Return to Sunnydale: The Great "Buffy" Rewind, Season One

This summer, I embarked on a rather ambitious project, if I say so myself: thanks to the glories of Netflix instant and the infinite patience/passing interest of my special lady friend, I am going to watch every single episode of "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," and then blog about my thoughts on the show here, one season at a time. This is the first installment in that series.

In my late-middle school/early high school years, I knew a lot of people - a lot of girls, anyway - who loved "Buffy." And while I would catch the occasional episode here and there and generally knew what was going on the in the show even when I wasn't watching it, it never became must-see-TV for me, for reasons I still can't quite define.

However, something has happened over the last couple of years: I have slowly but surely begun turning into a Joss Whedon fanboy, and I'm going about it all wrong. It all started during the writers' strike of a few years back, during which Whedon created "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog," a web series Tara introduced me to which I immediately fell in love with. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now.

After "Dr. Horrible," one of Tara's good friends bought her a "Firefly" box set and, just as with "Dr. Horrible," I instantly fell in love with the space western series, and I really enjoy its big screen continuation, "Serenity." Hell, I even bought the comics because I couldn't get enough of those characters and that story.

But still, being the obsessive geek that I am, I felt bad for falling in love with the Whedonverse without experiencing "Buffy," a series he put seven seasons of work into. I had seen the feature film version (which I hear Joss is none too fond of) and I had the earlier-in-life flirtations with the series I described above, but I felt like now was the right time to take the plunge.

And I have to say, after having knocked back the first season of "Buffy," I'm really enjoying myself. Sure, it's not great. Hell, there are some episodes that I'd consider flat-out terrible, but it's a fun ride, and I'm curious to see where the show went after season one.

(Note: I'm not going to do an episode-by-episode breakdown, because neither you nor I have the time for that; instead, I'm going to give you my general impressions of the season.)

The tricky thing about "Buffy" appears to be the overall tone of the show: there's some campy shit that goes on in these episodes (I'm looking at you, ancient Italian demon that haunts a high school's intranet for the purposes of flirting with a shy, bookish girl before possessing a giant makeshift robot with glowing eyes and horns) but each episode is grounded in issues that were on the minds and hearts of myself and my "Buffy"-watching friends when we were in school: popularity, rejection, infatuation, friendship, love, longing and confusion all being as prominent in the show as any monsters.

As a result, the performers who are the most successful in the show's first season are the ones who pull off the balancing act between camp and all-too-real emotional turmoil: Alyson Hannigan (Willow), be-still my beating heart, is perfect at this. You know that Italian internet demon robot thing I was telling you about? Well, it was after her, and she sold the hell out of the shy girl looking for her shot at companionship at the other end of those awfully strange online conversations. Bless her heart, even when the show falters, which it does quite often in season one, Hannigan's performance never does.

Every time Hannigan was on screen, the show seemed to step up its game, and the same could be said for Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) and David Boreanaz (Angel). Two solid actors, they bring so much more to their underwritten characters than what must have been on the page, and the couple of scenes they have together were my favorite of the season.

Other performers, however, haven't fared so well: Nicholas Brendon (Xander) has yet to master the art of delivering overly-witty Whedonisms and Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, sure does kick a lot of ass, but when it comes time to hit the deep emotional notes, she and the show sometimes waver, not sure how straight or campy to play key moments.

While there were plenty of season one episodes ("Teacher's Pet," "The Pack," "Out of Mind, Out of Sight") that I wouldn't be surprised to discover are legendary in fan circles for their awfulness, the show in general took an interesting arc as the season progressed: the ideas didn't get any smarter, but the execution got better, as if the crew in front of the camera and behind the scenes were getting closer to honing "Buffy"'s tricky tone.

Two fine examples of this actually aired back-to-back: "The Puppet Show" and "Nightmares." The former is based on the goofiest of horror concepts - the killer ventriloquist dummy - and plays it for equal parts laughs and scares. And you know what? It works, thanks in large part to how the episode's plot plays with the conventional trappings of that particular cliche.

