THE AWESOME SIX-MINUTE CLOUD ATLAS TRAILER YOU REALLY OUGHTTA WATCH

Hooooooooooly smokes. Thanks in advance for the birthday present, Wachowski/Tykwer/Wachowski. (It releases on my birthday, is what that means.) This looks like something we're all gonna get in massive fights about, but I gotta say based on this I want to see this fuckin thing six ways from Sunday. Time will tell if I ever actually get around to finishing this book: been trying for six goddamn years now.

(h/t The Playlist)

OUR HOUSE

Time-lapse photography from the International Space Station. The Sunshine score. Done. Awesome.

APROPOS OF NOTHING, ANYTHING GOES

Just because this is awesome. Y'know, Temple of Doom is fucking great until the plane takes off . . .

COMIC-CON AND 4 ALTERNATIVES

Slave Leia cosplayers: There can only be more than one.

As many of you may have noticed, Comic-Con is currently underway in San Diego, which, as film critic Scott Renshaw noted, is “a stupid place for an event where you're indoors the whole time.” (This documentary I reviewed over at Tor is an okay-ish primer.) It's the nerd Super Bowl, a massive event, a place where somebody detonated a claymore full of comic books, video games, science fiction, TV, board games, toys, fucked-up carpeting, and laminated badges. My only in-person Comic-Con experience is with the decidedly smaller and less crazy one in New York, and let me tell you, even that blew my fuckin mind. I got lost for half an hour trying to find the room where my roundtable interview with Joe Cornish was, then I got lost for another forty-five minutes trying to find someone to covertly hand my borrowed press credentials off to, eventually randomly stumbling across a colleague who was cosplaying with her girlfriend as the Eleventh Doctor and companion. Then I tried finding another friend's booth for another bewildering few minutes and eventually just had to check the fuck out from sensory overload and get in a goddamn cab.

The thing is, as fascinating as the whole thing is, and as much a nerd as I am, I still don't quite fit in at Comic-Con. While there isn't really a Con monoculture (much as it all may blur into one for outsiders), I don't really fit in with any of the tribes, either. I'm not a comic book guy (I like them, I just sometimes brainfart and think Steve Ditko coached the '85 Bears), I'm not really a hardcore gamer, for the same reason I don't really get down with swords and orcs and gelflings and questing and saying “thou” and shit, because it feels like all the big video games are The Quest of the Eldritch Dragon Lord, unless they're Tom Clancy's Call of Modern Warfare, and if I want to play that game I can watch Fox News while voguing with my PS3 controller. Movies, I do like (as you may have noticed), but I don't get automatic geek boners for superhero trailers (the squee-est I ever got over a trailer was for Bande a Part at Film Forum, because my superpower is being tweedy enough to fucking crush planets). Toys, hey, look. I don't want to be all “I'm in my fucking 30s” and stuff, but I'm in my fucking 30s. If you told me they were putting out an Alain Delon action figure from Le Samourai I'd be all up on that shit, but otherwise y'all can have 'em with no competition.

While Comic-Con is fine and dandy for the people who it's for—and I won't lie, even though I feel like I'm in a foreign country there, it's a reasonably hospitable foreign country—it's not for everyone. With that in mind, here are some alternate Cons (feel free to break with longstanding Movies By Bowes ™ tradition and actually use the comment section to propose Cons I might have overlooked):


Fritz-Con

The idea: This is something the Self-Styled Siren and I came up with a while back (I don't remember whose idea it was, and she doesn't even remember the conversation; such is the danger with goofy passing fancies): a whole Con based on Fritz Lang. Which would fucking rule. You got a solid forty years of awesome movies to choose from, even if you'd have to stick to the classics to appeal to civilians. Though, on second thought, the idea of any civilians voluntarily showing up to Fritz-Con is the funniest thing ever.

Cosplay opportunities: Many, and awesome. Dudes can cosplay as Dan Duryea in Scarlet Street and have everyone in a hundred-mile radius be like “Whattafuckindouchebag . . .”

