New Years

In the dawn of a new year, at the beginning of a new decade, it is reassuring that "Star Wars" parodies will not only remain but thrive... forever.

Consumer-priced editing software and the invention of Mash-Ups are to thank for this one and even though I'm not 100% with the equating of Chewbacca to an African-American person, who else would play B.A.? ..

Episode I: Examined

I should be writing. I know, I know... this is writing, but not "work writing." I'm procrastinating. But I don't feel too bad.

If you're anything like me, you have a myriad of problems with the Star Wars prequels, but not enough time to dedicate to going film by film, instance by instance, dissecting all that is wrong and bad with the three films which brought the series into lame land.

There is, however, at least one man who is nothing like me. He has gone to the trouble of not only thinking it all through and producing a video critique, but he even includes interviews with friends to prove his points.

Attached is Video One Part One of SEVEN in his series on why Episode I is, in his opinion, awful. It's ten minute long. It's safe to assume that the other six installments are all around 10 minutes, too, so if you additionally assume it took him 2 days to work on each clip (there's a lot of editing work put into these), and assume he took a couple days to write each chapter, that comes out to around 30 days -- an entire month -- dedicated to this thing.

Now I don't feel so bad that I'm not writing that screenplay I promised myself I'd finish by the end of 2009. But I do feel a little bad that he stole my idea* (a while ago a friend and I talked about creating a short video podcast dedicated entirely to what's wrong in the prequels. We assumed we had enough material for at least 25 episodes).

This is the only chapter I've had enough time to watch**. Some day I shall probably get through the other six (time is on my side: if it takes me years and years, that won't make The Phantom Menace any better).

Enjoy.

*I'm sure a million other people "had" this idea as well. It's to this guy's credit that he actually followed through on something and did it. It's this same logic I use to not complain about groups like The Jonas Brothers. Yeah, their music isn't so inspired and a lot of people could have written it. But you know what? They didn't. These guys did.

**Not from working, mind you.

Ridiculous Clothing

It only takes one item to prove you are a fan, but if you take two one items and wear them simultaneously, you cross some strange social line dividing the sick from the normals.

I went to sleep wearing this shirt...

...then woke up in the morning and threw on a sweat shirt...

...resulting in this ridiculous, over-done combo:

It's like I'm on the Batman track team or something.

Holy Dodged Bullets.

Occasionally I pay attention to my "YouTube Recommends" section, and today I'm kind of glad I did. On it was a video of the 1966 audition for "Batman" -- not for Adam West and Burt Ward, but for Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell. Waggoner (whose name means "He of Wagons With Extra Letters") may best be known for being the Attractive Man on "The Carol Burnette Show," but I've never heard of this Peter Deyell dude. After this audition he has two listed credits, one of which is "Delivery Boy" on "Santa Barbara;" probably not a recurring character.

I'm not here to just crap on non-superstar actors. They got a chance, and I'm sorry they didn't find more success. But when you watch this audition, you kind of see why they didn't find their fortunes here. You also have to hand it to the creators of the show (William Dozier in particular) for casting their show properly. When you think about it, this was an incredibly challenging show to cast for, seeing as how they had a high-profile guest character every single week. They solved this by (mostly) casting the greatest person possible for the role. Seriously, try picturing anyone else playing Penguin.

But the show also needed a solid center, and that was not the oddly-homosexual undertones brought to you by the audition seen here (though there's no "straight" way to read the line "when she finds out what you've been doing on our supposed fishing trips" and not sound... y'know). I love how it starts in the middle of a crisis, but Bruce Wayne is reading a book. Then he kind of looks to Dick like he's been caught napping in class. Magical.

Off Topic... but enough complaints that it might be about "Star Wars"

Spoilers ahead...

I love reading the Onion's A.V. Club for reasons I cannot fully fathom (that's not the spoiler). Maybe it fills my inner snark to read someone snarkier, or maybe it's their tell-it-like-it-is approach to movie criticism that I enjoy (a film is never perfect, and they recognize this). I also love reading lists of any kind, ranking the 10 Blankiest Blanks for no reason other than I like to see where people list stuff.

But the A.V. Club's list of the 50 Best Films of the 00's is flat out misguided. Perhaps the result of a group vote you just end up with a weird assortment of films, and their rankings end up more arbitrary than logic would dictate.

For example -- and this is where it gets slightly on topic -- THE DARK KNIGHT is ranked #41 of the decade. #39 is THE PRESTIGE.

This is wrong. I'm not simply sticking up for THE DARK KNIGHT (quite the opposite, actually, as I will probably laboriously deal with in future posts), I'm of the camp that found THE PRESTIGE predictable and out and out lame. I cannot be the only person to see this movie and notice we were seeing an awful lot of the back of one character and never his face. There's a reason -- because seeing his face would reveal that he's played by Christian Bale, too, thereby undoing the "big secret" that he has a twin and that's how he does his magic tricks.

But the other characters could see this dude's face, right? Are they that dense? Apparently.

Other surprises/annoyances of the list:

-MOULIN ROUGE made it. A pretty film that has collected dust in our DVD collection. I think if I watched it now I'd laugh at -- not with -- the musical performances. C'mon... a tango "Roxanne?" We barely need the regular version of that song.

-No room for UP. Maybe they're just playing tough with recent entries, which I can understand. And maybe it'll be all over their "Best of 2009" lists... but it seems like UP was pretty great. I'm glad WALL-E and THE INCREDIBLES made the list (and with INCREDIBLES being ranked higher!), but to leave out UP just feels wrong.

