Bratty Girl

I’ve always loved comic books, and despite Iron Man not being as spectacularly popular as my favorites Superman, Spider-Man and Batman, and even less well-known than the Hulk, X-Men and the Fantastic Four, this new science fiction fantasy movie adaptation directed by John Favreau is a satisfying visual feast. The main protagonists display solid acting and the film showcases Hollywood’s visual effects superiority. Thanks also to the writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum and Matt Holloway for a good screenplay, which is the basic foundation of any decent film.

The often-troubled yet talented actor Robert Downey, Jr. is quite effective in Iron Man, his wisecracking humor, panache and fearless bravado fitting the character of hedonistic billionaire and weapons manufacturer Tony Stark. Coming across like a modern-day Howard Hughes or the narcissistic Donald Trump, the swaggering and sardonic celebrity tycoon gets kidnapped in Afghanistan by radical Muslim terrorists right after demonstrating to the US military his firm’s newest missile technology called Jericho.

A fellow scientist hostage named Yinsen (played by actor Shaun Toub) manages to save Stark’s life with a crude electromagnetic contraption embedded in his chest and powered by a car battery to stop shrapnel from reaching his heart; the tech genius tycoon eventually replaces it with a high-tech/high-powered pacemaker-like device.

Under the gun to recreate his company’s newest weapons for mass destruction in a cave, the MIT whiz secretly and defiantly builds a hyper-energized iron suit to blast his way out of captivity. This and other, more sophisticated versions of his super-duper iron suits use up so much metal, no wonder the market prices of metals nowadays have shot up to world-record levels! It’s also a thrill to behold the technological capabilities of his iron suit, which allows our super-hero to fly up into the heavens at a faster speed, even than America’s finest fighter jets.

One of the true secret weapons of Iron Man in his struggles and exploits is not made of metal; it’s his flesh-and-blood loyal assistant and budding love interest — Virginia “Pepper” Potts, played well and with good humor by actress Paltrow. She once wowed us with her superb performance in the wonderful 1998 film Shakespeare in Love. Like Natalie Portman and Steven Spielberg, Paltrow is proud of her Jewish roots and cultural heritage. She is a descendant of the famous 17th-century Polish rabbi David HaLevi Segal of Krakow and generations of rabbis in Minsk, Russia.

One of the enjoyable highlights of this movie is the penultimate explosive duel that pits Iron Man against a much larger, bulkier and more menacing iron monstrosity. Both of them ferociously battle and blast away at each other, oblivious to much of surrounding southern California. The enthralling action scenes and special effects here are not senseless fun or gratuitous, but are used effectively to advance the storyline and character development.

One of the lessons of this film is that sometimes in life, our most abominable foes are not those outside our armies, businesses or clans, but possibly some of the most trusted people in our inner circle. Watch out for the remorseless machinations of the villain Obadiah Stane played by actor Jeff Bridges.

Iron Man is one superhero action movie with heart and (some) brains; it is good, satisfying summer entertainment. Like the hero in the unforgettable Batman Begins film of 2005, Downey fully portrays Tony Stark/Iron Man as human, vulnerable and flawed, with multiple vices such as womanizing, boozing and gambling. Often bloodied and bludgeoned, but never bowed, the main protagonist is characterized as gutsy, gritty, honest and endlessly seeking redemption.

Unlike many superheroes who reside in urban jungle New York (or its comic book counterpart, Gotham City), Tony Stark lives the high life in a seaside mountain cliff mansion with underground laboratories in sunny Malibu, California. This tycoon drives Audi luxury cars, flies in private jets with sexy stewardesses, indulges in excessive gambling and liquor, womanizes wantonly, and thinks he is on top of the world as big boss of the publicly-listed Stark Industries. However, a fellow scientist hostage in a cold dark Afghan cave asks about his lack of a family, perhaps alluding to his meaningless meanderings through sybarite pleasures, and later comments poignantly that the tycoon is after all “a man who has everything but nothing.”

