BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE
STUDIO: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
MSRP: $22.99
RATED: PG
RUNNING TIME: 124 min
SPECIAL FEATURES:
* Commentary with director Jon Turteltaub and Jon Voight
* Deleted scenes with introductions by Jon Turteltaub
* The Treasure Reel: Bloopers and Outtakes
* Secrets of a Sequel
* The Book of Secrets: On Location
* Street Stunts: Creating the London Chase
* Inside the Library of Congress
* Underground Action
* Cover Story: Creating the President’s Book
* Evolution of a Golden City
* Knights of the Golden Circle

The Pitch

History rocks, man…again.

The Humans

Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Bruce Greenwood, Helen Mirren

“Yeah, Ricky, I see you in the front row there.  Look, this whole following-me-around-and-crying-‘Champ’ thing was old 20 years ago…”

The Nutshell

After the successful discovery of the Templar Treasure from the first movie, Benjamin Gates (Cage) is faced with a new challenge when it’s discovered that his great-grandfather, Thomas Gates, may have been complicit in the Lincoln assassination. Gates is presented evidence by Mitch Wilkinson (Harris), a descendant of a Civil War general and a mercenary, who is in possession of a ripped out page from the diary of John Wilkes Booth that names Gates’ ancestor in the assassination. Determined to prove his great-grandfather’s innocence, Gates and his friends, Abigail (Kruger) and techno wiz Riley (Bartha), along with his father (Voight) and mother (Mirren), set out on another treasure hunt, this time looking for Cibola, a lost city of Native American gold. Their search takes them from Paris to London and back to the U.S., with the final crucial clue being hidden in the President’s Book of Secrets, a mythical tome which is for Presidents’ eyes only.

The Lowdown

I was quite a fan of the first National Treasure film. It contained two elements that have always appealed to me in movies: American history and treasure hunting.  Combining the legend of the Knights Templar / Freemasons, and clues hidden on some of our most historic public national items, including the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell, I thought the first film was a good popcorn flick with a bit of national history thrown in. Book of Secrets continues those elements from the first film, albeit both successfully and unsuccessfully.

“So according to this President’s Book of Secrets thing, there’s undeniable proof that Bush is a boob…”

First off, BOS does succeed in continuing the theme from the first film in that there is a great hidden American secret with a generous helping of history thrown into the mix.  And once again the road map to that secret is hidden within vital pieces of both American and foreign treasures. The hunt for those clues spans the range of everything from the Lincoln assassination to the  French Statue of Liberty to the Resolute Desks in Buckingham Palace and The White House, to the President’s secret book. It’s a continual adventure of discovery from one clue to another and this film, like the first, achieves its goal of providing for an interesting treasure hunt.

“Goddamned shitty Glengarry lead…”

All of the heroes from the first film are back, and Gates provides Cage with a fun character to play, one who is knowledgeable about American history with a penchant for solving puzzles hidden within that history. He’s also a moral hero, seeking to occasionally do the wrong thing for the right reasons.  Bartha is also fun as Riley Poole, Gates’ long-suffering sidekick. Kruger as Abigail could be easily written off as just the chick of the piece, but she serves her purpose as well by aiding in the hunt and providing key access to government resources at certain times. Voight is back as Gates’ father, and this time he has Helen Mirren as his ex-wife to play off of, which adds a bit of character element to the whole affair. 

Yeah, that was the typical reaction upon viewing SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2…

However, what character doesn’t entirely make sense is Wilkinson, a black market antiquities dealer, mercenary and history buff in his own right, who sets the entire adventure in motion by goading Gates into the hunt with the diary page implicating his ancestor. At one point he’s hell bent on finding the treasure, chasing Gates and the others through the streets of London and assaulting his father to get a line on Gates’ location. He even endangers their lives by shooting at them. Then, near the end, he’s willing to make a sacrifice to save them, with his ultimate motivation being credit for the discovery of the treasure rather than the treasure itself. He vacillates from cold-blooded thug to principled antagonist and it makes the film uneven at times. In that regard, he’s exactly like Sean Bean’s character of Ian Howe from the first film.

