WTF Jason Statham? Really?

I don’t get peoples fascination with him. I’ve heard (WAY to many times) people say at work “Well, it’s got Jason Statham in it, so it must be pretty good”. What? REALLY?! Since WHEN?!

I feel almost the exact opposite. If it’s got Jason Statham in it, it’s probably pretty fucking stupid. He’s quickly turning into the Steven Segal of this generation.

But with this trailer, he seems he’s somehow jumped past the Steven Segal stage and has landed somewhere in like… I don’t know what. Steven Segal never did anything like this. Neither did Jean Claude Van Damme, or any of the other late 80s/early 90s action stars I can think of.

Either way, it looks fucking stupid. But I didn’t watch the first Crank either.

The only thing that looks even remotely interesting in this trailer is Dwight Yoakam.

The poor guy… I swear.

So The Spirit flopped miserably. It’s apparently completely atrocious and unwatchably bad. I believe it. I haven’t watched it yet, but I believe it. When Robert Rodriguez, with all the good intentions in the world, called Frank Miller his “co-director” on the Sin City movie, he damned him for all time. With his act of kinship and respect, Rodriguez managed to convince Frank Miller that he actually IS a real director. But what he didn’t do was give him the rest of the tools needed to direct a movie. There’s more to it than simply story boarding and green screens.

In the medium of comic books, Frank Miller is almost untouchable as a writer. Or he was anyway. I don’t know what’s happened to him over the last ten years or so, but whatever. My point is that that the man knows how to pace stories and develop characters for comic books. Unfortunately, movies are a completely different and unique medium with an entirely different set of rules and guidelines. The skills it takes to write and illustrate a comic book are totally different than the skills needed to write characters, pace the story and direct actors in a film.

Poor delusional Frank Miller.

I remember when they first announced he was going to do The Spirit. I was hopeful, but also concerned. It would appear (I can’t say for sure, because again, I didn’t watch it) that the worst possible scenario played out. Frank got in WAY over his head. I doubt it was an ego thing… I mean, yeah, he’s a legend in the field of comic books, but I don’t get the impression that he thinks he’s king shit of the universe. But I think he somehow convinced himself (with the help of his “co-director” from Sin City) that he had the chops to fly solo with his own movie. Unfortunately that flight went right into the side of a mountain and exploded.

And really, what did he expect? Honestly? That he would go into making another movie ONLY using the tools he gathered while standing around on the Sin City set? Did he think that the public wants to see another movie done in exactly the same style as Sin City?

Sin City was awesome for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons was the visual style Rodriguez used. It was interesting to watch and captured the atmosphere of the comics perfectly. It was great for THAT movie. Variations on that might be interesting to watch in other movies. Like 300 for instance. 300 was fun to watch, partially because of it’s visual style, which was very similar to Sin City. Similar but different enough to stay interesting. If they’d done 300 exactly like Sin City, then it would have been boring and pointless.

Which I think was one of the reasons no one went to see The Spirit. I know that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t go. It just looked… tired. I don’t want to see another movie aping Sin City’s style. The only reason Sin City worked was because it (very precariously) balanced many different elements, one of which was that unique style. But that style wouldn’t have been enough on it’s own to make Sin City work. And it certainly wouldn’t be enough to make any other movie work.

That’s why I didn’t watch The Spirit. That and because everyone whose seen it says it absurdly bad.

Which sucks especially since I’m relatively sure he managed to drag down any possibility for that supposed Sin City sequel that was in the works. Remember back when they were talking about how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie were going to be in it? Yeah… we’ll see. I doubt it’s going to happen at all. Mickey Rourke has recently said that he’s not particularly interested in coming back as Marv. I haven’t heard word one from Robert Rodriguez about it. All I’ve heard from him are all of the different ways he’s trying to come up with movies he can remake for his goofy looking, home wrecking girlfriend to star in.

The only person I’ve heard say anything remotely indicating movement on Sin City 2 is… of course, poor, poor, delusional Frank Miller. Go figure.

And honestly, I can’t see them going forward on a sequel to Sin City without Mickey Rourke. Which is also a shame, because honestly… fuck Mickey Rourke. I’ve never liked that fucking guy. He was good as Marv, but whether or not he reprises that role isn’t a deal breaker for me. Get Clancy Brown or Ron Perlman in there to do the same fucking job. Probably better.

But yeah… I’m sure other people are far more attached to Rourke than I am. I just don’t see Sin City 2 happening without him.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?

Frank is supposedly in line to direct a new Buck Rogers movie. We’ll see.

But between Robert Rodriguez’ apparently decent into pathetic girlfriend placating movie remaking and Frank Miller’s complete and utter failure at making a movie on his own… it doesn’t look good for Sin City 2.

The really sad thing is that this has happened to Frank Miller before. Sort of.

