My sweet wife Sandra is not a particular fan of SF films (though she’ll certainly watch or go see them with me), nor of war movies. Yet after we saw this movie today, she talked about how engrossed she was during the entire film. (I’ll note that she went with me to see “Skyline” last year, and her reaction afterward was: “Really?”)  That speaks well for how this film is likely to do at the box office.

What makes “Battle Los Angeles” work is that it is first and foremost a war film about Marines. My son Jon spent four years in the Corps and did a tour in Iraq; my nephew Darren is still in the Corps and is on his second tour of Afghanistan; so the Corps has a special place in my heart. I claim no particular expertise in matters of the Corps, but the film seemed very authentic all the same; some of the younger Marines looked and sounded like my son and my nephew. War film cliches abound — the grizzled staff sergeant (Aaron Eckert, in a great performance) on the verge of retirement, the young lieutenant just out of OCS, the rumors among the men about how Eckert live while his men died on his last combat tour, the mission to rescue some civilians and bring them back out of harm’s way, the steady attrition of the members of the squad — but that provides a frameworkon which hangs the rest of the story.

And the rest of the story is that it’s these human Marines vs. alien Marines, who are making an amphibious assault, coming literally up out of the waves after having landed just offshore in cities around the world. The aliens are tough, but not invincible — still, they’re chewing up everything in their path as they make their way inland. And each time the Marines think they may have things under control, the alien assault escalates.

The film uses a bit too much shaky-cam early on, but settles down  reasonably as the movie goes along. Eckert is outstanding in his role as the staff sergeant and vanishes into it far better than he did as Harvey Dent/Two Face in “The Dark Knight”. The set pieces are very intense, and the filming and art direction is outstanding: you really think you are in the ruins of Los Angeles (most of the film was shot in Louisiana, to take advantage of areas still devastated from Katrina). My only complaints — which I’ll address specifically in the spoilers below — have to do with the rationale for the alien invasion and the ending of the film.

It’s not a great enough film to make me say, “Gee, I want to turn around and go see that in the theaters again.” But it is good enough that I’ll almost certainly buy the BluRay disk when it comes out. All in all, a well-done effort. Spoilers after the jump.

SPOILERS! BE WARNED!

OK, I just about put my face in my hands when — halfway or so through the movie — the Marines, holed up in a building, find an outside ‘net link, find a TV feed, and hear a news report that scientists have determined that the aliens are here for…our water! Which they use to power their ships and themselves! And, furthermore, that (a) Earth is the only planet in the galaxy (or maybe the universe) with so much liquid water on the surface, and (b) our sea levels had already started dropping. Y’know, the director went to great lengths to achieve some level of USMC authenticity (the actors went through a mini boot camp, etc.) and yet comes up with a rationale that is not only patently false but profoundly stupid, and that any 12-year-old reader of science fiction could have set him straight on. Sheesh. The aliens could simply have landed on Europa, drilled through the ice, and pulled out all the liquid water they needed. And there are probably literally millions — and possibly billions — of planets in our galaxy alone that have liquid and/or frozen water. And…water for energy? Srsly? It was all just so profoundly stupid that it sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of the rest of the film. The director would have been far better off not having any explanation at all than to come up with that idiocy.

The second big flaw in the film (IMHO) involved the fact that the alien aircraft turned out to be drones. All the drones in an area (e.g., Los Angeles) are hypothesized to be controlled by a command ship somewhere. The last part of the film has the surviving Marines hunt for the LA command ship, then call in a missile strike on it — at which point drones start dropping out of the sky. Once again: srsly? A race capable of interstellar travel can’t build an autonomous drone? We can build an autonomous drone now, and we can’t even get humans beyond low earth orbit any more. And in an echo far, far too reminiscent of “Independence Day”, once the alien control ship in LA is taken out, the news is radioed to the other cities being invaded, so that they can take them out as well.

I think it should be mandatory for anyone making an alien invasion movie to read and heed this article over at Cracked. I think that “Battle Los Angeles” made just about every mistake listed here. It is a tribute to how well done the movie was that I enjoyed it anyway. As always, your mileage may vary.  ..bruce w..

I didn’t have plans to go see “The Book of Eli”, even though the trailer made it look like “Fallout 3: The Movie” (I happen to be a big fan of “Fallout 3“). But then I read some early reviews that indicated that “Eli” might indeed be worth seeing, so my sweet wife Sandra and I went yesterday.

I’m glad we did. And she is, too.

I won’t recap the plot here, except to say that Eli (Denzel Washington) is carrying a book west across the devastated North American continent, and Carnegie (Gary Oldman) — who runs his own ruined town — wants that specific book.Oldman uses every tactic he can think of to persuade or force Eli to hand over the book.

“Eli” is a truly fascinating and remarkable movie. On one level, it’s a stylized post-apocalyptic samurai movie. On another, it is a classic Greek drama, with archetypes, divine intervention, and inexorable consequences. On yet a third, it is a morality play about Good and Evil, one that could have roots in the Middle Ages. Finally, it is a subtle yet profound treatise on faith in general and on Christian faith in particular. There are layers upon layers here, particularly as the film reaches its denouement — and said denouement means that I will go back into the theaters to see it a second time with new eyes.

My main criticism is the language, the principle reason for the ‘R’ rating. (Yes, there is violence, but it is very stylized and not much different from what you’ve seen in films such as “The Lord of the Rings”.)  It wasn’t necessary (the Greeks didn’t need it in their plays), though it did serve as a marker between characters on either side of the great divide.

