A Knight to remember?

PREVIEW REVIEW: By the pricking of Christopher Nolan's thumbs ...

LINKS: Watch the official teaser for The Dark Knight Rises; Daily Herald reviews of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

Yo, A-S: This "Cherry Burst" business isn't fooling anyone.

Nobody drinks Alka-Seltzer for the flavor. Nobody drinks it at all, really. You take Alka-Seltzer by dissolving it in water and, yes, pouring that water down your throat, but that's just ingestion. The way I see it, when you actually drink something — whether it's a glass of lemonade after mowing the lawn, or a Big Gulp of your favorite soda at the movie theater — the act of drinking itself is pleasurable. My point is that I've never seen Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, but I know that almost everyone who did see it hated it. And that's why I tend to think that people get confused in their estimation of Batman Begins, the film with which writer and director Christopher Nolan assumed the Batmantle. For everyone whose innards were aflame with the heartburn of Batman & Robin, Batman Begins was a hearty swig of Alka-Seltzer. Soothing. Calming. Healing. But a great movie? Come on.

For starters, the screenplay was only co-written by Nolan, with David S. Goyer, from a story by Goyer. Goyer's left his mark on the good, the bad and the ugly of cinema, but when he's bad, he's really bad. You had an uninspired performance of a weak central villain, a stilted revisitation of the death of Batman's parents, and probably the most problematic action direction Nolan has ever done. Batman Begins isn't terrible, but at its best, it's boilerplate. Perfectly adequate if what you need is some sweet relief from the awful taste of Batman & Robin, but hardly a bold reinvention of a worn-thin franchise. Nolan had a better idea of what he wanted to do with The Dark Knight, got a world-class performance from Heath Ledger, didn't waste any time on backstory, and basically delivered a superhero movie grand slam.

So which Nolan is coming to the plate for The Dark Knight Rises next summer? Now that we've been given our first real indication of what's to come, I think it's safe to say that there's another home run in the works. The teaser is essentially a conversation between Batman, who's off camera, and Commissioner Gordon, who looks like he's either recuperating from an Adam Sandler movie marathon, or just got hit by a truck. Gary Oldman has been aces as Gordon from the start, so it's fitting to have him lead us into the next chapter in the story. There's a brief glimpse of Tom Hardy as Bane, once from the front, and a second time from behind. The rear-angle view,  with a wobbly Batman in the foregound while Bane comes to get him, rising up to fill the entire frame, is sheer brilliance. Bane is slightly out of focus, but his movement is direct and purposeful. I'm going to break that Bat-guy in half. It's a mesmerizing and mesmerizingly simple cut. The effect is to leave you almost more worried for Batman than for Gordon, who's only on life support in a hospital bed. There's a lot of opinion from fans of the comic books that Bane is a minor Batman villain, but this teaser definitely gives him some punch.

There's already a ridiculous roster of talent in the mix, with Oldman and Bale backed up by Morgan Freeman (Batman's tech guru) and Michael Caine (Alfred the butler), but The Dark Knight Rises is certainly raising the bar on casting. Hardy is one of three actors to come over from Nolan's Inception — the director also found room for Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and all three are strong performers. To say nothing of the fact that just about anything that got borrowed from Inception would be fine by me. The casting question mark, and it's a big one, is Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Do we really even need Catwoman? I admit that I'm intrigued to see what the more serious-minded Nolan has in store for a character who's always been more goofy than grim. But if you're going to go there, why make her a second-class citizen? She's obviously not the lead villain. And I'd guess that Cotillard is the clear successor to Katie Holmes (from Batman Begins) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight), so Catwoman isn't even Batman's main squeeze here. It's nothing against the inarguably gifted Hathaway, but the whole thing just feels extraneous. I'd be just as happy to see as much of Catwoman in the movie as there is of her in the teaser. That is to say, nothing at all. Less is more, Mr. Nolan.

Lost weekend

THAT AND MY TWO CENTS WILL GET YOU: This is all there is?

LINKS: The world's best Boss; a movie with Kevin James that's a whole lot worse than Zookeeper

Crack open a bottle of Heinz, folks, it's a ketchup weekend at your local multiplex. There are a lot of movies that get released during the summer season, and it's tough to keep track of them all. If you missed seeing Super 8 or Kung Fu Panda 2, or even Thor or X-Men: First Class, then this is your big chance to catch up. (See what I did there?) If you haven't gotten around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides or Cars 2, eh, read a book or mow the lawn. And if you haven't gotten around to seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon, um, take all of the four-fifths empty bottles of (wait for it) ketchup out of the fridge, stand them upside down and see which one drains all the way to the top of the bottle first. I promise you'll be much more entertained than if you wind up languishing in a darkened auditorium with Optimus Prime and the fellas, wondering whether your brain cells are dying faster than they would if you were stuck above 26,000 feet on Mt. Everest.

Summer is traditionally Hollywood's golden goose, so who knows how it happens, but once in a while you get a prime weekend in the middle of June of July when there's just nothing new that's worth anyone's moviegoing dollar. This weekend, we've got Horrible Bosses and Zookeeper. No, really, that's it. I checked. Anyone remember the scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack winds up in the back of a garbage truck that's passing a couple of tree trimmers? One of them says to the other, "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that." What gives, movie studios? I say it's a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good weekend in July.

Horrible Bosses looks bad in a garden-variety sort of way. Three dudes have rotten managers at work and decide that the only way of making their office hours bearable is to kill the jerks lording it over them. Ho, ho. The movie's rep is that it's the latest film to equate boundary-breaking vulgarity, crudity, obsenity, etc., with humor, which means that it's merely the next in a very long line of films to go for the gross-out gold. There's a scene, for example, involving Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd — an entirely respectable sort whose performance in the excellent historical drama Amazing Grace is absolutely worth digging up on DVD — that's basically a joke about how his character makes a living by getting paid to urinate on people. Don't you sometimes wish that you hadn't lived to see the all-bets-are-off, anything-goes era of movie comedy?

As for Zookeeper, well, Kevin James is fat, which is always good for a laugh, and he plays a guy at a zoo who discovers that he can talk to the animals, which is like throwing a bucket of water on the comedy flame. A "bucket of gasoline" is what some of you are thinking that I meant to say. Trust me, I've had plenty of experience not laughing at live-action films where a doofus interacts with all creatures great and small. Maybe there's some catsup in the fridge.

Dwarves ahoy!

