I'll Be There

Trailer for Coyote vs. Acme

Opens August 28th.

Movie Review: A Scanner Darkly

I finally got around to this one last night, and kind of liked it, kind of didn't.  The funny thing is, though I like the point of Philip K. Dicks' works, I seldom enjoy his mode of storytelling.  It's a twenty year old movie at this point, so I'll let Wikipedia tell you as much of the plot as you care to read.  I will say though, it is beautifully made and acted, and all the plot loose ends are wrapped up by the finish, and of course and as usual, I agree with the societal commentary PKD was making.  The rotoscoped animation over the live action was a lot of fun to watch as well, and it really worked with many of the plot elements, especially with the "scramble suits."  It's just that a lot of the movie made my skin crawl (yeah, check that opening scene!) for no real payoff.

Three out of Five Stars, and that's knocked down one star from what would be four if I liked PKD's storytelling manner better.  You may care for his style though, so add that one star back in if that's case.  So... conditionally recommended.

Crossed My Desk this Morning

Yeah, movies have been kind of crappy for the better part of the past decade.  Here's hoping for a brighter future.  However, I suspect we'll just get some meaningless AI-generated slop with dancing rock piles, and the Hollywood execs will remain as baffled as ever.

Of Course I'll Go See It

First Project Hail Mary, now this.  It's shaping up to be the best year in movies in about a decade.

PHM Side-Note on Accidents

Following up on last week's review of Project Hail Mary, one of the things that struck me both while reading and watching were the parallels between PHM and the Manhattan Project.  Yes, both were multinational big-budget science and engineering projects carried out in a rush, but that explosion 

boom

put a punctuation mark on things.  And while in the story the explosion did add a dramatic element, it was also the catalyst behind the major plot twist about which the entire story revolves.  Moreover, the incident very much echoes two criticality accidents at Los Alamos that happened just as and just after WWII ended.

Reenactment with inert components.  Don't try this one at home, kids.

Maybe it's my background, but while reading PHM this parallel jumped out immediately and it gave the whole book – and later movie – a ring of authenticity.  In case you want to learn more on the Manhattan Project (and perhaps get the feel for the behind the scenes action in PHM), look no farther than Richard Rhodes' fine 1986 history The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Yeah, just go read the book.  Both of 'em, I mean.  And see the movie.

Project Hail Mary: Just Go See It

TLDR: It's the adaptation of the book that I'd hoped to see.  Here are my 2021 thoughts on the book.

Today was the first time I've set foot in a movie theater since 2021 (well I at least tried, once, in 2023; see jaundiced thoughts here), and it was an hour and a half drive each way to get there.  Worth every minute of the trip.  Go see it in a good quality theater while it's still in its original run, then buy the blu-ray next Christmas.

So... 4.5 out of 5 stars?  Maybe 5, I'll have to see it a few more times before granting that high honor.  It's good though, so go see it in a theater while you can.  It looks great up on the big screen, plus we need to vote with our dollars when given something to bother voting for.  Lord knows, that's a rare enough occurrence these days.

Yeah, yeah, the puppet alien stuff is good, as good as all the critics are saying.  However, don't fall into the cutesy-alien sentimental trap here.  Look at the person behind the carapace, at the fully developed character.  It took competent writing, scriptwriting, puppeteering, and voice acting to let Rocky's personality show through.  Don't waste all that effort treating this as another cheap Spielberg ET exercise in emotional manipulation, because it isn't.  This is a reasonably complex character, and while the kids can get a thrill from seeing an articulated rock pile, adults can appreciate what's going on too.

Finally, it's a miracle this story made it through production hell.  In a spoilerific interview here (No, don't click if you haven't read or seen it!  Really, don't!), the scriptwriter reveals how he was gently pressured to take out one key plot twist.  If the studio execs had succeeded in so gutting the story, my review would have been reduced to 2 out of 5 stars: "Nice special effects, but it's a shame they threw away the book.  Don't bother."  But they didn't!  So go see the movie.

This is not to say that major parts weren't adapted for screen.  And that's OK.  Not every technical in-joke or plot complication can make it – or even translates – to film.  The main point though is, the core of the story is there, it is a good story that people who've read the book will recognize, and it was faithfully translated to screen.  Again, this is the adaptation of the book that I'd hoped to see.

Thursday Movie at the Library Night: Ulee's Gold

Tonight!  Don't forget!

A Look at the Science Behind 'Project Hail Mary'

By no coincidence at all, it's this week's topic at Big Picture Science podcast.  Go & download & listen.