And "Nightmares," while not making the most sense in the world plot-wise, strikes a similar chord: the plot revolves around the main characters' worst nightmares coming to life. Some of them are funny (Willow's), some are kind of scary (Xander's) and some are nearly tragic (Buffy's/Giles'). All in all, good stuff to be found here.

So now I'm 12 episodes into "Buffy" and with Halloween right around the corner, I'm ready for more. Stay tuned, faithful readers.

Review: "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"

All right, here we go. I know it's been a while since I promised this post, and even longer since I've blogged at all, so I'm gonna play things fast and loose with this here review -- spell check be damned!

I hate to say it, but for the first time, Edgar Wright let me down. "Spaced," "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz": they're all very good or great. He's a key director for my generation. But the dude dropped the ball on this one. It's just that simple.

OK, so I don't get labeled as a hater or whatever, I'll give you the good stuff first. Any conversation about "SP vs TW" and its positives has to start with Kieran Culkin as Wallace, Scott's roomate. Loved him seven years ago in "Igby Goes Down," and he just keeps getting better as an actor. He brings Wallace (my favorite character from the "SP" books) to life so perfectly, any time he was on screen the movie immediately got better. This isn't the kind of role that wins Oscars, but hopefully it's the kind of role that leads to bigger parts in the future.

Also, while we're talking about the goods, I'll say this: Edgar Wright is incapable of making a movie that doesn't look or sound amazing. His use of color, lighting, editing and sound design make this one of the most thoroughly enjoyable action movie experiences I've had in a while, probably since JJ's "Star Trek." Edgar knows how to shoot a movie and deliver a series of images to audiences in a way that is exciting, informative and fun. You can feel a love of the possibilities of the cinema in every frame he shoots -- kind of how you could feel that with Kurosawa and early-to-mid-period Spielberg.

But while we're talking about the sound, let me segue to the bad. For the most part, the soundtrack kicks ass. However, a big chunk of this movie is about musicians. And in the original "SP" books, Bryan Lee O'Malley makes it perfectly clear what the music made by his characters should sound like. In the epilogue to one of the books (4 I think?) he says that the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Graham Parsons-led band that birthed alt-country, is the soundtrack to Scott's head, while Uncle Tupelo, the alt-country trio Jeff Tweedy was in before he started Wilco, is the favorite band of Stills, the lead singer of the band Scott plays bass in, Sex Bob-omb.

OK, so, given that information, you'd think that the big screen Sex Bob-omb would be an alt-country band. Hell, the Flying Burrito Brothers' cover of Bob Dylan's "To Ramona" is used in the movie. But, all of the Sex Bob-omb songs were written by ... Beck. Yep, they didn't bring in an alt-country guy like Jeff Tweedy, Ian Felice, AA Bondy, the Avett Bros., or even Beck's roots music-leaning buddy, Jack White. No, they brought in garage rock/sex rock/acoustic mopey rock (sometimes)/Danger Mouse pawn Beck to write Sex Bob-omb's songs. And how were the songs? Oh, they were fine. Probably the best Beck songs I've heard since "Sea Change." But they weren't Sex Bob-omb songs. They were Beck songs (which were imitations of White Stripes songs).

And that may seem like a minor gripe, but I'm using it to make a bigger point about the film. "SP vs the World" is a well-executed technical exercise that misses the point entirely, kind of like those pesky songs.

In anticipation of the movie, I read the six volumes of the "SP" series in the week before I went to the theater and saw it. And while I greatly enjoy the books, they're not without their problems, the biggest one of which being that the story, even after Bryan Lee O'Malley has spent six books and upwards of 1,000 pages telling it, feels rushed. That's due to the richness of the world and characters he created. I could have kept reading about super-powered hipsters in Canada for a dozen books, and I was sad to see it end so soon.

