Summer Movie Review Mash-up

I know I’m a little late writing up reviews of the following three movies, despite the fact that I went to all three on opening weekend. That should give you a pretty solid sense of how underwhelmed I was by all of them. *frowny face* Am I being obtuse, or has Hollywood simply forgone strong plots and characterization for off-the-reservation special effects? Or maybe it’s the writer in me; I spend so much time focusing on the story arc and development that I have lost touch with the point of sitting in a really dark room, surrounded by ten foot high speakers, staring at a screen that is large enough to serve as a helicopter landing pad. In other words, experiencing complete auditory and visual overload (which is a completely separate experience from the cognitive and cerebral experience of absorbing a good story). Do the other writers out there have this same issue?

And also, after the lobe-blowing let down of Prometheus, I do believe I have become hopelessly jaded.Abraham Lincoln: Vampire HunterI’ll start out with this one because it was by far the best--for what it was. I had no expectations for ALVH other than being entertained by some unbelievable special effects and general storyline silliness. In these things, it did not disappoint. ALVH had three exceptional things going for it: fun characters; interesting plot, especially in terms of reinventing history; and outstanding fight scenes. The one complaint I have is that the story covered far too long of a timespan to really allow viewers to settle into the characters and vicariously experience their inner struggles. There was a lot of glossing over of interpersonal conflicts and psychological development. That being said, there was enough of a hint at the grander details the story must contain in the novel that I definitely left the movie wanting to read it. And, surprisingly, it passes the Bechdel Test.The Amazing SpidermanI have to admit, I was confused about this one. What happen to Mary Jane? What happened to Norman and Harry Osborn and the Green Goblin who I thought were integral to the original Spiderman origin story? Granted, I haven’t read a comic book since I was maybe ten, but I found a re-telling of this story without the original cast of characters to be very off-putting. All of the actors in TAS did a good job and were believable in their roles, and the special effects were generally fun, but the story just really dragged along. Essentially, it’s the story of a fringe-dwelling teenage genius who solves incredible genetics-based problems (that the world’s top scientists can’t??), struggles to impress a high school beauty (who somehow has the time and lab experience to also work in a genetics lab??), copes with the loss of both his parents and his beloved uncle, and is transformed into one tough hombre through a spider bite. There are holes, and lots of them, throughout the plot (like, how does he manage to synthesize the benefits of the genetically-modified spider’s bite, while his nemesis can’t? And how did no one in this high-powered lab notice that the spider’s venom could lead to such amazing benefits in the first place?), and the story itself took quite a long time to actually head in any definitive direction, like saving the world from an evil scientist. Not to mention a scene lifted directly out of Gleaming the Cube. This one was a solid “meh” and a full failure in regards to the Bechdel Test. I’m sure fifteen year old boys loved/will love it, however.Total RecallThis iteration of Total Recall had a couple of marked improvements over the first: the settings and special effects (which kind of go without saying since it’s been gasp twenty-two years since the original came out). The fight scenes were fantastic, especially those involving Kate Beckinsale, who pulled off quality bad-assery nearly as fine as Sharon Stone in the original, and the overall look and feel of the two cities (plus a bonus ruined landscape) where all the events take place were quite elegant and well designed. But that’s where the magic ends.One complaint I have with Total Recall redux is that all of the characters are completely cardboard. All of them. Kate’s character, Lori Quaid, runs around pissed off and intent on killing Quaid. Quaid, played by Colin Eyebrows, er, Farrell, runs around confused and ready to fight, and Jessica Biel’s character, Melina, runs around bummed that Quaid can’t remember her but intent on making sure his brain gets dissected by a new character, leader of the resistance, Mattias (played by Bill Nighy, who really looked like he just wanted to take a nap instead of be in this film). Besides Nighy, everyone, as described, does a lot of running around and fighting or shooting things, and not much else.There are two other major flaws in the film, which are inter-related. For an unknown reason, the writers dramatically changed the plot from Schwarzenegger’s TR. Instead of the story taking place on Mars with a focus on its alien artifacts and the element turbidium, the mining and distribution of which is being controlled by a corporation run by the evil Cohaagen, everything occurs on earth and Cohaagen is transformed into a despotic political leader played by Bryan Cranston. The new story is that Earth was devastated by chemical warfare and there are only two livable regions left, basically the UK and Australia. The people living in Australia are low-paid servants to the metropolitan dwellers of the UK and commute every day through the Earth’s core to work in UK-based factories (why the factories, which would seem to be giant waste-producing facilities that would muck up the pristine metro environment of the UK aren’t based in Oz isn’t explained). SPOILER: The gist is, the UK is running out of living space (because they didn’t realize how much room the factories would take up, presumably) and Quaid knows that Cohaagen is planning to wipe out the population of Oz to make room for the excess UK population (which would leave no one to work in the factories???). The only obstacle is the Resistance, which Quaid, in his original role as a member of Cohaagen’s goon squad, is supposed to infiltrate, much along the lines of the original movie.So, the flaws. Besides the traveling through the Earth’s core idea being rather boring when compared to the elaborate infrastructural implications and physiological variations resulting from the Mars motif in TR One, not to mention the ever-present threat of the livable Martian infrastructure being breached and the inhabitants dying an eye-popping, tongue-extruding death, Cohaagen’s character is completely inconsistent with the world he apparently leads. The idea put forth in the thin storyline is that he rose through the ranks in the chemical wars as a ruthless warlord, yet somehow becomes an esteemed and respected leader in a fairly mellow, egalitarian, and orderly modern society in the UK. Yet, in all of his screen time, his character does nothing but revel in the idea that he gets to wipe out a couple million people and can’t wait to share the fun with his good buddy Quaid (once Quaid is reverted back into his original persona as a bloodthirsty assassin). None of it really makes sense. How does a bad guy thrive as the leader of the free world when all he wants to do is wipe out half of said free world?Long story short, TRr had a gaggle of sparsely drawn characters running around inside a very thinly fleshed out plot. Worst of all, really, is that there were none of the classic one-liners Schwarzzenegger is so adept at. Plus, it fails the Bechdel Test.See you at the party, Richter!

