On Saturday, 2 June 2012, I met Thomas K.Y. & Kai-Yin H. for lunch at Mulan, a decent Taiwanese restaurant in downtown Waltham, Massachusetts. We also screened Snow White and the Huntsman at the Landmark Embassy Cinema. The fantasy film was enjoyable, despite some flaws.
Snow White and the Huntsman only loosely follows the story recounted by the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney. There’s still a princess, a wicked stepmother, a magic mirror, and seven dwarves, but this Snow White reminded me more of the wave of high-minded but inconsistent fantasy flicks from the 1980s, such as Dragonslayer or Labyrinth.
Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart acquits herself well as the eponymous princess, who is more like Joan of Arc than Disney’s cheerful heroine. Charlize Theron (soon also to be seen in Prometheus) happily chews the scenery as Queen Ravenna and needs to be “uglied up” with computer-generated effects for her younger rival to be the fairest in the land.
Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth is appropriately gruff as the drunken widower hired by Ravenna to find Snow White. Sam Clafin (from Pillars of the Earth and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) is a swashbuckling nobleman and potential live interest similar to Robin Hood, and Sam Spruell is Ravenna’s cruel brother Finn.
Snow White and the Huntsman‘s dwarves have less of a role than you might expect, even with clever casting — including the heads of veteran British character actors Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, and Brian Gleeson put onto little people’s bodies. The effect was seamless, but it only serves to whet the appetite for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December.
Speaking of Jackson’s example, the production values of Snow White and the Huntsman are very good, with nicely unified sets, costumes, and armor. James Newton Howard’s orchestral soundtrack is a bit heavy-handed during the set-piece battles. I think the direction could have been better, since the movie starts slowly and the ending feels rushed. There are also few memorable lines in the script, which felt like a middling Dungeons & Dragonsgame (and I’ve participated in many of these).
In addition to the dwarves and Ravenna’s sorcery, the brief scene where Snow White and her companions enter a faerie glade is a hint of how this movie could have used visual effects for a more fantastic setting (see The Dark Crystalor Legend for examples). Instead, the movie focuses on more mundane matters like raising an army and the princess realizing her birthright, closer in style to Ladyhawke but without the simple but strong plot magical device of that movie.
Overall, I’d give Snow White and the Huntsman, which has finally dethroned The Avengers at the box office, a 7 out of 10, a B, or two and a half out of five stars. It’s rated PG-13 for violence.
We met other IDG/CW alumni Michele L.D. and Bob R. and their respective spouses Paul D. and Sheila K.R. Just a month before, I had dinner with Ken, Michele, and Bob at the Met Bar & Grill in the Natick Mall for “The Escapists” book club. We discussed Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winner, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which we mostly enjoyed. As a longtime comic book fan and onetime New Yorker, I found the novel very evocative.
We played a few rounds of billiards/pool as munchies and Ken’s other friends arrived, including a few I remembered from previous shindigs. None of the friends I’ve introduced Ken to made it. We then tried candlepin bowling, which both Bob and Ken were good at. I lobbed gutter ball after gutter ball (I’m not as bad with regular bowling or its Wii equivalent). Janice’s game improved significantly, though.
I did slightly better with air hockey, which I won a tournament in back in the early 1990s in Queens, New York. Overall, we had a good time, and it was nice to have an excuse to socialize. I get along well with most of my current co-workers, but the copy desk crew had a decade for its chemistry to develop.
“Vortex” Team 1 (the explorers aboard the Blackbird, for which I owe an update) has chosen to take a break for Jason E.R.‘s “Glassworks” superhero miniseries. The fictional city of Hamilton, Delaware, is the same setting that Jason ran with his DarkPages noir one-shot, but we’ll be using the Marvel Heroic Roleplayingsystem.
On the weeks when Jason isn’t running, we’re looking at various ideas, including Bruce K.’s Pathfinder: “Conan” and Rich C.G.’s fantasy and horror proposals. Brian W. has graciously offered to host the Monday games. I don’t mind the break from Game Mastering, but I’m sure I’ll want to be back behind the screen soon enough.
Last for now, but not least, my historical weapons class at Guard Up! in Burlington, Mass., has continued to be interesting. Each Wednesday night, I and about 10 other students spend half an hour practicing our moves with wooden or resin weapons and half an hour sparring with foam ones. It’s good exercise.
Our instructor, Karl, has shown us the basics of the quarterstaff, longsword, and warhammer. We’re currently learning about the naginata (a Japanese pole arm) and will eventually get to the great sword and fencing.
Janice and I went to last year’s International Steampunk City, and we were glad to see strong attendance, including many young people. We didn’t get to any of the panel discussions, but I did get to chat with some authors and artists in a variety of media.
This past weekend was a good one for superhero fans. Janice and I visited four comic book shops on Free Comic Book Day, including the Comic Stop in Watertown, Massachusetts. I hadn’t visited that store before.
It’s smaller than my usual haunts of the Outer Limits in Waltham and New England Comics and Newbury Comics in Needham, but it was well-organized, and the proprietors were hospitable. I was glad to see that lots of families visited all of the shops for the event. I picked up several free issues for myself, nephews and nieces, and David I.S.
Disney/Marvel has been building its shared cinematic universe toward The Avengerssince at least 2008’s Iron Man. I’m not sure the movie would be particularly accessible to viewers who are unfamiliar with its predecessors or with Marvel’s characters, but for those of us who are fans, The Avengersis a long-awaited reward for our faithfulness.