My second issue with the "SP" books is that their two protagonists, Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, just aren't good people, and O'Malley doesn't hide this fact. At one point, Ramona tells Scott, "You're the nicest boyfriend I've ever had," to which Scott replies, "That's sad." Yes, it is, because Scott's a dick. You see, something you learn from the books is that pretty much every supporting female character in the books has had her heart broken and her life damaged by Scott in some way. He's a selfish, self-absorbed, willfully ignorant prick, a fact that the movie pretty much white-washes over entirely -- and not only does this take several layers away from its title character, it pretty much results in the removal of characters' entire back stories (did you ever see Kim Pine not behind the drums in the movie?! In the books that character is so much more) and the erasing of entire characters whose mere presence would make it clear how bad of a guy Scott is (I'm sorry you didn't get to be in the movie Lisa, I really liked you).

At another point in the books, a far more sympathetic character tells Ramona, "You're not nice!" and no, she's not. You know those "seven evil exes" that Scott has to battle over the course of the story? Well, in the book they each have backstories, and the thing that unites each of them is the fact that they were hurt, damaged, emotionally harmed by this insensitive and selfish bulldozer that is Ramona Flowers. They each had a reason for being angry, for being vengeful, for having been turned "evil." However, in an attempt to make Ramona more likable, the exes' backstories were pretty much minimized (Matthew Patel), changed so they become Bond villains (Gideon) or removed entirely (the twins have no lines, when in the books they said some pretty important stuff to Scott).

So essentially, we went from having six mythology-rich books fueled by an alt-country soundtrack and centered around two terrible, selfish people who were together because they each deserved to have someone that bad thanks to all the harm they'd done to others TO a movie about Michael Cera and a quirky girl with multi-colored hair walking through the snow to the sweet sounds of OK Beck songs while doing well-filmed battle with criminally underused character actors.

So yeah, looks like Edgar kind of missed the point. Oh well, at least we have Wallace.

Review: 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time'

If there was any film that had the potential to break the curse of the lackluster video game adaptation, it could have been "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time." The PS2 game of the same name has a well-defined (though clearly "Aladdin"-inspired) aesthetic, an interesting McGuffin (a sand-filled dagger that reverses time), some cool visuals, plenty of running, jumping and climbing and not much of a story to speak of. That's where a strong screenwriter and a director with a sense of adventure would swoop in, tie all of the game's tried-and-true elements together with a fun story that clocks in at an hour and 45 minutes and let everyone enjoy their popcorn and go home.

That's not what happened here.

Here we have a film from the writers of "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," "The Uninvited" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and directed by Mike Newell, who gave the world "Mona Lisa Smile" and the shockingly forgettable "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." This movie isn't fun, it isn't clever, it isn't cool -- hell, it's not even so bad it's entertaining. No, it just plain sucks.

Frankly, dear reader, I don't even know where to begin. This movie is bad in so many ways, it would be quicker and less painful for me to list the ways in which this thing doesn't suck. But no, that would be letting it off easy.

I know, let's start at the beginning: you know how you can tell when a screenwriter lacks the basic fucking skills that it takes to tell a simple story? When a movie opens with on-screen text, followed by narration, followed by an opening flashback sequence, that are all, for lack of a better word, pointless. The text is all about the power of destiny, but when you're making a movie about how you can just rewind time whenever something that you don't like happens, destiny doesn't really enter into the equation. And then the narration and opening sequence tell us that the beloved king of Persia (I didn't know Persia had kings, but whatever) was not content with his two biological sons that were produced by their never seen or mentioned mother, and so he just went out into the street one day and adopted the first acrobatic street rat he saw. Umm... why? It's never explained, so I would say it doesn't matter, but that would then make the first 15 minutes of the movie pointless, wouldn't it?

