Inspector Gadget Saves the Day, Maybe

My kid is watching an Inspector Gadget movie that he found on Netflix. I want to save you the trouble, in case your small child is thinking about watching it.

If you're able to tolerate Inspector Gadget, it's fine. It's about the Inspector discovering some giant egg that hatches into a gigantic flying lizard who wreaks havoc all over Metro City. Wacky hijinks ensue, and everyone seems to have a different idea what to do with the lizard. The mayor wants to turn it into a tourist attraction. Dr. Klaw wants to use it to destroy the city. Inspector Gadget wants to make it his juggling partner.

There's some weirdness in the show. Penny is 16 and doesn't look much like her original version. (Her voice is identical, which frankly is just weird.) There's a GadgetMobile, inexplicably voiced by Bernie Mac. (My guess: 1) money, 2) he wanted to impress his kids.) There's a Scottish bad guy, for no apparent reason.

The whole premise of Inspector Gadget is that everyone is incompetent. Let's just lay that on the table. The inspector is the biggest buffoon, of course. Every time he solves something, it's by complete accident. But the bad guys are also incompetent, and come up with absurd schemes that never work. And never make sense. The mayor is an idiot, the chief is a doofus, pretty much everybody is an idiot except the dog.

Here, the movie ramps up the incompetence factor. Dr. Klaw (who has the best voice of the show) wants to control the lizard, so he has his henchmen try to feed it some kind of remote control electronic device blah blah whatever. The lizard won't eat it. What kind of super villain has plans that fail because an animal won't eat something?! Goon.

The Scottish assistant is also incompetent. Penny is helpless - she seems more of a damsel in distress than she ever did in the show, in fact. She does a lot of screaming and flailing and crying for help. She has a boy who seems to have a crush on her (again, was there ever a boy in the show? We didn't need this subplot.)  The boy's also an inventor, but he completely fails at inventing some kind of potion that ends up saving the day. So the world is saved because Inventor Boy screws up.

It's a fine waste of time, but just be prepared as an adult to yell at the screen a lot. It's computer generated, so it doesn't have the warm feel of the original cartoon. One other difference: it sadly doesn't have the voice of Don Adams, who passed away in 2005. The guy who does the Inspector's voice does a fine impersonation, but it's clearly not the original voice.

I always thought that the device of the show was that Penny and the dog were the real brains behind the Inspector. But here, nobody has the brains. They all seem so confused that it's amazing the entire city doesn't come crumbling down around their ears. It's a little disappointing on that front. Still, like I said, if you're stuck inside and your kid has to watch something, it's not the worst thing on Netflix.

Clifford's Really Awful Soundtrack

Have you seen Clifford's Really Big Movie?

(I will remind you that I have Netflix and a five-year-old, so our house has been victimized by that movie multiple times.)

The movie itself isn't too bad, but the music is absolutely atrocious. I think they commissioned two songs for the movie. The music is mindless, the lyrics are insipid, and you hear them during the entire movie because they play them OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN all through the movie. They have slow sad versions, they have fast happy versions, they have instrumental versions. It's a lot like what they did with Simon and Garfunkel's music for the Graduate, except in this case the results are horrible.

"Julie and Julia" and Me

This is going to be a little bit self-indulgent, so bear with me. I just saw a preview for Julie & Julia and I got unexpectly choked up.

I'll explain. Julie Powell started her Julie/Julia project as a Salon blog, around the same time I was starting up my original blog. I feel a kinship to her, even though we've never met and for all I know, she's never even looked at my blog. She was one of us, along with Meg and Patia and the Grumpy Girl and Phil and Nancy and the guy who did Fried Green Al-Qaedas Virtual Occoquan.

And then Julie exploded into a huge phenomenon. I don't think I knew at the time how big it had gotten, but I knew she had gotten to a level that most of us hadn't and probably weren't.

But that's was cool. I'm proud of her, even though, again, nothing whatsoever at all to do with her success. I can't wait to see the movie. And when in the trailer, they showed a quick shot of her computer with the old blog banner (albeit a completely different blogging service), I got a bit verklempt.

So congrats, Julie. I feel a little like the kid who used to play playground basketball with Michael Jordan before he became Michael Jordan. But I'm thrilled that it's come this far, and hope you're having all kinds of success and wish you nothing but more.

P.S. Oddly enough, I just looked up the old blog, and stumbled across this article about the movie. Apparently, there's a bit of controversy about the way her blog is depicted in the movie. Salon's Kerry Lauerman is quoted.

Tony Stark: Behind the Music

Saw "Iron Man" on Saturday.

It was one of the best comic adaptation movies I've ever seen. And yes, I've seen the latest Superman (via Bryan Singer) and Batman (via Christopher Nolan) movies. It was better than Superman Returns, and very close to topping Batman Begins.