Many, many years ago Frank was asked to write a sequel to Robocop. He did, and (from what I hear) he apparently did quite a decent job of it. People have said that Miller’s original draft of the Robocop 2 script was kickass. But studios, being what they are, they took his script and chopped it up and added characters and took characters out and blended story elements and changed everything around until it was barely recognizable as Frank Miller’s original Robocop 2 story. And the movie that ended up being filmed was horribly stupid. But it still said right at the beginning of the movie “WRITTEN BY FRANK MILLER”. It was a big deal. I remember being excited for it, because I knew who Frank Miller was and I was very hopeful that he’d turn out a decent Robocop story. It didn’t work out that way. Hell, Frank was even IN the movie. He played a small role. But yeah, Robocop 2 was retarded.

After that, Frank Miller was done with Hollywood. Much like his angry, cynical, smelly, derelict hobo looking peer Alan Moore, he shunned Hollywood and the movie making industry. In the once rare interviews he did around the time, the hurt and betrayal he felt was painfully obvious. He was done with Hollywood forever. They’d burned him bad and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. That’s why Robert Rodriguez had to practically stalk him to get him involved with Sin City. Unlike Alan Moore (who is just hateful and unpleasant) Frank seemed genuinely heartbroken about his relationship with Hollywood. I get the impression he’s a pretty damaged guy to begin with. He probably has major rejection issues. I think that’s why 95% of the women characters in his stories are either heartless, sexless bitches or prostitutes in need of saving. Or both.

But I don’t want Frank Miller to disappear from Hollywood. I don’t want this Spirit thing to completely devastate and destroy him, like the Robocop 2 thing did. I can’t really see how a failure of this magnitude COULDN’T devastate and destroy him (it certainly would me) but I hope it doesn’t. What I want is for Frank Miller to go and do the legwork it takes to learn the craft of filmmaking. Chitchatting with Robert Rodriguez on the set of Sin City is a great start, but it isn’t enough. I hope Frank is solid enough to realize his mistakes with The Spirit, but humble (and determined) enough to go back and learn from what he did wrong. He needs to take some film classes. Take some screen writing classes. I think that he took Robert Rodriguez’ laid back style for granted. I don’t think that he realized that Robert earned that style through years and years of low budget film making. You can’t just jump into a big budget action movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson without any kind of experience. Life isn’t that easy. Even when you’re one of the greatest comic book writers/artists of all time.

Black Dynamite. It comes out next year.

Currently Listening: Britney Spears - Out From Under

Sandra got me a shitton of DVDs this Christmas. Part of the reason is that we went down to the states a few weeks back to do some Christmas shopping. I went into a Big Lots and they had a whole pile of decent DVDs for like, 2.99 or something. So I bought a bunch for myself. Then Sandra was like “No way mister, we’re Christmas shopping” and she took em all and gave them to me as Christmas presents. Then we were in Target and they had a bunch of DVDs on sale for like, 3 for 12 bucks or something. So I picked out a bunch that I wanted and then Sandra made me go away while she bought them. There are two in there that weren’t bought like that. One was Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The other was The Pee-Wee Herman Show. But all the rest were crazy cheap and facilitated an abundance of Christmas DVD presents.

Rather than list them all, here’s a photo of the stack.

Sandra’s up at her grandma’s with her family. I’m at home alone, drifting from one present to another.

One of the things Sandra got me for Christmas that I opened early (because I ended up running into Futureshop to pick it up, since it was on sale that day) was a new Wacom tablet. I think I’m going to have to take it back and get another one though because the eraser doesn’t work.

Anyway, I’m killing time at home and started working on this in photoshop.

Which will ultimately be a newish take on the Batman character Harley Quinn. Obviously inspired fairly heavily from the Dark Knight version of The Joker. I typically don’t use black and white to actually “ink” anything that I’m drawing in photoshop. I generally go for more of a painting style approach, but I figure that since this was a comic book character (though, originally cartoon character if you want to nitpick) I should take a more Tim Bradstreet approach.

Plus, Sandra bought me the Brian Azzarello/Lee Bermejo Joker graphic novel which has a similar kind of gritty, demented approach to The Joker that’s very inline with the Dark Knight interpretation.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve flipped through the pages and taken a look at the style and it’s very much like the movie. I don’t know which came first, but I’m gonna assume that this book was inspired by the movie rather than the other way around. Either way, it got me wanting to do something like this.

I figure I’ll lay down a fairly intricate black and white drawing with line shading and bold outlines and then paint the colors on a layer under it in photoshop.

I really liked the scarification on The Joker’s face in the movie and I think that was a pretty interesting interpretation of the character. Doing away with (apparently at least) the whole “You dropped me in a vat of chemicals and now I hate you because that was such a dick movie Batman” aspect. Leaving the audience to assume that he either did it to himself or someone did it to him.