The acting was excellent; the directing was outstanding; the art direction was very effective (and, yes, the film looked a lot like “Fallout 3″). What was most telling, though, was the depth of characterization and writing. “Eli” shows just how banal and shallow “Avatar”‘ is, both in story and characterization. In particular, Gary Oldman’s character — Carnegie — is vastly more believable, sympathetic and effective as an antagonist than either Parker Selfridge (the corporate scum) or Col. Miles Quaritch (the military scum) in “Avatar”.  Likewise, the religious themes in “Avatar” come across as rather goofy feel-good New Age-ism compared to the themes of faith, sacrifice, and suffering in “Eli”.

As John Notle said over at Big Hollywood, “Eli” in the end is a genre movie. But what a genre movie — possibly the best of its kind (though I have to reserve judgment until I see “The Road”).  Your mileage may vary.

SPOILER AFTER THE JUMP

WARNING. SPOILER AND REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS.

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The book that Eli is carrying — and that Carnegie wants more than anything else — is the Bible, apparently the last copy in existence. Carnegie wants it because he knows he can use its language to manipulate people and build his power base. Eli is acting on communications from God — God told him where the Bible was buried and has been guiding him west for 20 to 30 years towards a place where the Bible belongs. Eli’s copy is bound and locked, and Eli has been reading from it “every day” for those same 20-30 years. Eli — who pre-apocalypse was a Wal-Mart greeter — has incredibly keen senses and absolutely deadly fighting skills — unarmed, with a large, sharp knife, or with a gun. He wanders into Carnegie’s town looking for a charge on his external battery for his iPod. A fight in the main saloon (Carnegie’s HQ) leaves several people dead and Carnegie intrigued. He offers Eli a leadership position, unlimited clean water (a rarity), and sex with a beautiful young girl (Solara, the daughter of Carnegie’s woman, Claudia) to stick around; Eli refuses all of it and tries to leave town, even as Carnegie finds out that Eli has a Bible.  Confrontations and chases ensue; they end with Eli shot and lying in the dirt, and Carnegie heading back to town (minus most of his men) with the Bible (Eli told Carnegie where he hid it rather than let Carnegie kill Solara).

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD

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Eli — instead of going back to town after the Bible — continues west, helped along by Solara (she’s got one of Carnegie’s still-functioning cars). They make it to the ruins of San Francisco, and Eli indicates that they need to head out to the island in the middle of the bay — Alcatraz. There Eli indeed finds a community, one dedicated to rebuilding civilization by collecting and reprinting whatever books they can find. But one book they don’t have is the Bible. Eli, still suffering from his wound (Fisher King, anyone?), tells the leader there to get lots of paper — and begins to recite the KJV Bible entirely from memory.

And we see for the first time that Eli is blind.

Change back to Carnegie’s town. Carnegie has the town engineer carefully pick open the lock on the book. Carnegie opens it — and sees that the Bible is entirely in Braille. He tries to get Claudia (who is blind) to read it, but she claims (with a smile) that it’s been too long since she last read Braille. In the meantime, all of Carnegie’s power structure is falling down — most of his henchmen are dead, and his control over the town evaporates.

Back at Alcatraz, Eli finishes dictating the Bible, then dies from his wounds. But the community there prints a hardbound copy of the Bible and places it among the other religious books in their collection. Solara takes Eli’s weapons and starts to head east back to Carnegie’s town and her mother.

Food for thought.  ..bruce..

I swear this exact scene was in "Avatar". Except everyone was blue.

I saw “Avatar” (in 3-D) yesterday afternoon and saw “Sherlock Holmes” this afternoon.

I’ll be going back to see “Sherlock Holmes” again, probably within a week; “Avatar” will have to wait for DVD, if then.

“Avatar” is worth seeing once on the large screen, in 3-D, just for the sheer visual spectacle and technical brilliance. But the plot, character development (or lack thereof) and dialog is every bit as wretched, unoriginal, and stereotypical as others have warned. The film really, really is “Dances with Wolves” meets “Ferngully: the Last Rainforest“, to such an extent that I felt embarrassed for James Cameron, who wrote and directed the film. Not only was there not an original thought, theme, or plot twist in the entire film, the whole film was largely predictable from the start, with developments telegraphed far in advanced, and the characters were unrelentingly one-dimensional. No nuances, shading, or sympathies here. The “aliens” look, dress, ride, fight, and even whoop like stereotypical Hollywood Indians, and their bodies — largely human except for being (a) blue, (b) 15 feet tall, (c) with a tail, and (d) having a neural interface built in to their ‘pony tail’ — make no sense for the environment, particularly having plain human feet (5 toes, none-prehensile big toe) in an arboreal environment. The longer I go since leaving the theater yesterday, the less I think of the film — the technical excellence fades and the bad taste of the actual underlying film remains.

By contrast, “Sherlock Holmes” is worth seeing repeatedly, both on the big screen and once the DVD comes out. It is a deceptively excellent film. I say “deceptively” because it is only when it is over that you begin to realize just how well the entire film was directed, edited, performed, and art-directed. Robert Downey Jr (in the title role) does more to establish Holmes’ character within the first few minutes of the film than any of the “Pandora” actors do during that film’s entire 2:40 length. The chemistry between Downey and Jude Law (who plays Watson) is instant, real, and believable. All the characters are complex, imperfect, and conflicted, yet drive towards their respective goals, enduring the consequences along the way. And it’s all great fun, with some real tension and great visuals along the way. It probably noses out “District 9″ as the best film I’ve seen this year.

Based on my own viewings — and based on the crowds today waiting to see “Sherlock Holmes” — I not only think that “Sherlock Holmes” will win the weekend box office, I think that it will dominate “Avatar” for the rest of their respective box office runs here in the US. Your mileage may vary.  ..bruce w..

No, really, Captain -- 40 years from now, they'll still be filming this.

The original “Star Trek” series started on NBC the same month I started my freshman year at Grossmont High. It ran two and a half seasons before dying, but eventually spawned a long list of movies and four successive TV series (ST: The Next Generation, ST: Deep Space Nine, ST: Voyager, and Enterprise) — not a bad legacy that. However, aside from some flashes of brilliance in ST:TNG, the whole franchise pretty much hit its peak with the second film “ST: The Wrath of Khan” (1982) and never quite climbed that high again.