The Avengersmanages to compress several decades of fictional continuity, adhere to comic book tropes such as superheroes fighting when they first meet, and provide enough explosions to launch the summer 2012 movie season. I’ll try not to give away any “spoilers” here, but note that a few of the links in this review may have some.
The basicpremise of The Avengers, in both print and film, is that the world’s greatest and most powerful heroes band together to fight a common threat. Of course, getting there is half the fun, at least for the audience, if not the battered costumed characters.
A major strength of recent superhero movies has been in casting good actors and treating the material seriously, without the campy excesses of the 1960s through 1980s. (Since then, we’ve suffered through angsty melodrama with the X-Men, Batman, and others.) It’s no surprise that Robert Downey Jr. is witty and charismatic as “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” Tony Stark/Iron Man.
Chris Evans holds his own as supersoldier Steve Rogers/Captain America, the team’s moral and tactical leader. Chris Hemsworth is mighty as Thor, Norse god (OK, extradimensional entity) of thunder, and Tom Hiddleston is delightfully smarmy as mischievous nemesis Loki. Scarlett Johansson returns as superspy Natasha Romanov, the only woman in this version of the group (founder Wasp is absent, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts has a brief supporting cameo).
Mark Ruffalo joins the merry band as Bruce Banner/the Hulk, the third actor in as many movies to tackle the dual role of compassionate scientist and rage monster. Even though I liked Ed Norton’s paean to Bill Bixby’s TV version, I think Ruffalo did fine with the computer-assisted role, and the Hulk gets some of the funniest scenes in the movie.
Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg are joined by Colby Smulders as SHIELD agents Col. Nick Fury, Agent Phil Coulson, and Agent Maria Hill, respectively. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is the shadowy organization that initially gathers the high-profile metahumans. Jeremy Renner is no-nonsense as expert marksman Clint Barton/Hawkeye — he’s not quite as flamboyant as his comic book counterparts — a former circus performer or DC’s GreenArrow.
I did like that the colorful vigilantes eventually found a way to work together to protect humanity from the invading Chitauri. The “Earth’s mightiest heroes” may not see eye to eye –leading to some drama and humor, as seen in previews and trailers — but both their squabbles and eventual teamwork are impressive to watch.
As expected, the visual special effects are especially spectacular, with SHIELD’s helicarrier, the Hulk’s rampaging physique, and numerous powers all rendered more realistically than many artists or kids in Halloween costumes could have ever dreamed. The costumes were redesigned to be harmonious, and I’ve long maintained that spandex or tights, if handled properly, can be just as good as the black leather of the X-Men movies. I picked up the HeroClix miniatures, and I look forward to seeing more action figures and Lego sets based on The Avengers.
As with any “juvenile” entertainment, a few critics in the mainstream media gave The Avengersnegative reviews. Some of their points are valid — mostly around pacing, some frenetic scenes that are hard to follow, and more characters than time to develop them equally well — but they assume falsely that popcorn entertainment and high art must be mutually exclusive.
I’d give The Avengers, which is rated PG-13 for violence, an 8.5 out of 10, three to four stars, or a B+/A-. It deserves to be on many of the “best comicbook movie” lists that can be found online.
We also sat through 20 minutes of previews. I was already interested in Disney/Pixar’s Brave, and I’m now a bit more curious about The Amazing Spider-Man and Alien prequel Prometheus. I am not interested in shoot-’em-up Battleship, Tim Burton’s quirky Dark Shadows, or 1980s flashback Expendables 2. As Stan “the Man” Lee says, Excelsior, true believers!
On Saturday, 28 April 2012, Janice and I went to Gore Place in Waltham, Massachusetts, for the 25th annual Sheepshearing Festival. I was impressed by the size of the event and the number of attendees. We enjoyed the herding dog demonstration, fair food, craft tents, and bluegrass music. Janice and I also took a brief tour of the early 19th century home of one of Massachusetts’ governors.
We caught a matinee of The Pirates! A Band of Misfits, the latest comedy from Aardman Animation, the studio responsible for Wallace & Gromit, among other things. We enjoyed the movie, which follows a hapless pirate captain (named “Pirate Captain” and voiced by Hugh Grant) in his quest to win the “Pirate of the Year Award.”
The Pirates!
Along the way, Pirate Captain and his eccentric crew — even for pirates — meet Charles Darwin (voiced by Martin Freeman, also known as Arthur Dent, Dr. Watson, and Bilbo Baggins) and an entirely unamused Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton). Also important to the plot are a dodo, a dirigible, and Darwin’s monkey butler.
If this sounds delightfully chaotic, it is. The Pirates! has a lively Anglo-American voice cast, sight gags too numerous to catch in a single viewing, and good use of modern music (the Clash’s “London Calling” is most memorable). The movie, which combines stop-motion and computer animation, also alludes to real-world literature and science of the 19th century.
I enjoyed The Pirates! more than the past few Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, and I recommend the movie to anyone who likes animation, comedy, or swashbuckling and steampunk. The Pirates! is rated PG for some crude humor and slapstick violence, but most of the adult jokes will sail right over children’s heads. I’d give The Pirates! A Band of Misfits an 8.5 out of 10, a B+/A-, or four stars. This coming weekend is the opening of the much-anticipated Avengers live-action movie….
Gene's Worlds 