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Parlance Pandemonium, Vexatious Vernacular, and Loose Lingo: Language and the Power of Words

This is a post about the relationships between language and the words that we use, writing, cycling, and feminism. Given the wide range of subject matter, you can probably guess you’re in for a meandering and possibly, though I'll do my best not to make it, obtuse undercurrent direct from my often muddy stream of consciousness. But hey, this isn't an academic research paper, and you probably wouldn't read it if it were.Trigger! Warning! Disclosure! Flashy Red Lights! I’ll be using words that most people find either offensive or bawdily humorous from here forward. Here's a good chance for you to grab a cool beverage and maybe tab over to Twitter to check up on the current cycling race or [fill in the blank] sport updates. Or just skip down to the last couple of paragraphs that focus on writing. Your choice.As so often happens to me—I can't imagine why—I was recently involved in a debate about the use of the "c" word. Nope, not Clinton, the other "c" word. Yep, cunt. You see, I have this reputation as a feminist, probably not a big surprise to you, dear readers, and to many feminists, and women in general, the “c” word is considered the lowest, meanest insult there is. I don’t see it that way.Let me back up and tell you why cunt became such a, if I may, hot topic. And this is where cycling comes into the flow. Because, yunno, cycling is just another “c” word, at least to some. (Looking at you, Novitsky and Tygart.)Procyclist and one of the favorites for this year’s Tour de France Bradley Wiggins gave a press conference last week where he flung vitriol and expletives at those who claim any cyclist who could win the TdF must be a doper. I chimed in with my full support of his tirade, which caused a close friend to question in what universe a feminist ideology can be accepting of anyone using the “c” word, especially in the pejorative sense. Wiggo said,

I say they’re just fucking wankers. I cannot be dealing with people like that. It justifies their own bone-idleness because they can’t ever imagine applying themselves to do anything in their lives. It’s easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that sort of shit, rather than get off their arses in their own lives and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something. And that’s ultimately it. Cunts.