Look, I could go through the entire movie like this explaining why it's stupid, but I hope you get the idea. Jake Gyllenhaal is fine as the Prince, I guess, but he simply cannot salvage this material. And likewise, Gemma Arterton is drop-dead, eyes-shooting-out-of-my-head, whistle-blowing, smoke-out-of-my-ears gorgeous in this, but she happens to be stuck in a crap movie, which is ultimately too bad. Still, I was grateful whenever she was on screen, because then at least I could be distracted from the dumbness that was coming at me from all angles. And Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley probably got paid a whole lot of money for putting on eye-liner and some spray-on tanner and getting to ham it up, so more power to them.

But, while we're talking about the performances, let's talk about the ways "Prince of Persia" is perhaps too faithful to its source material. Remember how in the game everyone, despite being from the Middle East, spoke in a British accent? Yeah, they do that here. In fact, with the exception of Gyllenhaal, the entire principle cast here is English, and the only one among them who attempts to change their voice at all is Gyllenhaal, and he's trying way too hard to sound English.

But, on the whole, this movie does borrow incredibly liberally from the world of video games, just not the one that inspired it. There are shots, ideas, sets, entire sequences, which were taken straight out of "Assassin's Creed." At one point, during one of many, many, many, many rooftop chases involving Gyllenhaal's character, I leaned over to Tara and asked why the Prince didn't simply hide in a pile of hay, because that's what you do in "Assassin's Creed" to get out of that exact same situation.

Oh, and this movie isn't content simply ripping off other games. I'll let you discover this act of plagiarism for yourself (if you dare!) but at one point in the movie Tara and I simultaneously looked at each other and said, "But in Latin, Jehovah starts with an I!" Yeah, they go there.

In the interests of time and brevity, let me just give you a quick rundown of some of the other stupid shit that happens in this movie. And I swear, I am not making any of this up:

- There's a major subplot involving ostrich racing.
- Alfred Molina gets to make a couple of dick jokes in what is supposedly a kids' movie.
- There's a secret group of assassins called aSANDsins. Seriously. Not kidding.
- The CGI in this movie is nothing short of embarrassing for Disney. There are evil snakes which do the bidding of the aSANDsins and look worse than the snake in "Anaconda," which came out over 10 years ago. Plus, these "snakes" make noises that sound like a combination of a chimpanzee and a bird. And whenever Gyllenhaal's character is supposed to be doing an acrobatic stunt and filmed from afar, he looks alternately like a cartoon character and an action figure.
- Two characters are talking in a desert (this actually happens a lot). An establishing master shot shows the weather conditions to be just fine and dandy. They cut to close-ups for two lines of dialogue. Then it's back to a master shot, which now shows a sandstorm roughly the size of the Manhattan skyline about 50 feet away. The characters treat this like it's no big deal.
- You know that magic time-reversing dagger? It's explicitly stated that it only holds enough sand to rewind one minute of time. But the sand is used up fairly quickly towards the beginning of the movie. It's refilled once, and then used pretty much at the characters' will for the rest of the movie, the whole "this thing only holds one minute of time-reversing sand" presumably thrown out the window.
- (SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE) You know that dagger? Yeah, at the end of the movie one character uses it to rewind the action of the entire film, bringing us back to the beginning and making the whole viewing experience, you know, entirely pointless. (SPOILERS OVER NOW!)

Before I go, I'd like to mull over the film's politics for a minute. On one hand, the hero has severe reservations about preemptively invading a city that may be manufacturing weapons for his empire's enemies, and in general seems to be arguing for reason and discussion while jumping off ledges and stabbing people. On the other hand, the film's supposed comic relief character spouts nothing but Tea Party talking points about the evils of government, especially where taxes are concerned. So, does this film lean hard left or hard right? I'd say it leans both ways so carelessly that it's sure to offend those from both sides, but I think the audience that flocks to see this movie will be too dumb to notice.

Case in point: Remember those on-screen titles I mentioned before? Well, when I saw this at a sneak-preview screening in Ocean County on Tuesday night, there was a woman behind me who had to read those five sentences or so out loud to herself, and aside from that pesky reading junk, she seemed to love this movie. In fact, most of the audience I saw this with loved this, disconcertingly so. They ate this shit up like me at a sushi buffet. But me, I just hated it, and I mourn the cool movie it could have been.