Either way, I think it works even better in the context of Harley Quinn. I mean, she’s the ultimate abused girlfriend. The idea that SHE either did this to herself to prove her love and admiration to The Joker… or, even worse, he did it to her to prove his ownership. Whichever way you look at it, it works in the context of the story.

That’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about Harley Quinn, and by extension The Joker himself. She was his psychiatrist. She started off in a position of power over The Joker and ultimately, he took that from her in the most extreme way. Or she gave it to him. If The Joker is the ultimate bad guy, then Harley Quinn is the ultimate doomed woman who can’t help but love bad guys. By the time she became “Harley Quinn” she was so far gone whatever power she ever had that she’s completely lost in this abusive, demented relationship with a man whose only emotional relationship with her consists of abuse and control.

It’s funny how Harley has become this kind of “powerful woman” character in the Batman universe, teaming up in almost homoerotic side stories with Poison Ivy. Because Harley Quinn is about as far from a “powerful woman” as you’re going to get in the comic book universe. They treat her like she’s this Mallory Knox kind of character who is somehow partnered with The Joker to pull off these intricate, entertaining crimes. That they’re on equal ground. But that’s not really true to her character at all. Without The Joker she’s nothing. Or, even more boring, without The Joker, she’s healthy and functional. But he’s managed to break her down so far that she can’t exist without him. Her entire emotional and mental structure is based on this need to please a man who only wants to keep her under his thumb.

It’s true that she is capable of holding her own, within the context of doing his bidding. She is a smart, capable woman. But she’s not strong. She’s incredibly weak and dependant. But not because he’s a man, or even THE man, but because he’s so fucking BAD. She’s beyond “He’s bad but I can fix him and make him love me” and into just getting off on how bad he is. That’s what I love about Harley Quinn. If she believed she was going to fix him and make him love her, then she’d be boring. But no… she just wants to watch him be evil.

And that’s hot. Abusive wife syndrome (which, I don’t know if that’ s actually a syndrome, but that’s what I’m going to cal it) isn’t an attractive quality in a character… but a character who gets off (I’m reading a little more into a children’s cartoon that I maybe should but whatever) on watching someone physically and emotionally hurt other people is both interesting and sexy. In a fictional character. In real life, not so much. But when we’re talking fantasy, that’s pretty hot.

It’s a shame that Heath had to die. There was talk (and, like so much talk around these Batman movies, I imagine it’s bullshit) that they were planning on possibly doing another movie that featured The Joker, this time focusing on his trial. It was (supposedly) going to have The Joker conducting all of these terrible things from his cell in Arkham Asylum, ala Charles Manson during his trial. THAT would have been the perfect context for bringing Harley Quinn into the movies. Can you imagine if they’d managed to have Heath in as The Joker, in Arkham, and had cast Michelle Williams as Harley Quinn?

That would have blown my mind. Of course, the history between the two would have made it that much more twisted and awesome.

But now we’ll never know.

Anyway, if you’re interested, this is the picture I’m using as reference for the Harley Quinn drawing.

And yes, she’ll probably be topless in my drawing as well. But I haven’t decided for sure yet. I’m going to draw gloves on her and probably some kind of hat with the pointy jester things and bells. If you could see more of her arms, I was going to have the diamond pattern tattooed on her. I may still work that in there. I was stuck between a few different poses from the same set of pictures.

I also liked this one, but I didn’t think you could see enough of her face to get the scarification across.

And I like being able to see her stomach. I’m thinking about doing something with that.

I talk a lot about my disdain for Tim Burton and his movies. But that’s not entirely true. I do think that in the right environment and with the right support, Tim Burton is capable of making good movies. I just think that his capacity for greatness is far more limited to the abilities of the people around him. He’s got a certain somewhat unique viewpoint, that when channeled well, can produce quality art. It’s just that most of the time that doesn’t happen. Burton isn’t capable of bringing those elements together for himself. 

One of my favorite acting performances ever came from a Tim Burton movie. It was in Burton’s fan letter to the doomed transvestite film maker Ed Wood. The performance was Martin Landau as a drug addled, washed up Bela Lugosi. Landau was absolutely brilliant. Funny, touching, offensive and completely immersed in his degenerate world. What was so amazing to me, beside the fact that when I watched it I simply saw Bela Lugosi and forgot I was watching an actor, was the way he was both this legendary actor and so pathetic and tortured. Watching it, I hurt for Bela Lugosi. I wanted him to be okay, even though I knew he wouldn’t be.

Anyway, this is the scene that I always remember when I think of that performance. I don’t know if it’s Landau’s best scene in the movie, but it’s the one that stands out in my mind. He has this little ray of sunshine through the darkness, and then his ego and the reality of his life clouds it over.

Plus, I love quoting this scene.

Karlof? Side…kick? FUCK YOU! KARLOF DOES NOT DESERVE TO SMELL MY SHIT! THAT LIMEY COCKSUCKER CAN ROT IN HELL FOR ALL I CARE!