There was, however, an early chance to reboot. At the end of the third Star Trek film — “The Search for Spock” (1984) — the Enterprise has been destroyed, and Captain Kirk and his crew are largely on the run from the Federation in a captured Klingon warship. While the film itself was a letdown from “Wrath of Khan”, it provided an opportunity to take the familiar characters in a dramatically (or at least significantly) different direction. Instead, ST IV (“The Voyage Home”, 1986) recycled the main plot element of the first Star Trek movie and by film’s end had restored the crew to the Federation’s good graces and to a brand-spanking-new Enterprise. The entire Star Trek universe has pretty much been stuck in a rut ever since.

Until now.

Abrams has done, at least to a certain extent, what Paramount should have done 25 years ago: freed the characters from the trap of Star Trek canon. The film starts with changed history: Kirk’s father ends up in command of a Federation star ship just long enough to destroy the ship and end his own life buying time for most of the crew and civilians on board to escape from a massive ship that has appeared out of nowhere. His newborn son, James Tiberius Kirk, grows up as a troubled, rowdy, brilliant young man, who accepts a challenge from a Federation captain — Christopher Pike — to attend Star Fleet Academy. He meets up with other (to us) familiar characters — McCoy, Uhuru, Chekov, Sulu, and, yes, Spock — who find themselves thrust into the middle of a threat to the entire Federation.

The film is, in my opinion, a complete success. It has a few flaws — too many lens flares, and some goofy (from a scientific point of view) exposition in the middle explaining just what’s happening and why. But it easily rivals “Wrath of Khan” for the position of best Star Trek movie ever (though it’s hard to argue against William Shatner and Ricardo Montelban chewing up the scenery and spitting it at one another). The cinematography and directing frankly exceeds any previous Star Trek movie, and the special effects make it just that much more stunning; the opening five minutes of “Star Trek” has more action, pathos, and drama than the grand climax of most preceding Star Trek movies.

The youth of the familiar characters at times borders on making the film seem like an ST version of “Teen Titans” or “Smallville”, but part of the fun is not just seeing them at a young age but seeing them start to form bonds (a few of which are unexpected and definitely not canon).  But it’s a well-done film that can stand on its own merits and that thankfully avoids (except in homage) the cliches and traps of all that has preceded it. A big thumbs up.

SPOILERS AHEAD — SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

The fundamental plot is that over a century in the future (of the film), an aging Ambassador Spock (“Spock Prime”) fails to stop a supernova in time to save the planet Romulus (center of the Romulan empire). However, he is still able to implode the supernova using ‘red matter’ to trigger the creation of a black hole — but that same black hole drags both Spock Prime and a massive Romulan mining ship, led by one Captain Nero (Eric Bana) — back into the past. Nero and his ship captures Spock Prime and uses some of the ‘red matter’ to create a black hole at the center of Vulcan — thus destroying the whole planet. And Nero’s next target is Earth.

As mentioned, the scientific exposition in the middle of the film is goofy. In Spock Prime’s future, a supernova “threatens the galaxy”, goes off early, and destroys Romulus (and, one must presume, a whole pile of other systems, since that star didn’t appear to be Romulus’s star). This ignores the fact that the blast wave from the supernova travels at light speed and would take, oh, years if not decades or centuries to reach Romulus. Spock Prime’s use of red matter at one little part of the shock wave causes the supernova to collapse into a black hole that sucks Spock and Nero both back in time (instead of simply crushing them). After capturing Spock Prime, Nero dumps him on the surface of what has to be another planet in the Vulcan system, where Spock is able to seen Vulcan (and its destruction) as large and clear as we can see the Moon (vs., say, how we see Mars, Venus, and other planets, namely as little points of light). That really turns out to be largely a plot convenience to have Spock Prime and Kirk end up on the same planet together.

This is all stupid (and wrong) on so many levels that I just have to wonder what Abrams was thinking here. I mean, it’s one thing to do the requisite “sufficiently advanced technology” to get us warp drive and transporters. This kind of stupidity, however, is equivalent to having Kirk fly up the side of a building unaided. Sigh.

That said, it’s still a great film. Go see it.  ..bruce..

“I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

I first read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand back in high school, most likely during my junior year (1969-70), so it was close to 40 years ago. Reading it was de rigeur among the nerdy, intellectual group I was a part of at Grossmont High, and it inspired a few of our members who worked in the GHS administrative office as student aides to create a mythical student, “John Gault” (misspelling deliberate), who would pop up from time to time on the daily “Do Not Admit” list of students who were truant or had unexcused absences. In retrospect, I’m sure that many of the GHS teachers saw that name on the list and rolled their eyes, but we thought it was clever.

I honestly don’t know if I ever re-read it before now — it’s not a book one picks up lightly — but if I did, I’m sure it was no later than my undergraduate years at college. So it’s been at least 30 years (and perhaps longer) since I last read it. Given its resurgent popularity, I decided a few weeks ago it was time to read it again. However, having seen the paperback edition — with its minuscule print — at a bookstore at LAX, I opted to order the hardbound edition via Amazon. And then I dug in and read the whole thing.

I’m glad I did.

The Novel Itself

Atlas Shrugged is, for all intents, an alternate history SF novel set in the United States in the latter part of the 20th Century — probably the late 60s or early 70s, roughly 10-15 years after Rand wrote it, though no time frame is ever given. It is a dystopic novel; the United States has clearly entered into another major economic slump, most likely another depression from the description of vacant and crumbling buildings in urban centers as well as glimpses of rather primitive living conditions in rural areas. Socialism/communism appears to be gaining ground throughout the world  — there are references to “the People’s Republic of Mexico”, “the People’s Republic of Turkey”, “the People’s State of Norway”, “the People’s State of England”, “the People’s State of Germany”, and so on. Even in the United States, there is a clear trend towards socialism/fascism, with the government directly or indirectly seeking to control manufacturing and business, though largely through industry councils, the press, public opinion, occasional legislation, and high-ranking Federal officials.