Avoid this at all costs.

Review: The "Red Riding" Trilogy

For those of you who don't know, I'm on furlough this week. "What's furlough?" you ask? Well, basically it's a company-wide mandatory week of unpaid vacation. So, what have I been doing with my time? Well, I've done a bit of cleaning, a bit of cooking, a bit of guitar and piano work (I have a show on Friday night in Keyport, after all.) But mostly, I've been watching movies.

So far during this furlough period, I've caught the original "Wolf Man" (it was good), "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (it was better, really), the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man" (it was great) and Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (it was also great). By the way, I didn't mean to watch two Claude Rains movies in one week, but that's the way it worked out.

However, as you can probably tell from the title of this blog post, those aren't the movies I want to talk about. After all, this is my blog, where I do what I want! And I want to talk about a trio of movies you guys and gals probably haven't heard of and even more probably haven't seen: the "Red Riding" trilogy.

No, these movies aren't kids' stuff, nor are they porn, although the title could be applied to either of those things, I guess. No, what "Red Riding" is, basically, is "Ellroy Goes to England." Based on a quadrilogy of novels I haven't read by English author David Peace, the "Red Riding" trilogy looks at systematized crime and corruption in West Yorkshire in the years 1974, 1980 and 1983. (There was also a book set in 1977 which didn't make the journey to film due to budgetary restrictions).

The same screenwriter, "Brothers of the Head" and "Tideland" scribe Tony Grisoni, wrote all three films, which also share some of the same cast members when characters cross over from one year to the other, and some folks even appear in all three.

Each separate film, however, was directed by someone different, who brought their own style to the table. "Red Riding: 1974" was handled by "Becoming Jane" and "Kinky Boots" director Julian Jarrold, "Man on Wire" director James Marsh handled "Red Riding: 1980" and "Red Riding: 1983" was directed by "Shopgirl"'s Anand Tucker.

OK, so now that all of those formalities are out of the way, you probably want to know if the movies were any good on their own, and if the trilogy worked as a whole.

(Note: Now that we're entering the proper review section of this review, I'm going to remain as spoiler-free as possible. However, since the plot depends so heavily on secrets being unraveled over the course of the three films, that means you'll be getting my general thoughts on the three films rather than a plot synopsis.)

Well, here's the thing with trilogies: usually, the weak link of one is its final chapter (for examples, see "Back to the Future III" and "Return of the Jedi"), but that isn't the case with "Red Riding." Here, we have two fine sequels in search of a strong starting point. And when you get right down to it, all of the problems of the second and third films stem from the fact that the first installment drops the ball so badly.

With "Red Riding: 1974," Jarrold and Grisoni should have known that they had a lot of groundwork to lay in painting a picture of a rotten-to-the-core region that makes Polanski's "Chinatown" seem like "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood." But they don't really do that. Much like the fine gray and hazy cinematography that is a defining characteristic of the series, "RR: 1974" never really comes into focus. We're given the entire story from the perspective of rookie beat reporter Eddie Dunford, played by Andrew Garfield, also known as Anton in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Eddie quickly realizes he's in over his head, becomes overwhelmed with the case and as a result the viewer never really gets invested in the child abduction case Eddie's investigating or the corrupt city as a whole.

The best parts of "RR: 1974" are the characters, themes and plot elements that get fleshed out in the sequels. For example, Sean Bean (playing local real estate tycoon John Dawnson) gets a fraction of the amount of his "RR: 1974" screen time in "RR: 1983," but he's put to so much better use it makes you wish a better or more appropriate director had been given the reigns of "RR: 1974."