I should mention that Wiggo, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a Brit and, in my understanding, the “c” word is a much more commonplace and universal pejorative in the UK than here. In other words, not quite as charged and anti-woman as in the US. I could be wrong in this assumption, however, since my closest association with English culture comes from growing up listening to the Clash and yes, cough, even Duran Duran.So why am I not opposed to being called the “c” word? Happy you asked, because it gives me a chance to tout one of my all-time favorite books, Inga Muscio's Cunt. Yep, that's the name of the book. It’s usually not shelved in the children’s section at your local bookstore. However, it is one of the greatest feminist reads you'll ever purchase, and she is a lovely and talented writer. The gist of why the title is that word is based on a sociolinguistic strategy of language reclamation. As you probably know, there is an intersection between feminist and sociolinguistic theory that revolves around language and how it is used / wielded to maintain a status quo. Part of the premise of Muscio's book discusses the origins of the word (originally a venerated goddess), and how it was co-opted by patriarchal forces and turned into a epithet. She analyzes how and why this type of thing happens (you should read Cunt and Rianne Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade for a deeper discussion of this), and then boldly discusses how women have it within our power to reclaim the words that once stood for our strength and dynamism—cunt being one of the most loaded—and in essence, turn the tactics used to derogate them back around.I read Cunt for the first time over ten years ago. Since then, I've never really considered the use of the word derogatory—in the sense that I think that anyone who calls me a cunt in an offensive way is really just saying, "I fear your strength and power and am cluelessly using this weak term in an attempt to establish dominance over you (and failing miserably)." In other words, I take it as a roundabout compliment when someone calls me a cunt. Yeah, I get that it’s NOT really a compliment, but the lesson here is that language is dynamic and requires both an actor and a receiver to give it veracity.And finally, because I’m a writer and a lot of you are writers, let me bring this subject back around to how it relates to, well, writing.We love words. It’s a flamboyant, fathomless, messy, challenging, salacious, and sometimes painful love affair that forces us to do terrible, terrible things. We kill people; we level buildings, cities, hell, sometimes even entire planets; we kick puppies and bury our in-laws alive in hidden coffins. Why? Because we can! Because the words are there, and we revel in leveraging them to achieve any and all nefarious deeds our demented minds can dream up. Being the wordsmiths that we are, we care A LOT about the structure and intent of our every sentence and every word. We are the type of people that will often recompose the same email dozens of times, even if it’s simply to say “I’ll be there for dinner,” in order to ensure that just the right amount of enthusiasm or reticence is beaming through our recipient’s screen of choice. We have been known to throw out five or ten synonyms at time for a single word in a heated debate because we’re too impassioned to settle for just one.We, above most, understand that language, dialect, syntax, accent, and inflection are all key components of our writing, especially vis-à-vis characterisation. Applied carefully and deliberately, they become critical components in how we shape our readers’ grasp and impressions of our characters’ personalities, attributes, tastes, thoughts, intentions, and overall existence. Without unique and specific applications of language, all characters would sound, and thus in our readers’ minds BE, the same. And this strict attention to language doesn’t stop at characterisation, but extends as far as the tone of our novels and stories. The way we develop our narrators’ patterns of speech and the words they use flavors our works, making them either light and rich, like a banana cream pie, or heavy and dark, like a Kells Guinness Stout Cake.In summary, words are the magic wand that we, as writers, wield with all the dexterity of a Hogwarts graduate. It’s a heavy and shifting responsibility, but we embrace it because we are power-hungry despots whose one goal in life is to bend and warp the minds of our minions. What better way to achieve this than through the thing we all share: language.