-AMERICAN PSYCHO is #34. Really? It's 2/3's a good movie, and then 1/3 a not-so-hot one. It's not bad, but again... better than UP? Didn't MONSTERS, INC. come out during this decade? (I like Pixar. Back off).

-The only LOTR film that made it was THE TWO TOWERS. This would qualify as "surprising" for this list. If we're talking theatrical cuts, I would tend to agree: the theatrical cuts of "FOTR" and "ROTK" don't belong here.

-KILL BILL, VOL. 1 made it, not VOL. 2. Again: "surprising." And another one I favor. I prefer this one if for no other reason than I never have to deal with endings, one of my personal hurdles.

OK, so it's not all that outrageous. I just like to hate on THE PRESTIGE. But I don't think that's a reason not to dislike this list. Maybe they threw it on there because added with THE DARK KNIGHT and MEMENTO there are three Christopher Nolan movies on the list, the personal leader (PT Anderson had 2 as did the Coen Brothers). And maybe they're going the way of Rolling Stone magazine and angling for a big interview with the guy. Or they like him that much and love the taste of his butt crack. Or maybe they're afraid Bale will scream at them (he's got 3 on the list, too). Whatever the case, it's lackluster to me and I'll prove it in future posts ad naseum where I point out Nolan's directorial flaws for Batman. It's gonna be great.

EDITED TO ADD: Upon re-examining the list, one of the real winners is Alfonso Cuaron. He along with Ang Lee and Richard Linklater each have two movies on the list, and while that's still one below Nolan's 3, Cuaron's 2 are both in the top 15. So... get out the ticker tape, right?

New Old News... or Old New Old News?

Re: the title -- this isn't brand new information, but it's new to me.

But it's new to me about old information about something

new that's also not new. Screw it.

If the guys at RiffTrax provide nothing else, then they allow me to

"enjoy" crappy movies more. I mean, I kind of have to watch the

prequels, but that doesn't make things any easier.

Fortunately, they blast them pretty hard. It's wonderful.

I still can't bring myself to endorse this treatment for the original

trilogy: I need SOMETHING worthwhile to have come from the

last 30 years.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" review -- How Batman Is It?

For all the Batman I've exposed myself to, I've never gotten into Sherlock Holmes, one of the greatest influences on the Batman myth. On a whim -- and admittedly somewhat influenced by the upcoming movie -- I picked up a couple of Arthur Conan Doyle's books in paperback at a used book store. I finished quickly with "Hound of the Baskerville," and I'm starting "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" now. Several things struck me about the relationship between Holmes and Batman, and just Holmes in general. Interestingly enough, I'm now going to list them.

1.) The "genius" of Holmes is kind of a myth, but a fun one. It's a delicate thing, mystery writing. The writer must know his story inside and out in order to plant clues for the characters and the reader to follow, and possibly get confused by... yet the writer must know exactly why things are getting confusing because to him or her, there is no mystery. This is where Sherlock Holmes comes in and usually explains away all mystery as attributed to his brilliant deductive mind. That may be so, but I couldn't help laughing a little at this brilliant deductive mind because it seems like cheating, since the writer who knows how the mystery really plays out is also writing Holmes. I know, I know... it's ludicrous. Of course the writer knows, that's how it works. It's just sort of funny to think about. I suppose this is what proves Doyle was talented because he was a) smart enough to tell this and many of this Holmes stories through the eyes of the less-brilliant Dr. Watson, thereby giving the readers an ally in confusion and befudlement and b) Doyle makes matters so complicated that when Holmes steps up and deduces everything out, it comes as a relief. You see this a lot on shows like "Lost" (see my earlier post about why Sayid is that show's Batman), where the story is so crazy and tangled and messed up that if anyone you trust steps forward and gives you a square answer, they suddenly sprout a halo over their head. Also to Doyle's credit, the times when Holmes delivers these "How'd he figure that out" moments are crafted so nicely that you just enjoy the experience.

2.) Who Would Win In A Fight Between Holmes and Batman? Good question, myself. It depends on the type of fight. My first semi-true exposure to Sherlock Holmes was in a See-N-Play record-comic collection where Batman solves a murder in England with someone who turns out to be the ghost of Sherlock Holmes (odd that Batman doesn't piece that one together until the very end... who else wears those double-billed hats, Batman?). There they obviously worked together and helped one another out. But who had the upper hand?

Physically, it would appear the victor is Batman. He's honed his body, traveling the world and learning martial arts of every kind. Holmes can hold his own in a fight, but I have to think that if you spend every single night swinging around on a rope, you're probably going to kick some fine puzzle-deducting ass handily.

If it is a battle of wits/detective work, now things get interesting and I feel the victory should go Sherlock's way, if for no other reason than he is the character who inspired Batman, not the other way around. Normally the first one to do something is the leader in these types of things... to me, anyway.

3.) Is the song "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty inspired by Holmes' headquarters? And if so -- or even if it's not -- will it be a musical cue in the latest "SHERLOCK HOLMES" film by resident King Douchebag director Guy Ritchie? Only if there's slow-motion punching to accompany it. Judging from the lyrics, it does not appear the song is inspired from much of anything, except for sexy sax solos. Either way, I can't stop singing this song -- and its solo -- every time I read it. As it should be.

So How "Batman" is Sherlock Holmes? Probably only 6 out of 10 Batmans worth, but that might get bumped up to a 7.5 the more scowly I picture him in my head, probably happens because the way Doyle describes the way Holmes pacing in "Baskervilles" always reminds me of an image from "The Laughing Fish" where Batman does the same (at the bottom).

Enjoy...