Which brings us to "RR: 1980," which is easily the best of the three. After seeing him bring a thriller-like sense of tension and suspense to the world of documentaries with the Oscar-winning "Man on Wire," I was really looking forward to seeing what James Marsh did in the world of genre fiction and hot damn, he didn't disapoint. The shortest of the three films by about 10 minutes ("1980" clocks in at around 90 minutes, whereas "1974" and "1983" are both around 100), this is a crisp, tight character piece and thriller that is basically a stand-alone picture until its final act.

Part of the reason "RR: 1980" works so well is because of its cast; Paddy Considine (one of the Andys from "Hot Fuzz" and an early contender for Rorschach in the "Watchmen" movie, that's him in the picture accompanying this review) takes the lead role of Peter Hunter, an honest but complex cop investigating a series of murders and a possible tie-in with corrupt cops, and runs with it -- his work here is just awesome, and reminds me a bit of a British, darker and clean-shaven take on Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon.

Unfortunatley, "RR: 1980" stumbles a bit when Marsh has to tie his film to the events of "RR: 1974" and "RR: 1983." Frankly, it felt like he was working on a separate level from Jarrold and Tucker and he had to lower his game a bit to tie into the other installments.

That's not to say "RR: 1983" was bad; it was actually pretty good. However, it's more of a direct sequel to "1974" and a spin-off of "1980," so it becomes an issue of trying to built a good house on a weak foundation. But "RR: 1983" is worth watching for its pair of lead performances: first there's David Morrissey, whose corrupt copper Maurice Jobson is a supporting player in "RR: 1974" and "RR: 1980," gets to step into the spotlight in "RR: 1983" and reveal a crisis of conscience -- yes, it's a cop flick cliche, but Morrissey and Tucker handle it well.

Also comiing up aces in "RR: 1983" is Mark Addy a a soul-music loving ambulance-chasing attorney who decides to take on the West Yorkshire police force head-on, just like Garfield and Consadine did before him. How do things work out for him and his clients? Watch and find out, if you want to know.

By the time "RR: 1983" comes to a conclusion, it can't help but feel sweeping and grand; after all, if the viewer has watched all three films in order that means they've spent 295 minutes, or just shy of five hours, with these characters and this city and even if they've enjoyed all three films, this will most certainly be a city they'll be hoping to leave. Still, the conclusion would have resonated more if the quality of "Red Riding" had been more consistent across the board.

The "Red Riding" trilogy aired on Channel 4 in England in early 2009, and was released in theaters in the U.S. this month. I believe it's still playing at the IFC Center in New York City, and all three films are currently available on IFC on Demand (that's how I saw them).

If you're a crime film buff, I'd say go ahead and check out all three films; "Red Riding" is a grand experiement in cinematic storytelling that really works, for the most part. However, if you think you may be on the fence, check out "Red Riding: 1980" first, because it's be best of the bunch and feels the most like a stand-alone (although there is information contained in the film that could spoil the end of "RR: 1974" if you haven't seen it yet.) And if you dig "RR: 1980," then go back and check out "RR: 1974" and "RR: 1983."

Quick technical note: The northern English accents in the films, especially in "RR: 1974," can be a bit difficult to decipher at times. However, if you've seen "L.A. Confidential" or "Zodiac," or if you're just familiar with cop flick cliches and archetypes, you can probably just press on through the way I did, or wait until the movies hit DVD or Blu-ray and throw on the subtitles.)

Thoughts on 'The Hurt Locker'

Thanks to the good folks at Netflix, I finally got around to seeing "The Hurt Locker" this weekend. And yeah, it was good. But at this point, I don't think most people really care if it was good; people want to know if it was better or more award-worthy than "Avatar." And you know what? I don't really think it was.

In fact, the more I (and my ever-loving special lady friend) thought about it over the weekend, we realized that pretty much every major criticism that's been thrown at "Avatar" can also be fairly applied to "The Hurt Locker." Don't believe me? Check this out:

"Avatar" criticism #1: The story isn't original.
Without fail, every time someone tries to hate on "Avatar," their principal criticism of the film is that its plot is simply a rehash of a story we've seen executed earlier (and, some would argue, better) in films such as "Dances with Wolves," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dune." And that criticism is fair. (But, one could also argue (as I and special lady friend have done) that Cameron needed to keep the story on familiar ground in order to not loose viewers who were already blown away by the film's visuals.)

