In a world...without The Voice.

Rest in peace, Don LaFontaine.

Independence Day, Special Edition

I just got done watching the Special Edition of Independence Day. This is truly a sci-fi classic. I consider it one of those movies that doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, story-wise, but which perfectly executes a specific genre or story arc.

I think it really holds up over time. But then, it doesn't hurt that Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Jeff Goldblum are all totally hot in it.

I enjoyed a lot of the new material. Having seen the movie several times, I recognized most of it. Just for example, there was a sub-plot with Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) and his children, a sequence with Jasmine (Viveca Fox) making her way to El Toro AFB, and the global coordination of the final airstrike.

Best of all, they at least attempted to explain how David Levinson (Goldblum) could hack into alien computers.

David Duchovny enters rehab.

Here is the text of an Associated Press article found on Yahoo! News.

LOS ANGELES - David Duchovny has entered a rehabilitation facility for sex addiction. In a statement released Thursday by his lawyer, Stanton Stein, the actor said he did so voluntarily, adding: "I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family."
The actor's publicist, Flo Grace, confirmed the rehab report, which first appeared on People.com.
She and Stein both declined to elaborate further.
Duchovny, 48, plays a sex-obsessed character on the Showtime series "Californication," which earned Emmy nominations for casting and cinematography. The show's second season begins Sept. 28. Showtime had no comment Thursday.
The actor appeared in the film "The X Files: I Want to Believe" earlier this summer. He has been married to actress Tea Leoni since 1997. They have two children.

My first thought was not about the irony of Hank Moody's behavior on Californication, but about Fox Mulder's infamous porn collection.

God bless you, David, and good luck. This one is a bitch, I have friends who can attest to that personally.

RDJ takes on TDK

Okay, this is NOT going to become a Robert Downey Jr fanblog.

Much.

HOWEVER...he recently made some pretty bold statements over at Moviehole about The Dark Knight. I first saw this reported at Yahoo! Here's an excerpt in case the link eventually goes away:

"My whole thing is that that I saw 'The Dark Knight'. I feel like I'm dumb because I feel like I don't get how many things that are so smart. It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved 'The Prestige' but didn't understand 'The Dark Knight'. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

I can't say that I agree with him about The Dark Knight. I thought it was extremely well-done—specifically the story, the performances and the special effects.

At the same time, I can actually see Downey's point. In being so ambitious, TDK stumbles in several places. The script tries to do too much. The intricate twists and subplots and the fast pace threaten to overwhelm the human significance of the things that happen. Chaos is overcome by human decency, but it leaves such misery in its wake that it still ends up seeming more powerful.

I honestly enjoyed Iron Man more, at least in the conventional sense. Like Batman Begins, it tells a classic origin story, straight out of Joseph Campbell. That story was executed perfectly, and given a heartbreaking (pun intended) contemporary angle. It also had a humor and a warmth that was missing from The Dark Knight.

One could argue that Iron Man was the less pretentious film, but then, I found The Prestige more pretentious than TDK by several miles. If you believe that all stories hav “messages” whether they mean to or not, then both of these movies may have messages that we need right now. In the case of Iron Man, it's “It's never too late to change”. Iron Man 2 is likely to follow the TDK mold in that it will veer into darker territory, but that is more likely to concern Tony Stark's lingering personal demons.

Unfortunately, in making these statements, Downey leaves himself open to charges of sour grapes. He certainly has a vested interest in Marvel Comics at this point. The fact is, though, this summer was going to belong the Jo—I mean to The Dark Knight no matter what. Headlining the second biggest event movie is an accomplishment in itself, as is bookending the main event...and he has accomplished both.

Pop Culture Update

* Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as the lead in an upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. Despite finding widespread skepticism on the internet about the involvement of Guy Ritchie, this long-time fangirl of both Downey and Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle is ovejoyed.

* Speaking of Ritchie...his spouse Madonna drew fire this weeked, for concert imagery that seemed to compare John McCain to Hitler and Barack Obama to Mahatma Ghandi. It is difficult to know how exactly this came across without having been there, and I suppose that I understand the point she was trying to make. At the same time, I find both comparisons to be tasteless and excessive.

* Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Farrell have donated their earnings from their new movie, "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", to Matilda Ledger, the daughter of their late co-star, Heath Ledger.

Storywh0re's Father's Day Special (with spoiler warnings)

Sorry for the long absence! I've been busy moving.

I want to hop back in the saddle by posting about fathers in popular culture. I could easily write about Ray Barone (a.k.a. Ray Romano), who's disinterest and incompetence with his own family is an exhausted cliché; or about Alias's Jack Bristow, who's love for his daughter Sydney sometimes led him to do dark deeds to protect her. However, I'd rather write about the two more recent examples--Indiana Jones and Hank Moody.

As you may already know, whether you saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or not, the grizzled archaeologist learns in it that he has an adult son. The young man's mother is Marion Ravenwood, Indy's romantic interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark—and, all of the sudden, his one true love. Indy and Marion had allegedly been engaged, until he ran out on her. I found the wedding at the end implausible, even though I know it's supposed to make the audience happy. First of all, Indy never struck me as the marrying type. Nor was I ever satisfied as to why neither of them had ever contacted the other, especially with the doe-eyes that the reunited lovers exchange. I just wasn't convinced that they could pick up where they left off so easily.