GET A LOAD OF THIS: First-look photos from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

LINKS: Follow The Hobbit on Facebook; watch the first teaser trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

If there's one thing that we know about hobbits, it's that they don't really kick a lot of (butt), you know? If you need someone to host an unexpected party, or crave a basket of mushrooms, or check out an awesome map with secret writing, or live in a hole in the ground (though not a nasty, dirty wet hole, or a dry, bare, sandy hole), then a hobbit is probably pretty close to the top of the list. A hobbit would never miss a nuncheon, but he probably couldn't make heads or tails of a truncheon. Hey, hobbits are lovers, not fighters. So it's no surprise, really, that Peter Jackson's "get the word out" approach to his two-film adaptation of The Hobbit is light on Bilbo Baggins — who's only, like, the guy in the title of movie — and heavy on dudes who look like they're ready to cleave some orcs in two, ideally in a rainstorm and preferably with lots of seething CGI hordes in the rear of the frame. Hey, world, there's a bunch of awesome battles in this one, too. I mean, only one, really, and it's way at the end of the second movie. And, technically, it doesn't have any oliphaunt-surfing, dwarf-tossing, or Nazgul-baiting. It's going to be rad, though.

OK, fine the dwarves are important to the movie. Only a couple of them get a lot of face time in Tolkien's book, but Thorin has a strong character arc and his companions as a collective presence are essential to Bilbo's growth. Let's have a look at the gang. That's Thorin up above, by the way:

L-R: Nori, Ori and Dori

L-R: Oin and Gloin

L-R: Fili and Kili

L-R: Bombur, Bofur and Bifur

L-R: Balin and Dwalin

I dig most of the costume and makeup work that's been done here. I never really pictured Dwalin as being the heavily tattooed, Conan-sized, war-hammer-wielding enforcer of the bunch, but I wouldn't get between him and his morning coffee, or whatever dwarves use to snap out of that 5 a.m. haze. All of the armor and gear of war, much as it panders to a certain segment of Jackson's Lord of the Rings viewership, does at least seem appropriate to the mission the Dirty Dwarvish (Baker's) Dozen has appointed itself. You don't set off intending to mess with a treasure-hoarding dragon in your feast day frock and lace-trimmed knickers. The hairstyles are fun, too, even though Bifur could probably use a trim and Fili and Kili are maybe a bit too ready for a starring role in a shampoo commercial. And Nori maybe gets some help from Dori and Ori rockin' the old starfish 'do every morning? (Do dwarves take along their scissors, combs and hairpins when they go on a quest?) The posed, GQ magazine look of the whole thing suggests that sets and locations aren't in the mix yet. Or maybe those are greenscreens (grayscreens?) and the Middle-earth environs will be added in post. There's still plenty of time to fix and fiddle with things before Christmas 2012 ... at least as long as the ancient Mayans were wrong about this.

French Kiss-off

PREVIEW REVIEW: The Three Musketeers for Dummies — or is that Dumas-es?

LINKS: See for yourself: Fireballs, zeppelins and Orlando Bloom with big hair (Note: Trailer 1 is silly, but this post draws on the more richly ridiculous Trailer 2)

What was my first clue that The Three Musketeers by Paul W.S. Anderson is going to (intake) like a Hoover after it comes swashbuckling into theaters Oct. 21? To be honest, if I'd known that the movie had anything to do with our good buddy Weak Sauce before seeing its ridiculous trailer, then I'd probably have gone in expecting to see about what I got. Instead, I just saw the title and poster art before clicking the link. A new 'Three Musketeers,' eh? Could be fun. So then there's some urgent orchestral stuff with VO by British actor Matthew Macfadyen, who could totally have been a Deep Voice Trailer Guy if the acting thing hadn't panned out. Anyway, the camera swoops over a palace courtyard with uniformed soldiers, which looks a little generic, but so far, so good. And then there's the second shot of anything at all, at the 12-second mark, which is a ninja warrior rising up from some sort of river or lake (turns out it's a river, probably the Seine) and — wait, wait, wait. Huh? A ninja? Does France have ninjas? Did the producers hire a real life ninja, maybe, who just forgot to go to wardrobe before filming the scene where he takes a dip in the river? Maybe it's a guy who got lost and wandered over from the set of the Jackie Chan movie on Lot B? No such luck. It's a for reals ninja, in a Three Musketeers movie, who promptly takes out a couple of guards with his wicked awesome ninja warrior gun/umbrella/crossbow thingies, and aaaaall righteee then.

I mean, suppose that Alexandre Dumas was alive today. Would he even take a royalty check for this kind of nonsense? There are literally dozens of movie versions of The Three Musketeers already, so I suppose, as a filmmaker, you only sign up for something like this if there's some sort of agreement in place that you can do you own "thing" — whatever that may be — with the material. Wimp Sack's "thing" is apparently to make everything more gnarly and video game-ish. One of the credited screenwriters is Alex Litvak of Predators (no other screenwriting credits), so no surprise that the trailer is packed with numbskull-level mumbo-jumbo like when Macfadyen (who plays mopey Athos) blathers that, "We're warriors. It's who we are. It's what we do." (Wait, wait, didn't you already cover both of those points? Like, two seconds ago? If I were a dentist and someone asked about my job, would I ever say, "I'm a dentist. It's who I am. It's what I do.") The other screenwriter, however, is Andrew Davies, who only wrote the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, for the love of William Goldman. See here, Mr. Davies, what are you even doing within 1,000 feet of a movie where Orlando Bloom (as the Duke of Buckingham) actually says, "My war machines will readdress the balance." Oh, will they, Bucky Boy? Is that because somebody sent the balance to Charing Cross Road when it should have gone to Chatterly Court? (I believe the word you're looking for is "redress," your grace.)

Some of you who've read the novel are trying to remember when Buckingham ever had or used any "war machines." The trailer clears that up with shots of zeppelins gliding above gay Pah-ree. And not just any zeppelins, mind you: These are hot lead zeppelins. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Each airship is fully equipped with cannons and heavy ordnance. OK, so I can roll with a steampunk Three Musketeers. And it's great to see that good ol' Orlie is still getting work now that he's all done making Pirates of the Caribbean movies. On the other hand, how is he not murdering his agent that he got cast in The Three Musketeers and he's not a musketeer?! Did it not even occur to him to say, "I am freaking Orlando Bloom. I'm d'Artagnan, or I'm not in the movie." Or maybe he defers to the kid, the American, the can't-believe-my-luck Logan Lerman for d'Artagnan, but doesn't he then insist on being Athos, the meatiest of the musketeers? Even Oliver Platt got to be Porthos in that Disney thing from a few years back. Milla Jovovich is married to the director, so no suprise that she gets to be Milady de Winter. And Christoph Waltz probably nabbed Richelieu when was he was still white hot from Inglourious Basterds. But even if Macwhatshispants gets Athos, who are Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans that they get to be musketeers and FREAKING. LEGOLAS. has to be Buckingham?!!

