The ABCs of Halloween II

[Warning: major spoilers ahead!]

 A is for art direction

 

As in all of Rob Zombie’s films, Halloween II showcases some great art direction. The Halloween costume party attended by Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her friends, the moonlit fields, even the blood-soaked bathroom looks cool. That’s the first positive thing I’m going to say about Halloween II. It’s also pretty much the last.

 

B is for Boogeymen

 

Michael Myers is supposed to be a boogeyman; every time Rob Zombie shows him as a boy (one who misses his mommy) or gives us look inside his psyche, he becomes more humanized and less frightening. How scary can your boogeyman be when you begin the film with him playing with a fricken toy horse?

 

C is for canine

 

At one point in the film Michael kills and eats a dog – raw, of course! – which is Zombie’s not-so subtle way of letting us know just what a bloody-thirsty savage he is. Or maybe it’s just that his favourite dish is hobo sushi…

 

D is for dialogue

 

(And for dreadful.) The worst part of any Rob Zombie film is the dialogue, and Halloween II doesn’t challenge the status quo. When characters aren’t stating the obvious (man clearly pinned in car wreck: “I’m trapped!”), they’re screaming profanity at each other like drunk truckers (my apologies to truckers), or cutting loose little gems like this line, courtesy Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell): “Let me make this clear: Michael Myers is dead! D-E-A-D!”

 

E is for epic

 

Rob Zombie’s Halloween II is an epic…

 

F is for fail

 

… fail, that is.

 

G is for girls

 

The depiction of girls in the film is amazingly clueless. According to Zombie, they love bands that were popular when he was growing up, like Black Flag, Alice Cooper, Motorhead and MC5; they rebel by getting tattoos of butterflies on their lower backs; for Halloween they dress like characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and they decorate their rooms by spraying a pentagram and “666” on their doors.   

 

H is for hobo hoodie

 

After disappearing from the coroner’s van, Michael hides out for year. He puts on a hoodie and looks like the world’s gnarliest squeegee kid. At least the dog-eating scene explains what he ate while on the run, so no one can accuse the film of lacking in, like, logic.

 

I is for ignite

 

Michael singlehanded flips a car into the ditch. The vehicle rolls once, then starts burning for some reason. This happens so we can see Michael carrying Laurie away from the wreck as a fire rages behind him, because being back-lit by flames makes things more profound (just ask Steven Seagal). What was I saying about cliches?

 

J is for John Carpenter

 

His original Halloween from 1978 is a masterpiece of atmosphere, suspense, sound design and direction. Sometimes I wonder if Rob Zombie ever watched that film.

 

K is for “Knights in White Satin”

 

Apparently there’s a TV station in Haddonfield that plays the Moody Blues performing “Knights in White Satin” on a loop, and everyone in town watches it. At least that explains why someone would want to go on a killing spree.

 

L is for “Lord of the Rings”

 

Michael’s mother, Deborah (Sherri Moon Zombie), appears in hallucinations/dreams dressed in a white gown, standing beside a white steed, like she’s waiting for some hobbits to join her at the Haddonfield renaissance fair.

 

M is for Mirror

 

Perhaps the number one overdone cliché in horror movies happens when someone looks in a bathroom mirror, opens the mirror door, and when he/she closes it, the killer/monster/ghost is suddenly seen in the reflection. Zombie does that here. Tsk, tsk, tsk…

 

N is for Norman Bates

 

Blame the original stab-happy, dead mother-obsessed killer for making mommy complexes part of the slasher formula. Zombie beats the concept to death by having Michael’s mom appear constantly in the film to drive his every move. Since Zombie’s married to Sheri Moon, it’s also plausible that he’d be kicked onto his big ol’ scary couch at nights if he didn’t feature her in the movie at least once every five minutes.

 

O is for overcooked

Most of the performances in Halloween are overcooked. Although Danielle Harris dials it down appropriately as the sheriff’s daughter, Annie. Even the mostly decent Brad Dourif, as her dad, is guilty of some hand-clenching emoting. And then there’s Tayor-Compton, who flies into screeching histrionics at the drop of a hat, and McDowell, who is downright embarrassing as a self-serving media whore and waaay over-the-top jerk.

 

P is for psychic connection

 

Because they’re siblings, Laurie and Michael have a psychic connection. The original Halloween series didn’t get this desperate until the fifth film.

 

Q is for Quentin Tarantino

 

Zombie wants to be Tarantino so badly, it’s tragic. From the “hip” pop-culture dialogue about nothing (Dourif’s character wonders if the “Marvin” in the saying “Starvin’ Marvin” was named after Lee Marvin), to the casting of fallen-off-the-radar actors (this time around we get Margot Kidder as Laurie’s shrink and Howard Hesseman as a hippie coffee shop owner), to the use of snippets of dialogue in between vintage songs on the soundtrack. Imitation is the sincerest form of heresy.