In this setting, Rand introduces a series of hyper-competent characters: Dagny Taggart, the woman who really should be running Taggart Transcontinental (a major US railroad firm) rather than her sniveling brother James; Hank Rearden, the founder and owner of a series of mining and refining companies and inventor of “Rearden Metal”, a new alloy much lighter and stronger than steel; Francisco d’Anconia, brilliant polymath and the heir to a centuries-old global mining conglomerate; Ellis Wyatt, founder and owner of oil production enterprises in Colorado (and of a new process to extra oil from oil shale at competitive prices); Richard Halley, a brilliant composer; and several others. They are a bit reminiscent of similar characters found in Robert Heinlein novels, except they are less flawed and tend to lack the ability to laugh at themselves.

The fundamental conflict in the novel is between these characters and the rest of society, including their competitors and the US government. These major characters want to do what they are really good at, in their respective areas of business, for the sake of making a profit; the government (and society) wants them not to “unfairly compete” and to “give back” to society, and slowly brings increasing pressure to bear, via industry councils, legislation, and Federal mandates. In some respects, you can think of Atlas Shrugged as an 1100-page economic/industrial version of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron“.

The novel, as a novel, has flaws. It is very long (1168 pages in the current hardbound edition), given the relatively small scope of the novel itself, and frankly could have been cut by about 40%. It is polemic and didactic, overly so; for example, it contains many long monologues by the major characters, including the famous radio address by the near-mythic John Galt near the end of the novel that goes on for sixty (60) pages and that would take well over 2 hours to deliver. The characters often feel more like chess pieces, archetypes, rather than real human beings. For that matter, Rand tends to divide the human race (as portrayed in her novel)  largely into three groups: the small number of hypercompetent individuals, a much larger group of those jealous of — and seeking to exploit or live off of — their abilities, and the masses caught in the middle. The novel is suffused with Rand’s “rational self-interest” philosophy, Objectivism, which is itself a bit controversial (to say the least); the novel also reflects her origins as a emigrant from the Soviet Union and her ongoing dismay with the seduction of the American Left by socialist and even Communist sympathies from the 1930s into the 1950s. Finally, in light of the feminist sensibilities elsewhere in the novel, Rand has some, well, interesting ideas about sex and love, or at least her characters do.

For all its flaws, though, Atlas Shrugged remains a brilliant work of intellect and a remarkably compelling story, even if you don’t agree with its premises and conclusions. There are many polemic and didactic novels written over the past 50 years that have vanished with little or no trace; the fact that Rand’s work still sells and is selling now stronger than ever speaks to the nerves that she did not just touch but attacked at length with sharp, pointed instruments.

Interesting Contemporary Parallels

For a work written half a century ago, Atlas Shrugged remains surprisingly timely. In an eerie echo of today, many (if not most) critical economic and political decisions are made not by the President or Congress, but by a host of civilian advisors who spend as much time  jockeying amongst themselves for position and influence as they do trying to solve the country’s problems. In the novel itself, the focus on trains, mining, steel, and manufacturing, especially within the United States, all seem very quaint and archaic in our digital/silicon/networked/globalized civilization, but every few pages, Rand will have a passage that is not only relevant but often prescient.

For example, consider this passage regarding one major (unsympathetic) character who ends up as a powerful government bureaucrat (all page numbers are taken from the 2005 hardbound edition; all bolded emphasis is mine; comments are in brackets):

“My purpose,” said Orren Boyle, “is the preservation of a free economy. It’s generally conceded that free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop a public spirit, it’s done for, make no mistake about that.

Orren Boyle has appeared from nowhere, five years ago, and had since made the cover of every national news magazine. He had started with a hundred thousand dollars of his own and a two-hundred-million-dollar loan from the government. Now he headed an enormous concern which had swallowed many other companies. This proved, he liked to say, that individual ability still had a chance to succeed in the world.

“The only justification of private property,” said Orren Boyle, “is public service.” (p. 45)

Likewise, in response to the major technological breakthrough of Rearden Metal and its successful use by Dagny Taggart to create a 100 mph train railway (the “John Galt Line”) from the East Coast to Colorado, resulting in a growing number of East Coast manufacturing firms relocating to Colorado, the following happens:

The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maximum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty miles per hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Breakmen was demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty cards.

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of those neighboring states.

A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity.

A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal.

A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states.

Wesley Mouch, Top Co-Ordinator of the [Federal] Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources [think: Tim Geithner at Treasury], was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be defined, except that the words “emergency powers” and “unbalanced economy” kept appearing in the text every few lines. (p. 299)

Substitute modern shibboleths such as “environmental impact” and “greedy CEOs”, and you can see the same mindset at work today. Or, if you want to talk about the Community Redevelopment Act and the resulting subprime crisis, here’s an interesting variant — a group of speculators gain title to a defunct auto factory and then sue a financial firm because it won’t loan them development money because they’re a poor credit risk:

“…It was an economic emergency law which said that people were forbidden to discriminate for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving his livelihood. It was used to protect day laborers and such, but it applied to me and my partners as well, didn’t it? So we went to court, and we testified about all the bad breaks we’d all had in the past, and I quoted Mulligan [the bank president] saying that I couldn’t even own a vegetable pushcart, and proved that all the members of the Amalgamated Service corporation [the speculators] had no prestige, no credit, no way to make a living — and, therefore, the purchase of the motor factory was our only chance of livelihood — and, therefore, Midas Mulligan had no right to discriminate against us–and, therefore, we were entitled to demand a loan from him under the law. …[they lose in court] … But we appealed to a higher court…and the higher court reversed the verdict and ordered Mulligan to give us the loan on our terms.” (pp. 317-318, emphasis mine)

Or this, two nameless characters overheard talking about Wesley Mouch, the Geithner-analog:

“But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.”