“Did you hear that Bruce?  What was it?”
“Nothing, just the other shoe dropping on John From Cincinnati…”

Where Book of Secrets also doesn’t entirely work is that, at its heart, it’s a basic carbon copy of the first film. Gates’ motivation is to find a treasure to restore his family name and honor, just as in the first film. The treasure also turns out to be a vast cache of gold that’s ultimately found underground through a labyrinthine series of hazards and secret passages, just like the first film. Gates also has to commit a federal crime and get the FBI on his back in order to continue the treasure hunt. There’s also a major element that’s broached in a key flashback that the film completely discards after that flashback. Gates’ great-grandfather is approached to decipher a code that leads to Cibola, which is what the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), Confederate extremists, were seeking to find. I think that BOS missed out on a (pardon the pun) golden opportunity to differentiate Wilkinson from Howe if they could have worked the KGC more into the modern story. 

“So you’re sure there’s a clue to the treasure down here?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.  But the thing is, you can only see it if you’re naked…”

Also, Book of Secrets falls into the cliche of having to crap all over the characters from one film to the next in that Riley is still pretty much an unknown and somewhat of a joke, hawking his book of the affair that no one wants to buy, along with losing everything after having tax problems thanks to trusting a corrupt financial advisor.  Remind anyone of a certain Rocky sequel?  But what really pisses me off is that Gates and Abigail are on the outs after falling in love in the first film. Plus, she ends up with his palatial mansion that he bought with his spoils from the first film…and they’re not even married. That one little element alone to me was utter bullshit.  My wife didn’t agree though…go figure. The filmmakers basically had to reset everything to the status quo of the beginning of the first film just to repeat the character arcs from that one. Lastly, it’s just a little too deus ex that the one person who can decipher the ancient Indian glyphs that lead to the treasure happens to be Gates’ mother.  there’s also the inevitable set up for the third film in this franchise

Despite some of its failings, National Treasure: Book of Secrets is still essentially another decent popcorn flick with some pretty good action scenes and fun treasure hunting. Although it didn’t have anything as cool as the Declaration treasure map from the first movie.

“You want what?  You want your cake?!  Who is this?!  Why do you keep calling me??!!!”

The Package

This is a two-disc offering that’s loaded with special features. The film looks quite good in 2.35:1 widescreen and the sound is good in Dolby 5.1 Surround, with optional French and Spanish tracks. There’s also French and Spanish subtitles. The special feature on Disc One is the commentary with director Jon Turteltaub and Jon Voight. Disc Two is stuffed to the gills with extra features including approximately fifteen minutes of deleted scenes with introductions by Jon Turteltaub. These are some pretty interesting deletions, particularly one that ties the hummingbird clue that Gates’ mother told Gates’ father that ultimately led nowhere because of the cutting of the scene. Other scenes give Keitel and Cage more face time with each other and explain better how Riley was able to hack the Buckingham Palace computer system, and a couple of scenes where Mirren and Voight are making their way to Cibola in the underground passages.

“Look, there’s got to be a way to figure this out!”
“I’ve tried…there’s simply no way to shut off those banner ads…”

There’s also a plethora of EPK-style behind-the-scenes featurettes that, while pretty standard, are nonetheless a pretty interesting watch. Secrets of a Sequel is a seven-minute short on getting the sequel together after the success of the first film. The Book of Secrets: On Location likewise is a 10-minute piece on the location shooting, and Treasure Reel is five minutes of bloopers and outtakes. Street Stunts: Creating the London Chase is ten minutes of behind-the-scenes of the London car chase and Inside the Library of Congress runs nine minutes on shooting inside the historic building. Underground Action run seven minutes and deals with shooting the scenes under Mount Rushmore.  Cover Story: Creating the President’s Book runs five minutes and details the myth behind the President’s Book.  Evolution of a Golden City is ten minutes long and deals with building Cibola. Knights of the Golden Circle is a quick two-minute piece on the secret order. 

There’s also two easter eggs (that I found anyway), that lead to one-minute stunt featurettes, one involving the driving rig for the car in London, the other with the idol drop onto the balancing platform in Cibola. Overall, this is a pretty solid offering of film and extras.

