A little on the Boss and Bob and their words

Haven't posted in a while but I've been listening backgroundly to Bruce Springsteen's latest, Working on a Dream. It's not bad from when I seriously tune in, and I'm pleased that it has some intimate acoustic numbers in there. A bonus track of "The Wrestler" is also a big plus as it may well be one of my favorite Boss tunes ever.

These modern albums tend to sound a little overproduced. And I realize that he's all about grandiose and overproduced, but this is in a different way that jibes but clashes with his ways.

Anyway, it's not bad but you can probably get by and never hear it. Except "The Wrestler," listen to that one.

But what really interests me is that lyrically his style can vary pretty dramatically. For starters, looking at the beginning of his career he was very wordy and a blatant Bob Dylan fan who could actually keep up. As time went on he managed to convey his thoughts with fewer words, and that's cool. But his word choices seemed to change as time went on as well. Maybe it's age but all of a sudden songs start with phrases as simple as "sundown sundown" to an almost-stuttered beat. "Thunder Road" would begin with the screen door slamming. The specifics, the characters and the story were the focus. It seems nowadays that he's more into the tones of things. I don't know, though. I'm not as versed on the Boss as I am on other bands. It does seem, however, that while he's not as vibrant and amazing as he was in the former days, he's still a relatively worthwhile listen.

That said, I will go ahead and tangent off and mention that Bob Dylan's last album, Modern Times, is worthwhile in a similar way. Again, he's not the spitfire lyricist he was back in the day, but at the same time I give a shit more what he has to say now. Back then he was deliberately absurd and esoteric and just meshed words together haphazardly but creatively enough to qualify as a skill. I mean let's face it, not everyone can make songs like the bulk of Blonde on Blonde. It pains me to admit that because I find the man overrated. However, when he's the old withered man he is today with a trail of destroyed relationships and lots of hardships and a lot of it due to his own pompousness, I'm interested in what he has to say. And surprise surprise, I like that latest album quite a bit! It's a humbler man and one that, while still a bit arrogant, aware of himself too. Plus, his style of music seems to be gradually shifting to a bluesy jazz that is both fitting to his voice and just overall more interesting than his straightforward rocking that never appealed to me all that much.

Tangent 2: To somewhat assuage die-hards that don't read this, all I've got for you is that I was born in 1983. A lot of developments in rock had been laid forth by then. At the same time, though, I am wont to put on some Chuck Berry once in a while and enjoy him thoroughly. At this very moment I have an itch to go and discover Roy Orbison for myself. I really just don't care for most of Bob's music from back then.
End Tangent 2.

Anyway, this one will be brief. These classic rockers clearly will not be blowing down any foundations of the genre as we know it anymore, but what they do offer is something more personally valuable and worthwhile in its own right. And that's my answer to why these old timers should keep on doing what they do instead of kicking back and relaxing as they make oodles of money.

The Dark Knight

This movie, if you didn't hear, was fantastic. The acting is top tier from everyone involved, with special note going to the late Heath Ledger for thoroughly creeping out millions as the joker.  The camera work is gorgeous as it paints Chicago into a battlefield for the two juggernaut forces of good and evil while on the side there's the tale of one man's fall from glory.  The story is compelling as hell and sticks with you after the credits roll.  The action is fucking punch-to-the-face classic  and brutal, and it's just a fantastic masterpiece of a film.

I was somewhat conscious of it, but note that I did not once mention neither "comic book movie" nor "superhero movie" which are both applicable descriptions of the film's genre.  The fact is, this film transcends those labels.  In those confines this is one of the best ever made hands down.  Outside of it is the more impressive element.  IT STILL HOLDS UP QUITE HIGH.  The reason I'm dwelling on this is because I'm getting a little irked that people can't help but look at it from that lens.  It's too narrow.  This lens is dangerous and not merely from the standpoint of limited options for comparison.  What I'm talking about is this group of hardcore fans.  The actual comic book readers or tv show viewers.  They feel some sort of sense of entitlement to a film that will be loyal to a favorite character.  I am often seeing the phrase "holds true to the comic" or nonsense like that.  There have been so many takes on Batman by DC Comics themselves that this phrase has just about no meaning.  In some he's just a vengeful vigilante out for justice.  In others he is a torn and tortured soul who will never get full satisfaction for witnessing the murder of his parents.  It's really pretty open ended and explains the polar oppositions of Christian Bale's Batman and Adam West's.  This phrase simply does not matter, and moreover, this method of thinking only serves to keep the comic book medium in the lower echelon of art that it tends to dwell within.  

