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Well, I guess it's officially a flop: Disney announced yesterday that it expects to lose $200 million on John Carter, all but guaranteeing that the first big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic Barsoom novels is also going to be the last. And what a damn shame, too, because I really liked it. The pacing was a little uneven, and I disagree with some of the changes that were made in adapting the story from the source material. (I could've done without the formulaic Hollywood backstory and character arc that was pasted onto the title character, i.e., the man who's lost everything learning to live again; in the original stories, he was simply an adventurer who had to adapt to a new world, and then fell in love. Also, the books were filled with enough conflict between Barsoomian races and city-states without having to elevate the stakes to the would-be epic, survival-of-two-worlds-in-the-balance stuff that nearly every summer tentpole flick of the last 15 years has beaten into the ground. And I prefer the book's conceit that JC was the only person who was capable of moving between Earth and Barsoom, and that he did it through mystical means rather than technological, as in the film.) But overall I was very pleased with the filmmakers' fidelity to the details and spirit of the books, and I loved the fun, escapist tone that neither took itself too seriously nor played the material for campy laughs. And I thought the casting was spot-on. Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins aren't John Carter and the lovely Dejah Thoris as I have imagined them for 30 years of my life... but they could be cousins to the people who live in my imagination, and that's pretty damn satisfying.

I recognize that I approached John Carter with a certain predisposition to like it, and also viewed it through a particular filter, i.e., how well did it adapt the books I've loved since childhood? But I've also spoken to several people who admit they wouldn't know Edgar Rice Burroughs from William S. Burroughs, so they had no preconceptions whatsoever, and they liked the movie, too. Based on their testimonies, I'm convinced the movie had the potential to appeal to a wider audience than it obviously has... which suggests to me that what I wrote a couple weeks ago about the weak marketing was right on target. Fingers are now being pointed in all directions, with some gossips blaming the film's director, Andrew Stanton, for mistakenly believing this character was as well known as Tarzan and insisting on the vague, uninspiring ad campaign. Others are saying the movie fell victim to internal politics at Disney, with the execs who greenlighted the movie departing midway through its production and their replacements just wanting to get it out the door and over with. But again, whatever the cause, there's no question in my mind that the marketing on this film stank worse than fresh calot droppings, and that had a tremendously negative impact on the movie's performance. And it's so deeply frustrating to me, both as an ERB fan and simply as a lover of good Saturday-matinee adventure flicks, because this movie so easily could have been handled differently, and with far happier results.

Consider this: Two clicks of my mouse this afternoon turned up a fan-made trailer that uses the same footage as the official ones, but is so much more reflective of what this movie is about, who John Carter is, why these stories matter, and how frickin' awesome they can be:



Now that's how you do a trailer for a rollicking planetary romance based on a seminal but no longer well-remembered literary work. This trailer makes me want to run out and see the film again, right now. So why couldn't anyone at Disney figure out how to do something that good? Why didn't they care about nurturing something that could've been major for them, instead of setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure? (I shouldn't be surprised, I guess; I've been asking the same questions for 20 years in regards to The Rocketeer, another great little movie with lots of franchise potential that Disney essentially dumped into theaters with very little support.)

Someday, somebody's going to write a very interesting book on this debacle. In the meantime, I really hope this movie finds its audience on home video, and eventually comes to be recognized as something more than it was initially taken for.

Good evening... come on in. Why don't you get yourself some popcorn and a Coke from our stunning black-on-silver art-deco refreshment stand? (Be nice to the charming and vivacious young lady manning the counter; you'll find her attitude very different from the sullen mouth-breathers at the multiplex. She actually likes her job.) Yes, I know our modestly sized bags of corn look puny compared to those MegaTubs you're accustomed to getting at the other places, but trust me: this is all you need.

Feel free to peruse the vintage one-sheets lining the walls of our lobby. Beautiful, aren't they? Every one a genuine work of art, individually designed to uniquely showcase the films in question, painted by skilled craftsmen who've never heard of Photoshop.