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Movie Review: Prometheus

Holy Scott Free! I sprinted to the theater last night to see Prometheus 'cause I've been pretty much DYING for this one, and left Regal with these three words spinning like a gyroscope in freefall through my head: Jumped. The. Shark.Yeah. I know.Ever been to a movie that felt like the screenwriters had gathered for a pre-production brainstorm, wrote down a list of say, a hundred plot points and events, threw them all in a hat, picked the first 25-50, and said, "All right. Let's lay these out in random order and just fill in some basic information in between to make it seem like they all cohere into a more-or-less comprehensible *cough* story, shall we? Oh, by the way, Set and Effects Departments, could you make sure that there's something pretty happening on the screen so the audience will at least feel like the 3D glasses were worth the extra two bucks? Yeah, that would be great."There will be a number of spoilers ahead because I really don't feel like this movie could be any more spoiled. Just so you know.Let's start with characters and character development. No really, Ridley, let's have some. We'd appreciate that in our big screen entertainment. Otherwise, this aimless collection of people walking around sharing bits of disjointed dialogue that frequently has nothing to do with what's actually occurring in the movie is a bit hard to make sense of and not in the least engaging. Let me see if I can sum up for you: two scientists, one of which is more of a dudemanguybro than an actual archeologist, who wish to meet an alien life form who they postulate created humans because, well, how cool would that be? A tough-as-nails, bitchy ship commander who...spends two hours being a tough-as-nails, bitchy ship commander. A gaggle of "scientists" who, in their minimal screen time, behave like a bunch of petulant ten-year-olds who woke up on the wrong side of the bed and fail to actually perform any scientific activities before encountering slimy alien-beings (which, in a totally unsurprising turn of events, promptly attack and destroy). And some ship crewpersons who...crew the ship.That about it? Oh, there was Idris Elba, the wry, pragmatic, hardbitten-but-in-the-end-heroic ship captain. And let's face it, I could watch Idris Elba play a man in a coma and be content for hours. If the movie had been two hours of Idris kicking alien ass and taking tongue-twisting alien names, there might have been a chance it wouldn't have sucked. Might have been.Then there was Michael Fassbender's character, David, the sinister yet necessary (and compulsory, given this being essentially a prequel to Alien) android. Or is that artificial human? In any case, Fassbender pulls off his role with acceptable believability. But would someone please give that man a meatball sandwich? After making Hunger—a stunning film about the hunger strike by IRA-activist Bobby Sands—he apparently didn't get the memo that it's okay for his size-to-weight ratio to be within normal human range.Finally, there was the star of the movie, Noomi Rapace, who plays Doctor Elizabeth Shaw. In the annals of movie stars, I am absolutely certain there's never been another actor who matches her amazing range of distraught chin-quivering. Which is about all she does throughout the film.The moment where the film completely lost me came about forty minutes in. After the sinister robot infects the dudemanguybro with some alien goo, and dudemanguybro and Shaw have an emotional moment about her being unable to reproduce followed by having steamy space sex, Dr. Shaw winds up, gasp!, pregnant. Apparently, this is what the bad robot had planned all along, but how he could have known this would be the result of the goo-laced champagne he gave dudemanguybro is anyone's guess.That's not what lost me, however. Here's where things go from corny to worse. Dr. Shaw learns of this illicit pregnancy and decides to have the extremely handy all-in-one surgery performing booth (which the audience was introduced to early in the film in a moment of totally in-your-face "foreshadowing." Really, it would have been more entertaining if Ridley had just made a cameo appearance during that scene and said something like, "Listen up everyone, this cool piece of tech is going to come in handy later. Wait for it. Waaaaaaaait for it.") give her an emergency C-section with only local anesthetic. The one thing us gore-lovers did get to enjoy was a gritty close-up of this massive open wound, the subsequent removal of the alien baby (which resembled a large wad of phlegm more than anything), and Noomi getting some well-aimed stomach staples.You caught the part where I mentioned this was only forty minutes into the film, right? That's important because after this major abdominal surgery, our heroine gets to run around and fight baddies for another hour and twenty or so. Let me repeat: jump the shark. And for some super questionable script writing, not a single one of the other characters even asks her why she's running around the ship in her bloody underwear with a bunch of staples in her stomach. 'Cause, yunno, apparently in Ridley's imaginings of the near-future, there's nothing strange about that. People have random abdominal surgeries all the time, right? And are more than capable of going for a few laps around the perimeter moments later, right? Right?Let's move on to theme, of which there were a few running through the movie: thwarted mommyhood being the most blaring, which, again, is apparently compulsory in any Alien-derivative piece. There were threads of Freudian parenting and psychosexual development theories, along with touches on the Cassandra Complex, but these moments keep bumping up against sequences of alien attacks and nasty alien viruses causing people to explode. The overall experience was to leave the audience awash in a daze of discomfort and confusion.In the end, the film was simply unsettling. As mentioned, the visuals and some of the tech were quite an achievement. However, they were lost on Prometheus. Too many pointless characters, short bursts of action, and conflicting themes all tumbled around on the screen in disconnected fragments. In a simile that perhaps Ridley would approve of: after all of Prometheus's hype and promise, the experience was somewhat like having the Corporation's drone try to stuff a rolled up magazine down your throat. Some things just don't work out well.Bechdel Test status: Passes. Barely.UPDATE: Another review of Prometheus that is absolutely spot on. Delves more deeply into the vag symbolism (um, should one ever use the words "delves deeply" and "vag" in the same sentence? You be the judge.)