Actually, Stevenson (the salt-and-pepper bruiser who plays Porthos) is kind of fun in the trailer. And Evans, as Aramis, looks like he could be the next, um, Orlando Bloom. Lerman has better hair for his role (d'Artagnan) than Chris O'Donnell did back in the Disney thing, and that's about the scope of the difference between them, as far as I can tell. (Lerman certainly wasn't picked for his riveting delivery.) What's with getting all these American pretty boys to play d'Artagnan anyway? Come on French people, stand up for yourselves. Your four musketeers are three Brits and a Yank. Isn't that even more insulting than when Disney used four Yanks? People with accents got three of the four main roles, and none of them is any more French than French toast or French fries. The rest of my gripes about the trailer are that it's heavy on the phony-baloney action crap that's in everything these days. Milady does the swan dive from the skyscrape — ah, palace roof move, and then tops it with the old "slide beneath the crossfire while ducking bullets with my face" maneuver. d'Artagnan hangs onto a swinging rope with one arm and sword battles with the other. Athos torches some bad guys with a flamethrower. A gorilla leaps off the Golden Gate Bridge and takes down a helipcopter. Streeeee-etch. Yaaaawn. Does anybody else hear those crickets? The money shot? d'Artagnan makes one of those sprinting, straining, hurtling leaps to escape an expanding fireball. Uh-huh. Macfadyen seems almost to be hinting at something when he puts the ol' "Hasta la vista, baby" growl into a moment where Athos says, "Round two." Settle down, champ. You gotta sell me on round one before we can talk sequel.

Full Moon fever

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Transformers: Dark of the Moon

LINKS: Daily Herald reviews of TF 1.0, TF 2.0 and TF 3.0

So, yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of these Transformers things — let's not sully the word "movies" by referring to them as such — that keep showing up, like a magazine that you never subscribed to that somehow sneaks into the mailbox every month with your name on the mailing label. It seems obvious to me that these, um, things are worthless — and I apologize for sullying the word "worthless" by referring to them as such. And yet, among the sizeable contingent of people who appear to admire them are a surprising number of actors who really should have better things to do with their precious time. Dark of the Moon brings Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Alan Tudyk and (the horror!) Leonard Nimoy into the fold, while continuing to cling to John Turturro like a toilet paper streamer stuck to the heel of his shoe. Although maybe Turturro should be written off at this point: "I am beneath the enemy scrotum" (from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) isn't even the most demeaning thing he's ever managed to make himself say in a movie. (Anyone know what Turturro utterance holds the booby prize?) Some directors are like the Sun, imparting life-sustaining energy to the careers of almost every actor they work with. Michael Bay, to extend the metaphor, is like the back-porch light bulb, or maybe even the bug zapper at the corner of the back deck. A new 'Transformers' (thing) eh? Maybe I should have my agent get me the script. I've heard those (things) are popular. Could be good for my caree — BZZZT!! Other observations:

(Un)Fox-y lady: Congratulations, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, you're an actor now. The former Victoria's Secret "angel" inherited the role of Mr. LaBeouf's Cheesecake from Megan Fox after Fox allegedly wore out her welcome by being "difficult" while working on the first two films. Ms. Huntington-Whiteley's first appearance, in the first frame of Dark of the Moon to follow its cheesy prologue, lets you know more or less exactly where Bay stands on the bothersome issue of needing to have women in his movies. If they're conventionally attractive women, then he stands wherever he must to get a creepily lusting "money shot" that will fire up the Internets after the fanboys have a peep. Somewhat amusingly, in most of the frames in the movie where Huntington-Whiteley stands within arm's length of LaBeouf, she appears to loom over him. They're actually the same height ... but Huntington-Whiteley is wearing four-inch heels in every scene.

A most un-Spock-tacular anomaly: I mean, it's not as though William Shatner hasn't occasionally collected a paycheck. (Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous?! Oh Captain, my Captain ... ) And at least Leonard Nimoy had the good sense to not actually show his face in Dark of the Moon. On the other hand, there's no mistaking the, ahem, fascinating vocal register of "Sentinel Prime," the Autobot who turns up on the Moon. Nimoy is 80, so it's at least possible that he didn't entirely realize where he was, or what he was doing.

Get me to the MacGuffin on time: Dark of the Moon is no different from other (things) of its ilk in that there's a tipping point in the big climactic battle that wraps everything up: Once Thing X is accomplished, the fate of humanity will be sealed. It's up to the good guys to prevent Thing X and save the world, but they have to be careful not to do it too soon, or the audience won't be in suspense about the outcome. The reality is that audiences haven't had a moment's doubt of the outcome since sometime back before the Great Depression, but movies still insist on the waiting game. The sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest is loaded with great moments, but one of the best involves Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver shutting down a self-destruct mechanism on their spaceship moments before it can blow everyone to Kingdom Come. They finish all of the steps to shut it off with about 15 seconds to go, but the countdown to detonation doesn't actually stop until it gets to 00:01. The joke is that the ship they're aboard was designed by an alien race that patterned its entire function after their observations of a Star Trek-like TV show that originated on Earth. Weaver's character gets it first: "It always stops at one on the show." On that show and every other one remotely like it, really.

It was in the paper

NO, I GET PAID TO DO THIS: Is there anybody alive out there? (This is Radio Nowhere ... )

LINKS: That thing I wrote about the one movie that everyone was talking about

So have you ever noticed about certain professions that the people who work in them don't always seem to be that engaged, when they're not at the office, by the thing that they do for a living? I'm not sure what this would be like outside of the journalism world. Maybe it would be like if I managed a Taco Bell and served burritos and chalupas and nachos to people all day long, but never ate any of that stuff myself, or even thought about it, really. Or let's imagine that I worked in a salon, doing hundreds of cuts and styles every week, but never paid attention to my own hair or beard beyond washing them. Maybe I'd even go to work with a paper bag over my head. Suppose that I got a job as librarian, checking books out to patrons, sorting books, shelving them, etc., but never actually read a book, or even used one to prop up the sofa with the missing leg.

The dirty little secret for at least some people who work in the newspaper industry is that we don't ever actually, you know, read the paper. I'm a little more active about flipping through the Web site. Mostly, though, I get my news by listening to the radio while I exercise, or hitting a few key stops around the Internet after hours. Maybe if I could put the Daily Herald on my Sansa and listen to someone read it aloud while I jog to the gym ... eh, even that might not cut it. To be honest, I don't even think about the newspaper all that much. (I do have a current subscription, but that's just so that my wife can get the coupons.) And I know that I'm not the only one because of a funny little thing that happens every so often at work.

Picture me sitting at my desk, minding my own business, maybe watching the new trailer for Captain Ameri — er, reviewing my interview notes for my next feature story. A co-worker comes up and lounges on the partition behind my iMac. We'll pretend her name is Janet. (Maybe we'll even pretend that Janet is a she. Don't you wish you knew?) Janet: "So, Cody, what did you think about The King's Speech?" Me: "It was great. Did you read my review?" Janet: "No. When did you review it?" Me: "It was in the paper. It was in January, when the movie came out. Do you read the paper, Janet?" (I was teasing when I said this — it's OK. Janet's a good sport. We can tease about stuff.) Janet: "So you liked it?" Me: "Yes, I liked it. Colin Firth is excellent. I put in my Top 10 Movies of the Year that I do every year in December. That was in the paper, too, Janet." Janet: "Well I don't read the paper."