We all knew the game looks phenomenal, but CHRIST. As any sane person knows, just taking Resident Evil 4 and updating it for the new systems would have been enough for Capcom… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But I like the little touches that are shown here… the flashlight, the new enemies, the way the sun-drenched landscape is completely different than the dark and dreary environments of the last few games.

The look of the new enemies is pretty creepy as hell, and this trailer gives us a few more glimpses at various other creatures, like zombie dogs, an updated version that classic Chainsaw guy with the Friday the 13th Part 2 sack on his head, and even a truck. There also appears to be a new, local character to fight by your side (and possibly play as?)

This is one of the best looking new titles coming out, by far… let’s just hope it can weather the storm of racial controversy that’s coming its way. They did the right thing by showing in this trailer that the Africans are, in fact, creatures… and you’ll also notice that a few seem to have a lighter complexion.

Now all we need is a release date…. let’s hope it makes it out by the end of 2008.

Last year, Palme d’Or winner Roland Joffé took a blowtorch to his career with Captivity; this year, he’s seeking your forgiveness with the conscience-rattling tale of two teenage lesbians who fall in love at a t.A.T.u. concert, and, later, participate in a three-way with Anton Yelchin. The film is called You and I, and the only way this this gets more sordid is if Joffé dedicates the film to Dith Pran. Here’s your non-exclusive look:

Some outlets are predicting that You and I has the potential to be a cult classic in the vein of Showgirls, but I’m getting more of an unwatchable-in-every-sense, Spice World vibe from this garbage (although the rotating bed bit is a nice homage to Body Double; “How ’bout Pavel Chekov, straight up!”). The MPAA rating will determine everything: an R guarantees my drunken presence in the theater; a PG-13 means this fucker’s out of theaters faster than you can say Glitter.

Since t.A.T.u. never made much on an impact here in America, I’m guessing You and I was produced almost exclusively for the international market. This would also explain the casting of Mischa Barton, whose exodus from The O.C. has inexplicably propelled her to European superstardom (and tasteful toplessness courtesy of Sir Richard Attenborough!). There doesn’t appear to be a U.S. release date just yet, but I can almost guarantee you’ll have the opportunity to skip this over Labor Day weekend.

Ever since I saw Haute Tension, I’ve been a big admirer of director Alexandre Aja. Hell, I even thought (and I know many of you will want me executed for writing the following, especially Alex!) his remake of The Hills Have Eyes was superior to the original, something that’s rarely accomplished by a remake.

Aja’s been busy since his Hills redux; he co-wrote and co-produced  P2, and he’s been developing a remake of Piranha in 3-D. Furthermore, in the meantime, he’s been shooting a remake of the Korean film Into the Mirrors, which is simply titled Mirrors, that of which you can have your first look at below courtesy the cool dudes over at Arrow in the Head.

Set for release August 15/08, Mirrors revolves around disgraced police officer Ben Carson, played by Kiefer Sutherland. After being ostracized from the police force for a fatal shooting, Carson takes a night gig, working as a security guard at a local mall. Eventually, Carson becomes embroiled in a mystery, one involving the department store’s mirrors. Seems the pesky things are bringing out the worst in people.

Below, you can check out the first bit of behind-the-scenes footage from Mirrors, which will probably end up on the eventual DVD.

Since there hasn’t been an Indiana Jones movie in almost 20 years, it’s understandable that there would be a lot of hoo-ha about it on the internet. One of my sick fascinations are ‘Best Of’ lists. Half of the internet is currently made out of lists, and I think I read them just to get myself angry. Like those AFI’S Top 100 Films programs, they are only interesting by their omissions. The past two weeks have given us an unrelenting parade of Indiana Jones based lists on various websites, in particular, ‘best moment’ lists. That’s fine, IGN has to fill their pages with something, but all of these countdowns seem to miss out one particular moment. Is it because it’s not very P.C? Is it because nobody likes it but me? I’ll never know, but I aim to remedy the situation right here.