 

R is for random rednecks

 

In a completely unnecessary scene, a truck full of rednecks accosts Michael while he’s walking through a field. After they give him a beating, he gets right back up and bludgeons them to death. What does this add to the story? Why nothing, nothing at all.

 

S is for shack

 

The climax of the film takes place in dilapidated shack, where Michael has taken Laurie. Revealed to be brother and sister, they’re suffering the same delusion that their mother is there – as well as young Michael, who is holding Laurie to a chair. The cops surround the place, Loomis arrives, and the finale turns into the silliest hostage situation imaginable.

 

T is for timeline

Exactly at what point, between Michael getting institutionalized and her committing suicide, did Deborah Myers give birth to Laurie? I’d try to figure out the timeline but that would mean watching Zombie’s first Halloween movie.

 

U is for UHF

 

Seeing Weird Al in the movie makes me want to watch UHF again. It’s a classic. In fact, I bet Michael Myers would’ve turned out a lot differently if he would have had the chance to drink from the fire hose. And you can buy it new on DVD for less than the price of a movie ticket to see Halloween II. The choice is yours.

 

V is for Vespa

 

A scooter is the only way Michael, a classic slasher slow-walker, could arrive at the various locations in Haddonfield when he does. We see characters run and run, yet somehow Michael appears right behind them if they stop for few moments. Or maybe Michael rips around on a Segway when no one’s looking?

 

W is Weinstein

It amazes me that the studio responsible for Halloween II, The Weinstein Company, would look at the finished film and say, “Yup, let’s release this.” Then again, the company is on the verge of bankruptcy, so perhaps it has something to do with its artistic sensibilities.

 

X is for XXX sensibilities

 

Is Rob Zombie capable of making a film without a strip club or a stripper in it? Nope. In Halloween II Michael goes to the strip bar his mom used to work at and kills everyone there. The scene does nothing to advance the plot. It does, however, remind you that you could be somewhere else more fun.

 

Y is for Yankovic

 

As I already mentioned, Weird Al Yankovic appears in the movie, as himself on a talk show. Loomis addresses him as “Mr. Weird” and it is the best moment in the entire movie.

 

Z is, of course, for Zombie

 

Man, you’ve written some cool tunes, and you’re capable of some eye-catching visuals, but more and more I feel like I’m watching a modern day Ed Wood with a budget.

-Dave Alexander

These Monsters Don't Muck Around

“Cryptozoology,” according to Dictionary.com: “The study of evidence tending to substantiate the existence of, or the search for, creatures whose reported existence is unproved, as the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness monster.” We’re completely fascinated by tales of creatures unknown to science, which is why you’ll see news stories of mysterious beasts show up regularly on CNN – usually accompanied by a blurry photograph or very indeterminate video footage.

The latest is the “Muck Monster” of the Lake Worth Lagoon in south Florida (story here). This current caught-on-tape creature consists of a strange wake in the water, captured on camera by a couple of lagoonkeepers (yes, apparently that’s a word). There’s not much to it, but then again, it doesn’t take much to fire up the imagination when it comes to “cryptids.” All you really have to do is give them a name to entrench them in the public consciousness (at least until the next one comes around).

Not surprisingly, cryptids have been the subject of many a B-horror movie, most of them pretty friggin’ terrible. However, there are a few titles worth mentioning, so I decided to list my five faves. Note, I kept the list to entirely fictional creatures, like the sasquatch, and didn’t include giant version of animals that already exist, so nothing with giant sharks, snakes, hogs or bugs. And while I was tempted to add The Life Aquatic, as Team Zissou is searching for the “Jaguar Shark,” I stuck to films that focus on the critter in question. OK, no that I’ve laid that out, here it is, in alphabetical order: Five Essential Cryptozoo Movies.

 

1. Incident at Loch Ness (2004)

Writer/director Zak Penn, who’s written a bunch of comedies and superhero movies, makes a brilliant move in casting legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog (as himself!) in the lead role. The movie has Penn (also playing himself) making a documentary about Herzog making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. The whole thing begins quite seriously and slowly reveals itself as a comedy as Herzog and Penn become increasingly at odds with each other. Despite gags such as the bikini model/sonar operator, the film manages to become quite tense and downright scary when something actually shows up in the murky waters. The best part of Incident at Loch Ness, though, is that it plays perfectly on Herzog’s reputation as a dead serious, nature-obsessed filmmaker.