Consider the fan I'm talking about who is so strongly attached to this character that s/he'd fucking flip if Batman held a pistol and so much as beat someone to a pulp with it.  Imagine if Christopher Nolan had directed a scene wherein Batman does exactly that, and it's so brutal and visceral that it has a self-contained resonance, revealing even more about Batman than could be stated.  This fan will not be considering this at all.  All he will consider is that will be on in his head is how fucking blasphemous the scene was.  Batman does NOT HOLD GUNS.  HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO ME?

Fans, these filmmakers owe you nothing.  DC Comics?  They owe you nothing too.  If they trust what Nolan has in mind, that's the end of it.  Welcome in a new twist on a familiar face and look how glorious it can be.  A thing about art is that it's dynamic and always changing.  This includes characters in stories.  If you don't allow for this growth, you're only wanting a novelty to sustain a comfortable status quo and entertain you.  This is not constructive.  This is not art.  You are effectively being unfair to both the character to whom you are irrationally loyal and to his source medium, forcing it due to economics to never grow and thus look silly ALL THE TIME AND FOREVERMORE.  Please get over it.  You will find a wealth of possibilities can lead to both bad and good outcomes.  Let it happen, let there be growth.  An entire industry depends on it.  If you don't like what changes, don't buy it.  But Jesus... give these options a chance!

And also, I want to take this opportunity to go ahead and say, without having read The Dark Knight comic saga, that Frank Miller is a hack.  After having read his Robocop comics and having seen Sin City and 300, I am convinced he is a man who can do nothing more than make creative settings for action, tits and violence.  Character development is nil.  Perhaps Dark Knight is an exception given that he's dealing with a firmly-established character and not one of his creation.  Sure, Mickey Rourke was great in Sin City, but I still didn't care about his story because it was more about the pretty moving pictures than anything.  That goes for everything else in the film and ditto 300 which got praise for being a bloody action movie.  That's the one constant I've experienced thus far.  And the fact that the dude behind 300 is directing The Watchmen certainly doesn't bode well for it.  Oh yeah, he also did Dawn of the Dead.  Any substance that graphic novel boasts will be squandered if this track record has any indication.  But that's not the focus of this paragraph.  What is is that Frank Miller probably sucks.

wall-e

So far, this is my favorite movie this year, and probably one of my favorite movies of all time.  Jesus Christ this movie is the first one to give me a feeling that ET gives me since fucking ET.  I loved it so much.

It's one of those movies that, like Pixar's last one, Ratatouille, gives you entertainment in its purest and greatest form, and somehow this pure and simple form of entertainment is utterly loaded with substance.  From social commentary to love, the movie is fucking packed and you're going to be utterly delighted from start to finish.

The question of what makes comedy comedy has been debated for a long long time now, but the one thing that is absolutely agreed upon is that it ALL derives from pain.  Even a poop joke is rooted in a natural human function that, if deferred long enough, can kill you.  It's utterly absurd that something so disgusting is so vital to living.  That said, a truly great work of humor does have the power to absolutely floor someone.  The folks at Pixar, incidentally, have an incredibly venomous sense of humor with just the right amount of hope, making for visuals that are indeed both funny and unnerving with how incredibly possible it all seems.  I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that Al Gore likely wishes he could draw these kinds of audiences.

Then there's a challenge to acting here where a couple of animated robots who never really speak any English at all convey emotions as competently if not moreso than most A List actors.  It's astonishing and I can't help but imagine it also being insanely time consuming.  I mean Jesus they made a couple ROBOTS make me almost cry and definitely got me a little misty eyed.  Folks, I don't cry at movies.  The ones that stick out in my mind are films I came back to viewing time and time again, and they didn't get that out of me on first viewing.  I came incredibly close in this one.  The funny thing is it likely happened in instances that weren't meant to induce that reaction.  Regardless, so it went.  Wall-E is one of my favorite protagonists ever.  Portraying an ironic sense of wonder that so insanely heartfelt it's almost baffling that it worked on me.  But that charm!  That humor!  Dude is fuckin' adorable!  Can't you see it!?  How can this kind of preciousness not get to you?