“They’re not laws, they’re directives.”

“Then it’s illegal.”

“It’s not illegal, because the Legislature [i.e., Congress] passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives.”

“I don’t think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch on the nose.”

“Well, there’s no time to palaver when it’s a national emergency.” (p. 333, emphasis mine)

Or, speaking of small domestic oil producers in the wake of the vanishing of the largest domestic oil producer and the restrictions on other industries (including railroads):

Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or discuss. (p. 350)

Or:

Empty trains clattered through the four states that were tied, as neighbors, to the throat of Colorado. They carried a few carloads of sheep, some corn, some melons and an occasional farmer with an overdressed family, who had friends in Washington. Jim [Taggart] had obtained a subsidy from Washington for every train that was run, not as a profit-making carrier, but as a service of “public equity.” (p. 351)

Or (with thoughts of TARP):

Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch has issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfactory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential — to whom?”

… One was supposed to describe, not to explain, to catalogue facts, not to evalute them: Mr. Smith had been defrozen, Mr. Jones had not; that was all. And when Mr. Jones committed suicide, people said, “Well, I don’t know, if he’d really needed his money, the government would have given it to him, but some men are just greedy.”

One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar [think: toxic assets and PPIP]; or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington.  (p. 352)

Or, thinking of the Detroit bailouts:

Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment — but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederate Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illlinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.

The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the frantic call of the moment — so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification Board — and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consume by the people of Illinois. “In this enlightened age,” Eugene Lawson had said in a radio broadcast, “we have come, at last, to realize that each of of us is his brother’s keeper.” (p. 911)

And so on. I could find and put up scores of such passages, perhaps a few hundred, without much effort. The overarching theme is one echoed today: that government, in addressing what is seen as economic inequalities, ends up punishing success and rewarding failure, all in the name of fairness and compassion. The novel offers what I’m sure Rand felt was the best (if not only) rational response to such a society; some of that is addressed in the spoilers below, but you need to read the novel itself to get the full scope of Rand’s thoughts.

To be honest, I think that Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress does a much better job of conveying many of the same libertarian sympathies found in Atlas Shrugged and is a better-written and more entertaining novel, to boot. (It’s also a lot shorter and more readable.) What’s more, Rand’s portrayal of a socialist USA goes to an extreme that I fully believe impossible, but as the passages quoted earlier show, many examples strike all too close to home.

Still, whatever its flaws, anachronisms, and idiosyncrasies, Atlas Shrugged remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago and perhaps more so than in recent years. If your inclinations are towards the liberal/progressive side of the political spectrum, you will likely hate the novel and will not get through it; you of conservative or libertarian bent will likely enjoy it, though you may have trouble getting through the last 400 pages (which should have been about 40 pages instead).

But whatever your views, Atlas Shrugged is a novel that will continue to sell, and sell steadily, for decades to come. And with the economic future of the United States as reflected in the graphic below, I suspect it will continue to enjoy its current position on the Amazon bestseller lists.

An ugly, ugly graph.

[My thanks to Rand Simberg and Ace of Spades for the links; also, I've made some minor edits and one correction (thank you, Erik).]

SPOILERS AHEAD (if you can have spoilers for a 50+ year old novel)

Rand’s original title for this novel was The Strike, and that sums up the core of its plot: what if the brilliant, talented people in society — those who actually invent, create, lead and produce –  got fed up with government’s and society’s efforts to control, mandate, and take what they were accomplishing, and so closed down their respective plants and enterprises and simply vanished? (Hence the growing catchphrase, “Going John Galt“.) You can get a taste of that right now with the brain drain on Wall Street: people are leaving because of government controls on what they can earn, because of government officials deciding how much income is “fair” for “Wall Street fat cats”. In fact, that language could come straight out of Atlas Shrugged; for example:

In the eyes of his contemporaries, [Midas Mulligan, a very successful financier] was a man who had committed the one unforgivable sin: he was proud of his wealth. (p. 316)

There are several brilliant/successful individuals who have already disappeared when the novel opens, and more vanish as the novel progresses. What’s more, regular competent individuals start leaving the workforce as well, rather than work for increasingly dysfucntional businesses. The result is a deepening of the financial and infrastructure crisis in America: energy and food shortages, disruption of transportation, climbing unemployment, declining consumer spending.

As it turns out, this core group of dropouts have constructed a small utopia of sorts, hidden away in the Rockies, where they spend time between their anonymous forays into the disintegrating nation around them. The common oath they all must swear to be admitted there is: “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask any other man to live for mine.” The community is run on a strict cash-only basis, with gold as the only currency, and everyone there hires themselves out for ‘menial’ jobs as well as pursuing their areas of expertise.

Back in the real world, the US Government reacts to the ongoing collapse by seizing more and more control over private industry, culminating with “Directive 10-289″, which freezes production levels, wages, prices, and all R&D and new product development, while at the same time requiring that all intellectual property (copyright, patent, trade secrets) be turned over to the US Government both in the name of equity and to help get out of the current economic crisis. It also forbids anyone from leaving or changing jobs without authorization from a Federal board. This merely accelerates the rate of people dropping out of the workforce, as well as the dysfunctionality and disintegration of most enterprises, leading to a near-total collapse of the United States as a functioning civilization.

