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I heard many men lying
Someday I would really like to see Liev Schreiber in a film that's fully as good as he is. By which you may understand that last night I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine with my brother, and it . . . was not that film.*
It's not a mind-killer. Fantastic Four (2005) caused me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fleurdelis28, and shmeislin to scream and change the channel (back to Constantine!) after exactly one line and I am convinced that National Treasure (2004) is responsible for certain losses in my long-term memory: Wolverine is not in their league. Some of its sequences are even brilliant, which makes them all the more frustrating in context—I love how after the introductory jolt of parentage and revelation, the credits play over and among the battles that become the calendar of the brothers' lives, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, soldiers of never-changing fortune, healing as we watch from shrapnel, bullets, fire and knives, in free-fall from death to death; the endless carnage is beginning to sicken Jimmy, but Victor grins with a cat's fangs and drags the next soldier down by the throat, breaks the spine of another with his hands; the story that follows is basically a spot-the-powers shell game, but I wanted more of those hundred-plus years that are summarized so beautifully even before the title card comes up. The assembly and introduction of Team X is promising; I don't know which scriptwriter invented the myth of the moon's lover who was tricked out of the spirit world, but it feels like something real, as does the ambiguity of its telling. But mostly Wolverine made me want to read the source comics, because so many of its components (Wade Wilson! Gambit! Recommend me some titles here, people!) would clearly have been awesome if properly handled and do I need to finish this sentence? The script as it stands feels at once overstuffed and underfleshed; there is enough material in this origin story for a trilogy and none of it gets the attention it deserves. And it is a bad sign when I, who do not consider myself a movie-minded person, start thinking about how differently I would have written a scene even as I'm watching it play out. What can I say? It was a perfectly decent place to park your brain for a couple of hours. But that isn't what I go to the movies for.
Still, there are some things to which I have a visceral reaction, and one of them is those claw-tips of Victor's sliding in and out as Schreiber flexes his fingers. (Shanir, god-spawn, unclean, unclean . . .) As far back as I can remember, I have wanted retractile claws. Barring a terrific advance in biomedical engineering, I will be out of luck until the day I die. At least onscreen, vicariously, I can enjoy someone else's better genetic fortune.
* Fortunately, since my brother is here until Sunday, we are going tonight to see Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo at the Underground Railway Theater. That should help balance any brain damage we may have incurred.
It's not a mind-killer. Fantastic Four (2005) caused me,
fleurdelis28, and shmeislin to scream and change the channel (back to Constantine!) after exactly one line and I am convinced that National Treasure (2004) is responsible for certain losses in my long-term memory: Wolverine is not in their league. Some of its sequences are even brilliant, which makes them all the more frustrating in context—I love how after the introductory jolt of parentage and revelation, the credits play over and among the battles that become the calendar of the brothers' lives, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, soldiers of never-changing fortune, healing as we watch from shrapnel, bullets, fire and knives, in free-fall from death to death; the endless carnage is beginning to sicken Jimmy, but Victor grins with a cat's fangs and drags the next soldier down by the throat, breaks the spine of another with his hands; the story that follows is basically a spot-the-powers shell game, but I wanted more of those hundred-plus years that are summarized so beautifully even before the title card comes up. The assembly and introduction of Team X is promising; I don't know which scriptwriter invented the myth of the moon's lover who was tricked out of the spirit world, but it feels like something real, as does the ambiguity of its telling. But mostly Wolverine made me want to read the source comics, because so many of its components (Wade Wilson! Gambit! Recommend me some titles here, people!) would clearly have been awesome if properly handled and do I need to finish this sentence? The script as it stands feels at once overstuffed and underfleshed; there is enough material in this origin story for a trilogy and none of it gets the attention it deserves. And it is a bad sign when I, who do not consider myself a movie-minded person, start thinking about how differently I would have written a scene even as I'm watching it play out. What can I say? It was a perfectly decent place to park your brain for a couple of hours. But that isn't what I go to the movies for.Still, there are some things to which I have a visceral reaction, and one of them is those claw-tips of Victor's sliding in and out as Schreiber flexes his fingers. (
* Fortunately, since my brother is here until Sunday, we are going tonight to see Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo at the Underground Railway Theater. That should help balance any brain damage we may have incurred.