 

2. The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

This no-budget drive-in hit was a huge influence on the Blair Witch Project and sparked the Bigfoot craze of the ‘70s. Directed by Charles B. Pierce, it’s done as a docu-drama, which lends it that faux-reality look, and seeing the creature walk through the Arkansas swamps is downright terrifying (and recalls the famous Patterson-Gimlin film). Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the movie’s ragged, low-budget verité style really works in its favour, especially when the beast attacks. Based on supposedly true events, most of the cast members are real people playing themselves. Making it even weirder is the film’s folky theme, sung by Pierce himself, which you really, really need to listen to, here. Few films are this ludicrous yet genuinely scary. “Hey Travis Crabtree, do you see what I see?” Yes, I do: the trouser-crapping sight of a hairy beast over there in the trees.

 

3. The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

Richard Gere fans don’t generally want to watch a horror film, and horror fans aren’t usually interested in Richard Gere; not to mention, this film’s about West Virginia’s Mothman, so no wonder it didn’t exactly become a hit. Regardless, it’s one of the most chilling modern genre movies of the past decade because director Mark Pellington has a gift for crafting terrifying atmosphere and disturbing, original sequences. Gere plays a widowed reporter who ends up in Point Pleasant, West Virginia to investigate the mysterious title creature that has been spooking the locals but good. But this ain’t a monster movie – instead it’s a full-on mind-f**k as Gere’s character discovers a connection to the sightings and his wife, the beings (whatever they are) decide to mess with him, and he discovers a series of patterns that seemingly predict a future catastrophe. The ending kinda goes Hollywood-lame, but the build-up contains plenty of stuff to give you nightmares, particularly the creepy mythology stuff in the story (based on John A. Keel’s book of the same name). A no, it doesn’t end with Gere building a giant bug zapper.

 

4. Piranha Part 2: The Spawning (1981)

Although it’s not exactly in the vein of more traditional cryptids, such as Nessie or Bigfoot, nevertheless, this first feature by James Cameron fits the criteria. And it deserves a spot for its sheer audaciousness. A total Jaws rip-off, it has a school of piranhas that not only attack scuba divers having sex… underwater… in a sunken boat, they have wings caused by government experimentation, and they use them to fly right on to land to chow down on humans. Even better: Lance Henriksen play the Roy Scheider cop character. The pièce de résistance, however, sees one of the resilient critters fly out of a corpse, that’s been sitting in the morgue for a day, to attack an attendant before flying away through a window. It has all the blood, boobs and broken logic of a classic B-monster movie of the time, but it’s pretty well made, and more fun than most of the Jaws sequels. Plus, these things would eat the Muck Monster for a snack.

 

5. Yeti: The Giant of the 20^th Century (1977)

This Italian-Canadian co-production was shot in Toronto and features a Yeti running around downtown T.O. terrorizing its citizens (and you thought the garbage strike was a problem). Obscure, yet worth tracking down (try here), it riffs on King Kong, as a “humane expedition up to Northern Canada” results in the capture of the massive hairy monster-man, who floated to the coast of Newfoundland after being trapped in a iceberg. Thawed out with a flamethrower, it’s trapped in a big plastic box, brought to the city and put on display. Of course these sorts of things are never a good idea, and before you can even properly marvel at the yeti, which looks like James Brolin in a homemade Chewbacca costume, an urban rampage is afoot – a very big foot, so to speak. And yes, as promised by the movie poster (I grabbed the image from here), Toronto’s city hall is included in the scenery. Canadian flags fly in the background, a bizarre Lassie-type subplot unfolds and at one point the Yeti takes such a shine to a human girl that his nipple gets hard (I kid you not). This one probably should’ve been called the Greatest Movie of the 20^th Century.

-Dave Alexander

War is Swell

There are many things to like about Inglourious Basterds, but the best thing about it is that it’s not Death Proof. Quentin Tarantino seems to have learned a vital lesson from his half of Grindhouse (the double bill experiment that tanked hard at the box office, earning about $25 million worldwide): If you’re going to have a lot of talking heads in your movie, they need to say something interesting. Deathproof is an hour-and-a-half of a few awesome car chase/wreck sequences and whole lot of bad performances and lifeless, often juvenile, dialogue. Inglourious Basterds is two-and-a-half hours of mostly sharp dialogue and largely captivating performances. Mostly. And largely.

The first thing that needs to be made clear, though, is that it’s not the film you think it is. The actual Basterds play a secondary role in the movie – the story is not really about them, and we don’t learn much about the supposedly legendary military unit. Secondly, this isn’t an action movie, so if you’re looking for combat and protracted gunfights, you’re out of luck. Tarantino has described it as being as much spaghetti western as war movie, and, yeah, it’s plenty pulpy, yet there’s also a lot of artistry on display that elevates Basterds above the kind of violent Looney Tunes romp depicted in the trailers (“I want my scalps!”).