And what can I say about that, really? I mean, I want you to read the newspaper. Of course I do. I guess if you don't, however, then we can still be friends. I mean, we probably won't hang out. Don't feel bad if I never show up for poker night. If you want to, though, you can ask me whether I liked that one movie. I promise not to snark at you. Mostly.

Striking sparks with Parks

SOMETIMES I WATCH TV: Are you watching the best comedy on television?

LINKS: I repeat — are you watching the best comedy on television?

I never watch TV on our television. We don't have cable and we can't get a decent digital signal — it's a mystery; our house is apparently in the Twilight Zone, or at least in the No Digital Reception Zone — but, more to the point, it's 2011. Watching TV on your television is practically barbaric in this day and age. I mean, we're not apes here. Sheesh. We watch TV online. Fewer commercials + DVR technology (pause, fast-forward, rewind) without buying a DVR = T(ir)V(ana). You don't have as many options, but I see that as a perk. TV programming is mostly white noise anyway. My point, in all of this, is that I have discovered what is literally — literally — the best show on television. (Once we're done pretending that Friday Night Lights is still on television, at any rate.) I give you ... Parks and Recreation.

I found out about the show from my wife when we were looking for something to watch on Netflix a couple of months back. We don't pay for Netflix every month, but we'd forgotten to renew the "hold" on our account and, rather than fight the charge, we decided to just enjoy a month of Netflix. So we watched the first season of Parks and Recreation together. (And then the second. And then we had to switch to Hulu for the third.) There's great stuff in the first season, but the show isn't quite fully formed. The basic blueprint is The Office meets middle-American city government, and first-season Parks and Recreation tries a bit too hard to make its lead character, Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler), "Michael Scott-esque." Even in the beginning, however, you can tell that the show is different.

For one thing, half-hour TV sitcoms tend to, not to put too fine a point on it, (exert a Hoover-like pull on the universe). That's right, they (exert a Hoover-like pull on the universe). Most of them, anyway. So just by not (exerting a Hoover-like pull on the universe), Parks and Recreation is something of a minor miracle. More than just not (you get it), however, Parks and Recreation is actually articulate, clever and character-driven. (Almost all of the time: The usual showbiz biology that teaches that humor cannot exist independent of sex is in force here, but to a refreshingly lesser degree than is elsewhere the norm.) The show began as a replacement, so the first season only has six episodes. The second season got a "Now that's more like it" full order of 24 episodes. The recently-conluded third season: 16.

The show did get renewed, but the chopped-down third season is a red flag. We know, we know, TV writers think this show is awesome and there's a loyal core audience. Fine. Here's some more episodes. The ratings aren't great, though, so get us some Emmys, or else. If  Parks and Recreation gets canceled, then I may lose faith in television altogether. Leslie Knope is a great three-dimensional character, but the show is pretty incredibly even-handed in fleshing out the supporting cast. Most half-hour ensemble comedies have a few strong characters — three or four at most — and everyone else is a one-joke stereotype who pops in every other episode or so to do their "bit," whatever it is. Ask yourself how many characters on The Office you can even name, other than Michael, Dwight, Jim/Pam and Andy.

You know what? Rashida Jones, who had a regular role in the second season of The Office, is a lead player on Park and Recreation and her new show is the better of the two. That's right, The Office. You are no longer the best comedy on NBC and, really, it's not even that close. Some of the characters on the two shows are suspiciously similar, but Parks and Recreation wins every comparison. Dwight Schrute, for example, wouldn't last five minutes in a staring contest with Ron Swanson. Nick Offerman is just as interesting an actor as Rainn Wilson, and Ron is a more colorful, more versatile, better-rounded alpha male riff than Dwight. So, yes, there's going to be a fourth season of Parks and Recreation. I'm telling you now so that everyone watches it. Especially since I can't, given our location in the No Digital Reception Zone. Do the right thing. Be a true American. Honor the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. Save Parks and Recreation!

Vroom for improvement

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Cars 2

LINKS / FRESHNESS RATING: Daily Herald review of Cars 2 / This post contains small SPOILERS for Cars 2

When I'm hunched over a keyboard reviewing the latest new wonder from Pixar, I find that I rarely have space to mention the excellent animated short films that Pixar includes with each of its feature-length releases. With Cars 2, they've outdone themselves. Literally. The short film is a dip back into the world of Toy Story, with everyone from Tom Hanks and Tim Allen to Timothy Dalton (the voice of Mr. Pricklepants, the actorly hedgehog) back in the mix. (I mentioned in my review that it might be an obscene display of limitless power that Pixar hired Sophia Loren and Franco Nero for 90-second roles as Italian cars. When you add this to that, there's no "might" about it. We get it, John Lasseter. Your people are awesome and EVERYONE wants to work with you guys.) The short is called Hawaiian Vacation and it's funny, touching and includes at least a quick gag for every single toy who was in Bonnie's bedroom at the end of Toy Story 3. Wow. Hawaiian Vacation is, in a word, sublime. And it sort of blows Cars 2 out of the water. It's far too strong a reminder of everything that's awesome about the Toy Story movies to be anything but a hindrance to the main event. Cars 2, huh? Why didn't they just make Toy Story 4? Other observations:

Et 3(D), Cars 2?: Once upon a time, it seemed like animation was the only realm where 3D really made a difference. Now I'm beginning to suspect that, a) it's almost as superfluous for animated films as it is for live-action films, and b) the best possible way to enjoy 3D animated movies is to see them in IMAX. I saw Robert Zemeckis's animated Beowulf (remember Robert Zemeckis's animated Beowulf?) that way and, more recently, How to Train Your Dragon. I think both of those films have scenes that maximize the visual impact of 3D, but I also think IMAX projection just make everything look better. Of course, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in IMAX 3D and the 3D was as bothersome as it is with every live action film, so there's that. At any rate, don't bother with Cars 2 in 3D. The 3D doesn't improve it one single iota.

Mater Mind Meld: Disney pioneered this gimmick at least as early as the memorable "Pink Elephants on Parade" number from Dumbo (1941), and it's still alive and kicking 70 years later. Mater gets trapped by the bad guys and drugged with something, whereupon the image blurs briefly and we fade into a trippy sequence set inside Mater's head. I almost invariably find such sequences to be a waste of time. (Remember Alex the Lion getting tranq darted in Madagascar?) Just have Mater conk out and wake up trapped inside Big Bentley (see what they did there?), which is how the "this is Mater's brain on drugs" sequence eventually ends. "Pink Elephants" turns this trick better than most because of its musical component, but nobody ever nails it.

Spy tech: Late in the movie Mater gets equipped by British intelligence with an array of voice-activated Spy Hunter-type gadgets. The voice activation lets a trademark Mater exclamation such as "Dadgum!" be TWICE as funny as it normally would (it's normally zero funny, so do the math). "Dadgum!" causes a gatling gun to pop out of Mater's innards, so you can imagine what goes down when he follows that up with a "Sheeoooot!" It's not so much that gag is handled poorly as that it's older than Mater's rusty chassis. Actually, a lot of the jokes in the film feel like retreads.