Iron Man is also an interesting parable of the struggle for personal redemption. From a nihilistic warmonger playboy, Stark eventually changes and seeks to use his technological genius and vast wealth to right the wrongs of our troubled world. We need not be tycoons like Bill Gates, politicians like Hillary or Obama, celebrities like Angelina Jolie or superheroes like Iron Man to be imbued with social responsibility; our priceless gift of life demands that we do our share to help change our world for the better.

In one action scene in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan just before the death of this fellow hostage Yinsen, the latter’s final words of advice to the swashbuckling playboy billionaire should perhaps also ring true for most of us: “Don’t waste your life.”

The Twilight hype is currently at crazy levels of intensity and it probably has to do with the fact that the first teaser trailer has finally hit. If you're not familiar with the film, Twilight is based off of the best-selling series of novels by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with another teenage vampire. I'll be the first to say this teaser trailer doesn't look half bad. But then again, the whole concept is really designed for teenage girls.

Just like "Scary Movie," "Epic Movie" and "Meet the Spartans," "Superhero Movie" is a lampoon flick that spoof past films about superheroes.

It’s made by some of the makers of the team that parodied the "Airport" movies before in "Airplane," and in all fairness, they have more laughs to offer than the Wayans Brothers who also indulge in this kind of genre. The superhero flicks they spoof here include "Spiderman," "X Men" and "Batman Begins."

The hero is a high school dork, Rick Riker (Drake Bell), who pines for the most popular girl in their campus, Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton.) Jill actually has feelings for him also but they can’t seem to connect with each other. During a field trip to a science laboratory, a genetically altered dragonfly bites Rick, and this gives him super powers. Like Peter Parker/Spidey, he can now climbs walls, scale skyscrapers, and becomes known as the Dragonfly.

A wealthy owner of a research company, Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald), is terminally ill and he’s hoping an experiment that can treat DNA will heal him. But something goes wrong in the treatment and he instead becomes a demon who is a menace to humans. He becomes this evil entity called the Hourglass who wears a preposterous costume and he must kill thousands of people to sustain his own life force. It becomes the Dragonfly’s task to save the people in their city.

This kind of spoof is aimed primarily at teen viewers and also older ones whose intelligence never developed. Just like other flicks of this genre, we are given a buffet offering of crude jokes and sexual sight gags (one implied bestiality and there are scenes of breasts and crouches being fondled.) Slapstick humor abounds, marked with violence like beatings, pratfalls, impalings, hitting with objects and even gunshots.

Some of them are not really funny but have a mean streak, like an old woman being fed into a machine. Toilet humor is likewise rampant, like Rick’s senile aunt (Marion Ross) having frequent farting attacks while sleeping on a sofa.

Leslie Nielsen did a lot of James Bond spoof in "The Naked Gun" series, but as Rick’s uncle, he’s now just too old to be doing physical jokes and even sexual ones like when he goes on top of a dead woman and simulates sexual movements. Pamela Anderson as Invisible Woman once again gets to show her scientifically augmented tops while Regina Bell goes over the top as a screeching angry woman called Mrs. Xavier. Brent Spiner and Robert Hayes also do cameo roles that manage to be quite funny.

As usual, real life public figures are played by look-alikes and made fun of, like Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the wheelchair-bound scientist, Stephen Hawking (author of "A Brief History of Time"), who complains about his lesbian nurse and endorses suicide and the use of drugs in high school. He’s later shown being attacked by bees and falling from the roof of a building. Also parodied are Catholic priests.

Just like "Meet the Spartans," the movie’s running time is quite short, so they pad the end credits with additional scenes of lowbrow outtakes, bloopers and silliness. The movie lacks genuinely hilarious punch lines. Some of the gags will also not be recognizable to most local viewers, like the joke on Tom Cruise and Scientology.

The opening lines of well-loved poem go like this. On the 15th of May in the jungle of Nool/ in the heat of the day/ in the cool of the pool/ he was splashing/ enjoying the jungle’s great joys/ when Horton, the elephant heard a small noise.

And what did Horton hear? He heard a cry for help from a tiny, tiny, tiny Who. And what is a Who? It is a small creature from the land of Who-ville, which is also a tiny, tiny, tiny place. Do you know how tiny Who-ville is? It is so tiny that it is located on a speck of dust.