Of course, the main character – who isn’t really the main character, but more on that later – yelling about Nazi scalps in the trailer is Brad Pitt (a.k.a. insurance taken out against having another flop like Grindhouse). As the boisterous leader of the Basterds, his performance has split critics, who think he’s either brilliant or overbearing. I’d say he’s a bit of both. While it’s fun to watch Pitt spew marble-mouthed tough guy monologues all over the screen for a while, the shtick wears thin, especially because his Lt. Aldo Raine doesn’t have a lot of dimension and the movie isn’t that interested in his struggle to, uh, collect scalps.

Basterd’s main plotline surrounds a young Jewish woman, Shosanna (alluring French actress Mélanie Laurent), who was the only one of her family to escape Nazi bullets and now runs a movie theatre in occupied France under a new identity. When a German soldier-turned-propaganda-film-star takes a shine to her, it leads to a chance encounter with her family’s murderer and a plan for revenge that involves a special screening at her cinema – a plot that involves using the very medium of film itself to take out the S.S. – how meta!

At the same time, the Basterds have been on a Nazi killing spree (very little of which we actually see) that’s enraged Hitler himself, and they hatch their own plan to wreak havoc at the screening. Hostel/Cabin Fever director Eli Roth plays one of the soldiers, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (a.k.a. “The Jew-Bear”) who crushes Nazi skulls with a baseball bat, while The Office’s B.J. Novak plays Pfc. Smithson Utivich, but neither get enough screen time to develop much beyond set dressing.

At the centre of the film is actually villain Col. Hans Landa, the aforementioned Nazi murderer. German actor Christoph Waltz deserves a Best Actor nomination for his elegantly mannered but truly evil character, and it’s a credit to Tarantino that he lets him steal the show. The director tends to like his movies long these days (i.e. the two-part Kill Bill) and his “director’s cut” of Basterds is apparently considerably lengthier. You gotta wonder if the men of the Basterds lost screen time to Waltz once the dailies came in because the guy owns this film. (It also warrants mentioning that actor Denis Menochet, as French farmer Perrier LaPadite, gives a really intense, hearty performance, as well, even if it is restricted to the opening scene.) Tarantino tends to self-indulge in his own dialogue, homages and in-jokes, which happens here (you’ll see shots and character names cribbed from other films), but, unlike in Death Proof, several overlong scenes are saved by the actors and the camerawork.

The cinematography is also Oscar-worthy in Inglourious Basterds. Director of Photography Robert Richardson (Kill Bill, The Aviator and a bunch of Oliver Stone movies) – a multiple Oscar-winner – gives the movie a lush, classy look that works as a visual counterpoint to all that pulp. The lush reds of the Nazi banners, the gorgeous greens of the French countryside and a lot of elegant browns make things really pop, creating a world that, in Tarantino-style, has its own pulse.

The filmmaker attracts a lot of talent and it really takes his work to the next level, glossing over a few of the shortcomings (which would explain why working stripped-down for Deathproof may have contributed to it being a dud). When you’re given such high quality eye candy, it’s easy to forget that Basterds meanders sometimes (for example, there’s a scene with Mike Myers in it as a British soldier that really doesn’t do much).

But, even if Tarantino does lose the plot occasionally, it’s nice to see a film – particularly a war film – that says “screw the rules” and does something different (the tagline "Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France" makes that clear) without losing your interest. This movie refuses to march in a straight line, which means historical fact isn’t worth a broken bayonet here and there are always surprises in store. Part thriller, part comedy, part war movie, part character study, part wish fulfillment against Hitler’s monstrous deeds and part treatise on cinema itself, Inglourious Basterds is total Tarantino.

And in a good way this time.

 

-Dave Alexander

Before Aliens, Terminators and DiCaprios...

James Cameron is so cutting edge, I’ll bet the only reason he isn't normally clean-shaven is that they haven’t yet invented a razor with an advanced enough shaving system that he’ll accept – something like a Mach Infinity with 27 GPS-equipped, diamond-tipped titanium blades. That’s how much he loves new technology. Not surprisingly, his long-awaited narrative feature follow up to the 1997 super-mega-Mach-awesome-box-office-blockbuster Titanic is set to “revolutionize” cinema, using new technology for a 3-D Imax experience so mindblowing, you’ll need to wrap your skull in duct tape and rubber bands before watching it – so you aren’t killed by it awesomeness.

Called Avatar, it’s the story of an exotic yet very dangerous planet (that has features on land that look a lot like plants and creatures in the oceans), where intruding humans are at odds with the ten-foot-tall blue alien species that lives there. When scientists implant a war veteran’s consciousness into an alien body so he can infiltrate the natives, he discovers a place that makes him rethink everything he knows, which pits him against some of his own kind. The first act was screened at the San Diego Comic-Con (not on a proper Imax screen, of course) and the verdict is: visually pretty awesome, narrative-wise, more than a little New Age-y.

