Beyond "Asteroids": Four upcoming videogame films

The other day, I was feeling really positive about the world. Maybe it was because I'd had a nice meal and my blood-sugar had risen above its usual level of what you'd expect in a shipwreck victim stranded with nothing but a crate of saltines and a drum of instant coffee, but for a while there it seemed like everything was going to be OK. Global depression, terminal ecological collapse, solar flares, invasion of the Moon Men... these things, if they came at all, would pass and we would survive. And not only would we survive, but we deserved to survive. Humanity was a bright, beautiful species with lots of good to offer the cosmos!

And then, this from The Hollywood Reporter:

Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids."

Oh, right. We're that species, too. Bummer. My first thought wasn't actually a despairing mental wail over how the main stream of our culture is a shit-eating Ouroboros with its mouth grafted to its own asshole, but this: why a four-way bidding war over a "property" the title of which is a common noun and which carries with it no characters or narrative? If they wanted to film 90 minutes of CGI space rocks getting blown all to hell -- "Armageddon grossed half a billion dollars, Chief, and they had only one lousy asteroid. Imagine Armageddon times, like, a zillion!" -- they could have optioned my ninth-grade Social Studies binder for a box of Hochtaler and a set of winter tires.

My third thought, after I'd wracked my brain to come with the nearest accessible structure from which a fall would certainly kill me, was that if they're filming fucking Asteroids it's open season for videogame adaptations. The old world is dead. All rules of sense, taste and cultural necessity, however slight they may have been, are struck down. And thus:

QIX: The Movie (dir. Alex Proyas)

Tagline: "Infinite vectors. One victor."

The game: A big hit in 1981, QIX called on players to draw geometric zones on-screen while avoiding, and ultimately containing, a deadly Apple ][ screensaver.

Synopsis: In the year 2025, cyber-hacker Damien "Ghost" Gost (Chris O'Donnell) finds himself fighting for the survival of reality itself as he races against time to prevent a "techno-demon" dubbed QIX ("Quasi-Interfaced eXomorph") from corrupting and conquering the world's datashpere. Meanwhile, in the "meatspace" of the real world, the shadowy Corporation responsible for summoning QIX is closing in on Ghost's fiancee (Anna Paquin), a brilliant DARPA statistician who just might hold the key to humanity's survival.

Amidar (dir. Russel Mulchahy)

Tagline: "Who or what is Amidar?"

The game: Fill-the-zones games were a big deal in '80s arcades, and Amidar stood out by offering two bizarre alternating scenarios for its path-following gameplay. In one, players controlled an ape running from cartoon jungle cannibals; the other featured a paint roller pursued by angry pigs.

Synopsis: Unwilling to leave Fox's QIX alone to cash in on the fill-the-zones market space, Dreamworks rushed Amidar into production. Bob Balaban (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) stars as struggling poet Michael Amidar, whose life takes a turn for the weird after he discovers a strange map in the lavatory of an antiquarian bookstore. Following the path laid out in the map leads to surreal shifts of reality and identity as Amidar comes every closer to the greatest mystery of all: himself. Co-star Genvieve Bujold is unrecognizable under award-nominated prosthetics as Balaban's otherworldly porcine love interest, Squee Cochonne.

M. Night Shyamalan's Math Fun (dir. Alan Smithee)

Tagline: "Dying is easy. Math is hard."

The game: In 1980, kids played the "education card", holding up Math Fun to convince their stepdads that an Intellivision console would be something other than a mind-rotting gateway to delinquency. Basically, you had to answer arithmetic questions correctly or your gorilla got dunked in the river.

Synopsis: On the banks of a river with no name... surrounded by creatures of fantasy and nightmare... one child must race against time to decipher the equations at the heart of reality. Dexter's Preston Bailey stars. Noteworthy as the late Rutger Hauer's last credited screen appearance, in the role of the Malicious Mister Minus.

Wonder Boy (dir. Rob Cohen)

Tagline: "The Eighth Wonder of the World... is first in line for action!"

The game: Also known in its NES incarnation as Adventure Island, Wonder Boy featured a kind of kewpie-doll caveman in a grass diaper who had to throw stone axes at slow-moving animals, and sometimes jump a skateboard over campfires, in order to rescue a princess, or something.

Synopsis: Superstar rapper by day, secret agent by night, Simon "Wonder Boy" Wilson (Common) and the bicoastal crew of "hip-hoperatives" known as the Tomahawks face their greatest challenge yet when terrorist group S.N.A.I.L. threatens to foreclose on the mortgages of every orphanage in America. Features the voice of LL Cool J, who postponed an announced retirement to play the role of "Papa Choppy", Wilson's acerbic robot helicopter. Decried by Wonder Boy purists ("Wondies") as a betrayal of everything Wonder Boy stood for, this urban-action-spy-comedy nevertheless had boffo box office with the fifth-best St. Patrick's Day weekend opening of all time.