Ah, here we are at the usher's podium. We called it the chopper back in my day. But of course that means nothing to you, does it? Here, let me take your ticket. That little slip of inch-wide red cardstock there. What's that? You wonder why it doesn't tell you which film you're seeing? But why would you... oh, I see why you're confused. This ticket says only "Admit One," without all the other extraneous information that's printed on other movie tickets nowadays. But we don't need all that nonsense here at the Black-and-White; you see, we have only the one screen. Now, go on into the auditorium and find a seat... watch your step, please, it's a bit darker than what you're probably used to. Slip into one of our low-back red-velvet seats. No, I'm sorry, they don't rock, but you should find them comfortable enough. I have made one concession to your modern sensibilities: you'll find the cupholder right there in front of you. There you are.

I hope you'll use the last few minutes before the movie starts to relax or to converse quietly with your date. We have no pre-show reel to distract you with mindless advertising; this space is supposed to be isolated from the outside world, a bit of escapism even before the movie begins. Isn't the hushed atmosphere so much nicer than all the blather that usually surrounds us? Please, don't do that. You won't be able to text or surf the web, not in my establishment. And no calls in or out, either, not while we're here in the auditorium. Mobile phones don't work here, not even the clock function, so you may as well put it back in your pocket and forget all about it for a couple hours. In a moment, there will be nothing trying to grab your attention except the film itself.... and here we go. The big waterfall curtain rises, the lights go down.

Tonight's feature at Bennion's Black-and-White Old-Tymey Movie Theatre is... Charlie Chan in Panama! A little bit of pre-war intrigue involving sabotage, a deadly plague, poisoned cigarettes, and the US Navy, all set against the exotic backdrop of the Panama Canal! SEE...  a beautiful refugee countess hiding out as a nightclub singer! SEE... the suave Latino club owner who has a secret identity! SEE... the author of countless "blood-and-thunder" adventure novels, drawn into a real-life web of danger!

Okay, I'll drop the silly patter. Sorry. I was just having a bit of fun remembering/imagining the way movie-going used to be back when there was still some glamour to it. The truth is, Black-and-White Theatre tonight consisted of me sitting on the couch in my bathrobe in front of my hi-def TV, spinning a DVD of a flick from 1940 that I doubt anyone reading this has even heard of. A far cry from the fabled movie palaces of old... or even those far more modest neighborhood movie-houses that used to lure people inside during the hot summers with promises of air conditioning and all-day programs for a dime. They're all gone now, the palaces and the small houses, all exterminated by the rise of the multiplex. But I love the movies that would've run at those places. Black-and-white is not inferior, kids! And just because something is old doesn't mean it doesn't still have the power to entertain...

The title of this entry doesn't mean what you probably think I mean. Read on to see what I'm really getting at.

The Girlfriend and I finally made it to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides yesterday. I say "finally" because we've tried several times over the past couple of weeks to catch the latest installment of the franchise, but for various reasons we did not succeed on our earlier attempts. So, you may be wondering, was the wait worth it? Well, yes, I would say so. Despite the generally mediocre reviews, Anne and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There's a new director this time out -- Rob Marshall took the helm from Gore Verbinski, who helmed the first three Pirates movies -- and the change seems to have made a tremendous difference, especially in the action scenes, which are actually comprehensible in Stranger Tides. (That's a big, BIG deal for me. I do not like the jittery, super-fast editing style where you lose track of who is doing what, and although the earlier Pirates movies never rose to the ridiculous level of the Bourne movies -- i.e., total incomprehensibility -- they flirted with it enough that I was frequently frustrated with them.)

This Pirates is smaller in scope than the wanna-be-epic second and third installments, a lot of extraneous characters from the "original trilogy" have been pared away, and the whole thing just feels much lighter overall. Like the other films in the series, it's too bloody long. (How is it that Errol Flynn managed to get all his swashbuckling done in roughly 90 minutes, but modern-day pirates need two-and-a-half hours?) However, I can't recall squirming in my seat or checking my watch once. I pumped my fist and/or laughed out loud a number of times. The sequence in which Captain Jack escapes from King George's palace and tears off through the streets of 18th-century London with the redcoats in pursuit is as much fun as I've had at a movie in years. (That sequence also includes an unexpected and delightful cameo from the ever-lovely Dame Judi Dench, who always makes me happy.) Surprisingly, after four movies, On Stranger Tides still manages to produce a couple grin-inducing references to the Disneyland ride that inspired this whole thing. And Penelope Cruz dressed in pirate clothes is nothing less than a force of nature. So, yeah, I recommend it. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but it is what a pirate movie ought to be, namely a nice bit of summertime escapism from the dreary, slow-motion horror that is 21st century.