It is in this context that John Galt (using new technology) jams the radio waves and broadcasts his long speech nationwide. After that happens, the civilian leaders in charge become more frantic, but their various attempts to remedy problems just make things worse. However, they manage to capture John Galt (who spends much of his time out in the collapsing US) and do their best to boost consumer confidence by staging photo-ops of Galt with the top government civilian advisors and making media claims that they have come up with “the John Galt Plan” to save the US economy. Galt, however, refuses to play along; they beg him to take control, but then reject all of his suggestions and refuse to change their fundamental approach to government and the economy. They finally resort to threats and even torture, but Galt maintains his postion. In the end, Galt is rescued and taken back to the refuge even as the lights in New York City go out and the last transportation link between the eastern and western US is severed. The novel ends with the utopia group making their plans on how to re-enter civilization and pick up the pieces. One member of that group, a retired judge, is adding an amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade.”

If you don’t want to read the whole novel, you can always buy the Cliff’s Notes for it. But then you’ll miss all the great parallels, such as those cited above.

Definitely a thumbs-up.  ..bruce w..

“Scrooge” didn’t do all that well when it was released theatrically in 1970. Movie critics didn’t like it, feeling that it was somehow silly in the light of the earlier ‘classic’ versions of “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 Alastair Sim version). For years after that, if “Scrooge” showed up at all, it was in a chopped-up, pan-and-scan version on TV; I can remember my own profound disappointment when I first saw it on TV. The VHS release wasn’t much better — while not chopped up, it was still pan-and-scan, losing much of the outstanding cinematography and choreography.

But for five years now, it’s been out on DVD in an uncut widescreen version. The movie itself has held up very well. The score and libretto are outstanding; a few of the movie’s songs have crept into the mainstream over the years (I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one on their weekly broadcast earlier this year). As mentioned above, the choreography is outstanding as well, as are the cinematography and art direction.

The real key, though, is Albert Finney in the title role. The director cast a young man (Finney was only in his early 30s when this was filmed) as Scrooge, figuring that it was easier to make a young man look old than to make an old man look young. Furthermore, the old Scooge is not played as a stern if elegant patrician; he’s played quite literally as a dirty moneygrubber, with a permanent hunch to his back. His Scrooge is not someone you would want to cross or meet in a dark alley.

The movie shows a bit more of Scrooge’s young life (via the Ghost of Christmas Past), giving a better sense of Scrooge’s descent from a tall, handsome, modest young man to the bent-over miser he becomes. It also adds a scene of Scrooge in Hell (as part of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future) that is quite humorous and at the same time chilling (so to speak). And there are a few changes in the final sequence of events as well, but they represent a payoff from things set up early on.

At its core, though, “Scrooge” fully delivers on Dickens’ original message of regret, repentance, and redemption, and it does so in a powerful fashion. I recommend it without reservation.  ..bruce w..

[UPDATED 1604 MDT: Got an Ace-o-lanche going on, with other links coming in -- welcome all! Also made a few minor edits.]

The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.

– Sir Thomas More

I went into “An American Carol” with guarded expectations. While David Zucker immortalized himself with “Airplane!” (“Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?”, “I know how to talk jive.”), “Scary Movie 3″ and “Scary Movie 4″ were his last two outings. I expected some chuckles, some misses, maybe a few laugh-out-loud moments.

I didn’t expect to be howling with laughter — and often simultaneously wincing — through most of the movie. But I was. As was my wife. As were, as far as I could tell, the rest of the people in the theater.

Hollywood likes to think itself brave and groundbreaking as it makes the 3,932nd consecutive film of the past 40 years portraying (conservative) government, war, the military, intelligence agencies, and/or corporations (often all indistinguishable from one another) as evil. Hollywood is not brave; Hollywood is terribly conservative (in its own sense) and very much in lockstep with itself.

David Zucker is brave. Not just because he gleefully mocks the Left (including Hollywood), but because he gleefully mocks radical Islamic terrorists as well. And he is very politically incorrect in how both the Left and radical Islamists are portrayed. When in the first few minutes of the movie you have suicide bomber jokes — not wry or ironic asides, but Airplane!-style, pushing-the-boundaries-of-taste jokes and pratfalls — you know you’re not in West LA anymore.

The actors who appear in this movie — Kevin Farley (as “Michael Morton”), Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, Leslie Nielsen and the rest — are likewise brave, especially in light of actual voiced blacklisting threats towards outspoken conservative actors.

Not all jokes in the film were drop-dead funny, but enough were — and the movie moves fast enough to get by the occasional miss or slow moment — to have kept us entertained throughout. And there was at least one moment (“A lot of dust in here…”) that unexpectedly made me tear up.

The Left, the mainstream media, and Hollywood (but I repeat myself) will absolutely hate this movie. They cheerfully promulgate and perpetuate grossly-distorted depictions and unfair stereotypes of those on the Right (e.g., see the trashing of Sarah Palin), but they cannot endure to be mocked themselves. It is their fatal weakness, the one thing that keeps most clear-thinking people from taking themselves seriously.

And as an old American proverb says: screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke. The rest of us should go see the film, repeatedly. I plan to.

Spoilers (such as they are) after the jump.

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

The film, of course, models itself after “A Christmas Carol”, with a Michael Moore-surrogate (“Michael Malone”, played by Kevin Farley) planning a protest against the 4th of July and being visited first by the digital ghost of JFK and then by three spirits: Gen. Patton (Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (Jon Voight), and “the Angel of Death” (country singer Trace Adkins, who also plays himself). Most of the time is spent with Gen. Patton; the time with Washington and the Angle of Death is quite short, I suspect to hold the running time down.

The subplot is that a group of Islamic jihadists want to hire Malone to produce a new recruiting video for suicide bombers, though they’re pitching it to him as a foreign-financed feature movie. (A running joke throughout the movie is the variety of people and groups dismissing Malone as a director because “he’s only made documentaries”.)