Based on those 20-some minutes of footage, Avatar upholds some well-known Cameron-isms, such as futuristic technology (Aliens 2, The Terminator movies, The Abyss), a military presence (Terminator, Aliens), aliens (Aliens, The Abyss), the oceans (Piranha 2: The Spawning, The Abyss, Titanic, his deep sea documentaries) and even that New Age spiritualism, which is all over the end of The Abyss. From an auteur standpoint, the filmmaker has definitely shown a persistence of vision with his films (except for perhaps True Lies; although it’s been a while since I’ve seen, it, I’m pretty sure Schwarzenegger doesn’t play a laser-guided mermaid hippie in it or anything).

When I was reading up on Avatar, I went through Cameron’s filmography on the IMDB and noticed his very first directorial credit, Xenogenesis. A student film he co-directed with writer Randall Frakes in 1978, it’s only twelve minutes-long. The synopsis on the IMDB is as follows:

 

A woman and an engineered man are sent in a gigantic sentient starship to search space for a place to start a new life cycle. Raj decides to take a look around the ship. He comes across a gigantic robotic cleaner. Combat ensues.

 

Certainly sounded like something James Cameron would make, so I searched for it on YouTube, and sure enough, it’s there in two segments: part 1 and part 2. The synopsis above says it all plot-wise, although it would be more correct to say, “Raj, who looks like he ran away from a stage production of Logan’s Run, decides to take a look around the ship, which is possibly an abandoned hallway in the Death Star.”

I mock, but for a student film from 1978, there’s a lot to admire, notably the stop-motion animated robot fight, in which the “cleaner robot” shoots lasers at, and locks arms with a crab-like, robotic vehicle, controlled by a female pilot. Sure, the laser blast effects are as bad as the hair and the costumes, the acting is a bit better (co-star William Wisher Jr. would go on to have writing credits on a number of Cameron films), but it’s clear Cameron was particularly fascinated by futuristic tech from the get-go, and here he succeeds. The struggle between the crab-bot and the cleaner-bot is the centerpiece of the film and the most accomplished bit of it, (robotic) hands-down.

It’s fascinating to see how this rookie effort fits into Cameron’s body of work. For example, the crab-bot fight was clearly the inspiration for the climax of Aliens during which Ripley fights the Queen Alien using the power loader. Both movie machines are operated in roughly the same way, and both are equipped with a cutting torch (machines with arms operated by humans are also in The Abyss and Titanic). Not to mention, you’ve got a strong female hero kicking ass in both films.

Machinery run amuck is a popular sci-fi theme, and you can see how the filmmaker might extrapolate this narrative into The Terminator, in which articficial intelligence essentially is cleaning humanity off the face of the earth. There are shots in Xenogenesis featuing the cleaner-bot’s lasers and menacing tank treads that strongly recall the war machines in the Terminator flashback sequences.

Cameron has been known for going over time and budget to complete his films; Xenogenesis ends very abruptly and has an intro made up of drawings and voiceover narration, suggesting he poured all he had into those robo battles. The opening voiceover and stills depict a cyborg guy with a metal skeleton, right out of Terminator, and lays down a sci-fi Adam and Eve scenario in which Xenogenesis is hoped to be a new sort of paradise to start over. It’s not too far off from what’s going on in Avatar.

And finally, although the set seems kinda modeled on the Death Star, it also has shades of those long, flat black-coloured hallways seen in Aliens. It has to be said though, that Cameron’s student film has absolutely no genetically-modified flying piranhas, à la Piranha 2: The Spawning. Boooo!

Despite this shameful omission, clearly Xenogenesis worked pretty friggin well as a calling card – one with a few ideas Cameron hung on to.

 

-Dave Alexander

Alienation at its Best

There are a lot of crummy jobs at Comic-Con – bathroom custodian, nerd-ogled booth babe, security detail for Twilight cast members, furry wrangler, etc. – but the worst one of this past year had to be standing around in full riot gear under the sweltering San Diego sun to promote District 9. During most of the day, there were a couple “troops” “stationed” outside a huge MNU military vehicle painted white with the now-familiar no aliens symbol on it – you know, the one featuring an E.T. with a red line though it that’s on seemingly every bus stop. Clad in black, those sweaty faux soldiers must’ve been paid handsomely to endure those conditions. Sony has pumped a lot of money into promoting the film, and you gotta wonder if there’s something more to the hype.

Turns out, the answer is yes, as District 9 is not just one of the best films of the year, it’s also one of the best sci-fi films of the past decade. More on that shortly, but first some background.

Director Neill Blomkamp, originally from Johannesburg, was working in Vancouver, doing music videos, T.V. commercials (including this well-known one for Nike) and making a name for himself as a CGI artist. He also made a short called Alive in Joberg, which was shot in the slums of Johannesburg, in the style of a documentary piece, about aliens who had come to Earth and were forced to live in ghettoes, where they were persecuted. The metaphor for apartheid was clear.