Or fuck it, show up as Fritz himself if you want rule fucking balls:

For the ladies, you could cosplay as Thea von Harbou and get in a fight with one of the Fritz cosplayers, or if you're feeling less dramatic, you could be Sylvia Sidney in Fury—

—or Brigitte Helm—

—or Joan Bennett—

—I mean, you got tons of options here.

Must-see booths: You got your UFA booth, with a dude on stilts dressed as F.W. Murnau, that booth's got great lighting and is shaped so weird you wonder how it doesn't tip over. Then you got your noir booth, which is lit similarly but stuff looks more normal, though the booth babes have an unfortunate tendency to make men leave behind the lives they've known and unravel along Freudian psycho-sexual spirals, but hey, man, shit happens at Con, what can I say.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Nil, unless the Skrillex “In the Hall of the Mountain King” remix blows up.


Donkey-Con

The idea: A Con for the kind of people whose jokes are too complicated and “ironic.” The entire Con is spent explaining to people with increasing exasperation that the Con has nothing to do with Donkey Kong. No one really knows why it's called Donkey-Con, because the explanation is so long no one has ever managed to sit through the whole thing.

Cosplay opportunities: I was at a Halloween party a few years ago talking to a friend of mine and her roommate. My friend was wearing a big old ratty-looking beehive and smudged make-up, and her roommate was wearing nothing but a plastic bag, a white tube top and shorts, and a big straw sticking up out of her cleavage. They explained they were Amy Winehouse and her bag of cocaine. Which was awesome, because this is when Amy Winehouse was still alive. At Donkey-Con, the people would explain that they were cosplaying as my friend and her roommate . . . get it? (Ed. Note: Donkey-Con is fucking insufferable)

Must-see booths: There are a lot of them, but after the first one explains what it is to you, you leave and go to the bar.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Virtually guaranteed, because some evil white guy in a suit would be like “Hey, wouldn't it be ironic if we made a billion dollars off this bullshit?” And he'd proceed to do so, even while everyone at Donkey-Con would explain that that wasn't really ironic, but if a trip to Donkey-Con teaches you anything, it is that you do not listen to anything anyone at Donkey-Con says.


Con-Con

The idea: The world's finest con men and women “con”vene (ahh, being me fucking rules sometimes) to present the latest in flim-flam, misrepresentation for financial gain, and plain old bullshit. Paypal me a hundred bucks and I'll tell you what city it's in this year.

Cosplay opportunities: This one can be a little tough to pull off—

—which is why this one's the most popular among men:

For the ladies, there's always the classic Brigid O'Shaughnessy—

—or if you're feeling new school, Annette Bening in The Grifters (secretly one of the sexiest performances in cinema)—

—or you could go subtle and just try a variation on “eye-catching but relatively unassuming.” You know, because you want to build trust in your mark.

Must-see booths: Hard to say, but one thing's for sure, at least one of them's going to prey on your deepest unspoken desire.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Awesomely, all the corporate sponsors lose all their money, too, just like you. Though, I mean, it sucks that you got fleeced, but hey, the evil white guys in suits did too, fuck them, woo hooo!!!


Karma-Con

The idea: Fuck yeah, that's right. A racially insensitive, commercialized-to-the-gills Indian cinema Con aimed squarely at NRI/American fans. Boosh.

Cosplay opportunities: Dude. Fucking unlimited. You can be bland and go the Shahrukh Khan NRI melodrama route—



—or more traditional, which in this case is less boring (here's Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai in a still from Devdas)—

—or straight-up 70s WTF—



—I could go on all day. We're talking the greatest cosplay like, ever.

Must-see booths: All of them. Good luck getting into the SRK panel, though, it's fuckin gonna be jammed. He'll be the only one of the Three Khans there (otherwise they'd just call it Three-Con): Aamir will not be there because it's not serious enough, and Salman won't be there because the Con isn't being held in his backyard.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Considering that this entire thing is a rancidly cynical marketing thing that would piss hardcore North American Bolly fans off to the point of murder (which is why the list of stars attending is always going to be weirdly selective), having it be consumed by commercialism would be a bit like dividing by zero. But seriously, it'll still be worth it for the mind-bending cosplay.


That, of course, is just the tip of the Con iceberg. To each your own subculture. May it never outgrow you.