Part of the problem might be that this scene occurs in one of the most contentious pictures in the series. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is probably no one’s favourite, nor even mine, but I‘m fond of it. How people can put it on a par with The Last Crusade baffles me, even as a I child I felt the insincerity hanging out of that film. Raiders of the Lost Ark is definitely a revisionist product, looking back at serials, capturing what was important about them while updating the format for modern tastes. The Nazis, for instance, were rarely the enemy in the non-political adventure serials of the 1930s, but they were the real enemies of the 30s and so are put in that role by Spielberg. In this kind of way it’s undoubtedly the smartest film of the three (now four) and sets up all to follow.

Temple of Doom however is in itself a genuine product of the time in which it’s set. Of course it calls to mind in particular George Steven’s classic adventure Gunga Din, with the Indian setting and the battle against the Thuggee cult. Gunga Din (and to a certain extent the real history of the Thuggee) is almost directly alluded to by the presence of the British captain at the dinner table in Doom. When he talks about the British army wiping out the cult fifty years ago, you can imagine he is talking about the events of Gunga Din. The adventure aspects of cults, crocodiles, magic and rope bridges all feel very authentic.

But the moment I like, the one that is left off all the lists, happens before all that. Nick was right to say, in his most recent review of new DVD releases, that Temple of Doom has a great re-introduction to the main character. It’s a reversal of the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s just as effective. The start of Raiders is dark, hot and sweaty, talking place out in the jungle with creepy statues. The scene would be almost silent, but for the jungle noises and nervous chatter. By contrast the introduction in Temple of Doom is bright and cheerful. In fact, it’s funny to see the words of a title so ominous as Temple of Doom splash across the screen while Kate Capshaw sings a Cole Porter song in Chinese, with a high-kicking production number going on around her. The white, bright and ritzy Shanghai nightclub and the appearance of Jones, in a white tuxedo, sets up a different starting point. In the first film, we are introduced to Jones as a rough and ready adventurer, and then later we discover that he is a university professor, and a bit of a goof. In Temple of Doom, he starts out witty and debonair, but by the end of the film, is fighting cultists with a machete and has lost 80% of his shirt.

As you all know, Jones sits down at a table with Shanghai gangster Lao Che to receive payment for an exploit we never see, Indy retrieving the ashes of the first emperor of the Manchu dynasty. Of course, it’s a double cross, and Jones soon ends up in trouble thanks to a poisoned champagne cocktail, real James Bond stuff. As a fight breaks out between a drugged Indy and the Chinese mob, with Jones becoming increasingly disorientated. Then, reeling from a punch, he staggers back into an innocent cigarette girl and socks her in mouth! Down she goes, cigarettes and heels in the air. Even as a child, I could not believe this scene when I watched it. He never stops to see if she is alright or even seems to realise his mistake, he even winds up a little for the punch when he swings for her. Indiana Jones punches some random woman in the face.

I didn’t see Temple of Doom until it was playing on British television. In those days UTV, the local ITV, had a very limited selection of movies, maybe twenty at any one time. This same collection seemed to continue from the late 80s to the late 90s. Then, of course, they solved the problem by basically stopping to show movies at all. But because of the selection of movies during that time period, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve seen Red Heat and Young Guns II more times than anyone ought to. There was a time when you could switch on UTV at about 9 o’clock every fourth Saturday and be almost guaranteed to see Tango and Cash. That movie is probably best described by it’s IMDB keywods : police, laser sight, framed, bare butt, escape.

Anyway Indiana Jones was not the kind of film that got played every three weeks. It belongs to the group known as Christmas movies, along with things like Star Wars and The Great Escape. These are not movies with a Christmas theme, but rather pictures you are guaranteed will be on TV every Christmas. This gave you one shot every twelve months to watch them or tape them, and if you missed it due to the excitement of Christmas, then too bad. Because of this rather harsh schedule, for years and years my friends did not believe me that Indy punches some helpless woman in the head out of nowhere. It wasn’t until about five years ago, when a friend put the movies on again, that I was able to confirm to myself and the world that he does actually do this!

And I know it’s kind of a sick pleasure to get out of a scene. But I love that it’s in there. It’s random, it’s uncalled for, and it’s a little mean-spirited. Something about this hero of children across the world acting in the most horrible fashion while zonked off his face on blue poison makes this scene unforgettable to me, and is another part of the fallible element that I believe makes Jones such a long-standing popular character. My advice, if you don’t remember this moment, is to watch the film again and look at how casually it’s thrown in there, and try to imagine anything similar finding its way into a modern children’s blockbuster today. At the very least, watch it while you still can, before the older, walkie-talkies-for-weapons Spielberg (who has become more violent in his personal projects and more prudish in his entertainment) replaces the cigarette girl with a Lao Che goon, or replaces Indy with a CGI monkey. It’s only a matter of time. But for now, it’s still there.

