(SPOILER ALERT - and a disclaimer. I've watched "X-Files: I Want to Believe" three times so far - the first time in a standard theater, and twice afterward on DVD. For some reason, I seem to rack up more complaints with each viewing. Maybe I should give it a rest, and revisit the film in a year or so to see how it has aged. Mind you this post comes from someone who considers The X-Files to be one the finest series to grace the Boob Tube, so my expectations may be overly high. Please take these words with a grain of saltpetre.)

Only if the screenplay makes it worthy of the investment in big screen running time and real estate. Case in point:"X-Files: Fight The Future" made excellent use of big-screen FX and integrated well with the Season 5 mytharc. "X-Files: I Want to Believe" was essentially a long-form MOTW episode, muddied by the fact there several monsters.

Which "monster" triggered more audience consternation? Was it the Russian "Frankenstein doctor," the dying gay assassin seeking a nubile female body upon which to graft his head (love the "Married in Massachusetts" throwaway quip), or the now-cliched pedophile priest who "castrated himself at 28"?

XF:IWTB might have worked better as a TV/cable movie/series reboot rather than a feature film. Granted, XF:FTF rode the series' popularity wave nicely (rather than "jumping the shark" - ouch) but oh, my, XF:IWTB could have been SO much better, even without aliens, the 2012 theme, or William.

As Garrison Keillor says in his Lake Wobegon tales: "It could have been worse." But not much.

Labels: movies, soapbox, x-files

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  I'll believe it when I see it, but the scuttlebutt on the street is that the long-awaited (Note - 10 years is an eternity in TV-Land, C.C. - Ed.) sequel to the X-Files: Fight The Future movie is in the pipeline, slated for a July 2008 release.

Why now, after years of proposals and stalled contracts? Reports say the impending Hollywood writers' strike is pushing up production deadlines on a number of gridlocked projects, including XF2. According to Hollywood Insider:

...[Chris] Carter, who will direct the movie and co-write the script with X-Files exec producer Frank Spotnitz, [said] years of contract disputes with Fox were resolved when the threat of an impending writers' strike came to a head. "If we don't do it now and the strike was protracted, it would force the movie to come out several years from now," he says. "And that was too late. It was either now or never."

And, oh happy rainy day! The show's creators will apparently return to its moody Canadian roots to film the sequel, the Vancouver Sun reports:

David Duchovny will be reaching once again for his umbrella, and so will at least 100 crew members in the city as 20th Century Fox made it official: the sequel to 1998's The X-Files movie will shoot in Vancouver. The movie, as yet untitled, brings together Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as special FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) who, in the original television series and in the first movie, encounter paranormal activity in their investigations. Duchovny and Anderson starred in the long-running TV series The X-Files (1993-2002), which shot its first five seasons in the Vancouver area.

Labels: canada, culture, movies

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  If you have access to a JSTOR subscription (if not, you might be able to "borrow" one at your local college or university library), check out this prescient early 1979 scholarly article by John Woodcock of Indiana University - Disaster Thrillers: A Literary Mode of Technology Assessment, John Woodcock, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 4, No. 26. (Winter, 1979), pp. 37-45. Woodcock here analyzes some of the notable technological disaster films and novels of the 70's, like The Andromeda Strain and Airport. [You can also try this link at Sage Publications] Interestingly, Woodcock devotes a large section to Thomas Scortia and Frank M. Robinson's pre-Three Mile Island (and very pre-Chernobyl) nuclear disaster novel, The Prometheus Crisis - this article was published less than three months before the Three Mile Island accident.

That's neither here nor there, but I've always been intrigued by Carpenter's use of a few lines of familiar-sounding text in 1986's Prince of Darkness (a you'll-either-love-it-or-hate-it cult classic), which pop up on a monochrome greenscreen monitor while a zombified research assistant rattles away at the keyboard:

You will not be saved by the Holy Ghost.
You will not be saved by the God Plutonium.
In fact, YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!

Which sound oddly similar to this excerpt from Stephen Vincent Benét's "Nightmare, With Angels," which appears in the frontispiece of The Prometheus Crisis:

"You will not be saved by General Motors
or the pre-fabricated house.
You will not be saved by dialectic materialism
or the Lambeth Conference
You will not be saved by Vitamin D
or the expanding universe.
In fact, you will not be saved."

Turns out that The Prometheus Crisis was reportedly turned into a screenplay by John Carpenter, but the project (working title, "Meltdown") was scrapped and Carpenter went on to helm The Fog, starring his soon-to-be-then-wife, Adrienne Barbeau. Looking back, filming a believable Prometheus Crisis, complete with colossal meltdown and the destruction of Los Angeles County would have been horrendously expensive, even back then without CGI. We'll have to be satisfied with the book: the real thing's already happened.

Labels: movies, science

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  The U.S. Postal Service wants you to vote for your favorite design from the forthcoming Star Wars® postage stamps! Most of the designs have a certain appeal, but I'm torn between three favorites:

1) Leia sends the "Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi!" hologram using R2D2
2) Yoda ponders graciously in three-quarters view
3) Luke gazes into the Tatooine twin sunsets

Some I really don't think are a great idea: do we really want freaky Darth Maul, a poxy Evil Emperor Palpatine, or for that matter, Stormtroopers - representing the U.S. of A. on our postage?