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Movie Review: The Avengers and Why Joss Whedon Should be One of Them

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hPpG4s3-O4]Who is your favorite Avenger? Mine is, hands down, Joss Whedon.Full disclosure: I have never read a Marvel comic. Additionally, I was ambivalent to all the movies that have come out with Spiderman, Ironman, Captain America-man, Green Swollen Man, Hammer Man, etc. I enjoyed the movies for the ever-advancing special effects, but felt their overall depth was not quite up to my expectations. Or maybe standards. Either way. [Note: The aforementioned standards do not apply to horror films. Just sayin'.]But you take a master screenwriter and director like Joss Whedon, throw in some amazing special effects, kick-ass technology, superb actors (okay, maybe not all of them, but we'll leave that to your personal judgement) who can fulfill the roles of both a super-hero AND a complex human being, and suddenly, I begin to sit up a bit straighter in my seat and take notice.A short list of elements that make the Avengers stand out as superior to the other Marvel super-hero movies:

1. The main external conflict in the single hero stories is between them and an enemy, with a sub-conflict (or, one could argue, a primary conflict) with themselves. This is a fun story to see unfold once, but since all of the Marvel movies are the same story, varying only in the tightness and design of the heroes' latex suits and handy gadgets they get to use, it's become overdone and unoriginal. Whedon had the freedom and maneuvering room to move beyond this tired theme and take our heroes to a new level of conflict. Not only did they have to fight a common enemy, but they had to learn to do it together. Thus, most of the Avengers focused on the intra-personal clashes and struggles that would naturally come about when you put a demi-god, a narcisstic genius, a sir-yes-sir, bottle-enhanced super soldier, and an invulnerable and unbeatable scientist-slash-mega monster together. After the epic fight scenes we've all gorged ourselves on in the previous Marvel movies, it was high time for exposure to a battle of another sort: a battle of wits. Something Director Whedon excels at.
2. That being said, Whedon didn't let us down when it comes to the reason the child in us really loves super-hero movies. The action and destruction were spectacular. I'll say one thing about Bruce Banner; he loves to stomp the holy hell out of New York City.
3. And the third and most unexpected bonus of the Avengers was Scarlett Johansson's character, Natasha Romanov. Almost 49% of you are saying "duh," but I'll explain what I mean. Unlike sweet, affable darlings such as Betty Ross or Mary Jane Watson—who are lovely, true, but consistently need a good saving at the hands of their respective heroes—Nat Romanov can and does lay down plenty of hurt on her own. Naturally, being a Joss Whedon film, no one would expect the female lead to take a side role, and once again hats off to Whedon for putting Johansson's character front and center. In a turn of particularly subtle brilliance, there's a point in the film where Hawkeye states the distinction between the Black Widow's identity as a spy instead of soldier, or, in other words, someone who uses wit and intelligence rather than brute force to extract information. This is important in that it gives Johansson's character layers that you rarely find in either super-hero personas or the female characters that inhabit the sidelines of the films featuring them.

And for one final bonus, Mark Ruffalo's portrayal of the Hulk was to date the best of the best. Conflicted, neurotic, nerdy, depressed, heroic, the list goes on. And with the most soulful eyes in Hollywood, who better to embody such a range of characteristics? The good news is, there's a chance we'll see more of Mr. Ruffalo in this role.If you are a comic book fan, a ten-year-old boy, a ten-year-old girl, an action-lover, a Joss Whedon fan, a green screen worshipper, trying to speed up your rate of hearing loss, or simply looking for a stellar two-hour span of entertainment, the Avengers is the movie for you.Bechdel Test status: Does not pass.