This bit of dust and all the Whos in it, live peacefully on a dandelion. The flower likes to dance with the wind, splash in the rain and smile at the sun. But one day, the Who-ville dust is removed from its safe place and it is now falling fast to distraction taking all the Whos to certain death.

But not if Horton can help it. The elephant tells himself, “A person is a person no matter how small.” and then off he goes to save the dust and Who-ville.

Now there is only one writer who could have created a whole world on a bit of dust. Take note, it is not even on a grain of sand but on a tiny, tiny, tiny speck of dust. But that is not surprising because Horton Hears a Who! is another story by Teodore Geisel, whom everybody knows as Dr. Seuss, the man whose flair for rhymes and for the whimsical still knows no equal.

Dr. Seuss also made a cat, who lives in a hat, green eggs, a wocket in your pocket, a Grinch who stole Christmas and many other strange but lovable characters. These were created for a series of reading books for young children. This happened over 50 years ago and since then kids everywhere have grown up learning to read their first English words with Dr. Seuss.

Horton is one of the most lovable among the Dr. Seuss characters. He is gentle and kind, friendly and purposeful. Though big and bumbly and a bit dumb-witted, he shows selflessness in taking on the gargantuan task of saving Who-ville. While almost everyone around him is asking why, saying don’t, belittling his efforts, are plainly unconcerned or disbelieving in the Whos, Horton, the savior, plods on, clinging tightly to the flower with its precious bit of dust.

Horton’s adventures are presented in easy-on-the-eyes text and drawings in the book. And I am sure that all those who recall those pages were happy to see those soft and fuzzy images come to life in the movie version of Horton Hears a Who!.

Forget happy, I think the word here should be ecstatic because for the first time there is a motion picture based on a Dr. Seuss story whose look retains the innocent charm of the original.

Previous attempts made, most notably with How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat, resulted in horrible duds.

I believe that the main reason these failed was because the producers employed live-action instead of animation. Live action requires live actors who despite all the prosthetics and CGI rendering can never approximate the look of the familiar illustrations. Can you imagine a live actor as Mickey Mouse?

Besides, actors do have a tendency to overact and the sight of a Method-steeped Grinch or cat in a hat in a garish colored set can be really unbearable. Remember, Jim Carrey as the Grinch and Mike Myers as the cat were actually painful to watch.

Horton escaped this problem by being entirely animated. Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Marino and done at 20th Century Fox by the team responsible for Ice Age, it is such a visual delight. The lush forest of Nool, the airy Who-ville and all of the characters are presented in soft-rounded lines that seem to have been filled in by colored pencils or chalk.

The action moves smoothly and with airy naturalness. This holds true be it a scene where Horton is pelted with bananas by naughty monkeys, or chasing the dust across a heavenly field of clover or being scolded by a moralizing kangaroo.

There were obvious efforts to flesh out the characters with the addition of subplots and to spice up the dialogue with wisecracks from popular films or TV shows. Those were probably times when the directors forgot that Dr. Seuss never intended Horton to delve into family problems or play in comedy clubs. Thankfully, only snippets of those made the final cut.

Thankfully too, Horton never had to cope with Jim Carrey’s mug. The actor is back with Dr. Seuss as the elephant with a big heart. He still shows hints of getting carried away at times but because he is technically disembodied here, he fails to do damage to the sweet, sweet tale.

We often judge a movie based on its cast and director. It’s like saying a film by Steven Spielberg or Michael Bay is a guaranteed blockbuster.

I think it’s a bit unfair. But this is how the system goes. We can’t help but watch films that everyone else wants to see.

Have you heard of Roland Emmerich? He hasn’t directed as many films as the rest of the known directors in Hollywood have, but his few projects make it big on-screen.

Emmerich studied at the University of Television and Film Munich in the late ‘70s.

His student film, Arche Noah Prinzip Das (1984) opened the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. This feature made his name known far and wide after it was sold in more than 20 countries.