KEANU REEVES: MAN OF TAI CHI

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG Keanu is directing a movie called Man of Tai Chi fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap *ascends bodily to Heaven*

ONE LOVE

Happy Pride, y'all.

JESUS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, AND ACTUAL PROMETHEUS SPOILERS

This weekend, I swear. For about 72 consecutive hours I've either been trying to avoid, actively engaged in, or stewing about some sort of impassioned discussion about Prometheus. And, before that, I'd been sitting around since Tuesday night trying to figure out what the fuck to write about it. And before that there were the months of faux-viral video clips and Stephen A. Smith bellowing about it during basketball games and the filmmakers being coy about it. It would have been too bad if after all that, the movie was just another boring, business-as-usual blockbuster. But that's the thing. It isn't. And it kind of is.

A movie that's at odds with itself about what the fuck it actually is is going to provoke some discussion. And holy cow did Prometheus ever set off a shitstorm. I saw it last Tuesday at an all-media, and after the whole clusterfuck of getting our phones back was done, my friend with whom I saw it and I spent the next hour or so walking to the subway and riding back to Park Slope repeatedly asking each other, “Why did Prometheus suck so bad?” Then, after we got back to our respective apartments, we hit each other up on Gchat to ask again: “WHY DID PROMETHEUS SUCK SO BAD?”

So, I had a couple days to think about it, which was actually really valuable because the review I ended up writing for Tor had evolved beyond that initial negative reaction and developed a bit of nuance. That extra time to think allowed me to sort the things that pissed me off about the picture and weight how important each was to the whole thing. Also, it allowed me to assess Prometheus in relation to Alien, to Ridley Scott's career as a director, and to the median 2010s-vintage Hollywood blockbuster. The result? I really respect what Prometheus (mainly Ridley Scott, Dariusz Wolski, the designers, and the cast) gets right. (Ed. Note: if only there was a way to make the incipient “but” in 400 point boldfaced type with an mp3 of Samuel L. Jackson hollering “BUT” when you clicked on it . . .)

BUT, Prometheus has some of the dumbest writing, from inexplicable character behavior to unnecessary and poorly-placed plot twists to clunky big-idea-conveying to those ideas not being as big as they would seem in more competent hands to an ending that can go fuck itself in the severed android neck, since Tommy Wiseau's proud nadir, The Room. I don't invoke St. Wiseau the Lowest of the Low in vain, believe me. Here's a partial—complete would take us all day—list of dumb shit in the Prometheus script (and in case subtle hints like the title of the fucking post didn't convey this, spoilers in the following):

—Despite having no reason to do so, CEO Guy Pearce of Evil White Guy Industries (a pre-Yutani merger Weyland Corp.) stows away on the Prometheus and only reveals that he's on board near the end of the journey. The reveal has no dramatic impact, no purpose whatsoever: it just happens and suddenly Guy Pearce is doddering around in Andy Garcia Dead Again makeup and everyone's acting like he's always been there. Why wasn't he?

—When all the scientists go down to the planet, the air isn't breathable, so they wear their space suits. Then they get inside what turns out to be an alien spacecraft and suddenly, whaddaya know, the air's breathable. Far out. The scene where some dude cracks open his space helmet to breathe air just like back home on Earth is a staple of SF. So some dude cracks open his space helmet. Then everyone else does. Even after they discover alien shit so alien it killed other aliens, they're still lollygagging all over the fucking place with their helmets off touching stuff.

—Per the last, to repeat, they're scientists.

—The “ticking clock” is a time-honored suspense device. Alien had a literal one that counted every last second until the Nostromo blew up. But in Prometheus, near the end when Noomi Rapace is running around while shit blows up, her helmet tells her she has like thirty seconds of air left. She keeps running around doing all kinds of strenuous shit like trying not to get killed by various kinds of aliens (at some point the fact that she was supposed to be running out of air kind of becomes a non-thing) and trying to convince Michael Fassbender to fly another dormant alien spacecraft (hold that thought) to the head aliens' home world to ask them “Seriously, what the fuck, guys?” Despite the fact that this is totally retarded and Fassbender's head, back when it was attached to his body, thought it was a good idea to convolutedly impregnate her with an alien squid thingie either to kill her or just because what the fuck, he agrees to set up the sequel with her. (It's okay, take an Advil, I'll be here when you get back.)

