“Chronicle” and “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie”

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Chronicle (2012)

“I remember you,” says Steve (Michael B. Jordan) to Andrew (Dante DeHaan), as the two of them walk to check out a hole in the ground. “You wore that hoody every day to homeroom.”

Subtle, isn’t it? In the first 15 minutes, Josh Trank and Max Landis’s “Chronicle” has shown us that Andrew has a screaming, abusive father, a dying mother, a gallery of exciting bullies, a cool cousin (a different kind of problem there) — and now, a habit of dressing like the kid who shoots up the school. Another title for this movie might be “X-Columbine.” But I don’t want to get too snarky, because the creators are both several years younger than me, and they’re there while I’m here.

“Chronicle” is a good-looking, diverting movie, but derivative as all hell. Non-nerds might not notice this. Nerds, the sort of people who’ve dreamed about the situation Andrew, Steve, and cousin Matt get into, will notice. The most evocative images call back “Superman” (you’ll believe a sociopath can fly!) or, more often, “Akira” (when Andrew levitates and some pebbles come with him; when he goes on a rampage wearing tattered hospital garb).

And is it good? It’s fine.

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012)

Let us give thanks that producers keep giving money to Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. They don’t even try to hide that they’re in the business of avante garde, audience-limiting weirdness. So they made a movie about it: Tommy Schlaang (Frank Langella!) gives two idiots a billion dollars to adapt a poem about a guy who wears a suit made of diamonds. They spend the money on real diamonds and a Johnny Depp impersonator. (He does look like Johnny Depp.)

10 Years

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More than that, actually. In September 2001, before college started up again, I used the window between work and class to launch my first “weblog.” It was a page of HTML that I updated daily, like the one Andrew Sullivan had. Because I was so clever, it was titled DW-i: Dave Weigel Interactive! Months later, I realized how little fun I’d have if every diary entry was uploaded to an FTP server after text edits. There was a better option, a new service called “Blogger.” I joined it, and voila — blogging.

Back then I wanted to write for a living. Now, I do! When I’m not writing, I’m wondering about the meaning of what I’m covering (this sort of thing accelerates when a great foreign correspondent dies), and talking to other writers about the point of all this. The best answers are too pretentious to blog about. The cheap answer isn’t: It’s fun, and we’re lucky to do it.

You know what else is fun? Writing about other topics. Slate, which was my favorite magazine long before I was paid to believe so, is a good place to deposit thoughts about pop culture and Things Inconvenient to White People and other Internet topics. Tumblr would be a good place to stow my other thoughts. But I am a sort of a luddite, and I refuse to take this blog off Tumbler. Good God — I’ve written here for a third of my life! I own the domain well into President Santorum’s first term! DaveWeigel.com will remain a source for random, one-draft thoughts that are too hot for Twitter or Facebook or the myriad other places to put such thoughts.

“Dare” (1990)

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Every time they put up another statue of Ronald Reagan, the Anglosphere’s memory of the 1980s gets a little more schizo. In this country, the 1980s are generally agreed upon as a boomtime. Our president from that time is the only one that Republicans like to talk about, and boy, do they ever talk about him. Idea getting trashed? Mention what Reagan would have done. Nobody taking you seriously? Locate a picture of yourself seating across the aisle from Reagan.

This must be so alien to Brits. Their conservative icon, the one who waged victorious small war in the Atlantic and broke the unions into pieces, is a completely reviled pop figure. In my short time in England — admittedly, it was the apogee of New Labour — no one ever would have thought of popularizing some idea by connecting it to Thatcher. Her name meant the poll tax (“a tax on being alive”) and manufactured poverty.

Why does this matter? If you pull lots of comics from the bargain bins, as I like to, you find 1980s classics limned with political references, and only half of them still resonate. The British half. Anti-Reagan jokes make no sense anymore. Ah, but the many, many stories about fascist Britain — Thatcher satire! We all get it.