I'd put in an image, but just click through and you'll get all the image I'd put here.

Really looking forward to this movie.

Looks Like Project Hail Mary is a Go

The Critical Drinker approves.  Youtube, 7 minutes.

Finally Watched 'A Christmas Story'

It was one of those astounding facts that turned heads at Christmas parties, but I'd never watched A Christmas Story until last night.  I hardly need to review it here, but the sweet, nostalgic, slightly askew, fond regard in which it's generally held seems about right, now that I've finally seen it.

Picked it up on the double-feature DVD that includes its 2022 sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas.  Maybe I'll watch it before New Year's, maybe I'll save it for next Christmas.  There's only so much sweet, slightly askew nostalgia I can take in one week.

ps: You might want to pick up a pack of these.  I was always a stickler about such when my kids were young.  Still am, for that matter.

pps: As if on cue, this showed up: Could A Red Ryder BB Gun Be Lethal?  15 minutes of interestingness.  Or if you don't have the time, just apply Betteridge's Law and move on.

"Toward the Unknown" – Surprisingly Good!

I'd heard good things about the 1956 film Toward the Unknown, but face it, I had fairly low expectations.  However, it turns out that it's pretty good in a Top Gun–meets–The Right Stuff way.  Made with the full cooperation and assistance of the USAF, the flight scenes are well done, the few special effects (mostly a practical mock-up of the X-2 rocket plane) hold up to modern viewing, and the tacked-on melodrama isn't too melodramatic.  At least, no worse than either of the Top Gun movies.  And while the historical details of the X-2 program are somewhat different than what is portrayed in this film, in several scenes it's close enough to echo some of the actual tragedies of the real program.

So, what's it about?  Here's the one-line summary from IMDB: A shaken Korean War veteran tests the X-2 rocket plane.  OK, that's the plot summary you get – no spoilers.  Let's move on to my summary:  Did you like Top Gun and The Right Stuff?  Then you'll like this one too.

Next Round: Space via X-15.

Sci-Fi Rotten Egg? Maybe.

The upcoming movie The Astronaut – trailer clip here – looks like an adaptation of the rotten old sci-fi novel The Space Egg.  Here, read a synopsis and watch the clip, and decide for yourself.  I wonder if it is in fact an adaptation, or a re-invention of an old hack plot?

With so many good and classic sci-fi stories out there just waiting for adaptation, why bother with this junk?  Ah well, decide for yourself.  Looks pretty rank to me though.

ps: On a better note, looking around for mentions of The Space Egg on the web lead me to the site Stranger Than SF, which of course has a scathing and spoilerific review of that particular book here.  StrangerThanSF seems to be a passion project of a voracious SF reader, and there's a lot there spread around in good, bad, ugly, and indifferent.  Worth your time to poke around.

Finally Watched 'Creature from the Black Lagoon'

And it was pretty good!  I mean, for its time.  Not half as cheesy as I'd expected.  The simple plot was enough to hold things together, and the creature suit still mostly holds up.  Can't ask for much more than that out of this kind of flick.  Here, details at Wikipedia.  Read and run up onto spoilers at your own risk.

For all the times I've been to Wakulla Springs, you'd think I'd have seen it, but no.  It was long gone from theaters and even re-runs and deep re-re-runs by the time I came along.  Picked up a DVD, which as a nice surprise has the two sequels in the series.  

Rating this one is a hopeless exercise.  Either you want to see it or you don't.

Life is Short and Time is Tight. Read the Abstracts.

Over at Books, Bikes, & Boomsticks Tam writes on the problems associated with reading a summary.  Here, it's short, go read the whole thing: Soulless Drones

<insert schmaltzy interlude music here>

OK, we're all back.  For great art, sure, I'll agree that one has to read / listen / watch the entire piece as presented.  However, if you just want to get caught up on the n movies you missed in the Avengers movie series over the past m summers so that you can go to an afternoon matinee and enjoy it with friends – without having to spend a week of catch-up in front of the tube – nah, go ahead and skip to the Wikipedia plot summaries.  You won't have missed much anyway.  Long-series TV shows that start off promising but take a dip in the second year?  Sure, skip ahead with the summaries and see if the third year picks up to determine if it's worth your time to work through the series.  That politics-tainted speculative fiction (i.e., really bad near-future sci-fi) potboiler that everyone's talking about?  Definitely.  You'll want to know a little about what Cousin Hal or Aunt Margaret are going on about at the next family gathering, but you probably don't want to take that 500 page slog.  Again, when it comes to real art don't take any shortcuts, but when it comes to lesser works, go for the bottom line and get on with life.