And of course his and Eva's journey is fantastic and unfolds at the pitch-perfect pace and tone for the movie.  Pixar seems to have this down so well it's stupid.  It almost makes filmmaking seem like craftwork than artwork.  The only thing keeping it a thing of art is how much feeling it evokes.  There's more here than mere technique, it's gestalt writ large.  More than that, it's madly inspiring.  The end credits roll and something inside me wishes it could be part of something like this.  Something truly great and valuable.  Something that makes people feel like a kid and look in awe.  I caught myself with my mouth wide open and looking agape and retarded at the screen in a particular scene of exposition and it was one in many signs that I knew this was a great movie.  

I also bring up Lord of the Rings now because within the first five to ten minutes of Fellowship I thought something along the lines of "This is going to be a great film."  No movie has given me that reaction until now.  If I could personally thank fucking ANYONE who worked on the film, I would.

Ok, now the brutal part.  I have to say, by the ending my throng of awe and joy and wonder and more awe and sympathy tapered a bit.  Only a bit, but endings are tough beasts.  The fact is this is an adventure, and can only end in a finite number of ways, and they chose one.  They did it well, but it was one of the many all the same.  This isn't even really so much a criticism as it is a frustration that such journeys end.  I guess that the ending wound down in such a way is the disappointment.  Relative to the joy and wonder the rest of the film brings, it's fairly standard.  Hardly enough to diminish the value in it, though.

Not that the movie will incite revolutionary practices on care for the environment or anything, or that it will all of a sudden get people to once again appreciate this beautiful planet that dwarfs even the mighty internet, but I truly think it can open some eyes.  I think Pixar has done something that might actually serve as a valuable reminder about how good things can be and that they are worth fighting for.  Maybe it will be a minority of its audience, but I'm willing to wager it's more than many films that aim for such goals would achieve.

Terrific work.  Would watch again. A++++++

First Video Games Post: GameSpot

I hope this doesn't completely turn off my avid viewer base, but I'm talking video game stuff today.  

Today it's about GameSpot.  A very well established site that gets tons of viewers and tons of content.  What they also seem to get is tons of controversy in terms of their reviewing of games.  There seems to be rather clear circumstantial evidence suggesting that they don't exactly do the unbiased part of reviews so well.  And of course that's not completely possible to do anyway, but here's the story in a sentence for everyone.

One of their most notoriously critical critics (even downsizing the fantastic Zelda: Twilight Princess) was fired a few months ago for giving a genuinely bad game a bad review because the Spot was making money off their publisher.

Adding to that sentence, there's matters to consider like a mysterious anonymous editor posting about it in the forums talking about how wrong his termination was.  Another is that the entire visual theme of the place, at the time, REVOLVED around promoting that one game.  See what I mean?  It's fishy.  Of course they denied it, but I still think at least a modicum of bullshit is in that denial.

A more recent instance has popped up, causing me to start writing in this here journal again.  It involves the infamous Grand Theft Auto IV, which as we speak is getting more perfect scores than any game preceding it.  It's absolutely impressive, and in my eyes even a bit ludicrous.  These reviewers are pointing out flaws, and yet it's boundary-pushing and all that happy horse shit.  I think timing has a lot to do with it.  This game is released when there's literally NOTHING ELSE COMING OUT and everyone's high over the last November, chock full of amazing shit like Mario Galaxy or Call of Duty 4, is worn off.  It's been a relatively wan influx since then and then all of a sudden BANG, a stellar title rolls out.  I just find it a little superlative to score this game 10's, but so it goes.  I've never played it, maybe it will be the first game to make me cry, but I doubt it.  It's fucking GTA.  You commit crimes for people or yourself in a better looking city and with multiplayer.  But I digress. (and don't get the wrong idea, I'm still excited as dick to play it)

So of course the suspense comes when we all wonder what the fuck GameSpot is going to give it.  Mind you, I was only going to hear what the score was, as I have not visited the site since the past controversy.  There's enough there to tell me it's fucked up.  Anyway, the score rolls out.  And it is... a 9.5!  a 10!  A PERFECT 10 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!  HURRAY THE TRADITION CONTINUES!  EVEN GAMESPOT LOVES IT!