Grant Morrison’s “Dan Dare,” which I read in a collection of Rian Hughes-illustrated comics, is a classic example of the Thatcher-as-social-disorder story. Batman got a grim-and-gritty future, and thanks to Morrison, so does Dan Dare, a space age relic who was constantly at war with Venusians and Martians. In Morrison’s hands, Dare is a sort of Hindenburg figure. The German president, not the blimp. Crippled and bitter, slogging through a memoir (“I’m not a writer,” he mopes), he agrees rather quickly to help Prime Minister Gloria Monday — our Thatcher manque! —  as the public face of her desperate election campaign. “We just need five more years to implement our program,” she says. When [SPOILER] she wins, it’s her “unprecedented fourth term.” That’s what Thatcher would have won if she hadn’t been ousted the year this comic came out.

I should step back: I am not trashing this. “Dan Dare” is an absorbing read, largely thanks to Hughes. This was my first extended exposure to his art, after noticing it and liking it on some posters. It’s perfect — it evokes the 50s serial and the 60s cartoon, and jars horrifyingly with the stuff Morrison gives him.

Morrison gives him a plot. This is a far more structured story than “Arkham Asylum” (which made him) or “Flex Mentallo” (his first, perfect work of superhero surrealism). Dare is pathetic, but the elements of heroism crackle in his brain, and he shakes himself out of a TV stupor to realize how horrible things have gotten. As he explores his doubts about PM Monday, he’s given a tour of northern England, all food lines (“some of them have been waiting for days,” says his guide) and abandoned art deco. He flashes back to the massacre he participated in against some helpless Treens, the civilization of northern Venus ruled by the Mekon. (The mega-brained Mekon, later ripped off by Marvel AND D.C. for their own genius-floating-on-a-chair characters, rules the Treens and wars against Earth and Dare.) He uncovers the secret that Monday has been hiding from Britain, and without spoiling it I can say it’s an early, potent example of how Morrison taps Freudian sexual paranoia for sci-fi twists.

This is minor Morrison, much more nakedly political than you could ever imagine him getting in this decade, but it works. All credit to Hughes: It’s easy to hack out a future dystopia, but his looks like all the toys a 50s whiz kid with play with, after he got bored and left them peeling in the rain.

 

The Movies of 2011

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Here’s the list so far. What else do I need to see?

1) Drive
2) Attack the Block
3) The Artist
4) A Dangerous Method
5) The Tree of Life
6) Beginners
7) Cave of Forgotten Dreams
8) Contagion
9) Young Adult
10) The Muppets
11) Bridesmaids
12) Weekend
13) The Descendants
14) Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
15) Margin Call
16) X-Men: First Class
17) Moneyball
18) Source Code
19) Margin Call
20) The Trip
21) Meek’s Cutoff
22) Bellflower
23) The Future
24) Captain America: The First Avenger
25) Paul
26) Super
27) 50-50
28) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II
29) Everything Must Go
30) Tabloid
31) Kung Fu Panda 2
32) Fright Night
33) A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas
34) Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
35) A Better Life
36) The Adjustment Bureau
37) The Help
38) Another Earth
39) Midnight in Paris
40) Hesher
41) Limitless
42) Drive Angry
43) Green Lantern
44) The Conspirator
45) Red State
46) Super 8
47) Win Win
48) Hobo with a Shotgun
49) Thor
50) The Devil’s Double
51) Rango
52) Battle: Los Angeles
53) Cedar Rapids
54) Your Highness
55) The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
56) The Green Hornet
57) Hall Pass
58) HappyThankYouMorePlease
59) Horrible Bosses
60) Cars 2
61) Bad Teacher
62) The Iron Lady
63) Gnomeo and Juliet
64) J. Edgar
65) No Strings Attached
66) Transformers: Dark of the Moon
67) Atlas Shrugged, Part One
68) Just Go With It
69) 30 Minutes or Less
70) The Beaver
71) Priest
72) Sucker Punch
73) I Am Number Four

The Beaver, Green Lantern

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The Beaver (2011, Jodie Foster)

“So, Mel Gibson is a depressed toymaker who finds a beaver puppet in a dumpster. He drinks himself unconscious one night, and a TV falls on him while he’s wearing the beaver. All of a sudden, he can only talk through the beaver, which has a cockney accent.”

“Why?”

“It just does.”

“No, not just the accent — why any of this?”

“Oh, better question. What I’m told is that a brilliant script had been sitting on desks, or shelves, or whatever scripts sit on — cocaine mirrors? — for years, and that Jodie Foster finally acquired it, turning it into a comeback vehicle for Mel Gibson.”

“Well, they’re both good actors.”