But, if you want to play the "we've seen this all before" game, try the plot of "The Hurt Locker" on for size: a reckless, doesn't-play-by-the-rules rebel who only feels complete when executing his special brand of warring or crime-fightin' finds himself in conflict with a sensible but stubborn stick-to-the-mission-type in a tense setting where all their lives are in danger, man. Really, if you've seen a war/cop action movie ever, you've seen "The Hurt Locker." The only difference here is that now this story is being told in Baghdad, in 2004.

"Avatar" criticism #2: Its main characters aren't people.
This gripe can also be listed as "its protagonists are all CG creations," which they are, but so was Gollum, and I think we can all agree that he was awesome, amirite? Well, to elaborate slightly on what I was saying under criticism #1, while they may be played by actors (including Jeremy Renner in a star-making performance) the characters in "The Hurt Locker" feel even more artificial than the Na'vi of Pandora; Sgts. James and Sanborn don't feel like people in "The Hurt Locker," they feel like well-executed types.

"Avatar" criticism #3: It was too political, man.
Yes, "Avatar" makes no secret about its lefty-leaning politics. But, being a lefty myself, I didn't really see this as a fault. When a film that's virtually sure to have hundreds of millions of sets of eyes on it decides to really make us think about the cost of waging war and of exploiting natural resources, I simply don't see that as a bad thing.

However, for a film that is set in the midst of the Iraq War, "The Hurt Locker" is strangely apolitical. Sure, there's the film's face-palm-inducingly obvious "war is a drug" message (it's addictive for some, deadly for others) but really, even that left me asking the movie "What else ya got?" By making "The Hurt Locker" a cliche-ridden character study, director Kathryn Bigelow has crafted a movie that pays close attention to the soldiers and largely ignores the war and expects the viewer to do the same -- which, in my opinion, is a grave mistake when you're making a film about a war that's still happening as I type these very words.

A few years ago Mark Boal, the screenwriter behind "The Hurt Locker," had a hand in crafting the story for Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah." While it's also a flawed work, to me "Elah" is a much better and much more socially responsible film, because it looked at both the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and the impact the war has at home. On the other hand, "The Hurt Locker" comes across as a much more self-centered work, because it bypasses the entire Iraq War to focus its attention on someone who probably didn't like to color inside the lines in kindergarten.

*********

Whew. Now, just to be clear, overall I liked "The Hurt Locker." It was well-shot, the performances were strong despite the one-dimensionality of the characters on the page and the editing and camera work did a great job of creating tension without resorting to gimmicky Michael Bay editing tricks. I just don't think it was better than "Avatar," even though I didn't think that movie was perfect, either.

"So, big shot," you might be thinking at this point in the blog post, "who would YOU vote for in the Best Picture Oscar race?"

First of all, thanks for asking, Voice in My Head. Out of the field of 10(?!?!) nominees this year, I'd go with Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds." I'll probably dedicate a full blog post to my thoughts on that film at some point, but for now let me tell you why it succeeds in the three areas people where are so quick to criticize "Avatar" (and where I'm more than happy to point out flaws in "The Hurt Locker.")

On point one, a dedicated Quentin Tarantino viewer could argue that none of his films are inherently original by design, but that's part of their brilliance. QT takes the genres he loves, turns them on their ear and then gives them back to the world. This time out, he took on three genres:
* The men-on-a-mission picture: He turned the Dirty Dozen into supporting players and ultimately made their contribution to the plot minimal at best because SPOILER ALERT Hitler and company still would have been killed when the theater exploded. Which leads us to...
* The revenge picture: QT took one girl's quest for vengeance and had it change the course of history, which is awesome.
* The detective saga: while you probably don't agree with the side he's playing for (I know I don't), Col. Hans Landa is one great sleuth, and one who probably would get a whole franchise to himself if he wasn't, you know, a Nazi.