Unfortunately people don’t usually know what I’m saying or why when I say it. It’s one of many things that alienates me from the general public.

Back in the old days? Yes. But now no one gives two fucks for Bela.

In other news:

This is the fattest snow I I’ve ever seen in my life. FUCK YOU SNOW!

So my mom prompted me to look up the movie on IMdb to see if Chaka is going to be in it. Chaka, in case you don’t know, is a character on the original Land of the Lost TV show. He was this retarded caveman kid.

After further investigation, I’ve discovered that not only is Chaka in the movie, but he’s being played by Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone, who you may know from this video. He’s the guy who isn’t Andy Samberg.

gravity sent me this link. Here are some of the standouts.

Also…

Holy shit! They’ve made what may be the worst TV show in history into what might be the best movie in history!

And for some reason seeing both Rashida Jones in there makes me happy. Every time I see her what I think (rather than Karen Filippelli) is of her and Natalie Portman yelling “PUPPIES!”.

Also, Thomas Lennon, who I still think of as “Thomas Lennon from The State” even though he has since become Thomas Lennon from a lot of other things.

And, of course, major kudos for The Pixies song.

HOUSE Girl Olivia Wilde To Star In TR2N!!

I am – Hercules!!

Months after showing everybody its teaser trailer, “TR2N” is starting to cast human actors.

Olivia Wilde, who played Marissa Cooper’s lesbian love on “The OC” before turning up on “House” as Candidate 13 last season, is all aboard.

She’s pretty!

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Wilde will play a worker in the virtual world who tries to help fight Master Control Program, the villainous intelligence protocol that was the nemesis in the original film.

Wilde was two years from being born when the original “TRON” hit cinemas in 1982.

Also cast is Wilde’s “Turistas” co-star Beau Garrett (”Made of Honor,” “Rise of the Silver Surfer”), who will play “a siren in the virtual world.”

Jeff Bridges reprises the role of Kevin Flynn in the sci-fi sequel, due out in 2011.

Find all of The Hollywood Reporter’s story on the matter here.

Dude… Thirteen on House is the fucking HOTNESS.

She is like, supernaturally hot. She’s the kind of hot that transcends normal hot and becomes some kind of incomprehensible hot. A have a theory about her character though.

Remember a couple of seasons back when we had the original team and Cameron thought that she was dying of some kind of disease and so she went on like, a crank binge and turned into a big slut and had sex with Chase? Then she found out she wasn’t dying and went back to being normal Cameron?

I think they LIKED her like that, but didn’t want to lose regular old Cameron as a character. So they came up with Thirteen, who is like a super intensified version of “I think I’m gonna die so I’m gonna be a slutty druggy” Cameron. She’s hotter, she’s sluttier, she’s more of a druggy.

I approve either way. And I am QUITE down with TR2N. Which really should have been called Tr0nz.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

While it definitely looks cheesy, I don’t give a bag of dicks. It also looks awesome. Really, all I needed to see was Wolverine using his claws to slow himself down on a motorcycle.

Now, in the realm of BAD IDEAS, I give you this:

Yes yes a thousand times yes.

Though i wish we could get a trailer in decent quality.

Has anyone here seen the movie Badlands? I haven’t but I think I’d like to. It stars Martin Sheen (who I’m meh about) and Sissy Spacek (who I like quite a lot) as a young couple on a killing spree. It’s based loosely on a spree killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, which was also the inspiration for a pile of other movies, including Natural Born Killers, as well the the Bruce Springsteen song Nebraska.

I’m not really a huge fan of Natural Born Killers (though I thought it was The Shit when it came out and I was like, sixteen or something) but I do like that genre. That “lovers killing a bunch people” genre. Not a whole lot of movies IN that genre, but there are a few.

Yes, I think I’d like to watch this movie.

Two of my favorite things! Christmas and horror movies!

This dude has got to have been one of the scariest fucking dudes ever. He showed up at my door and it started raining and he was demanding that I let him in, I would probably shit my pants.

And, for the record, I miss Craig T. Nelson ever so much. He was awesome.

This one focuses much more on the relationship and parallels between The Joker and Batman. Holy jeeze am I ever excited!

So just a little more about Robocop.

YES, YES AGAIN.

I’ve been trying to get a decent download of Robocop, because, for some reason (and I really don’t know why) I don’t actually own Robocop on DVD. Ever since I started thinking about it the other night, I’ve been jonesing hard to watch it again.

But my downloads have eluded me. The first one I downloaded was in fucking French for some reason so that sure as shit wasn’t going to work. Deleted that and I’ve been trying to get another version downloaded.

So I’m sitting here at the computer, pissed off at how long it’s taking me to get this fucking movie downloaded… and then it occurred to me. I work in a fucking VIDEO STORE. I called them up and asked if Robocop was in, so I went down there and picked it up.

I forgot about like, legitimate procuring of movies.