You wanna know what really made me happy about Pirates 4, though? This is probably going to sound very strange, but it is what it is...  I found I was irrationally pleased to see a pattern of flickering horizontal scratches along the right side of the screen throughout the entire length of the movie. As a former projectionist, I spotted them instantly, and knew exactly what caused them. Once upon a time, scratches like that on such a relatively new film would've driven me crazy. Anathema! My job back then, and my quest as a viewer, was to achieve a perfect presentation, or as close to perfect as you could get with a strip of easily damaged celluloid sliding through a whirring, spinning, film-shredding mechanical gauntlet. In recent years, we've finally achieved perfection in the form of digital projection technology: a digitally projected movie is always crystal clear, always clean, the same after 1,000 or even 10,000 screenings as it was on the very first one. But that has created a different kind of problem, at least for me. Yes, I'm going to say exactly what my Loyal Readers are anticipating. Something has been lost in the change to digital projection. Movies don't look like films anymore, if that makes sense. They no longer have the imperfections that used to be part of the experience: the film grain and dust specks and scratches and all the other stuff we tried so hard to eliminate. It's arguably not the same art form any longer, because the medium is so utterly different now.

Seeing those scratches on Pirates 4 was a dead giveaway that I was watching actual film, that there was a human being up there in the booth threading a strip of celluloid through the rollers and sprockets and gates before every show, and not just a computer that turned everything on at the appointed time. The projectionist had made a mistake at some point and damaged the print, true, but those platter scratches (not to mention the eruption of scratches and garbage around one of the reel changes!) were organic to the medium, and weirdly enough, I did enjoy seeing them. It made me realize how much I miss scratches and hairs stuck in the gate and juddery splice marks and the "cigarette burns" that used to signal the end of a reel, and all the other artifacts of the Way Things Used to Be that have been lost since everything became just another variety of computer.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was a good movie, yes, but it was also a good film, in the literal sense. And it was really wonderful to see one again. At least it was for me... your mileage may vary.

[Ed. note: This review has already appeared in a slightly different form on my LibraryThing page as well as on Facebook. Just in case you're keeping track of every place I appear on the InterWebs.]

Blockade Billy is the latest work from Stephen King, perhaps my single favorite author; it's an uncharacteristically slim volume comprising two novella-length works.

The title story is narrated by an elderly baseball coach as he relates the tale of a (deliberately) forgotten player from the 1950s, a rookie catcher who was brilliant at the game but harbored a terrible secret. King pulls off the improbable trick of keeping a reader who has no interest in sports (me) turning the pages through descriptions of plays that would have been tedious, if not incomprehensible, in another writer's hands. However, the mystery at the heart of the story doesn't build beyond a mild curiosity and the big revelation at the end is a let-down, lacking the author's usual punch and suggesting this story was really just an exercise in capturing an old man's voice and the rhythms of a game that King clearly loves. In those goals, at least, it succeeds. As a story, not so much.

The second half of the volume, "Morality," has an interesting premise: Would you be willing to do an immoral thing for a large sum of badly needed money, and, if so, what would be the consequences on your psyche (or your soul, I suppose) and your marriage? Would it make any difference if you weren't religious? Or is morality something that transcends belief in God? Unfortunately, it's a premise that seemed all too familiar to me, recalling the film Indecent Proposal, among other things, and the actual immoral act the protagonists are called to perform is so random and ultimately so minor in nature that I couldn't help but wonder what the big deal was. Yes, what they do is crappy and unquestionably wrong, but it didn't seem all that horrible -- they didn't kill anyone, it didn't involve sex, and no permanent damage was done. Perhaps this was King's point, that even the smallest actions can have hugely corrosive effects, but I simply didn't buy it as it was developed. The reactions of the characters seemed overblown for what they'd actually done.