Much like in point one, for point two QT has taken some characters we've all seen before and given them entirely fresh spins, like the determined detective (Col. Landa), the salty platoon leader (Aldo Raide), the woman out for vengeance (Shosanna), the double-agent (Bridget von Hammersmark) and the egotistical movie star (Fredrick Zoller). You've seen these characters before, but never like this, and after you see them in "Basterds," you'll never look at them the same way again.

As far as point three goes, "Basterds" isn't incredibly political, and it doesn't need to be. That's one of the beauties of telling Nazi stories; you pretty much don't need to convince anybody in the audience which side they should be rooting for at this shootin' match.

Well, I've gone on a little longer than I expected, but them's my thoughts. But I want to know, what do you guys think? Am I being too hard on "The Hurt Locker"? Is it really as good as everyone says it is? And who are you pulling for in the Best Picture race? Please don't say "The Blind Side."

In Memoriam: J.D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)

When I was a teenager, J.D. Salinger was essential to my survival. I suspect there are millions of others out there who could tell you the same thing.

At a time in my life when very little made sense and I didn’t particularly care for the parts that were clear to me, Salinger’s writings provided an essential service; they helped put things so that, even if they didn’t make the bad parts any better, they at least made me feel like I wasn’t the only sane person in a world gone mad.

Reading Salinger, specifically "The Catcher in the Rye," I felt it in my bones that there were other people out there who thought, felt, raged and sulked like I did, and if they made it through, well then there was a chance I could, too.

As a result, in my early high school years, knowledge of "Catcher" became a kind of test that made it easy for me to get my bearings on people in a setting where most relationships feel like they're constantly on testy ground -- if you read Salinger (the more times the better), we could proceed from there. If not, you were probably one of Holden Caulfield's reviled phonies, and we probably didn't have much to say to each other from then on.

Looking back now, I can see how that perspective can seem, well, snobbish, self-righteous, self-absorbed and elitist. Well, that's true. However, it's also true that most suburban teenagers -- even the shy, confused, angry ones -- feel that the universe revolves around them. Holden Caulfield felt this way too, and maybe that's one of the reasons so many disillusioned and frustrated teens embraced him as one of us, even if the man who created him may have been in his 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s when we were reading his words for the first time.

Growing up, I drifted away from Salinger's writings. I tried "Nine Stories," but, I don't know, it just didn't click with me, and I never made it beyond that. A few years after Salinger and Holden helped bring my world into focus, I was on to Kurt Vonnegut, another great author and great man whose loss a few years ago still hangs heavy in my mind and in my heart.

While I may have stopped reading Salinger, and honestly haven't cracked open one of his works in years, I will never forget the impact the man and his writings had on me and my life -- it's an impact I still feel, and I'm sure it's one that will be felt by others for generations.

Holden Caulfield was my entry into a long line of protagonists -- Dream of the Endless, Hamlet and Donnie Darko are but a few -- who are moody and occasionally self-centered to the detriment of others, but it is those qualities combined with their rebellious, even heroic ones that help their like-minded readers/viewers acknowledge and accept both our own emotional lows and our vast potential.

Maybe. Or maybe this is a fumbling, wrong-headed tribute to a great author. I'm not entirely sure. I do know that, even though I haven't read his work in years or thought about him in months, news of Salinger's death today has shaken me greatly.

There's something comforting when thinking about the iconoclasts and rebels who are still refusing to go gently into that goodnight, kicking and screaming against societal conventions, the status quo, passing trends, age and illness, and when one of them goes, you have to wonder how much of a chance us mortals have. Or maybe that's just me. Oh, there I go again. If Salinger taught me anything, it's that it's never "just me." Thank you, J.D. Salinger. May you rest in peace.