The film got him noticed by Peter Jackson, who was looking for someone to direct the Halo video game adaptation that he was producing. Blomkamp moved to New Zealand to mentor under Jackson and work on the film, making some Halo shorts for Microsoft in the process. But, after a period of intensive pre-production, the project – a collaboration between Universal, Fox and Microsoft – fell apart. Blomkamp and Jackson moved on. As they explained at the Comic-Con press conference, Jackson still wanted to produce a feature for the young director, so he did. Blomkamp went to South Africa and shot District 9 (with some interiors shot in New Zealand) while Jackson shot his upcoming feature The Lovely Bones.

OK, so back to the film itself. It’s co-written by Blomkamp and one Terri Tatchell, and stars Sharlto Copely (who’s also in Alive on Joberg) as Wikus Van De Merwe, a not-so-bright but enthusiastic management type tasked with clearing out District 9. Also known as “D-9,” the fenced-in ghetto is populated by insect-like aliens (and some opportunistic Nigerian gangsters). The film begins as a mockumentary and explains that the aliens came to Earth 30 years earlier and parked their ship over Johannesburg. When the military stormed the ship, they found that the creatures’ leaders had died and the remaining drones were starving to death Although initially embraced by humanity, they eventually wore out their welcome and were placed in the D-9 shantytown and their care was contracted out to MNU, a weapons manufacturer mainly interested in trying to make their powerful DNA-activated weaponry useful to mankind. MNU stooge Wilkus, who’s married to his boss’ daughter, is put in charge of evicting all of the aliens so they can be relocated to an alien refugee camp. In the process, an accident alters his DNA making him an outcast sought after by MNU, which realizes he’s the key to unlocking the weaponry. Desperate and hunted, Wikus retreats into D-9.

You’ve heard many a time that science fiction is really about the present, and this is true for District 9, which is critical of the corporate power, media control and the weapons industry, but it’s mainly about the near-past, namely a South Africa under apartheid. The best part about the film is that it makes the serious metaphor the core of the narrative and then goes on to give you all fun things you want in a sci-fi/action movie – while maintaining a balance between the two.

Fun thing one are the aliens; Blomkamp’s creature design is original. Despite their insect appearance, he manages to humanize them, and make them fairly amusing at times (e.g their insane love of cat food). Even better, technically the CG is perfect, which sucks you further into the world of District 9. The animation never calls attention to itself (Weta, the effects company that headed up The Lord of the Rings trilogy, nailed the practical effects, as well).

Fun thing two: the action. District 9 has fistfights, gunfights, car chases, an aircraft chase and havoc-causing mech suits – yes ARMOURED MECH SUITS, which is like catnip for sci-fi geeks. Blomkamp’s love of video games is apparent here, as many of the sequences play out like first-person shooter scenarios, which works with the documentary aesthetic.

The third really fun thing about District 9 is that it doesn’t shy away from blood, guts and gross stuff. There are guys literally blown to bits by the awesome alien weaponry (another video game influence), some really disgusting alien autopsy-type stuff and, of course, Wikus’ transformation.

Lastly in the fun file, District 9, presents us with an entirely new world, where familiar sci-fi tropes, such as fantastic alien creatures and futuristic technology, is wrapped in a filthy, nightmarish ghetto. Like groundbreaking sci-fi films such as Metropolis, Planet of the Apes, Alien, Blade Runner or Serenity, this is gives us a never before seen environment.

All too often Hollywood sci-fi movies nail the special effects, action and other eye-candy but pay little attention to character, story and dialogue. Aside from a child-alien, which is borderline cutesy cheese, District 9, tells a tight story, with more humour (and horror) than you’d expect.

Blomkamp, was expectedly nervous about the film when asked about it at Comic-Con, but he’ll probably feel just fine when his feature debut proves to be a hit. In summer of big budget tech-centered crapathons such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe and Terminator: Salvation, audiences deserve something, thoughtful, original and thrilling as District 9. And it’s satisfying to see Sony get so behind the film – even it does mean staring at those posters every damn time you wait for the bus.

The movie is worth the sweat put into it, and I’m not just talking about the sun-scorched actors at Comic-Con.

 

-Dave Alexander

Some Kinds of Wonderful

What exactly is a John Hughes film anyhow? Why were his movies so popular? How did they come to symbolize the ‘80s? What the heck happened to him? These are some of the questions I was asking myself this week after writer/director/producer John Hughes died of a heart attack at age 59.

