two, it turned out. By 30 minutes into the film I was appropriately dazzled by the all-star cast. I actually said out loud, "Jesus Christ!" despite being alone. Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Rutger Hauer, Morgan Freeman, Tom Wilkinson, Linus Roache (both of whom were in Priest), and last but far from least, Cillian Murphy. My heart stopped when he appeared on screen, then started beating again very, very fast. It was difficult at first to overcome the waves of lust crashing through me enough to identify him. I mean, look at him:

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

It is simply not fair that a man should be so beautiful.

It also amused me that, with the exception of Morgan, almost the entire cast was made up of UK actors affecting American accents with varying degrees of success (Cillian and Christian were the best. Tom Wilkinson, not so much). Oh yes, and Katie Holmes. I can't stand Katie Holmes, mostly because of her thing with Tom Cruise, whether that's justified or not. Fortunately the rest of this outstanding cast far overbalanced her, or she could have ruined it for me. I also felt absolutely no chemistry between her and Bale at all (kind of the same I feel about her and Tom Cruise).

Amusingly, the biggest scuttlebutt over on Imdb.com is whether or not Christian Bale has a "strong enough jawline" to be Batman. This very thought crossed my mind more than once throughout the movie. Michael Keaton undeniably has a better look for the mask, but I think Bale more than makes up in intensity what he lacks in facial structure. He was an angry Dark Knight. Keaton was just "too cool for school." It was also nice to see Christian with a regular body shape again (after The Machinist).

But enough about the cast. Onto the film itself. From the opening shots I felt that this was what Batman was meant to be. The only other chapter that used this more suitable monochromatic palette was probably Batman Returns. I realize the earlier Batman comics were colorful and bright, but I much prefer the dark, grim graphic novels of the past 10 years. I perked up a second time when they mentioned Arkham Asylum; Dave McKean's bleak masterpiece by the same name is the only book I own. Making Arkham a tangential plot point was a shame though. For being an "origin" story, I felt they did nothing to touch on the most interesting aspect of Batman's character -- the thin line he himself walks between insanity and rationality, how he and the "theatrical" sociopaths he fights against are two sides of the same coin. Yes, his parents were murdered right in front of him as a child, but I really didn't see a believable transition from there to the splintered, tormented man Bruce Wayne becomes. Again, this was covered best in Returns in his relationship with Catwoman.

This didn't detract one bit from my enjoyment though. I loved watching the elements of the Bat persona coming together. From the ninja training to assembling his costume, it was all very well done (although it seemed to be a tiny bit of a cheat that all his gadgets were ready-made and just sitting in a forgotten basement). The scene when he finally faces down his fear of bats gave me CHILLS (helped a lot by the score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard). I also can't get enough of shots of him perched against a building with his cape flapping iconically in the breeze. And the new Batmobile made the original look like a Ford Focus in comparison.

I loved this movie all the way through, loved it passionately, until it literally and figuratively became a train wreck. After all the buildup, I really didn't think it was a fitting end for Kaiser Nazgul (or whatever the hell his name was). And after the truly creepy and frightening Scarecrow effects seen earlier, the prospect of dousing the entire city with psychotropic toxins held such enormous CGI promise, but essentially went nowhere. Most disappointingly of all, the only really interesting character in the whole movie, Dr. Crane/Scarecrow (Cillian), gets zero development, zero depth, and is dispatched almost as an afterthought. (Of course, my fascination with him might have only been hormones talking, but still. WTF???) Yes, they briefly allude to him getting away, but it seemed at the end they were much more focused on paving the way for a certain special other villain in the next movie. A cool conceit, but extremely unfair.

As a sign of how quickly I lost interest at the end, Tery had gotten home by then and was talking over the final scene between Christian and Katie, and I didn't even bother to rewind. Or perhaps this is because I will most likely be buying it. 3.5 out of 5

Current Music: Of course this land is dangerous//all of the animals//capably murder us

Based on my good friend Gerry's recommendation (partly) and the description at Netflix, I rented The Machinist.

( ::and here's what I thought:: )

Eh. A 2.5 out of 5, just because I've seen it all before.

Tery's on a crusade against Ellen Degeneres. She says that every time she sees her talk show, she's hanging all over men, dancing with them, kissing them, commenting on their "hotness," etc. The breaking point came when she saw a commercial that was literally a montage of Ellen and her men. She feels strongly that Ellen sold out, and I tend to agree. She got me worked up enough to write ( a letter to Ellen via her website. )

(I didn't add Tery's suggestion for a P.S.: Sleep with us!)

A little harsh? We don't think so. Especially when Tery pointed out how much it would have meant to her as a young lesbian in her formative years to have such a prominent role model as Ellen first promised to be, and how confusing to then see that role model appearing to "bat for the other team." For her to make herself palatable to midwestern housewives, she's whitewashed over and ultimately erased her lesbianism, leaving behind the gay community that supported her so fiercely when she first came out. Like I said in the letter, we aren't asking her to French kiss women weekly on her talk show. But a little less acting like a total breeder (or "Uncle Tom" which was Tery's name for her) would be a nice start.

This topic was raised at the hospital, where unfortunately Kay (the makeover queen of insensitivity) felt the need to get involved. She saw no problem with Ellen kissing men all the time. I'm proud of Tery for completely smacking her down in her tracks, saying that she would never understand until she'd walked a mile in Tery and Tabby's shoes. Which is true. I would draw some heterosexual comparisons but I feel I've made my point. To further illustrate her cluelessness, she absolutely doesn't believe Jodie Foster is gay (but she so totally is).

Finally, I donated to the Red Cross today for the Katrina relief fund, only $20, but that's really all I can spare this month. So all those motherfuckers blaming the disaster on homosexuals, godless liberals and worst of all, the victims themselves, can suck my (figurative) dick and go straight to hell. (I'm looking at YOU, Rush Limbaugh, you big fat idiot.) Shame on all of them.

I also have high hopes that this might be the wake-up call Bush supporters needed to return to the side of Reason and Sanity. If one good thing comes of this horrible tragedy, please god, let it be this. See