There he goes again

BREAKING NEWS: Kate from LOST finds her way into Middle-earth

LINKS: Become a friend of Peter Jackson on Facebook

I know, I know. For someone who devotes an inordinate amount of time to whining about all of the things that are wrong with Peter Jackson's vision of Middle-earth, I certainly seem to keep track of what he's doing with The Hobbit. I care too much about J.R.R. Tolkien's books to just yawn and say nothing. And, for all that I crack wise about Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, I still own them on DVD, and still have tremendous respect for a lot of what he did with them. I try to cling to that respect, at any rate. Sometimes it's hard. Apologists will give you that line about, "No movie could ever be as good as the book," along with lots of stern finger-wagging about how its improper, or at least inconsiderate, to compare movies to books that they're based on. Bull. If you make the movie, then you're inviting the comparison.

Besides, is it really all that hard to stick to the author's vision? People make excellent movie adaptations out of the novels of Jane Austen on a regular basis. Without making ridiculous changes that reinterpret the source material, or invent characters and events, or greatly dumb down character arcs, motivations and backstory. (Of course, you can sometimes do all of that and still make movie that's at least pleasantly watchable, if not destined for AFI greatness, such as Clueless.) Peter Jackson would have been an ideal director for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (although Gore Verbinski did just fine with it). Hey, Pete, here's a broad outline of a cool thing we do at Disneyland. Knock yourself out. Do whatever you want with it. Instead, we get all of his "improvements" to The Lord of the Rings. I mean, how did anybody ever even read the books in the first place? Hey, Fran? Philippa? Am I crazy, or will audiences will respond much better if Merry and Pippin are nitwitted, ill-mannered jackanapes who literally run into Frodo as he's leaving the Shire and sort of just go along with him. Let's write that!

I'm hot beneath the collar at the moment because the latest big news from the set of The Hobbit is that filmmakers have cast former LOST tough gal Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel, an elf of Mirkwood. Which means that it's happening again. Yes, Peter Jackson is MAKING STUFF UP. To make the movie(s) better, of course. I get that Tolkien didn't have, proportionally, a whole lot of truck with female characters in his books. Actually, there are exactly zero female characters in The Hobbit. So I guess merely beefing up the presence of Arwen, or lingering over Eowyn's crush on Aragorn, wasn't really an option. I still don't quite get why that means that BLATANT INVENTION is necessary to make something that anyone's going to watch. All of the women who are going to go see a Hobbit movie in the first place are with you already, Pete. You don't have to keep winning them over.

Jackson offered assurances on Facebook that Tauriel won't be sharing Legolas's treehouse (or his cave chamber, or however it is they roll in Mirkwood), which is great, fine, splendid, thanks a million. At least the made-up characters won't be having fake pretend liaisons with the other characters who aren't technically supposed to be in the movie. WE CAN ALL THANK TOM BOMBADIL FOR THAT. (Legolas's old man, Thranduil, has a small role in the book, and Orlando Bloom wasn't doing anything else anyway, so loophole. I mean, elves live forever, right? So ol' Leggy was for sure hanging out somewhere when Dad locked up Bilbo and the dwarves.) I'm guessing that about two-thirds of the running time of the second Hobbit movie has already been mapped out for the Battle of the Five Armies, and there has to be someone to cut to whenever we need an elf to do some bow-and-arrow whizbangery, right? Welcome aboard, Kate from LOST. Hope your oliphaunt surfing is up to snuff.

A big, Harry to-do

PREVIEW REVIEW: Welcome back, Potter — it's the final countdown

LINKS / FRESHNESS RATING: Watch the last Harry Potter trailer ever / This post contains avada kedavra level SPOILERS for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

In terms of pop culture time, which is sort of like geologic time, I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows about 100 years ago. And like most people who were hanging out somewhere at midnight on the first day of sales, I read the entire book in a few days and didn't read to process so much as to tick off the various mini-climaxes and get to the big showdown. I remember a wedding. There's a lot of wandering in the forest. We get a couple of surprise betrayals (et tu, Luna Lovegood's dad?), as well as a tearful goodbye or three (we hardly knew thee, Dobby). It turns out that Dumbledore fishes off the witches' end of the pier. (Or maybe that was a wholesale invention sprung on readers after the fact that's not supported by A SINGLE WORD OR SENTENCE in the entire seven books. I don't quite remember.) Ron chickens out, then chickens back in; Neville Longbottom leads the resistance at Hogwarts; Snape maintains plausible deniability. Harry crosses over, then crosses back, then suddenly has kids of his own. Somewhere in there, Voldemort finally got good and mort, once and for all. The end.

I know there's a ton of stuff that I'm not remembering. If the final trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 is anything to go by, however, then either most of the story was already covered in Deathly Hallows, Part 1, or else, well, shoot there's only time for so many details when you're adapting a single novel into nearly five hours of cinema. What I'm getting from the trailer is that there's a bit of Harry, Hermione and Ron breaking in at Gringotts to snag one of the horcruxes, and then — bam! — Team Harry vs. Team Voldy at Hogwarts. I mean, they definitely checked off the wedding and the camping trip in Part I, and Dobby went to ride with the Valkyries in House Elf Valhalla, but did the filmmakers really have nothing left except for Gringotts and Custer's Hogwarts's Last Stand?

I can't say that I'm thrilled about the prospect of the Potter peeps attempting to outdo the length/scope of the siege of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers (as envisioned by Peter Jackson). Watching scene after dimly lit scene of orc horde target practice has its own set of problems, but wizard battles are even more visually static than siege engines in the rain. It's all fireballs and bolts of energy, unless two wizards are fighting, in which case it's even more lethargic. There are two or three cuts in the trailer of Harry and Voldemort "dueling," which is to say that they point their wands at each other, the wands emit color coded streams of lightning that meet in the middle, and then the combatants make "morning after Thanksgiving dinner"-level poop faces while they grunt and strain and try to ... what, exactly? Push the other guy over backward?

The most confounding part of the trailer, though, has got to be the What-the-Helga-Hufflepuff?! inclusion of what sure looks like a moment that's intended to have the "Fill your hands!" resonance of the Long Kiss Goodnight to the Big V. Dirty Harry gives ol' He Who Must Not, Etc., his coldest stare and snarls, "Come on, Tom. Let's finish this the way we started it. TOGETHER!" What happens next is probably something that you shouldn't watch if you want to maintain any level of suspense about How They Chose To End It. Is Radcliffe doing a line from the book there? It didn't have the ring of familiarity to it, but my memory of stuff that happened 100 years ago is admittedly spotty. There's not a high bar here. The prior films have sorta been all over the map, but I personally think Deathly Hallows, Part I is the worst of them. It wouldn't have taken much for me to exit the series on a high note, but if I've already seen the biggest cut from the grand finale, then I'm just going to be angry. Don't make me angry, David Yates. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

What about Bob?