Taking this a step further, who doesn't cull through the titles, then skim through the half-dozen abstracts, then really read only one or two papers each month in their favorite journals?  There just isn't time enough to keep up in a field any other way.  

Unexpected Good News: A Movie of Weir's "Project Hail Mary"

The trailer just dropped today, with a release date of 3/20/26.  link here  You go watch now.

My review of the book (from 2021; has it really been that long?) here.

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked.

"Oppenheimer" (the movie) Dissected

When Oppenheimer came to theaters, I was looking forward to a glorious movie and a glorious theater experience.  In short, the shiny new theater I picked presented such a customer-hostile environment that I walked out before even buying a ticket, and bought a copy of the disc a few months later.  Then I watched it, and was appalled by the lack of character development on the interesting historical figures, while the director instead chose to linger for a third of the film's runtime over a dull, neurotic girlfriend.  In short, this film was a beautifully made complete waste of time and right now that disc is wasting my shelf space, but only because I haven't yet thrown it out.  I haven't written a review until now either, because the film's lack of cohesive content made commentary difficult.  There really wasn't much to say about it beyond a simple "don't bother" delivered months after it had left theaters, so I didn't bother.  Giving this thing any kind of n-stars movie rating would be akin to reviewing one of those semi-funny AI generated Star Wars / Miami Vice mash-up videos.  Sometimes interesting visuals, but really nothing beyond that.

Anyway, here's a writer's take on the film, and it's not pretty (link, just under one hour).  If the hour length  gives you a case of the TLDWs, here's her summary:

• Unnecessary Complexity
• Inconsistent Pacing
• Inadequate  Context
• Failure to Establish Thematic Framing

Whew.  The poor woman actually watched the damn thing three times (that's nine hours!) to bring us this analysis.  I wish there was an obvious link from her review video for some sort of coffee fund donation, because that kind of dedication deserves more recognition.

Spaceballs 2?!?!

A definite maybe for 2027.  Mel Brooks has been known to tell jokes and pull pranks before, but this is looking pretty solid.  Teaser trailer here (with a cameo by Brooks himself), and a mention on Wikipedia here.

I give it an 80-20 chance of happening.  But wouldn't it be great to have a reason to go to a movie theater again?

The Return of "Coyote vs. ACME"

Maybe.  Perhaps.  Seems likely.  Article at Living Life Fearless.

Suspended sentence?  I'm still waiting to hear the release date.

UPDATE: Looks like it'll be released sometime 2026.  Details at... Sports Illustrated?

In Praise of Physical Media

There are a lot of people out there who love-love-love video streaming.  Great.  I'll largely stick with physical media though, because (a) I'm at the tail-end of this internet train spur so service is highly unreliable, and (b) what if an old favorite move or series gets politically unpopular or is simply ground under the wheels of corporate maneuvering?  Either way with option (b), it's gone-baby-gone and there's nothing to bring it back.  Also, streaming services don't seem to maintain a decent back catalogue.  From what I've seen, they're more like the modern equivalent of Blockbuster Video, where it's easy to find the latest in the "Robo-Death Lust IV" type movies but just try to find Kagemusha or something from back when Woody Allen was still funny and relevant.

Anyway, Giant Freakin Robot has an article today on the matter, mostly as it relates to The Expanse series.  Go and read.

The downside of buying physical media is that you've got to devote shelf space to it, and sometimes you get stuck with prize turkeys.  Speaking of which, anybody want a blu-ray copy of Oppenheimer?  Ugh, I thought so little of that movie when I finally saw it that I didn't even bother to review it.

'Forbidden Area' Adaptation on Playhouse 90

Last October I blogged about reading Pat Frank's novel Forbidden Area, and mentioned that there was a TV adaptation written by Rod Serling.  Found it, at long last!  Link.  (note: doesn't play on Safari, works fine on Firefox)

It's... eh.  The super-genius female lead in the novel gets demoted from being a key member of the Enemy Intentions Group to merely its secretary, and finally has a dramatic meltdown in the arms of Charlton Heston.  The central cause of why the B-99 bombers keep blowing up is tipped off way too early.  There's some two-fisted drama in the last 20 minutes that hasn't aged well.  Apart from all that, it's a decent adaptation of the fair-to-good source novel.  At an hour and a quarter length, it's probably time better spent than on what's in the theaters these days.