Amongst several other jobs of varying secrecy, I work as a fact checker for a pornographic playing card company. I won’t tell you which one exactly, but it’s in the top three. (Okay, it’s Queens of Spades. Happy now?) Being a fortune something-hundred company, you’d expect the bathrooms to be swank, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. I’ll tell you this: there’s no way I’m going back to a non-solid gold toilet. It’s not so much the luxurious luster as it is the form-fitting comfort you can only enjoy from one of the softer metals. True, pewter can also feel pretty nice, but you end up looking like your ass has a black (brown)eye.

So I was sitting on the solid gold toilet looking for something to read, as I’d forgotten my copy of A Pocket People’s History of the United States. (I have large pockets and am also a semi-socialist.) To alleviate their guilt over clear cutting literally millions of acres of virgin forest in search of the perfect pulp for making pornographic playing cards, the executives of Queens of Spades often take nature-specific vacations. You know, things like mountain climbing and kayaking and shooting exotic, caged animals from the back of a Land Rover. So there was a copy of Outside magazine sitting on the toilet tank. You could tell it was a periodical for rich, white, active types, since Lance Armstrong posed for the cover. I didn’t dare pick the thing up and flip through it. There’s no telling what kind of dick juice and fecal matter caked its glossy surface. But according to the cover, there was a feature on page seventy-eight all about “your dirtiest enviro-confessions.”

I’m a fairly environmentally friendly guy myself. I aim my frappuccinos for the garbage can and take in lost, sexually confused animals. But I’ve also been known to set fire to my oil moat to keep out paparazzi and the A.T.F., so one of my dirty enviro-confessions wouldn’t be too surprising. In search of a scoop, I called my old friend Ed Begley, Jr.

“Why so winded?” I said.

“Oh, it’s this damn bicycle toaster oven. You know how many miles I have to clock to heat up a Hot Pocket?”

After I explained that every Hot Pocket crisping sleeve is made of petroleum-rich plastic byproducts, Ed’s bike hissed to a stop. He cried a little, but at least I didn’t have to deal with all the heavy breathing. I asked about his dirtiest enviro-confession.

“Let me think about it,” he mused. “You remember Transylvania 6-5000, right?”

“Of course,” I said, humoring him.

“Well, we shot out near Lake Tahoe. Beautiful place. The sexiest, loneliest squirrels you’ve ever seen. I’m out scavenging for granola. This must have been a Sunday. And I come across Goldblum down by the lake shore.”

“Jeff Goldblum.”

“Right. Anyway, he has his hands wrapped around this duck’s neck. And he’s just squeezing the thing. And I’m just laughing, because I think this must be one of the props. But he keeps squeezing and squeezing until this stuff starts oozing from between his fingers. Like he had a fist full of tomato paste and tiny little bones. I felt terrible about it, Jeff strangling that poor duck and all, but I never said a word. I just came back later and quietly buried it.”

“But that’s not really your dirtiest enviro-confession. If anything, that’s Jeff Goldblum’s.”

“Yeah, but he’ll never tell you that.”

“So why did he strangle the duck?”

“Couldn’t say, really. Geena made him do some crazy things in those days. Crazy, dark things.”

“Geena Davis.”

“Mm hm. Hey, you wanna come jump on the trampoline?”

“Maybe this weekend,” I said. “Right now I’m at work.”

Suddenly I realized I’d been sitting on this solid gold toilet a really long time.

I love baseball.  It’s pretty much the only sport I enjoy.  Well, that and dwarf tossing.  But my interest in dwarf tossing has kind of dissipated ever since I accidentally ingested a cocktail of creatine, psyllium husk and some kind of monkey tranquilizer and flew into a blind rage and tossed a dwarf through a fucking window.  I’m not proud of that moment.