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Movie Review: The Cabin in the Woods

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Itzujv4JwU]What is the thing that you most fear? The monster under the bed? Unstoppable zombies gangling through the moonlight? Giant snakes that can swallow you in one bite and let you to slowly digest in their thoracic cavity (I'm sure that description is not quite biologically apt, but you know what I meant)? Maybe something else? Something even more gruesome? Here's a thought project for you: imagine that thing that you most fear, and now imagine it times a thousand. Wouldn't you be tripping all over yourself to go see a movie featuring THAT!?Why are you shaking your head? Hello?Okay, well, perhaps my movie taste is a touch, ahem, unique, but don't let that dissuade you. If you ever sat through a movie like Evil Dead, or Dead Snow, or even one without the word "dead" in the title, like the Walking Dead, er, no, like Night of the Living Dead...no, wait, I'll get it, um...Fright Night!—whew, as I was saying, if you ever watched a movie like one of those and had even a fleeting moment where you thought to yourself, "This is the grooviest gorefest of all time" then Joss Whedon (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame, among others) and Drew Goddard's (involved in such projects as Lost and Alias, and writer of Cloverfield) latest collaboration, the Cabin in the Woods, will send your horror-loving heart into spasms. Of joy, just to be clear.With a tagline such as "You think you know the story" one thing you know you can count on are surprises. But let's face it; we've all seen movies that had a bit of a shock, and we've all become almost numb to the expectation of the unexpected. Us gore junkies are always looking for the next big thing, the next big whallop that sends the adrenalin glands into overdrive and the stomach lurching so far up the throat that we have to bounce in our seats to get it back down where it belongs. With Josh and Drew, we can relax, because those gents know how to deliver.So it's off to the deserted, dilapidated cabin in the woods we go with our five vacationing college friends. Of course, if we weren't in such capable storytelling hands, we'd already be yawning. But no, we're not yawning. We're sitting raptly attentive in our seats, hands clutched together just beneath our chins knowing that at any moment, we'll have to yank them up to our faces to cover our eyes as the real show begins.And when it does, get ready, because you won't be expecting this.I wish I could tell you more, but suffice it to say, the anticipation is part of the experience for this movie. The characters are all charming and well cast, the setting is perfectly eerie, and the story leaves nothing to be desired. If you, like me, enjoy a good arterial spritzing and prefer your horror with a side of humor, the Cabin in the Woods is what's for dinner.And because I can't help myself, here's a tiny, two-word, pseudo-spoiler: Sigourney Weaver.Bechdel Test status: Squeaks by, barely.

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Movie Review: Act of Valor

When I grow up, I want to be a Navy SEAL.

You guessed it, I saw the movie Act of Valor recently, which is easily the best hour and a half recruitment video the military could have ever wished for. If the Navy and Army don’t see a thirty percent jump in enlistments in the next year, I’ll eat frog legs. (Frog legs, hehe, get it? Mmmkay, bad joke *rolls eyes at self*.)

Put quite simply, this movie will not disappointment anyone who enjoys action, explosions, and a healthy dose of patriotic seasoning (even on their frog legs). Act of Valor offers not only these usual genre standbys, but also takes authenticity in moviemaking to an unprecedented level. By now, most everyone interested enough in the film to be reading a review of it knows that the main characters are all real active duty SEALs, and that they filmed much of the movie using live and battlefield-current munitions. Which, of course, is what made the whole thing so damn good.

[Side story: the main weapon the SEALs carried throughout the movie is the M4 rifle, which was just coming into wide use back in 1998 when I got out of the Army. I had to ask a gun-nut friend if that was what it was because the ones carried in the film were heavily bedecked with different types of sights, scopes, stocks, camouflage, etc., which, as I understand it, are options each special operations soldier gets to personally decide on. If I ever need to accessorize an M4 (and who doesn't at some point need to?), I believe I might go with this feature.]

I have to admit, however, that this level of realism had an unexpected effect. It was eerie and dark, close enough to reality that it actually made me uncomfortable. In some scenes, it felt more like witnessing real footage from a terrorist attack; the opening scene was particularly disturbing. The blood, the splatters, the explosions, and the SEALs’/actors’ calibrated precision—knowing that these experiences aren’t far from the truth for these guys—REALLY—made it a bit hard to watch. There is something about looking into the face of a person who has personally seen, and perpetrated, violence and death and witnessed the darkest parts of the human psyche that can take the ooh-aah-show-me-more factor out anything.