—Per the ticking clock point, the whole point of the climax was that there were two spaceships on the planet: the Prometheus and the flying alien death croissant. Idris Elba, Benedict Wong, and the other guy made a whole big deal out of kamikaze-ing the Prometheus into the flying alien death croissant so it wouldn't go to Earth and turn the sequel into a Roland Emmerich movie. So, Idris et al take one for the team. The aliens maybe get killed. Then Fassbender's head just tells Noomi Rapace “Oh yeah, and there was no need for Idris and everyone to get killed.”

—Last, and most fundamentally, there's a way to do the whole “larger forces are at work here, and they may be beyond our ken, and thus this movie shall lay things out allusively rather than run the risk of the explanation for shit being stupid” thing. Stanley Kubrick was up on that with 2001, and 2001 was awesome. If you look at 2001, it's all right there: A leads to B leads to monolith acid trip leads circularly back to Strauss in a clean, orderly fashion. Who the fuck the aliens are and what their whole deal was is left alone, because there was no answer that was going to be cool enough, and leaving it ambiguous has been giving us stuff to yak about for almost 45 years now. Prometheus wants to be this thing—which is why I graded it on the curve for ambition; they might have fucked it up but they at least tried—but, as that bit inside the em-dashses alludes to, they fucked it up. The movie over-explains who the “Engineers” are, literalizing them as these big white emotionless humanoids who somehow are a 100% match for human beings genetically and also started the evolutionary process that led from primordial ooze to us jagoffs (in case it's been a while since you took biology, those are mutually exclusive conditions except under staggeringly improbable circumstances; the whole “they created us but evolution is still a thing” is total bet-hedging controversy-averse screenwriter dicklessness). And yet, in spite of defining the terms of the explanation in such a way that there's shit that needs to be explained, it just leaves everyone hanging. Anyway, tl;dr Prometheus' handling of its own mythology is a total misfire. (Thank fuck they cut the part about Jesus Christ being an Engineer . . .)

So, yes, the script is a shitpile. The handful of wholly negative reviews have focused on this, to the exclusion of all other aspects of the movie, as in the case of this tantrum over at /Film. The whole thing focuses on stuff like I listed above, ending with the dismissive, “But boy, it sure is pretty.” To recap, that's six words devoted to any aspect of Prometheus that isn't the script. Writing a review of a movie and focusing solely on the script is almost like writing a review of a movie based on what the wallpaper looks like in each scene, or what kind of chairs everyone's sitting in (yes, the script is more important than the art direction, and if you'll note I actually agree with a number of the points the dude made, but come the fuck on, THERE ARE OTHER ASPECTS TO THE MEDIUM).

On the other hand, Roger Ebert (and others, not to beat up on ol' Rog) giving Prometheus four stars isn't any better an indicator of value. I mean, this happens every now and then, everyone's fretting about an uneven balance of quality between different dissonant elements of a given film and Ebert chimes in like “FOUR STARS! I WAS TRANSPORTED!” and everyone else is like, “Uhh . . . ok.” (Also, unlike the /Film review, to the former's marginal credit, Ebert spoiled nine kinds of fuck out of the plot before any civilians had had any chance to see the movie, and without warnings, either. Naughty, naughty, sir.) Prometheus' champions are almost all saying “meh, fuck the script, the movie's awesome, it's Ridley Scott's best picture in years and truly beautiful filmmaking.” And that's all true. The photography is gorgeous, and finally there's no reason at all to bring up Dances With Smurfs in the discussion of best use of 3D, because Prometheus raised the bar really, really high. The only problem with that is . . . the script really, really sucks. There's a degree to which direction, photography, sound, design, and the other elements that make cinema cinema can overcome a shitty script, and when all of those elements are at an elite level, as they are in Prometheus, that degree can be nearly enough complete to make the overall experience enjoyable. But with an elephant turd of a script like Prometheus', it can never close the circle and make for an unqualified masterpiece.