As for baseball, my interest was sparked when I was in Little League.  Back then, I played left-field, which is a position the coach pretty much reserves for a fat kid or a fat kid with weak knees or, in my case, a fat kid with weak knees and a chronic bladder-control problem.  Suffice it to say, my burgeoning baseball career was pretty much stillborn since I got a total of two hits the entire season, despite getting on base nearly every game.  That’s because I got hit by the pitchers.

A lot.

After a season of getting pummeled by baseballs (which left welts all over my body the size of tumor-filled testicles), I decided to hang up my jockstrap and vicariously live through my favorite team, which, by default, happened to be the San Diego Padres.

And they sucked.

Hard.

Like, down to the shaft hard.

And they still suck.  And although I’m not such a diehard fan that I’d slather on face-paint or anything, in the past I have delicately shaved my crotch in the shape of the “S.D.” logo and I did tattoo my left nut with a picture of the Friar mascot.  Sometimes if I get nice n’ sweaty and churn up enough duck butter, I can make it look like the Friar is being engulfed by a monstrous tsunami.  Anywho, the whole point of this rambling is that I’m a pretty big Padres fan, even though I don’t outwardly advertise it.

Also, I do frequent Petco Park often.  There’s nothing better in life than slapping down nine bucks for a Dixie cup of lukewarm Miller Lite and spending eight dollars on a stale bag of peanuts.  But, despite the overpriced food and drinks, Petco Park does have one thing going for it; semi-decent bathrooms.

With urinals and stalls.

You see, in all my worldly adventures, I’ve come to notice that many stadiums have implemented “piss troughs” in their men’s restrooms.  For those of you unfamiliar with piss troughs (or “urinal basins,” “pee tubs” and “piss trenches”), they are communal sinks that men line up along and piss into.  Now, I may be wrong, but I’ve been told that the origins of piss troughs date back to ancient Greek mythology, when Hephastadion (the Greek God of Circle Jerking), constructed these troughs for the Titans and Giants, since they commonly caused flash-floods with their wayward urination practices.

Anyway, you’ll find piss troughs in your finer, classier establishments; like in flophouse toilets or in my uncle Frank’s basement.  And, apparently, in many baseball stadiums.

So, just to detail my disturbing fascination with piss troughs even further, I’ve decided to construct a little play for your amusement.  The character of “Bathroom Designer” will be named “Jimmy” and the character of “Stadium Official” will be named “Bob.”

Bob:  Hey Jimmy, how’s the family doing?
Jimmy:  Well, my wife’s a whore and my son is addicted to crack.
Bob:  Fantastic!  Anyway, I was calling because I was looking at the bathroom plans and noticed that we only had stalls and sinks.
Jimmy:  Uh-huh.
Bob:  Well, something just doesn’t seem right.
Jimmy:  Uh-huh.
Bob:  We have all this room at our disposal and I just get the feeling that we should, you know, put something there.
Jimmy:  Uh-huh.  Like what?
Bob:  I don’t know.  I feel like we’re missing something.
Jimmy:  Okay.  Let me mull this over for a second.  (Thinks) Why don’t we just put a big fucking bucket in there.
Bob:  Jimmy, you’re a genius!

The End.

The moral of this little play is that piss-troughs scare the ever-loving crap out of me.  Normally I’d pay good money to have a strange man’s dick sweat flop onto my shirt and, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy pee mist wafting into my eyes as much as the next guy.  Unfortunately, I gave up watersports long ago, after my wetsuit started to stink.  But I digress…

A week ago the Padres were the team with the worst record in the majors.  As of two days ago, they were the second-worst team in the majors.  Maybe by the time this blog is posted, they will be the third-worst team in the majors.

Go Padres!

Desert Island Question Time:  If you were only allowed to watch one genre of film for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

For me there’s no contest.

Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels is one of the great “movie movies,” a madcap romp through depression-era America that in part inspired the Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which is the name of the film that the lead character in ST – a movie director – wants to make).  If you love film and haven’t seen ST (or any other Sturges’ picture) then you are doing yourself a serious disservice, so go forth and rent it.