Fuck that site.  They actually CHANGED their fucking rating after it was published.  Sure, it's entirely possible the reviewer had a change of heart and decided yes, this game is amazing and deserves a 10.  What's more likely is politics upped that score.  GTA4, too, has ads about the site, and I'd imagine an angry fanbase is just so hard a thing to deal with.  Jokes I tell you, nothing more.

What really bothers me most about this is that, really, it's hard to single just these guys out, and it's also hard to single out just video game sites.  The potential for this kind of shit going into reviews is sadly high.  What's even more sad is how utterly unsurprising it is.  It just backs that age-old "money talks" thing.  That or just being a bunch of pussies about dealing with disagreement.  I can understand the latter, considering that even I bite my tongue when confronted with someone who loves something I hate (Across the Universe being a choice exception).  But this is different.  This is a task laid unto you, and social pleasantries or whatever shouldn't factor in.  A review is there to inform people who have not experienced a work (of art or otherwise), or to those who have give something they can use in comparing their own opinion or even augment it.  That's not happening if money or politics are getting factored in.

What sucks is that it's tricky to find good honest ones, and this is especially true in video games, I feel, where reviews are ostensibly a bunch of rattling off of mechanical elements of the game and not so much about the feeling one gets while playing.  Adding to that is that everything about reviews is bullshitable.  Anyone can write glowing praise about something they hated.  Go back and read an old book report you wrote to see what I mean.  So imagine how easy it is to say you love or hate a bunch of mechanical elements about a game without even lying about how you feel about the goddamned thing.  So petty and easy to lie about it's ridiculous.  

So really it boils down to an issue of trust on the reader's part.  We choose to trust the thoughts and ideas of certain people and their taste in things.  We trust that they're well read/watched/played (haha)/listened/jerked off (porn) and we trust that they have a good discerning eye/ear/dick (porn)/hand (video games/porn).  On top of that, they have to have a good writing style.  You also have to WANT to read what they're saying or hear in this day and age.  But that comes after the trust, because if you don't trust the source, you could give a shit what they're saying.  The only exception is if you trust their untrustworthiness, like the Onion or SomethingAwful I suppose.  

GameSpot, unfortunately, is no exception.  They're unveiling their practices, and it's both laughable and sad.  I'm sure they're in good company, but they slipped up and made it known.  It sucks because it throws into question what earns trust.  I used to read their reviews because of their penchant for being particularly harsh, even when it went against my own thoughts on a game.  I just can't anymore, and it kind of sucks.  Maybe I'm being unfair, considering GTA4 is a high profile game that would cause that kind of tension, but I don't think so.  The previous title, Kane & Kynch, was high profile as well, but definitely not on the level where it warranted payola to get involved and get a critic fired.  I suppose it's worth noting, though, that they did keep his score up.  But to counter that, Jeff Gerstmann's firing led to the departure of at least five other GameSpot employees.  I mean shit's just gotta be all kinds of retarded, right?  I don't feel like I'm being unfair.  What makes me wonder if I am, though, is the fact that I may well trust someone who does the exact same thing, only are a little more crafty.  Perhaps the thing to do is read it/watch it and decide for ourselves the value of their opinion.  It's just hard for me to not hold a grudge to a group that takes the whole review thing so lightly and likely sees it as more of a business opportunity.  And besides that, like I said, there's plenty of sites reviewing in that mechanical style anyway.  To lose one is not a significant thing.  I may change my mind on this, but for now I just can't support a site that functions this way.

I suppose I can go ahead and say that Zero Punctuation is probably one of the better game critics out there today.  Watch his silly reviews.  That's him talking, and that's his thoughts about it, it's clear and it's funny.  If it's all bullshit, he's spectacular at it and he's worth a view on that alone.

Blah, whatever.  I'm posting it and leaving it here.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson is one of those people whose work I love so much it rouses concern in me that I just might be a hipster. What also rouses concern is how each time I watch it, The Life Aquatic becomes a better and better movie to me, and it's generally regarded as his weakest one yet.