I even looked at the DVD to buy, but it was the shitty version and if I’m going to buy it, I wanna buy the good version.

So I rented it.

At first, I just wanted to watch the scene I talked about in my previous Robocop post. The one from Robocop’s POV and they discuss whether or not they should keep his arm.

But then I just sat there watching it and kept going. Then I started at the beginning and just watched the whole thing.

It was the first time I’ve ever sat at my computer and watched a whole movie. I usually hate it, but I wanted to watch it and I wanted to watch it loud, so I put on my headphones and went to town. If I watch a movie at night on my regular TV, I have to keep the volume low so I don’t wake up Sandra. Typically I only watch foreign movies at night because I can watch them with the volume fairly low and the subtitles on.

Anyway, so I watched it and got a couple of my questions answered.

First of all, the food he eats is just to keep the organic parts of him alive. The robot parts run on regular electricity and the fleshy parts and his organs run on food. 

Second, his eyes must be his real eyes, because he blinks. I can’t imagine that robot eyes would need to blink.

Third, during that same scene, Miguel Fuhrer says that they’re giving him a "full body prosthesis" which would imply, to me at least, that it’s pretty much just his head (and not even all of that) and face and brain that’s still human. When he’s got his helmet off, the way the pistons and various robotic looking bullshit is situated on his neck looks as though there isn’t really much room for anything fleshy to be in there.

In fact, looking at that, it pretty much looks like he doesn’t even have a skull anymore… like they just stretched his face over a robotic skull like the Terminator. A damn fine bit of make up design I might add as well.

So I’m inclined to believe that he’s pretty much a robot with a human brain and a human face… and human eyes and like… mouth and teeth and stuff.

Something else I realized while rewatching this is that it’s not so much that he’s a cyborg, but that he’s a reanimated corpse. I mean, they make a very specific point to let us know that Murphy is dead. We watch his gory death scene, and then we watch a very long (almost deliberately long) scene of them failing to revive him and calling his time of death.

I mean, Alex Murphy is dead. Robocop is essentially Frankenstein’s monster, but he’s a dead man’s brain inside of a robotic body, brought back to life to be a corporate slave. The movie pretty much follows this man as he dies, is reborn with exceptional power, searches for himself and finally accepts what he is and his purpose. The movie ends abruptly when Robocop reclaims his name.

It’s weird, because it’s almost a ghost story.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting and worth exploring sometime.

But not tonight. And probably not any time soon.

Another thing I discovered while watching Robocop tonight is that, aside from a few glaring special effects issues, Robocop is, in my opinion, just about a perfect movie.

For me at least. It’s got almost everything I look for in a movie. It’s got an obscene amount of violence. It’s got interesting character on a quest of self discovery. It’s got an obscene amount of violence. It’s got a badass villain. It’s explains WHY things happen. Even ridiculous things have a reasonable explanation. It’s got religious metaphors and symbolism. It’s got an obscene amount of violence. It’s even got a boob or two (it wouldn’t be a Paul Verhoeven movie without boobs SOMEWHERE… it took some hunting, but I found em.

) The characters have clearly defined and realistic motives. I don’t know. It’s just… awesome. Oh, and it’s got an obscene amount of violence.

It’s just really unfortunate that those glaring special effects issues are SO glaring. It’s a damned shame really. I almost wish that Verhoeven was able to pull a Lucas and go back and do a "Special edition" version of Robocop. Go in with a computer and do a little dicker dicker doo and magically fix some of those ugly bits.

Like, for instance, this: 

The old "bottle rocket on a string" missile trick. It’s a bit Ed Wood I think.

This one bothered me the most though…

One of the things that really sold me on the awesomeness of Robocop was being able to suspend disbelief regarding the robotic nature of his body. But this… it’s bad… And it’s not like it’s a quick shot that I had to freeze frame… it goes on for a while and I don’t know why someone didn’t say something and fix it. I hope it wasn’t just an issue of laziness.

I mean, this is a shot a couple minutes later… and it’s a different angle… but the problem is still there.

I have to think that someone said something at some point because eventually it looks like they slapped a piece of rubber under his arm, but even then it still looks bad.

I don’t mean to sound nitpicky… it’s just that if I were directing that movie, I wouldn’t have let something like that slide.

Either way, it’s a small mark on an otherwise pristine production.

I’m gonna stop talking about Robocop pretty soon, because, really, I don’t want to turn this into the Robocop fan blog.

The last few things I’m gonna say real quick are the following:

#1. When I talk about how awesome Robocop is, I’m strictly talking about the first movie. The second movie was bullshit and I didn’t even bother with the third or the TV show or the cartoon or the comics or any of that crap. All I’m really interested in is the first movie. That’s enough for me.

#2. It really could have used a little more boobs. I would have put a couple more in there.

#3. Kurtwood Smith was the fucking MAN.