If I have to choose one, I'll probably pick the Leia-R2D2 stamp (shown), mostly because of its messenger meta-symbolism. After all, wasn't R2D2 essentially a little galactic postman? Depressingly, note that all the choices have the new 41-cent first class rate...old Artoo didn't charge a penny, and didn't let Stormtroopers, meteors, warp drives or the dark of space keep him from delivering the mail.

When Star Wars was packing the theaters in 1977, first class postage was...13 cents. Feh. Maybe the Evil Emperor stamp isn't such a bad idea after all. :)

Labels: movies, news

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  There's no cannibal guilt after consuming their offal.

Wash and drain one pound of fresh chicken livers (extra points for organic or no-hormones, no-antibiotics brands) in a colander. In a separate bowl, combine one cup of bread crumbs (preferably Japanese style panko crumbs but ordinary ones will do) and a teaspoon of Lawry's™ Seasoned Salt. Toss livers in crumb and seasoning mixture with chopsticks or fork until evenly coated. Sauté in portions in a large nonstick pan - in some butter or oil - until outside is browned but interior is slightly pink. Remove from pan, allow to cool slightly and enjoy.

Chianti and fava beans optional. As you can see this mostly-vegetarian-thing has some spectacular falls off the wagon, especially after a hard workout.

Labels: food, humor, movies

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  Yesterday, on the coldest Chicago night this winter so far, my friend Matt and I took in David Lynch’s Inland Empire at the Music Box. The subzero wind chill virtually emptied that typically buzzing section of Southport, desolation exaggerating the film's strange aftertaste the way a shot of icy vodka enhances caviar's salty bite. For quite some time after leaving the theater, nothing in the outside world appeared quite that same as it did about three hours before.

One caveat: don’t let anyone convince you that Inland Empire would be better with chemical seasoning.* Taken straight it's enough of a freak-out, and I suspect combining mind-altering substances with this film’s elemental nightmarishness [or as the occasional Polish-speaking character might say, koszmar] could send a more-sensitive soul on a little holiday in a padded room.

Scenes drift into and out of comprehensibility, with characters’ dialogue often devolving into the kind of non-sequitur that makes no literal sense, but makes perfect sense in REM sleep. Different people substitute for one another, and unknown faces stand in for the familiar. The discordant, swelling score alternates between suggestive vibration and head-on sensory assault, lending menace to scenes as innocent as a young woman’s laugh. I think the digital cameras Lynch uses are especially appropriate for the subject matter, shattering lens flares into prismatic streaks and giving skin, light, and shadow intense, unflattering hues. Oddly, the look is familiar because it's frequently the way our eyes and brain function. It's just not the stylized vision we're accustomed to seeing on the big screen.

Let me say Laura Dern is simply amazing in her multiple personalities/manifestations, but it would be counterproductive for me to try to describe the storyline, since what you might take away from seeing this Rorshach-blot of an epic may be very different. For example, one of the creepiest things in this movie - for me, at least - is a squat mid-Century table lamp with a rectangular red shade sitting ominously atop a dresser. We first see it unlit in silhouette, its angularity suggesting a killer skulking in a shadowy hallway bleached of warmth. In a later scene, the lamp's red glow looks terrifying, not comforting. There is, in fact, little or nothing about Inland Empire that's comfortable.

Lynch accentuates the natural physiological effect of dim light upon the human retina, where darkness shifts perceived chroma blue, by showing sets in varying luminosities. In fact, keep an eye out for all red lamps in this film. There is also a squad of hookers that periodically appears like a taunting Greek chorus, or the faceless wraiths in the underrated 80's supernatural thriller, Nomads. The red lamps may be an allusion to a "Red Light district," or they may be a symbolic portal between the film's shifting time signatures; just remember when you see a red lamp, "reality" is about to slip into the quicksand.

While jarringly surreal, Inland Empire never becomes simple phantasmagoria. There are no human-headed cockroaches or smoking caterpillars on mushrooms here (although we do see a "family sitcom" where the players wear costume rabbit-heads, speaking terse dialogue as if reciting a prayer card) just bubbling streams of distilled subconscious, strained through California-cum-East European anxiety. And forget about trying to keep track of linear time: here it’s always after midnight, even in the scorching midday sun.

The movie is extraordinarily challenging to watch. For the first time in years, I had the urge to walk out of the theater at several points, and a few people actually did. Not because the film was bad, but it was so overstimulating and intense for lengthy periods I could hardly stay in my seat. However, I’m sure that’s the effect Lynch intended, as one leaves with the uncomfortable brain trail you get upon waking from a nasty nightmare. But if you’re up to facing over three hours of full-on Lynchian mindf---(hint: the dashed letters do not start with a “u,” nor end in “k”) this is a limbic-system feast. Today, I actually want to see it again.

* Not unless that's your normal state. If not, I wouldn't suggest you mix the two, as I predict a raging case of the 'noids.

MORE: The Boston Globe's Ty Burr has one of the most elucidating reviews of Inland Empire I've read to date.

"The Trippy Dreams of David Lynch" by Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Labels: movies

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