“They’re not alone! Anton Yelchin is Gibson’s depressed son. Jennifer Lawrence is convincing and button-cute as a cheerleader with a secret. Well, two secrets.”

“Which are?”

“Her brother died, and she used to be a graffiti artist.”

“Does everyone in this movie have totally stupid interests?”

“Yes. Stop interrupting. So, Gibson immediately turns his life around because the Beaver gives him amazing advice — usually along the lines of ‘shut up and do something constructive.’ He gives an inspiring speech to his failing toy company and it’s saved with a new product — Beaver-themed wood carving kits.”

“This is a child’s toy?”

“Yes. It sells out immediately. Gibson becomes a national celebrity. There’s one of those ‘cover of every magazine’ montages, and a Today Show interview.”

“So this solves his problems?”

“Sort of. He reignites his marriage for a while, having what appears to be great sex…”

“With the Beaver still on?”

“Yes. But he still can’t function without the puppet. Foster takes him out to dinner and he’s basically non-responsive. I’ll give it to him, Gibson is quite good at portraying the shame and resignation of someone suffering from extreme depression.”

“In a movie about a puppet.”

“Rub it in, huh? Anyway, everything works for a while, then falls apart. Gibson’s son screws things up by encouraging Jennifer Lawrence to pick up graffiti again as therapy and getting them both arrested. Gibson sinks back into depression, and the puppet attacks him. Or something. Gibson fights the puppet. He defeats him by taking him to the garage, building a coffin, and chopping off his arm with the puppet on it.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“This actually happens. Anyway, everyone learns something and the movie ends with the characters frolicking at an amusement park.”

“This sounds hilarious.”

“It is!”

Green Lantern (2011)

After all the hype about how terrible it was, it really wasn’t so bad.

Limitless, Shameless

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“Limitless” (2011) – Surprisingly good sci-fi about a man who stumbles upon a drug that allows him to access his entire brain and become nearly superhuman. He recalls everything he’s ever learned or heard. He picks up languages just by half-hearing them. (Goddamn it, I need a drug that does this.) The movie loses me a bit by making the same mistake that “The Adjustment Bureau” did — assuming that political power is more useful than financial power!

“Shameless” (2004) – The Showtime remake of this show was modestly amusing, even if I didn’t buy the winsome, moneyed-looking Emmy Rossum as a poor family provider. Some Twitter pals convinced me to rent the British series that got ripped off. It’s… pretty great, mostly because it drinks so deep in the dark, grimy, hopeless side of modern British life. (I liked Rose, Doctor Who’s first reboot companion, for this very reason.) Somebody adapt a fantasy novel into a big budget film so David Threlfall can make big bucks.

Still More Movies

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The Fall (2006) – Occasionally beautiful but pointless twaddle from a music video director.

Never Let Me Go (2010) – Passable sci-fi/coming of age stuff, like Merchant Ivory does “Logan’s Run.”

Win Win (2011) – Fine pedestrian middle class drama.

Bridesmaids (2011) – Ropey but brilliant.

For the want of a nail and/or power strip

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Because my computer can’t use an aircard, I have a MiFi disk. Because the MiFi disk always accidentally turns on and powers down, it was off when I got into a cab yesterday. Because I’m neurotic about finishing up work, I spent the short cab ride trying to power the MiFi, with my iPad and notebooks strewn across the seats, eventually giving up because the tech wouldn’t work properly. Because I’m lazy, I just sighed and shoved all this stuff into my bag as I met a friend. Because it was nice out, we drank outside. Because I’m inattentive, I didn’t notice until a waitress pointed out that a pounding rainstorm had surpassed the awning over the bar seats, and water had started shooting in to the bag.

This is how my $849 iPad stopped working.

Yet More Movies

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Priest (2011) – Just awful.

Drive Angry (2011) – A completely successful neo-B movie, with memorable and only sometime predictable violence.

Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) – Canadian Tarantino wannabees win a contest and make a grindhouse splatfest set in Halifax — sorry, “Fucktown.” Some fantastically bad acting and reel after reel of over-the-top violence, starting with a man (Ricky from “Trailer Park Boys”) being decapitated by a truck, razor wire, and a manhole cover, and concluding with a man being stabbed to death by an exposed ulna bone. Good family fun.