THAT AND MY TWO CENTS WILL GET YOU: They love him, they love him not

LINKS: There's a new book about Robert Redford; official Web site for Redford's most recent movie

I have never met Robert Redford. On the other hand, I've lived in the shadow of Mount Timpanogos, which is home to Redford's Sundance Resort, as well as a Redford-owned personal residence, for most of my life. I've heard him casually discussed around town for years and, now that there's a new Redford biography (by Michael Callan) on the market, a few people are talking once again. A couple of years ago, I did a live radio interview with the Park City NPR affiliate during the Sundance Film Festival. One of the first questions put to me, by an out-of-state journalist, was along the lines of, "What do they think of Robert Redford down there in Provo?" Unspoken, but heavily implied, was the following: Don't they think he's liberal celebrity jerkwad? There are absolutely people in Utah Valley (me, for instance) who admire and/or respect Robert Redford. On the other hand, it's not for nothing that even out-of-state types know (or think they know) that famously conservative Utah County looks at its most renowned part-time resident at least somewhat askance.

That would be putting it mildly in the minds of some. There are probably more than a few people in Provo, Orem and surrounding cities who wonder why we couldn't have gotten Bruce Willis (who owns homes and businesses in Idaho) or Harrison Ford (in Wyoming). Willis, is at least right-leaning (he doesn't like being called a Republican, but he's publicly supported Republican candidates and ideals), plus he saved Earth from a rogue asteroid with his bare hands and he can ferret out Eurotrash thieves executing complex robberies without even wearing socks. As for Harrison Ford, who knows what his politics are, but he probably wouldn't bug anyone about the environment and what's cooler than being Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, the president of the United States, the guy from The Fugitive who didn't kill his wife, and a commie submarine commander with a bad Russian accent? Also, there's that one time that he was a sleazy yuppie lawyer who gets shot in the head and becomes a Good Person.

Most Utahans know that Redford has acted in movies, and maybe even that he's directed some, but who watches any of those anyway? I'm not saying that anyone's done a scientific study to rate Utah residents' opinions of Redford's films, but if they had, it might look like this:

Utah-Approved Robert Redford Movies
1) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid *
2) The Natural
3) Didn't he do that one where he bags Demi Moore from Woody Harrelson?
4) I guess there's the thing with the British actress from The English Patient where he knows stuff about horses and Scarlett Johansson
5) [He's made other movies? Really?]
 * Although, what the aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks, Burt Bacharach? Seriously, what. the. aitch-ee-double-hockeysticks?!

If you could have overheard people in line at the Cinemark 16 in Provo when Redford's new historical drama The Conspirator played there in April, the conversation might have gone something like this:

"Say, what have you heard about that new Redford movie?"
"You mean the historical thing about how we should all feel bad for killing the woman who shot Abraham Lincoln?"
"Didn't a man shoot Abraham Lincoln?"
"That's probably what that sissy Lefty Redford thinks, too."

On the other hand, even Utah residents who wish that Robert Redford would just pipe down when there's a debate about widening the highway in Provo Canyon, or preserving wilderness lands in southern Utah, probably think it's pretty cool that he's made Utah famous all over the world with the Sundance Film Festival. Like, almost everyone in the cast of Friends has personally been to Utah because of that. (A for-reals true fact. Everyone except for the guy who plays Joey. What's the holdup, Joey?) And businesses in Utah do get millions of dollars from the festival every year. Shoot, Redford even did that one movie where he plays a mountain man who kills bears and shoots guns. (That would be Jeremiah Johnson.) Back off, Idaho! Robert Redford is our Hollywood celebrity.

We're No. 1!

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Super 8

LINKS / FRESHNESS RATING: Daily Herald review of Super 8 / This post contains monstrous SPOILERS for Super 8

For a lot of us, movies are a bit like sports teams. When we like a movie, we start to root for it a little. We want other people, including movie critics, to also like it. And since the most readily quantifiable measure of any movie's "success" or "failure" is its ticket sales, we pay attention to box-office tallies with the hope that "our" movie will kick all of the other movie's butts. Anyone with a degree of affection for J.J. Abrams's Super 8, therefore, was probably pleased to see it "win" its opening weekend, beating out a relatively weak field to deliver its marketers at least a week's worth of "No. 1 movie in America" ad copy. The first-weekend haul of $35 million for Super 8 suggests that even a feeble entry into the marketplace by Green Lantern — or (less plausibly) a muscular showing by Mr. Popper's Penguins — will almost certainly unseat the champ, bumping it down the charts and beginning its long slide into home viewing platforms. Nothing about its weekday grosses suggests that Super 8 is about to suddenly demonstrate some killer second-weekend staying power, but one can always hope. One who, like me, is rooting for the movie, that is. Other thoughts:

Train Strain: I've never witnessed an actual train crash. It's probably a sight to behold. The train crash in Super 8 is definitely that. I enjoyed watching it, and at the same time came within just one more bounding, spiraling train car, or billowing orange fireball, of rolling my eyes. More than once actually. (It's a long train crash.) Is the entire train made of rubber bouncing balls? Did it somehow collide with the Great Wall of China? I get that it's supposed to be over the top, but there's a fine line that the scene doesn't quite manage to effectively straddle from start to finish. I had the same reaction watching the tank battle later in the movie. Mostly perfect, but definitely pushing it.

The Grunts On the Bus Go Splat, Splat, Splat: One of the more underrated thrills of the movie, I thought, is the nighttime attack on the military bus, with four of the young heroes, including the kid who always pukes, boxed up in the holding pen at the back. There's just one vehicle in the scene for Abrams's monster to toss around, but the action is just as nerve-wracking as in the noisier, more heavily populated "money" scenes.

No Country for Old Men: As a devotee of Kyle Chandler and the Coach Taylor-ness that he exudes when playing authority figures — and if you tend to think that's all he does, then I refer you to Peter Jackson's King Kong for an amusing change of pace — it was a little disappointing to see Joe's dad pull off an awesome jailbreak (after he's been cooped up by the Air Force) and then ... not really do all that much. Still, I greatly enjoyed the scenes of him attempting to manage the escalating crisis.

Master Spielberg: The parallels between Super 8 and producer Steven Spielberg's E.T. are obvious, but Abrams also impressively follows his idol/mentor's lead in another respect. One of the strongest elements of the movie is how long and how effectively it keeps the monster continually just beyond the edges of the screen, tantalizingly just out of sight. It's the same thing that Spielberg did so well all those years ago Jaws, and Abrams handles it like a champ. Of course, you sometimes end up over-promising when you keep your biggest secret until people are literally about to punch you in the face if you don't show them some-thing.

Another One of Those: So, yeah, I probably haven't really seen that exact monster in half-a-dozen other movies, but it felt that way. When we finally get a sorta-complete-look at what's been terrorizing the town, it's a bit of a letdown. The triangular face. The breathing orifices with fluttery skin flaps. The deep-set beady eyes. The rancor-from-Return-of-the-Jedi-like posture and body structure. I still love your movie, J.J. I was just hoping for more of a surprise.