Prometheus is a frustrating one, for sure. It's too ambitious to be dismissed out of hand, but the train-wreck script undermines those ambitions and makes them seem more commonplace than they actually are. If it makes money, maybe someday someone else gets to make a big beard-stroker R-rated SF movie that actually works better. But the fact that it's out, and we all saw it, means that at the very least we don't all have to keep fucking talking about it coming up. Also, everyone had to re-watch Alien to prepare, and that's a net gain, because Alien fucking rules. Prometheus will never fuck that up. So, hey. Life goes on. Now let's all spend a month and a half driving each other batshit (get it?) talking about The Dark Knight Rises.

NATURAL PO-LICE: A DECADE OF THE WIRE

Happy 10th anniversary to The Wire. As you can see, I got my entire vocabulary from that show.

(EDIT: For a more substantive reminiscence, here's an oral history Marc Spitz did for Maxim.)

IF THE PLAN DOESN'T WORK, IT CHANGES

Twas two years ago today the series finale of Lost aired. Revisit my wrap-up if you like, but seriously, the above interview with Damon Lindelof is what's really essential. Fascinating stuff, and really, the fact that he's that candid when he doesn't need to be kind of rules.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

This guy fucking rules. (via Animal New York)

RIP, ADAM "MCA" YAUCH

For a long and rich career in music and film, may you long be remembered, sir.

IN HONOR OF THE DAY

Namaste.

A DISPATCH FROM OUR ANDHRA PRADESH OFFICE

So, yeah, basic run-of-the-mill Telugu love story . . . then . . . WHAT THE SWEET LIVING FUCK? I actually want to see this without subtitles when it comes out, just because I don't want the experience to be sullied by actually knowing what's going on. (Oh, and this has no apparent connection to the Richard Kiel MST3K classic Eegah, as far as I can tell; maybe the thing with the bug is a metaphorical inversion of Richard Kiel's height or something.)

REMINDER: F.W. MURNAU WAS AWESOME

Obviously, F.W. Murnau wasn't really on crack, since they didn't have crack in 1927. But he might have been cranking the camera with his dick because holy shit dude. That there's Sunrise, kids. That there's one of the best movies that ever has been. Revisit this post for a more in depth discussion of Murnau's cinema.

COMING OUT OF RETIREMENT FOR A PRIVATE GIG?

EAST MARS (AP) --- Ewan McGregor's Penis, in an effort to regain market share (currently dominated by the upstart penis of Michael Fassbender), released this statement on the Conan O'Brien show recently. Clearly, the gauntlet has been thrown.

If we've learned anything from this contretemps, it's that Louis C.K. is a dyed-in-the-wool classicist.

RACE IN CINEMA MONTH: THE SURREALISTS WEIGH IN (WARNING: EXTREMELY NSFW)

Yes, the Future definitely will be Odd. Tyler, The Creator (the centaur who does all the blow in the video) may be a pretty decent rapper and producer, but he's a pretty spectacular director of music videos. What this has to say (other than fuck you), I couldn't tell you and wouldn't dream of trying. But it's something else, for sure.

RACE IN CINEMA MONTH: TALKING ABOUT THE HELP

Watch Actresses Viola Davis & Octavia Spencer on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.

The theme of this month, in a way I could never hope to encapsulate. A must-watch.

"...THIS AWESOME FILM ABOUT NAZIS FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON."

Hmm. Okay. I'm going to need a plane ticket to Berlin, a new passport, and a hotel room with a fainting couch. Holy fucking shit. THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT NAZIS FROM THE FUCKING MOON.

LINE!

I really like this. As an (increasingly occasional) actor, I can relate.

A FOOLPROOF POSITIVE DRUG TEST

Now, I'm not saying this like it's a bad thing or anything, but how fucking high is Harrison Ford in this?

(EDIT 1/5: Turns out this is a clever bit of editing, made from that clip a while ago of Harrison Ford, looking really high, playing Uncharted 3. So, the point stands that ol' Harrison looks baked as baked, but for clarification he's not actually watching the Indiana Jones movies for the first time. As you were.)