I have to admit that I can’t remember when The Kingdom came out in theaters or if I’d even heard of it at all before I read the back of the DVD box at the local rental shop. I thought it sounded interesting so Muse picked it up yesterday for the weekly $10 Tuesday rental deal. And then we watched it at dinner.
After the first ten minutes I had to pick my jaw up from off the floor. Twice.
The kingdom starts and finishes strong and Jamie Foxx shows once again that he was meant to play dramatic roles in movies. The movie is powerful, emotional, action-packed and very suspenseful. And when I say action-packed I don’t mean like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or the latest super-hero from Marvel Comics. I mean devastating explosions, realistic gun fights, painful car crashes…. Everything you could want in a movie I think.
As I’ve never served in the Middle East I can’t vouch for it’s true realism but this movie shows things that no other movie touches and everything seems more real than I could imagine. This shows both sides of terrorism and the challenges that our people face in dealing with the every day trauma from a personal, political and physical point of view.
I don’t think I can recommend this movie enough. It’s not for people who can’t handle some blood and suspense but it should be watched for those people because they probably have the most to gain from watching scenes like this. This movie doesn’t seek to shield us from life or glorify the trvial; it puts everything right up on screen and lets the horror of it all make a lasting impression on you.
Warning: contains some minor spoilers but seriously, have you seen the previews?
Muse and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [omg could that title be any longer] at the theater in Tung Chung last Sunday. We laughed our butts off, usually for the expected reasons, for the first half and then it kind of shifted gears somehow. It was a great movie and I’ll buy it when it comes out on DVD but I think it was just too late to keep up appearances with the previous movies.
Harrison Ford is just as good in this version as he always has been although his character seemed to fluctuate quite a bit between an old man constantly thinking “I’m getting too old for this shit” and a hero that can do anything. In the first three movies he was a lot more consistent. The idea of him having a son was a cute idea even if the character was a little annoying. Short-Round had more personality. Him showing up looking like Marlon Brando was a bit odd and really set the tone for two hours of cliches and stereotypes.
We re-watched the first three movies prior to going to see this new one so we would be ready. One thing I noticed for the first time was how over the top, campy and completely unbelievable they were. I never got that from these movies before. Sure they all three showed some form of mythological magic in action against evil Nazis or evil Indians but they always seemed different. I guess now that I’m older (and wiser? nah) I had to suspend my belief in everything that happened so much more than in the past.
So when the new movie makes fun of itself or things in the previous movies it’s a nice hommage now and then but sometimes it was just too much. It seemed to ride on the hopes that the cliches and stereotypes it showed would carry it through and in some ways it did since all four movies are basically made in the old pulp fiction style of the Golden Age. I suppose the idea of aliens from another dimension are nothing new when thinking about the Azteks. And truthfully is that any harder to swallow than a box that melts faces, a man who can pull out a still beating heart from a human with his hand or a knight living forever drinking from a magic cup?
The special effects were very hit and miss. The ending sequence was pretty cool. However, as Abraxus pointed out in his post, the cemetary model that was used was really pathetic. Like him, I assumed we were supposed to be looking at an intentional view of a model and not the “real cemetary” as we were supposed to think. It was a total amateur presentation from one of the best special effects companies in the world which just made me shake my head in wonder as to what they were thinking.
I know it sounds like I’m bashing the new Indiana Jones movie and that’s really unfair. I’m a huge fan of the original movies and against my better judgement I still had extremely high expectations for the new movie. It was a fun, funny and entertaining movie. I would watch it again. It’s just that the Indiana Jones movies basically created the current Action/Comedy genre of movies that we have been evolving with since the early 1990′s and this movie just feels very retro and un-evolved. Not that that is a bad thing – it’s just not what was expected. I have no idea why.