It’s a shame that he’s primarily known for That 70s Show, because he’s SO much better than that. Nobody else could walk into a stranger’s house and say "Bitches, leave." then the bitches get up and fucking LEAVE. That’s badasstitude if I’ve ever seen it.

#4. The proposed "remake". I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I remember hearing talk of a remake of Robocop. I hope it’s not true, mostly because there’s pretty much only two people I would ever trust to do it justice… Paul Verhoeven and myself. That’s it. I don’t think anyone else can truly know exactly what I would need in a remake of this movie… and really, that’s all that matters. What I need.

Now I say goodnight and probably finish talking about Robocop for a while.

PS:

Last but not to be the least, I should say, for anyone who worries about the ethics of my downloading one of my favorite movies, that I’m currently the high bidder on the Robocop Criterion Collection DVD. So there.

Since I’ve been on that stop-smoking medication, my sleep has been troubled to say the least. I’m getting concerned about becoming dependant on sleeping medication, as my dosage has been going steadily upwards as I’ve become more and more immune.

Either way, my point is that I spend a lot of time laying in bed thinking about random shit.

The other night, the shit I was thinking about was one of my favorite action movies, Robocop.

Robocop is probably my favorite comic book movie, which is weird considering that Robocop wasn’t a comic book character until after the movie came out. But he was a super hero kind of character in a super hero kind of setting. As far as I’m concerned, Robocop set the bar for comic book style movies for adults. Paul Verhoeven did a phenomenal job of merging comic book sensibilities with America’s media bloodlust (as well as his own need to keep telling the story of Christ over and over and over again) and created a beautifully violent and exciting satire.

But this isn’t meant to be a review of Robocop or a dissection of it’s various symbolism and social commentary.

What I was thinking about the other night as midnight became one and one became two, was the scene where we’re first introduced to Robocop. There’s a long POV (point of view) shot, where Robocop is (apparently) sitting and simply staring ahead while people mill around him and talk. It’s before he’s officially unveiled and they’re still working on putting on the final touches.

Anyway, in that scene two people (Miguel Fuhrer and someone else) are talking about that they might be able to save either one of his arms or one of his legs and they decide to scrap it, presumably giving Robocop entirely robotic arms and legs. Considering that notion got me thinking… why did they keep his face? I mean, if his arms and legs aren’t worth saving, surely his face is useless.

I asked a coworker the other day what his opinion on it was and he suggested that it was a human relations issue. That people would feel more comfortable dealing with something that at least kind of looked human. I can see the merit in this, but I wonder if it wouldn’t make more sense to simply make him a new face rather than using the relatively useless original skin. I mean, he’s constantly being shot at and his metal body reflects the bullets no problem, but if he were to get shot in the face, I imagine that his mug would get pretty quickly destroyed. Granted, it hasn’t yet over the course of the three movies and various TV and comic book outings, but, you know, it seems like it would.

This thought leads into wondering exactly how much of him is a machine and what isn’t.

Clearly his brain is human. That’s the whole point of Robocop, that he’s a machine with a man’s brain and ability to reason and apply morals and ethics. That’s what differentiates him from the entirely robotic (and entirely badass) ED209.

So if he’s got a human brain and a human face, does he have other human organs? Does he have a human heart to pump blood and oxygenate his human brain? For that matter, does he have human blood at all or does he have some sort of other process for bringing oxygen to his brain? Does he have lungs? Does he breath at all?

I have to assume that if he’s got a human brain he’s got to have some kind of blood, even if it’s synthetic, and if he’s got blood then he’s got some kind of heart, even if it’s a pneumatic pump somewhere. Presumably he’s got a digestive system because he eats. But he eats baby food, so that would imply that his guts are not entirely normal. And is the function of his eating the same as other living creatures? Does he eat to give his "body" nutrients and energy? Is it to sustain only his fleshy parts or does it also fuel his robotic parts? I have to assume that the food wouldn’t be enough to power all of the electronics and motors in his body. I then have to assume that he needs other power sources beyond just the food. They had scenes of him "sleeping" where he’s just sitting, plugged into machines at the police station. I guess that’s him powering up.

Does he eat through his mouth? Or breath through his nose? Does he expel his waste through his Robobutt? Does he have to take big Robodumps on the Robotoilet?

I bet if he does, I bet that visor comes in handy. You wouldn’t have to bring a book or the latest issue of Mad Magazine. You could just surf the web with your eyes.

But anyway…

Powering up…

So does that mean that if he were to become stuck somewhere for an extended amount of time he’d eventually run out of power and just fall over dead? Would he actually die or would he just power off and hibernate? If he powers off for an extended amount of time does his brain then die? It seems like it wouldn’t take long to kill him if you can turn him off.

Also, it would seem that at least part of his brain is computerized. He’s able to cross reference things that are presumably in some sort of computer memory (such as criminal records, recordings of things he’s seen and heard) as well as functional processes like his targeting tracking system and the usage of his prime directives and the way they apply to and limit his actions.