The following year, 1985, he and his producer-sister Ute Emmerich created Centropolis Film Productions, better known now as Centropolis Entertainment.

After directing Moon 44, an English-language feature film in Germany, producer Mario Kassar noticed Emmerich’s talent.

He was invited to come to Hollywood to direct and work with Dean Devlin, who was also introduced in Moon 44.

His first big Hollywood hit was directing Independence Day with Will Smith in 1996. This was the first film to gross $100-M in less than one week after its showing and is still considered one of the best films ever made.

Godzilla was next in line. Unfortunately, it didn’t make a good impression on the critics and failed to meet box-office expectations.

Emmerich took some time off and veered away from doing films with much visual effects by directing The Patriot.

Emmerich was considered as director of Spider-Man in 2002, but plans didn’t push through. He also turned down the directorial job for Die Another Day.

Soon after, he directed and produced The Day After Tomorrow in 2004.

I found this movie amazing, almost as good as Independence Day.

Emmerich was interested in directing The Transformers, but Dreamworks chose Spielberg and Bay over him.

Emmerich’s most recent visual effects-laden film is 10,000 BC with Steven Strait and Camilla Belle.

Even when it was still in the previews, I had been wanting to watch the film. The movie is about a hunter determined to save his people and fight for his ladylove.

Emmerich felt that the casting played a big role in the movie. Besides keeping the film on low-budget, he knows casting well-known actors automatically distracts the audience from appreciating the uniqueness of his film.

Needless to say, I found every single one of his actors perfect for their role.

My research on Emmerich showed that just like any other directors, he has his own signature style. Emmerich likes to cast a certain group of actors for minor roles in most of his films. Some of these actors are included in at least two of his films: Christopher John Fields, Jack Moore, Steve Gianelli, Arick Avari, and a few others.

Emmerich is also known for featuring the number “44” somewhere in his films in reference to Moon 44.

His movies always have a scene showing a couple kissing in front of a luminous background, and he often includes a scene shot in the rain.

He is the perfect director of large-scale disaster films.

Emmerich is also openly gay. In fact, he donated the largest contribution ($150,000) to the 2006 Outfest’s Legacy Project, which is dedicated to the gay and lesbian film reservation.

What can you say about a movie that mixes some of the most sublime Broadway melodies in history with frequent, almost gleeful gouts of blood from slashes of the razor?

You’d say Tim Burton is in rare form again. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street updates the Stephen Sondheim ‘60s musical only in that it features goth-garbed Johnny Depp (as wrongly jailed Benjamin Barker, reborn as barber Sweeney Todd) and Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter (who apparently had to audition for the part of Mrs. Lovett, the baker of “the worst pies in London”). This also means it wallows in Burton’s detailed, blue-gray monochromatic cinematography — every texture, every wall, every piece of fabric rendered with dead-eyed, clammy care. It shows us a shadowy 19th-century London that is nasty and brutish, while the movie itself is somewhat short (only 95 minutes). And for the first time in a long time (overlooking mistakes like Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Burton’s vision fuses perfectly with the subject matter.

Barker returns to London after 15 years in the pokey, having been sent there by corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who had eyes on Barker’s wife and later adopted the couple’s young daughter. Fifteen years has turned Barker into a creature capable only of thoughts of vengeance. He mutters lyrics that are bleaker than anything Broadway has ever dared churn out (“There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it’s stuffed full of people that are stuffed full of sh*t”), but the thing that makes you want to go along for the ride is the damnably catchy music by Sondheim. This must be what Brecht and Kurt Weill had in mind in The Threepenny Opera: an examination of how horrific the world can be that had people humming Mack the Knife as they hit the exits.

There is something Brechtian about Burton’s Sweeney Todd, too, perhaps — the layers of carefully crafted ironic distance that allow us to perversely admire Depp’s killing spree. It comes through in the scene where Mrs. Lovett has her “epiphany” about what to do with the body of Pirelli (a rival barber played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, whose attempt to blackmail Barker costs him his throat). She posits the notion that human meat would taste much better in her pies than the cat corpses that a rival baker sells, and so Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd mesh their peculiar insanities into one fine enterprise: he clips them with the razor; she serves them up as baked goods.