But no film has had Bill Murray with as much time on screen completely topless, and this MUST count for something, shouldn't it?

Having been utterly and emotionally crushed by the fact that I can find NEITHER my Flight of the Conchords Season 1 dvd's NOR Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I resolved to watch this film, which was oddly placed upon my bookshelf. Given the way this film seems to want to act as a sort of play on screen rather than fully explore the elements unique to film moreso than other Anderson films, I find it, while overlooking that it was probably my indolent self putting it somewhere, droll and ironic. So it's no longer there, and it was played, further justifying my purchase. Thumbs up.

My girlfriend at the end: "It was ok." Oh yeah? Well you like Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal and he LOVED it! So yeah! That proves nothing!

The truth is she's absolutely right. I feel that Wes aims far and wide with this one, and with many stylishly sparse and tight long shots hopes to not only offer us an epic overseas adventure, but a deep exploration of the emotions spanning a breadth of characters. For Wes here, it's ambitious as hell, and while it's all guessing since I have not seen it, it looks like he narrowed his focus a little more for his followup The Darjeeling Limited. I don't blame him, because Zissou and Crew just didn't hit it out of the park. What they did accomplish, though, was at least a two-base run that's totally worth watching in my mind.

Again, this is maybe my third or fourth time watching it, and it's one that grows on me. Given that the reach is so wide, you really absorb little on the first viewing but a gist of the story and a breadth of humorous characters. Watch the journey again, and you may soften up to Steve Zissou, played by Bill Murray with the dolor that got him award talks in Lost in Translation, and his desperation for finding someone still rooting for him. Actually, to tell you the truth, he's probably the only character that I've grown attached to at all, but it's become a fun thing to watch his journey. Steve would hate to hear me say it, but I seriously like the film.

That doesn't change the fact that I walked out of the theater after my first viewing feeling a little underwhelmed compared to how I felt walking out of Royal Tenenbaums, which was equally dense and increasing in value on repeat viewings. So why is that? Well, Royal and Steve are two main characters with a lot in common. Both are old men with past glories and they're looking for reasons why they went away and also finding a way to regain them. Both have reached a point of desperation when we find them. What Steve has that Royal does not, though, is 1) thinner characters. Most characters are only seen through the lens of their interactions with Steve. The only real deviations are incredibly brief and both involve Ned. It gives a little depth to some other characters, but not a lot. Royal, on the other hand, gives a good amount of focus to troubles facing Royal's children completely out of his control. It's truly a broader ensemble piece and goes far in giving everyone a purpose beyond reflecting ONE character's troubles. 2) Thinner side plots. I wanted to care more about Willem DaFoe's Klaus, but it just never came up. He's just desperate for Steve's regards and it's never really explained why since he's essentially a right hand man. I keep comparing to Royal, and I don't know if that's completely fair, but in that one you have a sort-of-incestuous love affair, a drugged out friend, and some other stuff that doesn't completely tie together but it's there and interesting on some level. At the very least, again, it gives some flesh to his characters. Zissou's side crap is interesting too, but not as much so. 3) No big adventure to worry about. This may be the biggun' because this part was actually really cool in this movie. Completely unrealistic, we have Steve flip out on Filipino pirates to the Stooges' "Search and Destroy" and a very awkward yet awesome shootout/chase on their hideout island. It's funny and fun in an Indiana Jones kind of way, but stylistically anything but. It's actually pretty entertaining and is something new for Anderson. But it does pull away from time that could be spent developing characters. Thus everything is left feeling a little half-baked.

But fuck you all, sometimes the doughy bread is the good shit. It's soft and mushy, but there's some substance there. And style, which doesn't fit the bread analogy but Anderson's style is in top form here. From those strange jump cuts that feel abrupt but totally work somehow, to a full setpiece of all the ship's (the Belafonte) decks leading to very impressive long takes that make for almost a comic book feeling. My girlfriend didn't feel comfortable at all during these, though, so your mileage may of course vary. And it still amounts to something. Again, it's not as good as it could have been, but come on now. The ending does kind of get to me. I'm happy to see the redemption and I do feel it.