Anybody want a peanut?

THE INTERNET HAS MUCH KNOWLEDGE CLUTTER: Hey, Princess Bride fans, you never had it so good!

LINKS: Official The Princess Bride Web site; Inigo Montoya on Facebook

Official movie Web sites are dorky. (Almost as dorky as people who, tragically warped by years of brutally enforced adherence to style guides, still use the archaic construction "Web site.") Almost every movie has one — still, in 2011 — but it's hard to imagine what anyone uses them for, other than as a semi-convenient means of watching a movie's trailer (which is almost always easier to find by visiting an aggregation site like those hosted by Apple and Yahoo!). Seriously, ask yourself, when is the last time you went to a movie Web site to look at early photos, or read a plot synopsis, or join a community, or even just see what was there? And yet there's a line item in every movie budget — still, in 2011 — that says something like, "Create Web site. Include trailer, synopsis, photos. Game?"

I mention all of this because I'm a tad confused as to why I find it so charming that The Princess Bride has an honest-to-Pete official Web site. It's right there, on the Internet, just like the movie was going to come out at Thanksgiving, or Christmas. This is a movie that was released in 1987. The Internet was six guys in a room at Los Alamos in 1987. Infoseek hadn't even been invented in 1987. AltaVista returned the same three hits for every search in 1987, and two of them were Al Gore's e-mail address. At what point in the last 24 years did someone with legal jurisdiction over The Princess Bride find himself, while staring at a Web browser, suddenly sitting beneath a blinking light bulb? Hey, it's only negative 13 years until the movie opens, we could really use an official Web site. Or maybe it was: Guys, guys, I finally figured out that line item in the budget! No wonder we still have $251,003.26 on the books.

The site itself is pretty basic. I mean, you're not gonna believe this, but you can look at photos from the movie. Or play a game. Or join a community. And there's official movie merchandise for sale. Some of you just said, "Aha!" but I'm not buying it. Either the official movie merchanidise, or its presence as an explanation for the site's existence. Sure, it's cool to think about owning the official, limited edition, 1:1 scale prop replica of the Dread Pirate Roberts's sword, but how many people have actually seen that and reached for their credit card? Inconceivable! Frankly, I'm not even going to bookmark the site, or probably ever go there again, let alone buy a ringtone, or take a trivia quiz. And despite all of that, it makes me just a tiny bit giddy that there's an official Princess Bride Web site. Not some half-(glassed) fan site. Not a random page on Facebook. It's the official movie Web site.

It occurs to me that I've written this far into a post about a 24-year-old movie and I'm just expecting that everyone knows what it is. People born the year that The Princess Bride was released could have graduated from college by now. If they're Mark Zuckerberg (who's not actually young enough, though it's close), then they could have dropped out of Harvard, alienated friends, rivals and non-existent ex-girlfriends who go to BU, and accrued billions of dollars by now. I just assume that all of those people know about Westley and Buttercup, about Inigo, Fezzik and Vizzini, about the Pit of Despair and the Cliffs of Insanity, about the shrieking eels and the Rodents of Unusual Size, because how do you not have encyclopedic knowledge of something as awesome as The Princess Bride? It's not just a movie. It's one of my vital organs. And now it has an official Web site. And that makes me a little jazzed. Because if there's a Web site, then someone, somwhere, realized at some point that there's a critical mass of people out there who recognize the sound of ultimate suffering, or who would sooner destroy a stained glass window than an artist like yourself. Still. In 2011.

Get me to the church on time

PREVIEW REVIEW: Somebody's getting married (and it's not the Muppets)

LINKS: Breaking Dawn official Web site; take a stand with Mitt against vampires

Nobody ever asks political debate participants the really tough questions. The 2012 Republican presidential contenders held their first debate on Monday night in New Hampshire, and we still don't know what candidate and self-confessed Twilight aficionado Mitt Romney thinks of the new trailer for Breaking Dawn, Part I. Here's what I think of the new trailer: How the heck did it take them until 40 seconds in to work in a shot of a shirtless Taylor Lautner in the rain? What's up with the I'm-so-sexy supermodel chick thumpity-thumping along in her high heels to deliver a message to her leering Volturi masters? You're selling the flick to teenage girls, fellas. Making them wait 40 seconds to salivate over Taylor Lautner's cartoonishly sculpted abs is like telling 4-year-olds you have candy for them, and then it turns out to be black licorice. You're just being cruel.

Speaking of Jacob Black, he's kind of a big whiny baby, but don't you think it might be at least a little bit cool if you could just run really fast and turn into a giant wolf every time something ticked you off? Sorry I came to dinner naked, honey. I wore clothes to work, but then I didn't get a raise and I destroyed my outfit by running real fast and turning into a huge wolf. I tried to pick something up at the GAP, but they don't have any fitting rooms for enormous wolves. Half of the trailer is people getting invitations to Bella and Edward's wedding, but Jacob is the only person whose reaction is even a little bit interesting. At any rate, it's a nice day for a white wedding, but couldn't somebody have handed Bella a Kleenex? Not because she's crying. Freeze the trailer at exactly 1:09 and tell me what you think is coming out of her nose.

There's not much dialogue in the trailer, and maybe there shouldn't have been any at all. Back when Twilight first showed up in theaters, I actually gave Robert Pattinson a thumbs up for his acting, but man is that guy a block of wood. Even Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic might not have been able to sell a slab of romantic hyperbole like, "No measure of time with you would be long enough — but we'll start with forever." At least he wouldn't have sounded like he was saying it to a bowl of oatmeal, though, or a bag of grass clippings. It might have been better to just turn the whole thing over to the Dollar Store Chorus. You know, the guys in the background of every other trailer ever made (including this one) who do that rhythmic synchronized chanting that could make a stack of waffles seem dramatic. I saw something once where it sounded like they were saying "all-a-dolla, all-a-dolla," and they've been the Dollar Store Chorus, at least in my head, ever since.

Also, I know there's kind of an angry vampires tossing people around vibe in the second half of the trailer, but what's with Volturi Secretary Girl getting turned into a human boomerang by some ticked off vampire overlord? It's kind of grim, for one thing, but also how is what's-her-name remotely important enough to the story to get two solid appearances in a not-quite-two-minute trailer? Don't the filmmakers have better things to show us, like helicopter shots of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio? Ha, ha, I meant better things like Bella and Edward being terrified that they forgot to use protection when he doesn't even have a full-time job with benefits yet. Honestly, though, if there's not already a dude in Rio who owns a helicopter and does nothing but sell aerial pans of the Christ the Redeemer statue to film studios, then I need to enroll in helicopter school today.