ST concerns successful comedy movie director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) who decides that he wants to make a dramatic film about the struggles of the common man – of which, his friends point out, he knows absolutely nothing.  He’s rich, handsome and successful in every way.  But Sullivan is determined to make a movie that will make a difference rather than simply entertain. With help from the costume and makeup departments of his studio he pretends to be a hobo and tries to “slum it,” which of course goes very wrong, often hilariously.

Along the way he picks up Veronica Lake (arguably the most desirable woman in film history) and eventually – 67 year-old movie spoiler alert – ends up in prison. The prisoners are shown a Disney cartoon (Playful Pluto) and Sullivan learns that while laughter may not solve any of the world’s great problems, it does help people survive them.

Very true.  Quick – name a serious piece of film fiction that has changed the world…tick tick tick…I’m waiting…

Right.  So.  Fast forward a few decades to one of the great cinema experiences of my life – South Park:  Bigger, Longer & Uncut.  My then-girlfriend (and future wife) and I saw this at what was then the Sony Loewe’s Theater on 3rd Ave. & 11th St. in NYC, and not since There’s Something About Mary had we heard a real audience – not a premiere, preview or special screening audience – laugh and cheer and have so great a time as this audience had.

We saw it again a few days later with a friend – a friend who had just been sentenced to a three-year prison term which he would soon start serving.  Really truly.  He was a South Park newbie, but man… when Satan hit his high note at the end of “Up There” he lost it – cheers, laughs, excitment, joy.  90 minutes of joy in the face of what for most of us would be an unimaginably horrific ordeal. It was Sullivan’s Travels come to life.

At the end of the day, Comedy is king.

Earlier today I saw a trailer for the modern blaxploitation picture Black Dynamite, which you can find on the official website. In fact, you not only can find it there, but you almost certainly should go and watch it there right now. Because when I say modern blaxploitation picture, I only mean modern in that this film is being released this year. Every other facet of this trailer is a pitch perfect recreation of the action based efforts in the 70’s genre, from the dodgy film stock to the voiceover man. Even the mild purple and green lighting for the love scene is bang on the money.

Some of the acting is a little on the winking side or the just plain bad, but this fairly low budget production has a casting coup in nabbing Michael Jai White as the lead. In fact, if there is anything in the trailer that stands out as non-authentic for the genre, it’s probably Michael Jai White’s real life martial arts prowess, which is a little too impressive and athletic. Rudy Ray Moore* of Dolemite fame could hardly lift his leg high enough to kick anyone, and you’d have to have just suffered a mild stroke not to be able to dodge one of his slow motion chops.

Obviously Black Dynamite is a labour of love for the filmmakers, and judging from this piece of footage, albeit only a few minutes worth, they’ve really nailed it, in camerawork, music, fashion and idiosyncrasies. I love the delay after the man is shot on the roof, as he stands around waiting to be shot again. If the full movie is made with the same attention as the trailer shows, it’ll be a treat, and an economical one. According to IMDB, the budget on the film is only around 2 million dollars, of which I’d imagine a nice chunk went to Michael Jai White. And when I saw that very reasonable figure, I couldn’t help but think of Grindhouse.

There is surely nothing so silly as an expensive item which is meant to look cheap. So spending 53 million dollars to try (and fail) to accurately recreate the aesthetic of tiny-budget genre cinema must be very silly indeed. I could never quite get my head around what that project was meant to achieve and it seemed the filmmakers only half agreed on what they meant as well. The section by Rodriguez is too flashy, modern and CGI fuelled to have anything in common with the inspiration, whereas Tarantino’s better entry feels more authentic at first but ends up with him being too clever by half.

Certainly the first warning light that should have flashed for the directors (who are no strangers to low budgets themselves) is how having too much money, too much time and too many stars might drown the concept. The problems are summed up toward the end of the Rodriguez trailer for the fake film Machete. After getting the tone right in the first half of the trailer (much better than he does in Planet Terror), Rodriguez blows it with a CG enhanced Danny Trejo flying through the air on a motorbike with a minigun mounted on the front of it. That the audience didn’t come to see their films is neither here nor there, the worst thing is that they failed in the central conceit of their own pet project.