The added focus on action has other perks as well. Here we have Wes throwing in visuals of the deep sea. With CG and claymation he does, to an extent, capture the sense of wonder of his audience. This is new territory for him, and again the high aim means it doesn't get all the attention it deserves, but it does offer a level of aesthetic captivation that's worth noting. But it does even more. It actually proves itself to be a neat little symbol of Steve's own vitality, first being something taken for granted to something that completely halts the film. It all comes together at the end to remind Steve that, as he puts it, "this is an adventure." This viewing is the one where I finally begin to understand what the hell he might mean.

Maybe it's forced. Maybe it's the dedication of a Wes Anderson fanboy, but if I really am one, wouldn't I have seen Darjeeling Limited by now? Wouldn't I have been excited for it rather than concerned that he's rehashing themes he's revisited several times over at this point? And again, I didn't feel this way when I first watched it. For some reason I started caring more as I re-watched. Perhaps it's one of those things where you're better able to sort through the pieces, and the pieces just aren't as well organized this time around. So what I'm here telling you is this: there's some really pretty, very worthwhile pieces here. You can sift through them and make something special of it, but it is a little broken up and not as well put together as Wes's other gems. I still give it a recommendation.

One Hour Photo

First of all, to discuss the newfound joy in watching movies on television. I would have never gotten up and watched One Hour Photo on my own, but there it was. The main motivation to watch this movie again was the fact that my girlfriend, who hates Robin Williams, had not seen it, and I wanted her to see him at his utmost creepiest. Bless her heart for putting up with my adamant pushing for watching particular movies, but I still have not dragged her into a Lord of the Rings viewing, but rest assured... IT WILL HAPPEN.

Anyway, another reason was, for the first time in a long time, I came upon the movie as it was starting, which is fantastic. It was still on FX, meaning everything is edited to hell, but fortunately this movie remains relatively clean, and ironically the one scene with any nudity at all is pretty much there entirely. What's NOT there is the word "fuck" and some pictures of someone's amateur porn that Sy, Robin Williams' character, develops. But anyway, the movie on the whole is there.

And that movie, overall, was kind of disappointing on this viewing.

So here's the deal, this is a Fox Searchlight picture, which usually means those slightly off kilter movies that aren't HEAVILY subversive or stylistically unnerving on the viewer, but they're also awkward enough to not earn a spot with the Fox label. Think Juno or Little Miss Sunshine for the humor section, this film for the suspense/horror.
That being the case, this movie gets a little more artsy than most, and it makes for interesting contrasts to the typical "follow the creep" and being that photos are the setting, most those contrasts are visual. Rather than live in the dark and be a generally murky man. Sy Parrish is a man who looks clean and pristine. His apartment is almost entirely white barring things like stove grills which I'm sure he'd make white if he could help it. To color things a little bit, he may wear a blue tie or blue messenger bag to match his bright blue eyes. It's neat because it shows man who's empty, neurotic as hell, and of course weird with a hint of well-wishing. But what primarily makes him creepy is his obsession with a specific family that frequents his One Hour Photo counter at their local SavMart. As it turns out, he makes duplicate copies of EVERY roll of film they bring in and keeps them for himself to place on a wall of his. Creepy and dorky all in one. As it turns out, this is the one colorful part of his apartment, and it doesn't even really belong to him. Everything about it screams creepy lonely longing motherfucker.

So what happens when he learns that this family he idolizes is far from perfect? When he learns that the story in the photos is basically a lie? Watch the film to find out!

Now, had Robin Williams not played this character, it's very possible this movie would go down in flames. First of all, he does creepy extraordinarily well, walking that line of decency/inappropriate work interactions uncomfortably well. He behaves like a normal miserable person at home and lets his surroundings do all the talking. It's subtle, it's pristinely disgusting, it's great. Everyone knows him to be funny (Mork & Mindy) or incredibly useless and stupid (RV). He's not often given these roles, and I think we're about due for another one. I enjoy it, and I bet if he weren't famous, he would be this creepy to people. Actually, most actors would.