Fortunately, the directors, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh, and writer, Kurt Johnstad, seemed to understand that there needed to be a lighter side to give the film more “entertainment” value. The banter between the two lead SEALs, LT Rorke and Chief Dave, provided most of this comic relief, but also did something much more important and meaningful; it gave us viewers a sense of the granite-strong fraternal bond formed between people who live and function in a world of danger and chaos. In many ways, this subtle but powerful subtext may be more of a draw for potential new enlistees, as well as moviegoers in general. I suspect it is the same magic that moved so many war veterans who saw Saving Private Ryan. Explosions and splatter-patterns of brainy goo on walls go a long way (if you’re as much of a gore whore as I am), but what makes a person truly connect with a movie, a book, or even just a catchy image is feeling that emotional tug. And really, I’m not even sure a die hard anarchist’s eyes can stay dry at the sound of Taps on a bugle.

I’ll end with a nod to the filmmakers for doing their best to incorporate some female characters with more complexity than the stereotypical “wife left behind.” I won’t reveal any spoilers, and of course, it still doesn’t get a pass on the Bechdel Test. But in a movie based on an all male tactical team, you can hardly expect it to.

If you plan to see this movie, prepare yourself by doing two things: Bring Visine because the action and excitement are so non-stop you won’t blink the entire time. And stuff some tissue in your back pocket just in case your eyes get a little more teary at the end than you’ll feel like admitting. You can blame it on the Visine.

One last point, why does everyone refer to “the elite Navy SEALs”? Navy SEAL is the definition of elite.

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Book Review: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Have you ever picked up a volume of something, whether a novel, a historical study, even a cookbook, and after reading just a few words became so wrapped up in it that the rest of the world completely disappeared? OK, maybe this doesn't happen much with cookbooks, unless you're a chef and cooking is your thing. As a dedicated reader, I have sunk my fangs into untold books and have become very good at spotting something that will turn my knob within the first few paragraphs. And I'm definitely not the kind of person who will force myself to sit through an entire story, ten or so hours of my life, if those first sentences don't do it for me. There are so many wonderful books out there, there's no reason to make them wait on the less wonderful books (and by less wonderful, I just mean the ones that don't work for me personally, it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with the writing).Mystic River is one of those books that stripped the outside world away and made me want to stay on the couch until I'd read the entire 500 or so pages. A lot of you probably saw the movie by the same name starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon that won quite a number of awards a few years ago, and deservedly so. When I saw the movie, I was quite moved by the entire story. The plot, the dramatic turns, and the heartwrenching emotional impact of it all was profound. It seemed that if a movie, which is often a poorly modified version of the original story when coming from a book, could be so well done, the book must be an amazing piece of work. And in the case of Mystic River, that's true times ten.Dennis Lehane has drawn the three main characters and all of his supporting characters with a pen made of part gold and part brilliance. It's not often that I read a book where at least at some point I feel like the author has to resort to at least a little bit of a laundry list to get across all the character details s/he wants. Not so with Mystic River. The story Lehane tells is so viscerally and subtly powerful that it's almost as if you're there, not reading about these people and the tragedy that befalls them, but witnessing it, a passer-by on the sidewalk.For those who don't know, here's just a quick synopsis of the story. In the mid-seventies, three boys, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle are just typical kids growing up in a blue collar neighborhood in Boston. One day, Dave is abducted and sexually abused for four days by unknown men. When he escapes, his life and the lives of his friends are forever changed.They grow up and fulfill what could be argued are sadly unavoidable twists of destiny: Sean becoming a State Trooper, Jimmy becoming a criminal, and Dave living a marginal blue collar life. They lose touch with each other beyond an occasional nod in a neighborhood bar, but their lives come into collision again when Jimmy's oldest daughter is found brutally killed the night before she planned to elope with her boyfriend. Sean is assigned to the case and Jimmy makes it clear that Sean either finds the killer soon, or he will. Jimmy's wife is cousins with Dave's wife, and they begin to grow close again as Dave and Celeste help Jimmy and Annabeth work through their grief.The cruel twist of fate, however, is this question: on the night Jimmy's daughter is killed, Dave returns home covered in blood with no strong alibi for what happened. He admits to having seen Katie, Jimmy's daughter, minutes before she died, but claims not to know what became of her. Is Dave lying? Did he kill Katie?The story uncovers the deepest secrets of the human heart and studies what it is that makes a person do what they do. It asks the questions of whether or not fate can be challenged, and how, and if there's any way to avoid your own. It's a beautifully written novel and I highly recommend it.Dennis Lehane has a new book out now called Moonlight Mile. I picked it up at the grocery store and read the first couple of pages yesterday--I could tell right away that it's going to be just as fantastic. He's also the author of Shutter Island, and many others.