Firday Freakout: Riki-Oh

AKA The Story of Ricky. In case you've forgotten the second-greatest movie ever, a refresher montage.

[drooldrooldrool]

RIGHT FUCKIN' ON

"A clever simulation of a mid-‘70s experience"

Grindhouse
Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Now playing at Empire Theatres

First of all, nothing exactly like this film has ever been intentionally attempted before, even by David Lynch. This alone is a blast of warm summer air in the face. Grindhouse isn’t just two full-length action-horror movies slapped together. It’s actually a clever simulation of a mid-‘70s experience long forgotten in our download era – namely, sitting in a decaying theatre watching exploitation trash, complete with warped, furry projections, ludicrous trailers and even retro, drive-in adult content warnings. Oh, and missing reels. The package is an wildly referential labour of love. In other words, the features - running at over three hours together – exist in a very deliberate and beautiful pomo framing device. Especially cool given they’re set in the now, stressed by tension actually brought on by text-messaging. Rodriguez’s fake trailer – Machete - is even going to be real film! Can’t wait.

But is the art good? Are you surprised I even care?

Funny thing is, to describe the two hemispheres is to lessen them in every way – the narratives depend so much on surprises, especially the latter. Still, open wide: A genetic-experiment zombie-survival flick (Planet Terror) vs. Death Proof, the tale of a paraphelic serial killer who murders with cars? Sounds utterly ghastly. But to be honest, I haven’t had this much fun in a movie setting since Two Towers - the one with that impossibly perfect rainy siege battle and “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!”

Put together, Planet Terror and Death Proof actually hit a lot of Peter Jackson’s nerves. Over and over again, till everything’s covered in blood and zombie ooze. Perhaps you’ve seen the trailers – a one-legged woman with a machine-gun attached! A helicopter tilting down into an army of undead! Kurt Russell! Being the master of the come-from-behind, border-crossing action-framing fills Rodriguez’s Planet Terror with characters you actually care about. It cleverly flips sympathy back and forth between a husband and wife falling apart, a sheriff and his Texas chef brother, and our main heroes, Wray and Cherry. Freddy Rodriguez plays the former with world-weary detachment, except when it comes to his knockout former girlfriend (Rose McGowan), retired gogo dancer. And don’t forget about Bruce Willis as a misused Afghanistan vet turned bad butting heads with a testicle collecting gangster geneticist (Naveen Andrews, Said from Lost). You just have to see it to believe it. I grinned constantly.

Though Planet Terror seems more fun, by the time Tarantino’s Death Proof is over you’ll start arguing with yourself.

Using many actors and even characters from Terror, Tarantino paints the far less manga story of four girls slowly drawn into the trap of a killer. I don’t dare reveal anything else, save that Quentin plays the joke to the hilt following the most unbelievable, slow-motion car crash I’ve ever seen by cleaving his half in two as well. But our antagonist messes with the wrong girls - who we’ve gotten to know quite well thanks to Q.T.’s trademark casual banter - in, again, one of the best chase scenes ever.

I’ve said too much.

This is the monolith Tarantino was hoping for with Kill Bill, dripping with story, cameos, great music and - need I say? – copious and realistic gore. As a collaboration it’s thrilling and varied, especially interesting to see how both expert directors handle Rose McGowan. Rob Zombie’s dumb trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS is more than made up for by the subtle genius of Thanksgiving, basically the last untouched holiday horror. A cop leans down to a decapitated man in a turkey costume, announcing seriously, “It’s blood.” Hilarious.
I can’t think of a better waste of an afternoon. Dudes, you’ve seriously done it again, the sum exceeding two partners.

ffff/fffff

"Ready to snap at all the endless bullshit"

Shooter
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover and Levon Helm

You know what the dismissed left really needs to do? Strike back. With bullets. And napalm. And high-powered explosives. That would certainly make the U.S. government think twice before slyly suspending even more civil liberties.

This is the message of Shooter, either as wish-fulfilment or warning, and it’s frankly scary. For years, Hollywood had to look back and mine the rotten, maggoty idiocy of Vietnam for source material. Everything from Apocalypse Now to, on the sillier side, Rambo. Yet thanks to the current Republican warlocks, today’s headlines are enough to justify the boiling anger of Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg). But what really got his goat was how, as a patriotic military sniper in Ethiopia, he and his spotter were left out to dry after protecting a covert operation to stop rebellion against America goals - oil.