But it's an understatement to say he could've ruined the movie if he didn't perform well. Even if he did a moderate job, this movie would, in my eyes, tank. First off, the plot holes are a series of small things that after a while grew grating. Things like the mother character telling her boy she's just dropping off some photos so don't take long in the store, and then saying that she'd like to pick up the photos that very same day in an hour. It's a minor oversight, I know, but it's there. Some others seem to have more to do with keeping the movie stylish rather than logical, but whatever. That's the small nitpick. The bigger one has to do with that style. The film uses its distinct visuals EVERYWHERE and it's a huge part of the film, and it goes over the top when it starts to just film shit and let the viewer make symbolism out of it. Once in a while it's witty, like a mirror looking like a photograph, but often it's just stupid. "Let's film a lone coin-op rocking horse outside the shop running with no one on it! Yeah, that's lonely!" It gets a little much.
I bet writer/director Mark Romanek hoped this to be significant. He hoped it would be his Taxi Driver or something, and I can see how he could have succeeded. The imagery shows a static lifeless world filled with shelves of crap in stores, and Sy's home reflects it to an extent. And being a byproduct of a materialistic world, he himself is almost like a robot seeking affection with only images of it to have any understanding, and then the ideal image is shattered leading to a breakdown. I get that, but for some reason I just wasn't all too shook up at the end of this film. There was just a guy I felt sorry for because he was lonely and honestly didn't do much about it. At least Travis Bickle tried to establish relationships. One Hour Photo is more about the look of the world and Sy himself, and not enough on the world itself or the characters around him who offered decent performances but whose fairly prominent presence away from Sy just made him even more of a creepy guy than an antihero.
But I have to bear in mind that Romanek is primarily a music video man, so of course it's heavy on the visual side. A lot of this shit looks like it'd come right out of a music video or TV commercial, the photos themselves are a horrible victim of this, actually.
Again, Robin Williams turns in a great enough performance, and you do get a moral quandary at the end, but it's just a few elements short of sheer greatness. However, it's also much more stylish than a lot of great movies. If there were a scale with one end stating Style, and the other stating Substance, it would lean toward style, but closer to substance than many similar films. I'd say that's worth something. It's still a fun creepy guy thriller at its heart.

Now, I've seen many a Seagal film.  And I've seen Under Siege before, which is very likely the best movie to come out of the Steven Seagal canon.  That alone doesn't say much considering his reputation for churning out complete shit, but still as an action flick this doesn't completely blow chunks.  Now, while this did not stop me from falling asleep on the film, I am still comfortable saying this.

I should also warn everyone that I am basing this review on my "sleep through" viewing, which was aired by TNT and means that almost all the violence and cussing was shoddily edited out completely.  My dubiously high mark of Steven Seagal's best work involved me filling in the bleeps and cuts with what I remember to be the actual unadultered film.

I'm not entirely sure where to start on reviewing this.  See, I think this is my first go at the shallower waters of cinema, and that's hollywood action flicks.  Ok, I'm hitting a stride now.  These movies require no level of intelligence, defy reality at all points, and, if done right, are a lot of fun for all said reasons.  If not, they can be a complete chore to get through.  

There is a key exception to the chore rule, though, and that is the age of the audience.  When I was in my early to mid teens and even probably a little before that, these movies were pretty much the finest examples of cinema to me.  I was a child whose first viewing of a Mortal Kombat arcade machine threw me into a frenetic fascination with all violent media.  Never once, mind you, being violent myself, I did find violence to be pretty much the greatest thing the world had ever known.  Many years later, something happened to me.  I went to watch films like XXX and Collateral Damage and thought they were pretty much the worst thing to come along (research post-writing shows these were both made in 2002, the year I graduated from high school).  All of a sudden I was, more and more, seeing these films as brawny smatters of retardation masking a complete lack of story or interesting characters with big explosions and guns.  When I revisit the movies I loved as a kid, I see that, for many of them, this is the case.  So in my growing up, for better or worse, my tastes changed dramatically.  Now, I'm guessing that I'm not alone.  There are others that went through a similar progression.  But not all, for I know people that still get excited about new movies starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the man I have in mind was indeed older than me.  All the same, I know I'm not alone. 