A fine country for old men

VIDEO VAULT: Riding the high country with Jeff Bridges in the role of Rooster Cogburn

FRESHNESS RATING: Mild-saddle-soreness-level SPOILERS for True Grit

I made the argument a couple of years ago in one of the Year in Movies write-ups that I do for the Daily Herald every last week in December that anyone who sees at least 11 new movies in a given year has a Top 10. My point was that my list of the Top 10 movies of (fill in the year) is no more (or less) definitive than anyone else's. Well, aside from the fact that I am always right about everything. I mention this now because True Grit, my favorite movie of 2010, is newly available this month on DVD and Blu-ray, which is a fine excuse for me to whip out "them two Navy sixes" and charge straight at everyone who hasn't seen the movie until they scatter to Netflix or Redbox and repent of their oversight. I may not be more right that True Grit is the best movie released in 2010 than someone who says it was The King's Speech, or The Social Network, or Inception, but if you go for a man hard enough and fast enough, he don't have time to think about how many's with him — he thinks about himself, and how he might get clear of that wrath that's about to set down on him.

The best way for anyone to have seen True Grit is in a movie theater, with theater sound and towering theater images. There's an arts organization here in town that's showing it on an outdoor screen at a large amphitheater as part of a late-night summer series, and I considered getting tickets to the entire series just so I could see True Grit riding tall across a theater-size screen one last time. (Turns out I'll be out of town. Curse you, preplanned vacation schedule!) If all you have is a flat-panel television, however, or even just a large computer monitor for Internet streaming, then a Texas Ranger with an unruly cowlick probably ought to give you five or six good licks with his belt that will have to do. If you've heard anything about "the new" True Grit, then you probably already know that Hailee Steinfeld (who was just 13 when she made the movie; younger, even, than her character) gives a deservedly Oscar-nominated performance as Mattie Ross, the steel-spined farmgirl who hires dissolute marshal Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn to track and capture the hired man who killed her father.

Steinfeld is fantastic, but Jeff Bridges, who also got an Oscar nomination, one that was viewed in some quarters as being largely an echo of the glory showered on a recent winner, is even better. Everyone in the movie benefits from the wonderfully precise 19th-century dialogue that Joel and Ethan Coen (who wrote, directed and edited the movie together) give the characters, but nobody chews it up and spits it out better than Bridges. When True Grit first showed up, many viewers (including a wide swath of critics) accused him of merely growling, and even garbling, his lines. To which I respond, "Bull," and also tharfnurressontuhsitthissunout. Frankly, I think it's a huge part of Rooster's charm that he's a talker, and a huge part of the movie's charm that he somewhat petulantly finds himself outclassed in that regard by Matt Damon's loquacious LaBeouf (to the point of playfully offering a particular remedy for an injury the Texas lawman suffers in an ambush). Did I mention that there's a lot of great acting in the movie? Because I don't think many people would have balked if Damon had gotten a nomination of his own.

There's probably a not inconsiderable segment of viewers who had no truck with True Grit simply because they like the John Wayne version. It so happens that I like the John Wayne version, actually. I grew up liking it. I still like it. And yes, Rooster Cogburn was a good role for Wayne. Anyone who has seen both movies and prefers the older one will get no further pestering from yours truly. Why would you pass up a story and characters that you know are terrific, however, just because somebody else did it well first? A couple of years ago I saw an especially transcendent production of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Utah Shakespeare Festival (which was called the Utah Shakespearean Festival at the time). I could have skipped it, I suppose (not really; I was on assignment), because I'd already seen the French film version with Gerard Depardieu. If I had, however, I would have been passing up this (you have to scroll down a bit). So yeah, I get it: Everybody loves John Wayne. Just don't let your fond memories of saddling up for this adventure with the Duke prevent you from taking a heck of a ride with the Dude.

Counting down to Lights out

SOMETIMES I WATCH TV: In which viewers have been egging on Two and a Half Men for nine seasons, but Coach Taylor can't even get to 77 total episodes

Before his head was exploded by a violent torpedo of truth, Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television because of the apparently hypnotic attraction of something called Two and a Half Men. I confess that I have never watched a moment of it. Perhaps I would find it incisive and witty. Perhaps I will also discover the cure for cancer while staring at my breakfast cereal tomorrow morning. My point is that why is Two and a Half Men so important that CBS didn't even blink at paying Ashton Kutcher to replace Sheen and keep it around, but three years ago NBC couldn't be bothered to hang on to Friday Night Lights until DirecTV stepped in to assume a fat chunk of its production costs? Yes, I get the dollars and cents of it: Millions of people misguidedly love Men, ergo CBS will do anything to save its ratings dominance. And Lights doesn't rack up the numbers, ergo the East Dillon High School football program is about to vanish (again).

Say it ain't so, Coach Taylor! Nobody needed (or needs) more than one — or maybe two-and-a-half — seasons of Two and a Half Men. The world of television, however, will always need flawed, complex, resolute, passionate and fascinating characters like Eric and Tammy Taylor. There are five episodes left in the now-unfolding fifth season of Friday Night Lights, which NBC has long since announced it will not renew. The first season of the show got a full order of 22 episodes, but the writer's strike cut the second season down to 15, and the show-salvaging deal with DirecTV capped production at 13 episodes each of the past three seasons. So Friday Night fans have already been cheated, and now they're getting the ultimate stiff arm. I'm sure there's a future for the show's cast members elsewhere on the tube or in movies: Kyle Chandler is probably the biggest "name" in the cast of the J.J. Abrams monster movie Super 8, which opens Friday.

I don't want to see Connie Britton play a caring pediatrician, though, or catch Jurnee Smollet as a dog-walker with crazy roommates, or occasionally see Brad Leland in a random guest-starring role on Sitcom A or Legal Drama B. I want more Buddy Garrity. I want more Luke Cafferty. I want more of everyone from Dallas Tinker and Mac Macgill to Becky Sproles and Billy Riggins. Mostly I want more of Coach and Tammy. Some shows have run their course by the time they get canceled. And Friday Night Lights got much more time to empty out its playbook than many other bright ideas. (My least favorite thing about TV is how frequently it's the moron-level stuff that sticks when networks throw things against the ratings wall in pilot season.) We've had a good long time to settle in in Dillon, and yet I still feel like I just got to town. I haven't even unpacked all of my boxes! Five more episodes?! I could watch the Taylors teach truth to troubled teenagers for five more seasons and not get bored.

Nathan Fillion recently (and briefly) made a few entertainment headlines by suggesting that, if money were no object, he'd acquire the rights to Firefly, the late, lamented sci-fi TV series that launched him to television cult stardom, and produce new episodes himself. Much as I loved Fillion and his rowdy crew in Firefly, however, if I had the power to save or bring back just one show on television, it would be LOST. OK, not really. For better or worse, polar bears, donkey wheels, animate John Locke cadavers and all, it told the story it had to tell. I might fret a little about never having gotten a Matt Santos presidency out of The West Wing. And I'd definitely agonize about using my one-time-only magic wand on Firefly, which got yanked when it had barely begun to spread its wings. When the TV fairy started to tap her watch and shoot me dirty looks, however, I'd check the scoreboard, nervously fold my playbook in half and then look her in the eye and say, "Get me Coach Taylor."