The sequence with George Washington is the shortest and least comedic. Malone meets him in St. Paul’s Chapel in Manhattan, where Washington points out that he (Washington) prayed for guidance in leading the country as President. Malone makes a distainful comment about the dust on everything, wondering why it isn’t better cleaned; Washington opens the doors and shows Malone what St. Paul’s faces — the fresh ruins of the World Trade Center — and explains that the dust there is from the 3000 people who died there.

The scene frankly and unexpectedly moved me. Sandra and I were living in northwest Washington DC on 9/11, just a few miles due north of the Pentagon and about the same distance from the intended target(s) of United Flight 93. I still treat what happened that day with seriousness, even if much of the country (particularly the Left/MSM/H’wood) does not. Our son Jon, a Marine, is in Iraq even as I write this as a direct consequence of the changed world after 9/11; likewise, my nephew, Darren Green (another Marine), will be in Afghanistan by year’s end as a very direct consequence of the 9/11 attacks themselves.

That is the one purely serious moment in the film. What could have been another serious or touching moment — Malone’s nephew, a Navy sailor, shipping out — turns into classic Zucker children-in-peril slapstick, all the funnier for the Tiny-Tim-to-the-nth-power setup earlier in the film.

Oh, did I mention there’s a whole sequence on Malone being a modern slaveholder in a world where Lincoln “negotiated” with the South rather than waging war? Complete with slaves picking cotton and polishing Malone’s car?

As I said: a brave man.  ..bruce w..

Truly an outstanding film. Not perfect (see the spoilers section), but every bit as tense, intelligent, and morally complex as the crime dramas that regularly get Oscar nominations. Put another way: if you took Batman out of the film (but left Bruce Wayne), removed the Joker’s makeup, and toned down the injuries to a certain character — it would be considered one of those Oscar-worth crime dramas, “ripped from tomorrow’s headlines”.

Adding to that verisimilitude is that Gotham City for the first time looks just like a normal city. There’s clearly a lot of effects to make it look both bigger than and different from Chicago — but there are none of the gothic city designs that have dominated the previous five Batman films, including Christopher Nolan’s first one, “Batman Begins”.  Ditto for Batman — with Wayne Manor still under reconstruction, there’s no Batcave, just a large, low-ceiling, well-lit expansive workspace buried somewhere in Wayne Enterprises-owned property, while Wayne himself lives in a large, sparse city-center penthouse. If anything, the city and the sets look normal to the point of banality — which serves to intensify the darkness within the people themselves.

That darkness is indeed the theme of this movie, and it’s pretty unrelenting — except for one grace note (or rather two) towards the end. The acting is all solid, with excellent performances by Aaron Eckert (Harvey Dent) and Heath Ledger (the Joker) — and, yes, Ledger’s performance really is Oscar-worthy. (Quick: who so far this year would you rate over him?) The score is likewise outstanding: it doesn’t call attention to itself but it does build the mood of the movie.

Like Harvey Dent’s coin, “The Dark Knight” is the flip side of “Iron Man”. In the few spots where “Iron Man” turns dark, it’s never more than a quip away from lightening up. In the few spots where “The Dark Knight” turns light-hearted, there’s still a weariness in the humor, and it never lasts long.

Highly recommended; spoilers after the jump

SERIOUS SPOILERS HERE, FOLKS — DON’T READ IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW

At one point, the Joker says that — for him, at least — there are no rules, and he proves it in this movie. He says that people will die until Batman reveals his identity, and then he keeps that promise, killing several key people (a judge, the Police Commissioner) and attempting to kill others (the Mayor). Even Gordon gets caught in the crossfire.

The Joker, while in custody no less, sets up a situation where Batman has to choose whether to race to save Harvey Dent (the DA) or Rachel Dawes (Dent’s current love — and the woman Bruce Wayne wants to be with when he sets down his cowl). Batman races to save Rachel — and find that the Joker has directed him to Dent instead. Rachel is killed, while Dent is saved — but horribly burned on one side of his face. (The effects are gruesome enough that when Dent first revealed the burned and raw side of his face, a number of people in our sold-out theater — young girls by the sound of it — actually screamed out loud.)

In the meantime, the Joker escapes from custody by triggering a bomb surgically implanted in one of his own henchmen (also in custody) and sets in motion several more threats (and deaths). He also visits Dent in the hospital and pushes Dent — the white knight DA — into becoming Two-Face. Dent leaves the hospital and begans seeking his own vengance among the crooked cops who delivered him and Rachel into the Joker’s hands. He also kidnaps (now-Commissioner) Gordon’s family, to make him pay for having these corrupt cops in his squad in the first place.

In the meantime, the Joker sabotages two ferries being used to evacuate the city, stranding them in mid-harbor. One ferry is packed with criminals in custody, the other with regular citizens. Both ferries are rigged to explode — and each ferry has the detonator to trigger the other. The Joker gives them until midnight (about 15 minutes away); if one ferry has not detonated the other, he says he will detonate them both.

For me, the emotional climax of the film is when one of the convicts on the ferry (who appears to be an uncredited Michael Clarke Duncan, looking cold and mean) talks the prison guard supervisor into handing over the detonator, saying (in so many words), “You’ve never killed a man before. I understand why you can’t do this. I have. I know how to kill someone. Give the detonator to me, and I’ll do what you should have done ten minutes ago.” The supervisor lets Duncan take the detonator — and Duncan tosses it out the porthole into the bay. (At this point in the film, I turned to my sweet wife Sandra and whispered, “The red-black game.” She smiled and nodded. Go look it up.) In the meantime, the good citizens on the other boat have voted to blow up the other ferry, by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. One of the passengers, frustrated with the delay in implementing the vote, takes the detonator — and then can’t go through with it. He sits back down, waiting to die with everyone else.

Midnight comes — and nothing happens.