The guy had an absolutely remarkable career with over a dozen hit comedies that he wrote or directed (or both). It’s unheard of for anyone to have that many hits making comedies, but even more astounding is that they were almost all made during the ‘80s, hence him being a symbol of the time period, like MTV, arcade games, Journey, leg-warmers or the Rubik’s Cube.

When I read through some of the tributes to the filmmaker (this one from Roger Ebert covers most of the bases), went through Hughes IMDb profile and read his Wikipedia page, I was reminded just how often his work comes up in everyday life of anyone who grew up in the ‘80s. A few examples include calling any theme park “Walleyworld,” after the ill-fated destination in National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation; repeating “Adler? Adamson? Adamson? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller” anytime someone announces a name more than once, courtesy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; referring to a really big pancake as an “Uncle Buck pancake” in reverence to the absurdly massive hotcake John Candy’s character makes in Uncle Buck; channeling Chet (Bill Paxton) from Weird Science and yelling “You’re stewed, buttwad!” when someone gets screwed over; and, of course, utilizing the classic line from Planes, Trains and Automobiles anytime you take a wrong turn while driving: “You’re go-ing the wrooong way!”

Part of Hughes’ success was obviously his ability to create memorable dialogue, characters and scenarios. As Ebert notes, “Few directors have left a more distinctive or influential body of work than John Hughes. The creator of the modern American teenager film, who died Thursday in New York, made a group of films that are still watched and quoted today.”

But what exactly made his work so distinctive?

Among the traits of a “John Hughes film” are the way the characters talk to the camera (breaking the “Fourth Wall”), the prominence of the soundtrack (characters sing and dance to popular songs, and many of the scenes are edited to popular songs – you can’t think of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off without hearing “boomp-boomp, chika-chikahhh” in your head) and an understanding of how teenagers think and act. Although you can’t blanket-apply these traits to every Hughes movie (for example The Great Outdoors and Some Kind of Wonderful are very different pieces) these three things get at why his films were so popular, why they were so ‘80s and why that success didn’t really carry over to the ‘90s.

As soon as you tie anything into the popular music of a time period, you’re gonna date it, and if you make that part of the narrative (e.g. the kids in Breakfast Club dancing to “We Are Not Alone,” or even the title of the movie, as in Pretty in Pink), you’re gonna date it even more. Of course, if it’s so dated and popular that it defines an era, inevitably there will be huge nostalgia for it. The perfect example of this is the recent viral YouTube video for the song “Lisztomania” by Phoenix, which is comprised of clips from The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Mannequin and Footloose. Not to mention that, Hughes movies often have music video-like scenes, which couldn’t have fit better with the then-newfound excitement about MTV.

In terms of characters talking to the audience, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off probably has the most famous examples. At the beginning of the film, Ferris addresses the audience while showering: “I do have a test today, that wasn’t bullshit. I’m mean, really, what’s the point? It’s on European socialism. I’m not European, I don’t plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they’re socialists? They could be fascists-anarchists – it still doesn’t change the fact that I don’t own a car.”

Not only is a great chunk of dialogue, Hughes clearly knew the way that North American teens thought. Bueller is a guy primarily interested in himself and his wants; and he’s a guy that acts on his whims. The ‘80s saw a spike in consumerism and being stylish, so he’s not just representing adolescents, but, really, the climate of the time – for better or worse.

However, it’s not just the message itself, it was the way it as delivered. Teens are often rightfully jaded, cynical and distrustful, and here’s one of their own talking directly to them about things they care about, all while acknowledging that the film knows they’re “cooler” than it, so it says, screw the Fourth Wall. Now that device comes off as more condescending that it did back then, but when Hughes did it, it felt like the films were speaking to their target audience in much more direct and bullshit-free way.

So why did Hughes’ career peak with 1990’s Home Alone (his highest grossing movie) and then pretty much take a nose dive (the last film he directed was 1991’s box office bomb Curly Sue)?

Sure, he kept working, writing Hollywood films under the pseudonym “Edmond Dantes” (the protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo), the most recent being a co-writing credit on the flop Drillbit Taylor, but he was no longer the so-called voice of a generation. The filmmaker kind of retired from Hollywood, although, as Ebert’s piece points out, he wasn’t the recluse that a lot of tribute articles paint him as being. Maybe he wanted to spend time with his family, perhaps he felt he’d said it all, possibly the disappointment of Curly Sue was a crushing blow – I don’t know.

Because John Hughes’ films were such a product of their time, and the ‘90s (grunge ‘n’ all) were such as strong reaction to the self-indulgence of the ‘80s, it makes sense that he’d struggle to find his footing. The more kid-centric films, such as the Home Alone series, the Beethoven films (Beethoven was the first film project he wrote as Edmond Dantes), Curly Sue and the awful Baby’s Day Out are kind of a retreat from trying to be edgy and relevant, into the safety of family films (like how Eddie Murphy became Disney’s bitch).