I WILL say this, though: Martin Riggs, John McClane, and to a lesser extent Casey Ryback here are far more entertaining characters than the action protagonists filmmakers are coming up with today.  Why do you not see more XXX sequels?  Not a whole lot of action film franchises springing up on the whole, are there?  They're just getting dumber and less valuable.  I daresay that these movies, while they're also brawny and stupid, still had something about them.  Riggs and Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon would joke around and bicker and argue and it was charming and funny.  The camera often even took us into their personal lives, over the films getting us familiar with Murtaugh's family and Riggs' start of being a complete suicidal mess to someone coming back to his good side with his partner's help.  It's the buddy cop movie blueprint and it still hasn't been topped.  People still try because it gives the audience a little something more to care about if done right.  John McClane of Die Hard had all kinds of personal problems, but then he gets stuck in pretty much the shittiest situation a cop can get in, and he has no star-studded past so he just inexplicably wants to do the right thing.  Incidentally, the right thing involves kicking more ass than any normal man could handle, and really character development doesn't go as far, but it's there, and it's enough where you start to think McClane is pretty funny.

And finally, after all this, we get to Under Siege and its protagonist Casey Ryback.  On the surface, it can be looked at as a sort of anti-Die Hard.  It throws away the personal woes, keeps the wit as best it can with a non-actor like Steven Seagal, and keeps a keen focus on badassery.  Where McClane had you concerned because quite he had some stupid ideas on getting out of certain situations, Ryback left no concern at all.  Being an ex-SEAL with tons of medals and shit, you weren't worried about him.  The journey is more about seeing how he's going to fuck with the bad guys and cheering him on as every single scheme works.  Only one character with more than a couple spoken lines gets killed on camera making you feel bad, and even he's off to the side enough where you don't care.  This is Ryback's show, SPOILER INCOMING he severs limbs on table saws, rips out Adam's Apples with his bare hands, and even pushes in poor Tommy Lee Jones' eye and then stabs him in the head with a cooking knife.  SPOILER DONE but while it is a spoiler, it should be no surprise that the good guys win.  Still, behind all this, it's just a Die Hard ripoff.  A contained space with something of particular value is hijacked by an unusually smart and subtly wealthy team of sociopaths and thieves and one man, the overlooked detail, fights on because he's the only hope for everyone.  

The truth is, you can look a this film as the transition point to the action genre that now thrives.  A super badass that is cool to watch, but hard to care about because he does everything right.  He's essentially not human.  This is why sequels don't work.  Look at Under Siege 2 and XXX: State of the Union.  And when I'm honest with myself, those greats are better than what we get now.  There are four Lethal Weapons and four Die Hards because we liked the characters.  That's gone, and I miss it.  They're no fucking French Connection or Chinatown, but they're fun, and their characters are likable.  Now the characters are disposable and the flash is getting too much focus, completely destroying its value.  Who cares about a big explosion killing all the bad guys if we never got a chance to hate them to begin with?  A big part of that is that they want to kill heroes we don't give a shit about.

But I'd bullshit you if I said I've outgrown it.  Those flashy action sequences can still get me going if done well.  That second X-Men movie kicked all kinds of ass, and I love ALL THREE Spidey flicks.  I guess the Superheroes get all the love nowadays?  I also want to praise Die Hard 4, but it's such a throwback with modern day effects that it pretty much epitomizes what action movies ought to be.  It cheated, though.  It had John McClane.  Trump card, y'know?  Still, I loved it.  Other stuff is just shit.  Jason Statham, who I loved in Snatch, is churning out cookie-cutter style over substance action movies that no one should care about.  So is Angelina Jolie.

I'm greatly blaming the Matrix for this, even though that first movie was pretty good.  I will stop there because that trilogy is a whole other mess.

Not all hope is lost, though.  As I mentioned, superhero movies can really nail it sometimes as they're dealing with characters that have had years of fleshing out.  But there's new blood I like.  The Jason Bourne movies are flat out awesome, even with the nauseating editing and cinematography in the latter 2.  They're still compelling stories and a very unique protagonist with his nice guy demeanor and surprising depth with his confusion.  More like that, and we're in great shape.  Plus, the trend seems to be agreeing with me, as I haven't seen as much press for these movies lately.  Unless it's Michael Bay making dogshit like Transformers.  Fuck you, Michael Bay.  Go blog about blu-ray and stop making movies.