Cheap Gimmicks

You know what I’m tired of seeing in movies and movie trailers? Tattoos.

Yeah, this from a girl with more ink than her own highly-inked husband. Clearly, it’s not that I have anything against tattoos, I’m just really tired of seeing them used as some kind of “watch this film, it’s got a bad-ass heroine/hero, whose bad-assery is obviously immense because they have this giant bad ass tattoo” gimmick. And then when you watch the movie, you see that tattoo maybe one time, usually in an overly-emphasized muscle shot (for a man) or a sexually explicit woman-as-object voyeur pleasing shot (for a woman), then…never again. What a cliché.

Tattoos, by their nature, are a symbol and usually have some private meaning to their wearers. For movie characters to have these giant symbols on their bodies, as an audience member, you expect there to be some point or purpose to them. If there isn’t, why feature them? It would be like a character in some romantic comedy carrying a shovel around for the entire film and never give any reason for it. No other characters comment on it, nothing. Just a shovel, folks, why the strange looks? Basically, tattoos in movie posters and on the characters are just as meaningless as a shovel. A notable exception is the angel character in “Legion”, but I’m not even trying, and I can already come up with at least three.

Just a little personal gripe.

 

Wanted

 

xXx

 

The Expendables

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

Gollum

My favorite of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was The Two Towers. There, I said it. It may not be a popular opinion, but I wasn't popular in high school and I've learned to dangle blithely and contentedly from my rung on the ladder. I think it really comes down to one thing: Gollum is and has been the most interesting fictional character to cross the big screen since, um, Ripley from Alien & Aliens (we'll pretend that character never carried on beyond the second movie).In the first film, Frodo stole the screen with both his naivety and general cuteness, but his character didn't really stretch the model of reluctant hero to levels we've never seen before. In the second film, he was just plain useless and weak. The character of Aragorn, both in the first and third film was a real show stealer with his skills and martial prowess, but again, nothing unusual there. In fact, I think Jackson overstated the entire story of Aragorn's rise to power, but that's another subject.No, it's really Gollum who stretched the whole fabric of storytelling when it comes to literary figures and Hollywood films. He was a villain, but also an anti-hero, a monster, but also an underdog. It was impossible to watch his ragged ambulations and conflicted emotional contortions without feeling an overwhelming sense of both pity and loathing. No other character I've seen in a recent movie can evoke such fascination and even adoration. What is is about the bad-guy-who-wants-to-be-a-good-guy that makes people sit back, enjoy another beer, and rewind the parts that character was in (OK, maybe this is just me, but I'm hoping you see my point).Tolkien knew the utility of the Gollum character. Don't be deceived by The Hobbit, where he was almost reduced to a stereotype. Gollum represents the darkness we all have within ourselves. Not just reluctance to step up when called, not just weakness, not just fear--but real darkness. The ability to be overtaken by a need/greed/desire so monumental and consuming that even the moralistic and ethical laws ingrained within us from birth become nothing but scattered leaves in an October wind.I think Tolkien's greatest wish was to examine that subject, that darkness in humanity, and prove that there is some greater power beyond our own human strengths, that can rise above it and defeat it. I guess that's an obvious statement, given how the series turns out, but using the juxtaposition of Frodo and Gollum to tell that tale is really one of the most brilliant triumphs in storytelling ever written.So, anyway, I like the second movie the best because that's where Gollum, and all that his puny little character stands for, gets to really shine. Just thought I'd share that.

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.