Maybe.

Or maybe he just got bored of being a grown man making films for teenagers. Maybe he got tired of battling Hollywood for creative control, which has been suggested as a reason he stopped directing. Maybe Judd Nelson would show up as his house drunk on malt liquor begging for a job, forcing him into hiding.

Whatever the case, the synth/neon/huge shoulder-pad mark he left on North American culture was huge. Filmmakers such as Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow cite him as a key influence, yet I think Hughes was only starting to get the appreciation he deserved as an artist that knew how to craft a comedy, and not just the guy who gave Molly Ringwald a career.

Well, at the very least he’ll live on in our quotes. Remember, any time you accidentally touch someone too intimately, you owe it to the world to think of John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and yell: “Those aren’t PILLOWS!”

 

-Dave Alexander

Meanwhile, in Little China...

To quote Jack Burton, “Everybody relax, I'm here.” I wish I could say that, like Kurt Russell’s character in Big Trouble in Little China, I was off having action-packed, supernatural-tinged adventures with Kim Cattrall, but alas, my absence from the blog just isn’t that sexy. Rather, MSN has been moving things around (note the new URL), tinkering and waiting for a fresh shipment of 1’s and 0’s so it could continue to bring you this portion of the internet. Thank you for your patience.

That said, I was off at the San Diego Comic-Con, and you can read my coverage, here, here and here, and I was in Montreal at the FanTasia film festival, watching crazy genre films and presenting my own short film. Good times, indeed. I’ll post some pics and stories from Comic-Con, but in the meantime I’d like to share something I’ve been obsessing on for the last few days…

It’s nothing new for actors to try their hands at being musicians after establishing themselves as thespians – Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Johnny Depp, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Keanu Reeves are but a few examples (check out this huge list). And look no further than Rob Zombie for established musicians becoming filmmakers. But established directors getting into music? That’s rarer.

Eastwood has contributed music to his films as recently as Gran Torino (the theme song sounded like it was recorded while he was passing a kidney stone, but hey…), Mike Figgis does much of his own soundtrack work, such as the music for Leaving Las Vegas, and Robert Rodriguez cut some killer tracks for Planet Terror. And then there’s John Carpenter, who scored a bunch of his own films, and even created the famous theme for Halloween. This brings us to Big Trouble in Little China, one of Carpenter’s classic ‘80s movies, in which Jack Burton (Kurt Russell’s character) and sidekicks get caught up in some mystical shenanigans in Little China, and must rescue Kim Cattrall’s character from ninja/gangster/monster David Lo-Pan and his lighting bolt-throwing henchmen. The movie is required viewing for anyone who doesn’t hate fun, and those that have seen it probably recall the ridiculous theme song, “Big Trouble in Little China.”

What I hadn’t realized before is that it’s performed by John Carpenter’s Coupe DeVilles, with the Man himself singing, and there’s a music video for it. Well, praise YouTube, for having it, because it’s one of those monumentally mental, dated embarrassments that the world deserves to watch. And laugh at.

See it for yourself, here, before I continue.

It’s a testament to just how popular Carpenter way in the mid ‘80s that a bunch of money was poured into this ambitious music video. Obviously there were hopes for MTV rotation, as it pulls out all the staples of the era, from the band members rockin’ out with every overacting bone in their bodies, to terrible animated lightning effects, to the day-glo hand-coloured photocopier pages animation sequence. My favourite part of the vid sees The Carp’ wearing a kimono and a pair of those sunglasses with slats in ‘em instead of lenses while grooving with his axe. (Of course, other scenes with giant-shouldered blazers and fluffy, waving mullets are also pretty choice.) The visuals cut between performance footage on a stage, footage from the movie and the band rockin’ out in the editing suite, where scenes from the film begin to interact with the players, inviting all kinds of silly special effects (I told you it had a budget).

Lyrically, it’s also typically ‘80s: “If you feel the wind is risin’/baby, then the truth is here … Oh, we’d better run/run into the mystic night/run until they take us a-waaay.” Musically, it’s pure ‘80s synth, and the best/worst part of it all is that the song mercilessly gets stuck in your head. After watching the video at my office this week, it became a regular habit for someone to call out in a baritone, “Biiiiiig Trouble,” and to hear the higher pitched response, “In Liddle Chi-nah!” More good time than my description can possibly do justice to.

That said, the Big Trouble in Little China soundtrack is considered a classic, with used cassette versions of it listing on Amazon at close to $100. A double disc CD version of the album was reissued a few years ago by soundtrack reissue specialists La La Land Records. Again, it’s out of print and used ones are rather pricey, but if I watch this video many more times, I may just have to pony up for it. After all, you know what Russell’s character would think about it: “Ol' Jack always says... what the hell?”

 

-Dave Alexander