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Might I suggest starting with the 2001 mini-series, collected and available in trade paperback or hardback, of Wolverine: Origins. The first five minutes of the movie were distilled from that sharp bit of storytelling. If you can get your hands some collected Wolverine issues, particularly those around Issue 50 up to around 60-ish, you'll get a taste of the memory implant issues from the Weapon X Project. Speaking of, check out Barry Windsor-Smith's to-die-for Weapon X story arc. There are a few of the early 90s-era X-Men comics (vol. 2, not Uncanny) which feature flashbacks involving Logan, Maverick, and Victor when they were all special-ops and pretty tight.
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Awesome. Thank you for this and other recommendations!
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Oh, my coworker's husband did the sound design for that; I'd be curious what you think...
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Insofar as I'm qualified to say anything, it was sound design I noticed favorably. At points it reminded me of Tom Waits, which is not a bad thing; I liked the Carnevale music a lot and the unexpected presence of a nuclear blast late in the second act.
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Thanks! What do you like best?
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Also, your package arrived. Thank you.
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I trust you on film. I should be able to persuade
Also, your package arrived. Thank you.
You're welcome. I hope it arrived safe.
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I am convinced that National Treasure (2004) is responsible for certain losses in my long-term memory
You didn't like it? Was it the history? (I would've disliked that if I'd thought about it, but I managed to ignore that aspect; it probably helped that I don't really have much interest in that era of American history, excepting weird bits like the Irish in the early republic and state-vs-state conflicts that could've gone to full-scale war.)
I hope you and your brother enjoy the Brecht!
As far back as I can remember, I have wanted retractile claws.
You as well? I'd love to have them, as long as they didn't mess up my fingers so I couldn't play anymore. Nice steel ones, maybe, which I could deploy as a subtle hint when people started to annoy me.* ;-)
*In the same vein, I've contemplated at times adopting the custom of wearing war paint. When folk got annoying, I could start putting it on, and when they asked I could say "Oh, I'm putting on my war paint. It's traditional to do so before engaging in acts of violence against irritating people...
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. . . It was one of the most terminally stupid films I have ever subjected my rational mind to!
I hope you and your brother enjoy the Brecht!
It was good! I want to read the play in German now.
You as well?
I was raised in a house with three cats. I knew from an early age I had been deprived.
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You've never seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, then?
It was good! I want to read the play in German now.
Excellent. Hopefully you can find a copy soon.
I was raised in a house with three cats. I knew from an early age I had been deprived.
We had a cat when I was little, but I'm not sure I really started thinking about claws until I was a bit older. But I've definitely wanted them for years.
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(In hindsight, I actually can't remember when and where I saw it the first time.)
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Oh, God, I'd managed to block that out.
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Yay for getting semi-obscure references! And yay for people I haven't forced the books on reading the series. PC Hodgell came as a writer in residence to my school, and I kind of get the impression Pat thinks no one reads her books.
~:)
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Points to you!
PC Hodgell came as a writer in residence to my school, and I kind of get the impression Pat thinks no one reads her books.
She's one of my favorites. I only wish it took her less than five years to finish a book!
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~;)
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Yes yes yes to the pre-title sequence, which made me fall in love with Victor, and kept me in love with him throughout (even when he was forced into stupid, self-injurious "decisions" by the vagaries of plot, Liev Schrieber still convinced me that he was only cooperating with them because it amused him, in a totally black-humored way).
But yeah, in essence: When you have to keep squeeing over the fact that they grazed the surface of a rich, crazy canon with glancing, contradictory shout-outs, you're trapped somewhere you really don't want to be. Pity.
I don't know if you ever sample nick_kaufmann's blog (possible sp. errors)--he works best in small doses and from a remove, for me--but he managed to handily rewrite the entire film in fifteen minutes, losing nothing, and yet made it make emotional and head-sense. Check check it, tell me what you think.;)
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Heh. Thank you . . .
Yes yes yes to the pre-title sequence, which made me fall in love with Victor, and kept me in love with him throughout
And I don't think it would have been impossible to make the movie that follows naturally from those credits. It would have been less explanatory and dug in more deeply—and I think funnier, in the nicely blackest of ways—but I would have watched it. Just no one over at 20th Century Fox seems to have been interested.
I don't know if you ever sample nick_kaufmann's blog (possible sp. errors)--he works best in small doses and from a remove, for me--but he managed to handily rewrite the entire film in fifteen minutes, losing nothing, and yet made it make emotional and head-sense.
Is it friendlocked? I looked at
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Yeah. His off-the-cuff improv pretty much wipes up the cinema floor with the actual film. Alas.