Similarly, Hong Kong cinema is always saying that some new film is the return to the glory days of 80s genre cinema. I remember hearing this about S.P.L a few years ago, which was good, though very much like the movies Donnie Yen had been making consistently for a while, before a small detour into Hollywood. Most of these new genre movies have some appeal, but they can’t quite shake the ‘advancements’ in over stylising things for the modern audience. The older genre movies had to rely on cheaper and more outrageous things to get their audiences. I remember being about 12 and seeing the trailer for Tiger On The Beat, in which Chow Yun Fat shoots people by flinging a shotgun attached to a rope around corners. Something as daft as that costs very little to do, is every bit as outrageous and was more impressive to me then than the kind of expensive tedious antics of movies like Planet Terror.

The limited budget factor is why so many of these films were so inventive and the best ones were movies who surpassed their humble beginnings. There’s something slightly unpleasant about high profile successful filmmakers deciding to dabble in low budget genre, with a production budget in their pocket that could have paid for 1000 of the films they so admire. It’s like a rich student slumming. And if Black Dynamite is the success that it appears to be, I hope any other directors hoping similar experiments keep a copy of this film on their desk.

*By the way, I read over at Twitch that Ruby Ray Moore has another Dolemite film coming up for release, but to say it looks lazy is an understatement.

Last night’s season finale of LOST had many good moments. In fact, there were some I’m sure will go down as some of the best in the series’ history. But it should have been better. And there are definitely two moments where LOST blew its load by deciding to blatantly show its budget.

Both of these moments occured when the showrunners decided to show big, violent explosions by way of CGI. Previously in the series, there had been moments that were definitely CGI, and yet it didn’t really matter. Why? Because they were not emotionally-wound moments. Does it really matter if the Smoke Monster looks completely real or that the Oceanic 815 plane that streaks across the sky looks and moves exactly like a real one? No. It’s really no biggie. We get the idea.

But it’s when you stage two climatic moments in a heavily-promoted season finale with dodgy effects that you risk losing your power. The first moment came when the Freighter blew up just as the helicopter took off and Jin was screaming for them to come back. The resulting explosion of the ship looked almost completely terrible. And it almost completely ruined Jin’s death for me to the point where I just wanted Sun to stop bawling. Seriously. The other moment came when the helicopter ran out of fuel and ended up crash-landing into the Pacific Ocean. For the most part, the crew did a good job of creating tension without resorting to effects; but when the helicopter actually hit the water, it looked nothing like the real thing. In fact, it looked more like something Michael Bay would pre-vis in his sleep. It was embarrasing.

So why do these moments of dodgy effects bother me so much? Because they could be easily avoided. Now, I understand that LOST has a terribly short postproduction period time before each episode airs (especially with the writer’s strike), but if they KNOW they will have these two climatic CGI scenes in the show, why can’t they start them sooner? Or even better, why can’t they be a little smarter with their camera angles? There are plenty of other ways they could of shot the Freighter explosion that wouldn’t have looked so cheap and would not have cost as much money to do. And as for the helicopter crash – remember when the FedEx plane hit the ocean in “Cast Away”? For the most part (as far as I remember), we never saw the plane hit the water; we only saw what it looked like from inside the plane. When the plane was just about to hit the waves, you saw them through the pilot’s window for enough of a moment to send you in a state of panic. That was brilliant. And surely saved Robert Zemeckis a ton of money. If they had done something similar with LOST, it would have made a much more believable and startling crash.

LOST is not the only culprit, for sure, when it comes to irresponsible uses of CGI. I recently forced myself to watch ‘Evan Almighty’ with my family and found countless moments in which the shots could have been done differently so that the effects didn’t look so bad and that it certainly would not have cost 200 million dollars to make. I admire people like Guillermo Del Toro who can make something completely epic with a tiny, tiny budget because they know how to get the most out of their shots. I even remember how Joss Whedon would sneak in a short ‘Firefly’ take-off shot amidst a busy city just so that you got a sense of scope, even if it was only for a second or two.

Now, I love my LOST and certainly have no intentions to abandon the show despite it’s CGI failures. But for all the smart people behind the scenes that the show employs, it would be nice if they could take better care of their climatic moments so that we might not feel so cheated or apathetic.

Oh, and LOST? Shame on you for killing Keamy. I loved that dude.