Overall, Blockade Billy is a disappointment, a minor effort from an author who can do better, but sadly seems to be growing more and more inconsistent with age. Of course, he's churned out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of words over the past 40 years, so eventually the creative well has got to run low...

** 1/2 out of *****

Okay, pop culture, I get it. You have finally beaten me. Your insatiable entertainment juggernaut held me in its warm embrace for a brief, glorious moment of my youth, but then predictably, inevitably, churned onward toward newer and flashier things, leaving me stranded on the side of a one-way road that's rapidly diminishing into the rear-view. So I guess it's time for me to surrender to the obvious and admit that my day is past, my sensibilities are out of touch, and I am no longer even remotely cool.

At least that's how I felt about ten minutes into the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

First, though, a bit of backstory to explain how I came to be watching a film that hadn't previously drawn so much as one iota of my interest...

As previously promised -- or threatened, depending on your point of view -- I have more to say about that new Star Trek movie that everyone's loving on. Before I get wound up, I'd like to reiterate again that I really did enjoy the movie, so don't misunderstand my criticisms of it. But you know, everyone is raving about how great it was, and I, in my usual contrarian, stubborn-old-fanboy way, just can't let that stand without argument. Because while it was better than I expected, there were a lot of not-so-great things about it.

Even though it's been out two weeks now, I'm going to assume that spoiler protocols are still in effect for some, so exercise caution in going below the fold:

I've now seen the new Star Trek movie a couple of times, and, for what it's worth, my opinion remains virtually unchanged from the brief comment I made the other day.

Here's the short and spoiler-free version: J.J. Abrams' update of the venerable sci-fi franchise is a fun and exciting summer popcorn flick that frankly surprised me (I didn't expect to like it at all, let alone as much as I admittedly did). However, it's also a movie with a lot of problems, both from a film-making and screenwriting perspective, and also in terms of how well it succeeds at being, well, Star Trek.

For the spoilerized and sure-to-be-incredibly-nerdy longer version, voyage below the fold...

I've been saying all along that the only thing I really wanted from this movie was to see some old friends and find out what they've been up to for the last 20 years. It's not that I had low expectations, exactly; I like to think that I had realistic expectations. I wasn't looking for a transcendent experience, or a return to the happy days of childhood, as I was with the Star Wars prequels. I knew going into Crystal Skull that it wasn't going to be the second coming of Raiders or even of Temple or Last Crusade; basically, I just hoped the flick wouldn't be an embarrassing disaster.

After seeing it twice, I am happy to say that it was not a disaster. What it was, exactly, I'm still trying to figure out, so forgive me if the following is something of a ramble.

There are spoilers below the fold, so be careful if you somehow still don't what this movie is about...

Okay, I know I recently made a rather harsh comment about the biggest movie of the summer so far (the remark, if you weren't paying attention, was "screw Iron Man), but of course I went to see it on opening weekend anyhow (along with, apparently, most everybody else in the country), and, as it turned out, it was a hell of a good way to kick off the summer season. If you happen to be one of the three or so people left who hasn't seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

The short version: The fifth Highlander feature film, recently released directly to DVD, wasn't as bad as I expected.

It was worse.

Much, much, much worse.

It was worse than either Star Trek V or Highlander 2, long the benchmarks for movie sequel suckage.

It was so bad it left The Girlfriend curled into a fetal ball, whimpering inconsolably.

It was so abysmally, eye-gougingly, soul-grindingly bad, in fact, that this fanboy is now finished with the whole god-forsaken franchise, at least as far as new Highlander product goes. I'm not quite incensed enough to disavow the original movie and the TV series, both of which I still enjoy, but in the highly unlikely event any further Highlander movies get made, I won't be wasting any more of my precious, limited, mortal lifespan on them. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm just not that masochistic.

The long version follows, if you're interested in reading any more of my rantings on this subject, but I think the important point has been made...