Then there’s the issue of his eyes. We know that Robocop’s visor acts as a kind of semi transparent computer screen that feeds him information and instructions. We also know that the target tracking system uses his actual eyes rather than his visor, because of the scene where Nancy Allen has to help him reset his targeting by shooting bottles of baby food, and he had his visor off in that scene.

It seems to be that it would make more sense to replace his eyes with some kind of camera or lenses. There’s no comparing the functionality of mechanical eyes over human eyes. Hell, in the grand scheme of the animal kingdom, our eyes are pretty friggin weak, along with most of our other senses.

Or maybe they aren’t his original eyes. Maybe they are cameras that just look like eyes. I’m thinking that might be the case, because he’s able to switch to inferred vision and able to zoom in on targets and things.

What about his voice? His voice sounds mechanized, but it’s also still Peter Weller’s voice. That would imply that they’re still using his original throat and vocal chords at some point in the process, which would then imply that he IS breathing, or at least pushing air past his voice box. I can’t imagine that they would keep a  whole lot of flesh that they didn’t actually need. Would they really keep his throat and vocal chords but throw out an arm or a leg? And why does his voice sound like a robotic version of Peter Weller’s voice? I have to assume that they didn’t have any particular attachment to Officer Murphy’s original voice (Murphy being Robocop before he was a cyborg btw) because they seemed to not want people to associate Robocop with Murphy. They erased his memory (or tried to) and presumably told his family that he was dead, because they had a funeral for him and his family moved away.

If they kept his face to humanize him, then it does make sense that they would want his voice to be at least passably human, and it kind of is. But why use his original voice? It seems like it would be much easier to stick a speaker in his mouth and pick any random voice and let him use that to talk.

For that matter, it seems like it would be incredibly difficult to try and coordinate his vocal chords and breathing and intention to speak with his tongue and lips and teeth (which are also, presumably, original) when they could just synthesize his voice entirely.

But then again, maybe the thought was that people would accept Robocop as an authority figure as well as a "person" if they can actually see him talking in a relatively human voice with a human mouth.

I don’t know. I’m just throwing around ideas.

Obviously, debating the intentions of people who don’t actually exist and who didn’t actually build a cyborg police officer is absolutely ridiculous and completely geeky and pathetic, but these are the things I think about at three in the morning when I can’t sleep. These are also the things I think about when I write my own stories and scripts and things. It’s important (to me at least) to answer these kinds of questions, as I imagine the person who wrote the screenplay for Robocop answered these kinds of questions (after asking himself, probably at three in the morning) trying to justify choices that need to be made for the sake of the film’s production. I know that the actual reason they kept his face while discarding his arms and legs is because it would be incredibly rude to the actor playing Robocop to cover his face as well as his body, asking him to go without the most important tool in his acting arsenal. Not to mention that it would be difficult to relate or empathize with Robocop as a character if he looks like C3PO or The Terminator’s robotic skeleton.

Regardless, I’m glad they kept his face. Peter Weller was brilliant as Officer Murphy slash Robocop. It was his performance, both as the wooden (Pinocchio even) and almost mindless corporate tool that was Robocop before his "awaking" as well as the almost human Robocop that he becomes by the end of the film. Without Weller’s haunted and troubled eyes, removing that helmet wouldn’t have meant nearly as much.

All of that being said, check this out:

About five years ago I watched a movie called Audition. It was directed by controversial Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. I’d seen only one of his movies previously, the ultra violent Ichi the Killer.

Ichi the Killer made an impression on me, though I don’t know if it was necessarily a good impression. It was just an impression. I finished that movie thinking "well… that was different" and that was about it.

This was relatively early in my exploration of various forms of Asian cinema. Being something of a horror fan, but not overly experienced with "foreign films" it seemed like the obvious place to start.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve come all that far in expanding my library. I’ve watched many of the staples. The obvious shit like the Ring movies and Ju-On movies and Suicide Club and Battle Royale and The Eye and Old Boy and Lady Vengeance. Other stuff too, but my point is that I stick fairly close to the surface. I’m far from knowledgeable on the subject.

I do know what I like and what I don’t like.

I know that I’m burned out on Japanese ghosts. Specifically, ghosts of chicks with their hair hanging in their face and who move like they exist only in stop motion photography.

I also know that I’ll still watch all those Japanese ghost movies because they scare the ever loving shit out of me.

I’ve seen a few Miike movies. Ichi the Killer, it turns out, was the silliest of his movies that I’ve seen so far. Audition kind of stands at the other end of the spectrum.

The first time I watched Audition (again, about five years ago) I enjoyed it a bit, but honestly found it kind of boring. I guess I was geared up for another awesome splatter fest and wasn’t expecting what I got, which was essentially a drama.