A love of the lurid is nothing new for Burton, and this type of “blood and circus” entertainment didn’t first show up in movies like Hostel and Saw. It was present in the grand guignol slasher plays of 19th-century Paris which served up amoral horror shows to wide-eyed audiences. Vengeance is a staple of cinema, art and theater all the way back to Jacobean drama, and possibly much before (what is The Odyssey if not a tale of righteous payback?). But here, it’s given fresh voice for a new generation: the gapers who will sit through Pirates of the Caribbean movies that are slower in the water than a leaky galleon. And there is something perversely amusing about seeing Depp — declared one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office stars, thanks to those cinematic theme-park rides — relishing a role that is definitely not for kids.

Depp has a grand chameleon-like talent: he takes on the mannerisms of his characters like well-worn clothes, yet offers (with the possible exception of Edward Scissorhands and Donnie Brasco) little inner life beyond a brooding countenance. Depp’s insistence on slipping into characters, rather than filtering up personal emotion in the American “Method actor” way, leaves us marveling at his performances objectively, rather than feeling them deeply. Something Brechtian about that, too. Whether it’s Z-movie director Ed Wood, gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson, or a Keith Richards-influenced turn as pirate Jack Sparrow, Depp’s roles have largely been about protective coloration. His Mr. Todd is no exception, but here the character fits like a glove. Or maybe like the razor that sits so perfectly in his hand that he garbles out, “At last, my arm is complete!”

Here he’s in good form, displaying a glee not only for vengeance but for Sondheim’s memorable songs, belting out My Friends (a love song to his long-idle razors), No Place Like London and a duet with Rickman (Pretty Women) that is a highlight. There’s the gleeful A Little Priest, in which baker and barber cook up a scheme to get rid of the world’s unnecessary people, and a fine little comic set-piece called By the Sea. The music, written in the ‘60s, is certainly prettier than most recent Broadway or Disney-film fare, yet sung in ironic juxtaposition (such as Pretty Women, during which Depp holds a blade perilously above Rickman’s throat), it walks a fine razor edge between sublime beauty and sublime evil. Almost subversive.

But as usual, Burton is more interested in surface notes than in the true nature of evil. The details are dazzling, such as a mad camera sweep through a CGI-created London; or the cotton-gray clouds billowing above the city, recalling Batman Returns and German Expressionist cinema; then there’s an elaborate barber chair/abattoir assembly line, and those ever-higher, ever-sharper, ever-brighter gouts of blood. We get some background on how miserable London workhouses were for kids (Ed Sanders as street urchin Toby), and we can certainly dig why Barker is so pissed off, but we never really get the darker undercurrents beneath his character’s bloodlust. This might be too much to expect, asking Burton to probe the nature of evil with a little bit more precision than his Sweeney Todd swings a razor. But it would add more depth to Burton’s already impressive résumé if he could someday get past the gore and find the inhuman heart beating there.

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. — Christopher Reeve (1952-2004)

Nothing is given to man on earth — struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible — the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen. — Andrew Bernstein

This is how movies should be made and the very reason for their existence. More than for artistic excellence or change-the-world idealism, a good movie should give the audience real entertainment. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf, scripted by Roger Avary and famed novelist Neil Gaiman, starring Ray Winstone with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie and aided by sophisticated computer-generated imagery, is an enthralling, action-packed movie and a satisfying multi-sensory experience.

I watched the visually-stunning Beowulf in 3D splendor. I came out of the moviehouse inspired and energized by Beowulf, but also thinking — like the citizens of monster-besieged Heorot kingdom — that we need fearless avenging heroes to obliterate the numerous monstrous evils plaguing our society.

For lovers of literature, history, folklore and fans of sexy and brainy actress Angelina Jolie (such as this writer), this ingenious film adaptation of the oldest English-language epic poem, “Beowulf,” is a sumptuous delight of good storytelling, adventure, drama and wham-bam action. It is not perfect but it is a good movie, despite some deviations from the original Anglo-Saxon literary opus like the hero’s hubris and his controversial link to monster Grendel’s mother.