I found Crystal Skull to be a lukewarm conclusion to the franchise anyway. The best part was a breathlessly funny gag with a snake. If I were to rank the Indiana Jones movies, I'd put this one above only Temple of Doom. The alien origins of the plot seem like a non-sequitur for the series, best suited to pave the way for next month's X-Files movie.

Which leads me to my favorite recent discovery. Inspired by chatter on LiveJournal, I watched Season 1 of the Showtime series Californication, just to catch up with David Duchovny.

I was blown away.

Duchovny plays Hank Moody, a novelist living in Los Angeles. As the story begins, he has had writer's block for several years, and is forced to accept a job blogging—which he disdains. His breakaway novel has been made into a bad romantic comedy. Most importantly, Karen, his long-time live-in girlfriend, has left him with their fourteen-year-old daughter in tow, for a man more willing to marry her. Missing his family desperately, Hank is the definition of dissolute, losing himself in alcohol and casual sex.

First off, let me be clear: this is cable television. There is simulated sex of various kinds, mild violence, drug use, and—somehow the most jarring to me—vomiting. However, if you're okay with that, and already have a taste for mini-movies such as Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, you are likely to consider this another rare example of what scripted television should be. It is by turns hilarious, suspenseful, and heart-wrenching.

One could argue that the characters in Californication think and talk more about sex than people really do. At the same time, it feels a lot closer to real life than the umpteenth new show revolving around serial killers. In a lot of ways, this is a story about families, as Hank, his agent and his wife, and Karen's new family all navigate the complexity of modern life and field major transitions. No one is completely blameless or unsympathetic. My biggest objection is that casual cocaine use is depicted without consequence, which I do not believe is typical.

I must admit, the show has made David Duchovny hot to me again. (Perhaps I prefer his scruffy Hank to his polished “FBI Agent” look.) I always thought he was a better writer and director than an actor, but he has come a long way since The X-Files, and plays a far more demanding role here .

The plot takes a few delicious twists along the way, and the central tension of the main season is resolved in the last episode. This could be both good and bad. (It keeps things fresh, but forces the show to explore other conflicts.) Either way, I plan to catch Season 2, which airs later this summer, if only on iTunes or Netflix.

Storywh0re from the vault - Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

Okay, I usually like to let a new movie sit for at least a day before responding to it, but I just watched something that I hated so much that I have to write right now.

It's called Eagle vs Shark, and it's my first time renting from iTunes. The movie poster got my attention last year. For whatever reason, I was expecting Office Space with a costume party. The marketing hinted at a new rivalry along the lines of Pirates vs. Ninjas, with people choosing sides. What I got instead was a New Zealand comedy with a quirkiness similar to Napoleon Dynamite, but without the warmth.

It begins with Lily, a cashier at a burger joint, who has a crush on Jarrod, a DVD store employee who comes in every day. She gets laid off, allegedly randomly, only to learn later that the selection was rigged. Jarrod invites one of her co-workers to a party, but Liliy crashes it instead. They hook up afterwards, and become a de facto couple. Eventually, Lily goes home with Jarrod to visit his family. She gets drawn into their dysfunction, and into Jarrod's plot to street-fight a high school bully.

The awkwardness and flat affect of the characters are what first reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite. “Freakin Idiot” is replaced by “Cockhole”. The biggest similarity, however is the concept of the crystal dragon—a phenomenon found in martial arts and in paganism. A crystal dragon is someone (often male, often young) who makes claims to great power, skill or training that they don't really possess. They are shaped like something fierce, but you can see right through them.

There is so much wrong with Lily and Jarrod's relationship, I don't even know where to begin. In their first love scene, he's sexually unskilled in a way that goes past normal or endearing. Instead of cuddling or talking with her afterwards, he makes a threatening phone call. He stands her up for a date, then tracks her down at her house, where he cuffs her on her arm and accidentally smashes a cake she made him. This he chalks up to his “depression” and “intensity”. On their car trip, he is rude to her and her brother. Once they're with his family, embarasses her with inflated claims about her. He has a daughter that he didn't tell her about, but he clams up about his dating past. He dumps her, stranding her away from home, and goes out with another woman to please his father.

Let's be real clear: many of these are classic warning signs of an abuser.

Jarrod's absurd revenge fantasy culminates in him attacking a man in a wheelchair, only to loose the fight anyway. After all of this, Lily takes him back, just because he finally figures out that a woman named Lily might like lilies, and because he gives her a gift that he's already tried to give to two other people. She's already reclaimed some of her power by taking the center of attention at a party, but still, it made me twitch.

Why is the audience supposed to be happy about this? Because we love happy endings? Because being in a couple is better than not? The underlying idea seems to be to me that that Lily is there for Jarrod's redemption—to do the emotional labor at which women excel--whether or not its good for her or he's good enough. No, no, no, no no. I am beyond sick of these ideas, and I would feel the same if the roles were reversed.