Also, I should note, I was somewhat baked at the time, which may help explain my displeasure at the lack of visual stimulation. I sat there going "BORING! SOMEONE KILL SOMETHING!" because nothing was really happening.

I watched it again last night, sober this time. I felt the urge to watch a movie but, because it was one in the morning, I knew it had to be something I could watch with the volume fairly low. So I browsed through my foreign movies, knowing that the subtitles would allow me to keep the noise to a minimum, and settled on Audition. I picked it up used at Blockbuster for six bucks a while back and had been planning on watching it again.

I’m sure glad I did.

I didn’t fully appreciate how this movie worked the first time through. I think I was half expecting the boombastic gore festival that was Ichi, and didn’t really know what to do with it.

Audition is essentially a drama about a lonely guy trying to fill the hole left in his life by the death of his wife. It’s notorious for it’s gory and disturbing imagery, but this is pretty small aspect of the over all movie.

It centers around a guy named Aoyama, a middle aged guy trying to get his life together. His wife died from an unnamed illness seven years earlier and he lives along with his teenaged son.

A movie producer friend of his comes up with a plan. He advertises an audition for a fictitious acting role, which brings in hundreds of resumes for attractive women, all ready to line up and meet Aoyama. They hold the audition and interview the women, asking personal questions that would reveal various flaws and highlight interesting aspects of each woman.

Aoyama becomes entranced by a woman by the name of Asami, who comes across as kind of strange but cute in a weird girl sort of way. He calls her up and they have dinner and the movie starts rolling.

The next hour or so is spent showing Aoyama struggling with the morality of manipulating this woman by implying that there was a role to be won. He eventually tells her that the financing on the movie fell through and that it won’t be made, but that he’d still like to keep seeing her. By this point he’s totally in love with her.

His movie producer friend comes in and is like "dude, this chick is loco" and, of course, Aoyama blows him off.

Weird shit starts to happen and yada yada yada, big climactic gory ending.

I don’t want to tell anymore, because if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s one of those things you should really go into fresh.

What I missed the first time around was the incredible build up. The ending is so shocking and disturbing because the entire film has built up to it. It’s not a roller coaster. It’s more like a free-fall ride. You spend the majority of the ride sitting in the car, listening to the track click click click as it drags you up and up and up and when the drop finally happens, you’re so tense from the ride up that it’s that much more intense.

Weird shit happens all through the movie. There’s a section where Aoyama has decided not to call her anymore and wait to see if she calls him. I believe it went on for two weeks. When he finally does call her, we see that she’s just sitting on her knees on the floor of her apartment, staring absently at the phone, a mysterious bag of something sitting off in the distance. The phone rings and she smiles ominously.

It’s creepy as shit.

There’s another scene where Aoyama is trying to track Asami down and he finds this dude with his feet sewn into these wooden planks and some kind of weird stitching thing going on with his shins that I can’t entirely explain. It’s only on screen for maybe two seconds but it’s enough to tweak your mind.

Where as Ichi the Killer was a bombardment whose philosophy seemed to be "show EVERYTHING" Audition is pretty much the polar opposite. The horror in Audition is almost entirely in it’s tone and the performances of the actors. Specifically, of Eihi Shiina, who plays Asami. She’s someone you somehow fall in love with even though you KNOW she’s completely insane. And you, like Aoyama, are punished for it.

I think what really drives the horror home is that the tone of the majority of the movie is very uncomfortable. The movie is centered around this bullshit audition that these two guys hold. It feels creepy and lecherous. Watching the movie, you’re sympathetic towards Aoyama, but at the same time, you also kind of feel like he crossed a line by participating in the scheme. It’s exploitative and he’s using these women. Just as he is ultimately used.

Naturally, the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime. But, when does it ever, really?

Also, in contrast to Ichi the Killer (which I’m just using as an example of an entirely different sort of style by the same director) much of the gore is off screen. Sure, there are some pretty gory shots. But they only linger long enough for you to say "is that what I think it is?" and then it’s gone.

What makes it disturbing and hard to watch is everything around the gore. There’s a part where Asami is pushing acupuncture needles into a man’s chest, stomach and eyes. You don’t see much of the actual penitration of these needles. What you see is her face, smiling, almost giggling, as she’s slowly sliding them in. She says something that sounds like "kitty kitty kitty" which is a quite pretty and somehow musical thing for her to say, and which translates (according to the subtitles on my DVD) to "deeper, deeper, deeper". It’s both cute and terrifying at the same time.

While it’s hard to really even classify Audition as a horror movie, it’s hard to find anywhere else it fits. It’s like a drama/horror movie. The majority of the movie is an exploration of guilt and loneliness. It’s just that ending that really pushes it into horror territory. But that the rest of the film is essentially build up to that horror ending almost makes the entire thing a horror movie.

I don’t know. I suppose it’s beyond classification, and that’s okay too. It is what it is. And what it is is awesome.