His partner dead, we fast-forward to the rural and mountainous supposedly not B.C. The peaks of Kansas, perhaps – doesn’t matter – where Swagger now lives with his dog, a well-worn copy of the 9-11 Commission Report and plenty-a Ol’ Glories. Into this nest of abused patriotism drive up Col. Isaac Johnson and the guy who played Casey Jones in the original Ninja Turtles, now reekingly scummy, both. Despite protests from the sniper that he doesn’t like this president or the last one – set after 2008? – Johnson plays up Swagger’s sense of duty and democratic belonging to get experienced assistance and stop an impending assassination. Wellllll, it’s pretty clear from the posters who’s going to get set up for the fall, and soon enough, after an Ethiopan minister is blown away right beside the Prez from a mile away, Swagger is on the run, framed for a crime only he could’ve committed. His framers, meanwhile, sit cackling in an expensive-looking room, surrounded by icons of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Lucky for Swagger, shot and bleeding and on the run, the rookie FBI agent he overcomes (Michael Peña as Nick Memphis – love these names) is hung out wet by the agency for failing to stop the invented assassin. Slowly with surety, their two fates pretzel in some of the most fantastic leaps of logic and plot nonsense ever slapped onto this Molden Age of cinema. Just for starters, each of our two victims is aided secretly by ladies who conveniently have exactly the skills and information and pass codes they need. Oh, and pointy breasts, of course.

Lucky for us, Wahlberg is a captivating actor. The topographical wrinkles on his furrowed brow keep us going as Swagger and Memphis kill literally dozens of federal agents, two modern Rambos who no way in hell should be allowed to live to tell their tale to clear their names. And yet.

Like the crew on Boston Legal weekly, screenwriter Jonathon Lemkin is couching very serious condemnation of Republican behavior vs. public apathy in the last six or so years - Abu Ghraib, WMDs and even, thanks to the Band’s rickety Levon Helm, the Kennedy plot all rise to the surface by name. Lemkin is more than hinting that even the most loyal and partisan and guns and apple pie among Americans is ready to snap at all the endless bullshit. And that if they do, led by misused soldiers instead of blue-state liberals, it’s going to be a fucking bloodbath.

Valid enough. But a better film, please?

--/-----

Ghost Rider: "A trifle idiotic"

FLAME ON! Oh, wait – that’s that other flamer. Well, you could see how a guy could get confused.

Tell the truth, though, there’s no way I don’t know who Ghost Rider is. Born with an unnatural fear of skeletons, I obsessed over Johnny Blaze clawing at his face burning off every time the plot called for it in the ‘70s comic. Though the idea of a satanic bounty hunter transmuting into a burning, chain-whipping skeleton man in a leather jacket on a bike made of Hellfire seems a trifle idiotic at this point, it’s just the kind of thing that ensured Generation X would never really grow up. From Howard the Duck to Pretty in Pink’s Duckie, our fledgling pop culture is simply too insane to let go of.
Now that CGI Hollywood is prepared to mine the Marvel and DC back issues, Ghost Rider seems like a perfect target. And, to cut to it, I loved it. Even though. Sigh. It’s pretty much terrible.

If there’s still a kid in you, you just get over lines like “I feel like my skull is on fire” and probably the second-worst worst sense of what a TV reporter actually might be and say (1998’s Godzilla owns the lowest). Nick Cage handles Johnny Blaze with a certain Garfield disaffectedness, but that seems right for a guy who knows the devil is coming for him one day. Speaking of whom, Peter Fonda does a strange and interesting performance as Mephisto, though I really miss the frilly comic-book outfit only alluded to in shadow. But Fonda manages to fuse trustworthy charm with singer Nick Cave’s “weak and evil” to good effect as he convinces Blaze to sign his soul over to save his dad from terminal cancer. Father and son are in a motorcycle duo which young Blaze would break up to ride off with his girlfriend, Roxanne. But hearing the medical news, Blaze is torn up enough to attract the devil. Mephistopheles keeps his word about the cancer; he just kills pop in a bike accident the next day anyway. Haha. Blaze ditches Roxanne, done with love’s price for now.

The restrained ‘70s/’80s carnival feel is perfectly captured here, especially as we fast forward to now – all tits and tattoos and shitty metal licks. No wonder the Islamists want us buried.
Mephisto’s defiant son Blackheart, played by the weirdo kid from American Beauty, is after a certain 1000-soul contract that’ll bring on hell on earth with a cherry on top – him. So the devil brings Ghost Rider into the picture to take out his own son, sort of the opposite of how Blaze got into this mess. But watching the stuntman transform is a treat especially as, finally, we get an antihero who enjoys himself, cackling like mad – finally freed from worry.

How well a CGI skull can act is up for debate; slightly better than super-hot Roxanne (Eva Mendes), anyway. And for dealing with a bunch of demons and devils, there’s never the same kind of chaotic terror you get, say, reading Master and Margarita. But, unlike Hulk and Spider-Man, the film’s a lot of fun. Especially when, as huge geek bonus, the original, cowboy Ghost Rider hoofs into the plot. Played by none other than The Big Lebowski's cud-chewin’ Sam Elliot.
As a film, extremely dumb - but hot, wild and fantasy-fulfilling. What, you snobs have never wanted to crawl into bed with something like that?
zzz