It’s Monday and I’m sitting at home still un-showered and working on comics. Today is a public holiday here in Hong Kong. It’s Buddha’s birthday! Who am I to argue? Sadly though, public holidays are a double-edged sword. Sure you get the day off, but unless you feel like pushing through crowds of people everywhere you go, you pretty much just sit at home all day. Like I’m doing.
We say Iron Man on Saturday afternoon and it was awesome. I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to comic book to movie adaptations and I know many of them aren’t that great. Iron Man definitely lived up to the hype in my opinion though.
After the movie, Muse and I split up and went with our friends to different places. Me and my friend went to Sham Shui Po to go to the computer and game malls to look for a Sony PSP for me. I thought about getting a second hand system but decided it was too much risk for too little discount. So I went for a new one. Unfortunately all the cool colors of the new ‘slim’ PSP are all twice the price (or more) of the standard black, white or pastel colors. So I found a shop that still sold the ‘fat’ versions. They had a few of the limited Japanese releases so I went for one of those. Just to make Colin jealous if nothing else.
Oh yeah, that is a metallic blue Sony PSP. Only released in Japan but everything ends up in Hong Kong eventually. Sometimes I love shopping here in Hong Kong.
Here’s something I didn’t know when I bought the book I Am Legend: it’s a short story collection. I Am Legend is only the first 159 pages and then the rest of the book is all additional short stories by Richard Matheson. Nowhere on the front or back of the book does it say that. The only way I even knew was once I started reading it and saw the odd table of contents. Why does it matter? Because most of the other stories were kinda crappy.
As good as the story of I Am Legend is, it’s not as strong as the legend the book itself has become. Richard Matheson’s writing does not age well. The namesake story was written in 1954 along with about half the other stories in this book. And it reads like someone from the 1950′s wrote it. It is hard to future proof any creative work of course but for those people under the age of about 30 will probably have a hard time understanding many things in this book. For the baby boomers out there, you will be right at home.
The reason I say this is because in the “future” of 1976, the protagonist must deal with Willys station wagons with 3-speed manual transmissions and a choke. What’s a choke you ask and what does it have to do with cars? Then stick to the updated Will Smith movie, you will probably be disappointed by the original story. The other stories in the book fare no better and there are some glaring problems with continuity and editing even in this re-release of the legendary story so I can only assume that these are Matheson’s actual mistakes at this point and no one will ever correct them.
The story of I Am Legend is good. It’s extremely dated and the pacing is slow and deliberate but it’s good. Most of the rest of the book is fluff that was probably written for various low-rent magazines at the time of their writing. One stand-out is the story called Prey which if you’ve seen the classic 1970′s movie Trilogy of Terror, you will recognize right off. The story of the homicidal Zuni fetish doll is much better in print than the version in the classic movie.
I’d still recommend reading I Am Legend if only for the namesake story but with the caveat that you may not be old enough to get all the outdated references and terminology. If that sort of thing doesn’t bother you though and you don’t mind a few confusing edits here and there then by all means pick up a copy and read it. It may not age well but it’s still potent enough.
And now we see the last few nails in the coffin for HD DVD. I had mentioned a few days ago that the format war was over but the news over the past couple of days is just rubbing salt in the wounds. Retail leviathan Wal-Mart has announced that it will no longer carry HD DVD following Best Buy’s earlier decision. And though there were rumors of Toshiba completely dropping HD DVD over the weekend, we still don’t know if those rumors are true. According to Toshiba today, they are still weighing their options in this increasingly Blu-Ray market.
In my opinion Toshiba should just get out while they can and before the downward spiral catches more unwary consumers in it’s wake. Everyone knows that most people who buy technology are at least relatively clueless (much to the dismay of us obsessive research techies) and it won’t be long till stores that are still selling the remainder of their stock of HD DVD hardware and movies start looking with customers with the word “SUCKER” stamped on their forehead. It will happen; it always does. And those unlucky people who invest in HD DVD at this stage of the game (or later) are going to be very upset when they can’t find any more red cases floating in the sea of blu.
June 4, 2008 5:50 pm | 