That’s because at this point, Batman and the Joker are fighting, and the Joker can’t trigger the detonation himself. That fight was actually the most disappointing part of the firm; Batman has just taken on an entire SWAT team, and yet the Joker gets the best of him using three Rottweilers, a net, and a metal rod of some kind. One could argue that Batman is exhausted at this point, but it just doesn’t quite ring true.

Batman eventually turns the tables on the Joker, leaves him dangling for the SWAT team to find, then goes to help out Gordon. He ends up getting shot himself but kills Dent in the process. (I must confess that I found myself thinking, “One good right hook and Dent’s jaw would come clean off –and his left eye might fall out, to boot.”)

The movie ends with Batman on the run from the law, being blamed publicly (at his own insistence to Gordon) for much of the mayhem in order to cover for Dent’s fall from grace.

The tragedy of Heath Ledger’s untimely death is only compounded by the outstanding quality of his performance and the fact that at film’s end the Joker is still alive and Two-Face is dead.  It’s unclear what they’ll do for the third movie, but if the quality keeps up, it will be something to behold.  ..bruce..

“WALL-E” is something quite different from previous Pixar films: it is not a film so much as a feature-length cartoon. Specifically — as I said to my sweet wife Sandra as the credits ended — this is the longest, best, most exquisitely drawn “Looney Tunes” cartoon ever made.

Think about it. “WALL-E” contains all the classic “Looney Tunes”/Warner Bros. elements: a sympathetic underdog hero, not a lot of dialog, physical slapstick, manic and goofy secondary characters, unrequited (for a while, at least) romance, a melodramatic villian (with sidekick), “classical” music (“Barber of Seville” : my generation :: “Hello, Dolly” : my  grandkids’ generation), social satire both broad and subtle — but always sharp and a bit painful, lots of puns (visual and verbal), various subtle homages and cultural references (my wife chuckled every time she heard the Mac OS X boot sound), the triumph of individualism and common sense over mandates from above, and an upbeat ending. While most reviewers have seen the “Buy n Large” corporation as a slam on Wal-Mart, I think it also doubles as a call-out to the ubiquitous “Acme Corporation” from the Warners Brothers cartoons.

I know some folks have complained about the apparently heavy-handed message — anti-consumer, pro-environment — but that falls under the broad-yet-sharp satire. “WALL-E” didn’t have Bugs or Daffy or Elmer to make asides to the audience, so the storyboards had to do it.

Because it is a “Looney Tunes” cartoon rather than an animated film, “WALL-E” doesn’t have quite the personal emotional resonance (read: “tugging at parents’ heartstrings”) of some of the previous Pixar films, such as “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles”.  But it is, I think, Pixar’s finest work to date. I find myself humming “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and smiling two days after seeing WALL-E; I’m not sure when was the last time that a film had me doing that.

Spoilers (such as they are) after the jump.

I’ve seen a few reviews that think that “WALL-E” could have been a better film if they had left WALL-E disfunctional or with no memory at the end of the film. But that would have been completely out of character with the “Looney Tunes” nature of the film.  Hey, the movie has a happy ending, folks. Deal with it.  ..bruce..

I saw “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” on opening day, and — for all the grumblings that I’ve seen in other reviews — I actually liked it. Shia LaBeouf wasn’t as bad as I feared, and it was a joy seeing Karen Allen — the only real heroine of any of the Indiana Jones movies — appear again. The film was a bit goofy here and there, but it was fun.

And then in just this past week, I began to see rumblings about Frank Darabont’s original screenplay for Indy IV having been leaked to the ‘net in PDF form. I did some poking around, found it, downloaded it, and began read.

I didn’t stop until I had finished it, despite my wife’s best efforts to drag me away from my laptop.

The screenplay isn’t perfect, but scene-for-scene, line-for-line, it’s a far better script that what Lucas and Spielberg eventually filmed. I don’t know why Lucas and Spielberg (and it may well have just been Lucas) rejected this script; on the other hand, given what Lucas did to the Star Wars prequels, I’m not sure any explanation is necessary.

This film does not have the Cate Blanchett or the Shia LaBeouf characters. The Ray Winstone character is actually Russian (and turns out to be a Russian spy). Marion is married (!) when Indy runs into her in Peru, and — contrary to what Wikipedia says — she does not have a 13-year-old daughter from her liaison with Indy in “Raiders”. There are giant ants — even bigger than the ones in “Crystal Skull” — but there’s actually a rational for them — and I regret not seeing the hummingbirds. Oh, and Sallah and Dr. Henry Jones are both still alive.

Yes, there is one (only one) former Nazi — hiding out in Peru — in the movie, but he’s a relatively minor character and could have been easily written out or changed to something else, so it makes no sense to say (as Wikipedia does) that Spielberg rejected the whole Darabont screenplay because of that one character.

It’s a great read, even in screenplay form, and a great insight into the craft of screenwriting. If Spielberg had filmed this screenplay, I think that “City of Gods” would have blown past “Iron Man”.

But, hey — that’s Lucas and Spielberg for you. A few “spoilers” after the jump.

The overall arc of “City of Gods” is very similar to “Crystal Skull”, except that you have several groups after the lost city, not just two. Jones — while still in the US — ends up with the skull and with tickets and directions to meet up with an expedition down in Peru. That expedition turns out to be led by Marion Ravenwood’s husband, a charming, intelligent and experienced archaeologist. That group sets off, but then must deal with another coalition group comprising the (dictatorial) president of Peru, Indy’s Russian-spy (former) friend, some Soviet commandos, the one ex-Nazi, and a few others. It becomes a chase to the lost city — but I like this one better than the one in “Crystal Skull”. And the alien they awake is a bit nastier, too. (Indy to alien: “Hey…welcome to earth.” BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!)

As I said, do some sleuthing, and you can find the screenplay yourself. Pity that’s all we’ll ever see of it. ..bruce w..