The story is set in the 6th century Danish kingdom of Heorot ruled by the dissolute drunkard King Hrotgar and his pretty and musically-inclined Queen Wealthow. The kingdom is attacked nonstop by the hideous, bloodthirsty monster Grendel and his evil but bewitchingly sexy mother played by Angelina Jolie (whose naked physique is highlighted in scintillating gold and tipped with a serpentine ponytail). Hope comes when the famed Viking warrior Beowulf leads his ragtag group of Geat men to sail to this kingdom, volunteering to slay the monsters “not for gold, but for glory.” Beowulf bellows for all to hear and to echo through the ages: “If we die, it will be for glory, not for gold!”

While I enjoyed this movie with sheer wild abandon like a kid, here are some of the real-life lessons I gathered from this intriguing recreation of an ancient myth:

Face your demons. Beowulf shows us that the best way to deal with frightening and complex demons, in our society or in our lives, is not to run away, not to hide. Confront the demons, go to their innermost lairs, fight them head-on and crush them!

Be humble in victory, more so during setbacks. Don’t be foolhardy like in the early part of the movie, when Beowulf tries to lie or create excuses about supposedly fighting sea monsters as the cause of his defeat in a swimming race across the ocean. Perhaps his account was partly true, but it seems the warrior was embellishing or exaggerating his exploits. We are humans and shouldn’t be ashamed of our occasional setbacks; in fact it is even better to maintain humility in our most glorious triumphs.

Be faithful to your spouse. The Danish King Hrotgar and his successor Beowulf had succumbed to the near-fatal error of infidelity, with costly long-term emotional and even other life-threatening adverse consequences.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. The Danish king and our Viking hero Beowulf failed to heed the wisdom of this old adage: that we shouldn’t be easily fooled or swayed by mere physical beauty as exemplified by the utterly destructive but physically seductive monster mother played so convincingly by Jolie. Physical beauty is only skin deep; what matters most is a person’s character, heart, values and intentions.

Never leave behind unfinished business. In wars or in other endeavors, we shouldn’t slacken or be tempted to languor in our half-baked successes. Never be content with only half or partial efforts. We should give our all, our very best. Win or lose, we should meet our challenges and never leave unfinished business behind, in the same way that Beowulf did when he killed Grendel but didn’t destroy its more evil mother.

To slay demons, strike decisively at the heart. The words of King Hrotgar, which Beowulf embraced in his final battle. The most effective way for us to destroy demons — whether in myths or in our lives — is to decisively focus on the problem. When solving or confronting problems, we shouldn’t be distracted by side issues or peripheral matters, but sift through the mess and strike at the heart of the matter.

It is best to conquer one’s self. More than subduing armies or slaying monsters, the epic life of the Viking hero Beowulf shows us that the greatest and most difficult challenge is to conquer our own selves — our inner demons of pride, overconfidence, sloth, human frailty and weakness for temptation. In the penultimate near-fatal clash of Beowulf, he had to vanquish a monstrous adversary brought about by his own past hubris.

Leaders should inspire. If we are to be leaders among our peers, in our families, in our communities or in nation-states, we should be first in battling at the frontlines like the fearless and resolute Beowulf. We shouldn’t be last in the fight but first in enjoying the spoils, but true leaders should have the spirit of self-sacrifice and lead the way. Great leaders like Beowulf should inspire courage, faith and indomitable hope.

Never lose hope; victory is our destiny. We should emulate the overpowering positive attitude of Beowulf. While the Danish kingdom of Heorot sank into despair, when even their king, queen and other so-called leaders were cowering in fear, Beowulf showed up with invincible faith, sure of success. We should vigorously slay the demons of doubt and fear. We are not hapless victims of fate. We should never lose hope in our life battles, no matter how difficult or bruising our struggles, no matter how life-threatening or cruel the odds. God has created all of us for a purpose and to have meaningful lives. We’ll soon flourish. We should believe that success is our destiny!