Superhero movies typically take one of two paths: they work hard on the effects, to the detriment of the plot and character development, or vice versa. It's very hard to get both the effects and the characters right. This is a damn shame, because to get a great comic right, you have to get both parts balanced perfectly.

Effects are clearly important. Comics are the realm of the imaginary. It's easier to draw an adamantium claw or an invisible force field or a repulsor ray on a page than it is to create one on the big screen that looks convincing. The best movies can be killed in an instant if the effects are wrong. They can be too hokey (see the 80's Spider Man tv show) or rely on CGI to create comic-realistic effects that look slick yet inhuman (see any of the recent Spider Man movies).

When you're talking about superheroes, it matters if their powers are believable. But all of the best comic characters rely not on a great power, but a great story. I grew up on Marvel comics, so I'm talking about the guilt that Peter Parker carried, forever haunted by the death of his beloved Uncle Ben that he could have prevented. I knew about the tensions between each member of the Fantastic Four - the complicated family dynamics, the relationship drama, the jealousies that flew in every direction. I knew from Frank Miller's brilliant run on Daredevil that Matt Murdock was a lonely and haunted man, his faith in both God and humanity shaken at the core. I knew that Tony Stark was an alcoholic and a troubled man.

The best comics are about people, not effects. I saw the first Fantastic Four movie, and what I remember was Ben Grimm, the Thing, stopping a bus with his shoulder. I should have remembered the awkward tension between Reed Richards and Sue Storm, but instead I remember being blown away by the way that Mr. Fantastic's arm slipped under a door like liquid. They got the effects right, but they missed getting the characters right.

The Iron Man movie gets Tony Stark perfectly. He is a dynamo of raw energy - creative, sexual, charismatic in the extreme. He is essentially hollow, bouncing like a pinball from one affair to another, one dance club to another, with nothing to anchor him in the world. He is someone we've already met before - the millionaire playboy, rich without seeming to have earned it, famous without seeming to deserve it. He is rich because of technology that kills people across the world. His livelihood relies on the myth that military technology saves lives.

In a moment, his life changes. He channels his brilliance into fighting for good - truth! justice! the American Way! With a healthy dose of revenge (a bit stomach-churning) mixed in for good measure. He is a damaged man who tilts awkwardly toward goodness. He is not perfect. He is not heroic, yet he is a hero.


The movie shows Tony Stark in all his muddy brilliance. He is not made to be someone admirable. Often, he is unpleasant and piggish, greedy and libidinous, even after his transformation. He mistreats the people who work for him. And yet, even against all of this, he becomes a hero. "Iron Man" is a story of redemption, of triumph against the most relentless demons. "Iron Man" is a hopeful movie about humanity.


And no one could have played this part but Robert Downey Jr. He makes Tony Stark come alive - the genius and the self-destructive behavior come alive in every glance, every gesture, every line that he speaks (often muttering, as if speaking to himself throughout the movie). He is given a cast strong enough to stand up to his relentless performance - established actors like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terence Howard fill out the cast.)

And about those special effects? Brilliant. The technology kicks serious ass. As I said earlier, comics are as much about the visual effects as they are about the plot. "Iron Man" requires a man who is brilliant with technology, the kind of guy who can build a doomsday suit in the middle of a desert. The suit has to look like a technological marvel, but one we can believe. The director, Jon Favreau, pulls it off by relying on "live" effects over CGI whenever possible. Tony Stark is a billionaire, after all - he can afford the best tools available, and he uses them in brilliant and unexpected ways. Half of the fun is watching "the suit" come together - the trials, the spectacular failures, and the breathtaking successes. (Note: there is a robot that provides some of the funniest moments of the movie, without saying a word.)


So yeah - go see this movie. And stick around through the credits - there's an extra treat that you won't want to miss.

James Bond Themes

The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is due to be released in October. The only part of this movie that really interests me is the theme. There are have been amazing Bond themes (Goldfinger! Live and Let Die! Thunderball!) and less-than-amazing (Duran Duran? A-ha? And what was that Madonna song about?)

10 Artists Who Would Do An Unforgettable Theme for the Next Bond Movie:

1. Gnarls Barkley
2. U2
3. Radiohead (who would refuse the offer)
4. M.I.A.
5. BT
6. Devotchka
   
7. The Go! Team
8. Mark Ronson (and Anybody He Wants to Work With)
9. El-P
10. Robert Plant (and hell yes, anybody he wants to work with)
    

Who Will Probably Do the Next Bond Theme:

1. The Killers
2. Fall Out Boy
3. Timbaland
4. Justin Timberlake
5. Moby (who's kinda, you know, what am i trying to say, over)
6. Linkin park (see Moby)
7. Fergie
8. Sheryl Crow (hey, she already did one!)
   

Who's missing (off either list)?