Movie Review: The Black Hole

In my earlier review of Tron, I noticed that the movie was not as good as I had remembered. With this other early Disney sci-fi effort, I found the opposite to be true: it held up better than I expected. Story-wise, things aren't very complicated here: space exploration ship Palomino comes across a long-lost "ghost ship", the Cygnus perched at the edge of a black hole, and the crew goes aboard to investigate. There are plenty of co-incidences: one of the Palomino's crew members had a father serving on the Cygnus; they just happened to arrive on the very night the mad scientist's plan to enter the black hole is ready to begin; and so on. Still, while there might not be a lot of surprises in store (there's really only one mystery point here - the true nature of the robotic crew of the Cygnus), the script mostly keeps things moving right along without too much of the dialog cheesiness of Tron. The exception: Anthony Perkins gets a little too much into his idol worship of the mad scientist Dr. Reinhardt, and his conversion over to his side comes a little too quickly for my taste. Otherwise, though, not too bad.

The design and effects work here is actually more impressive to me than what happened on Tron. Sure, Tron was the more technically-intensive and groundbreaking work, but the costume design there just didn't do it for me. The work in realizing the massive Cygnus - and its destruction as it heads into the abyss - is to me better realized and quite impressive. I even mostly liked the cutesy robot design for VINCENT and BOB (although there was no reason to give BOB the folksy accents of Slim Pickens as a voice). The main downsides for me are mostly centered on Dr. Reinhardt's robotic guards, which carry out the inevitable shootout sequences by marching in lockstep with each other, and then standing around waiting to be shot. As a whole, these action scenes are poorly thought out and executed, and really drag things down during what is supposed to be the exciting, action-y part of the film (which really hasn't had a lot of activity up until then). 

But soon enough, the shootouts are over and we are back to seeing if the Palomino crew can escape the black hole's grip. Well, you can't have a film set at a black hole and not show the trip into it, can you? Nope - and so we get a strange variant on the ending of 2001, where the crew and the mad scientist (and for some reason, their robots) make a trip through literal heaven and hell, with flames and angels and the whole hackneyed two bits. At least Kubrick took a little effort into making his metaphysical journey into a strange mind warp of a type (even if it was just a helicopter shot run through a bunch of filters). While the fiery mountains of The Black Hole's version of hell are nicely realized, they are also a weird combination of lazy and nonsensical. 

Despite the ending, the whole thing does come off better than I had remembered. This movie usually seems to be remembered as an interesting failure, and I don't think it's as bad as all that, and certainly a better result than Tron (for what that's worth). Three stars.

Movie Review: The Defender

A Hong Kong version of The Bodyguard, the horrible Kevin Costner-Whitney Houston movie. Moving it to China and having Jet Li play the bodyguard role doesn't make it any better. There's the spoiled rich girl who is the target of assassins after witnessing a murder, and the pair of inept "comic relief" policemen. There's plenty of false scares, and bouts of frenetic "action" (mostly Li striking dramatic fighting poses - no real extended fight scenes until the very end) amongst what seems like hours of pouting by the girl and smart remarks from her young brother. If only someone could have protected me from this movie. One star.

iTunes Colors X: Purple

The last color in my collection (I think).

Song titles in my collection mentioning the color "purple" = 1

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Purple Haze"

Oh Good, Another Proposal

For the love of God, someone stop him before he proposes again:

Austin Mayor Will Wynn today will call for a November 2008 election to build a Central Austin passenger rail system connecting the airport, downtown and the University of Texas, along with the Triangle and Mueller developments in near North Austin.

Because that's what we need - another dysfunctional transit system to go along with CAMPO, Cap Metro, etc.

Unlike the current commuter rail project, which Capital Metro is building with its own, diminishing resources, Wynn will propose creating a task force of several jurisdictions to work out plans for the city and other governmental entities — and possibly developers and private companies — to pay for the project. This could include, Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken says, selling bonds to be paid back with general city tax revenue as well as profits from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Remember, if you really want to waste money, you're going to need several jurisdictions working together.

Wynn said he would hope to avoid using general obligation debt, which would require a property tax increase.

You mean, besides the tax and fee increase you've already pushed through as part of your "green building" boondoggle?

"I'm going to try to build the case that now folks, we have to begin the next and obvious phase of our desperately needed comprehensive transportation system," Wynn said. "It should be our goal to do it with no new taxes."

You just got through saying you are going to fund it with Airport money and bonds. Where do you think the money used to replace the funds spent on this thing will come from? This is already a tax increase, you moron.

Wynn said he hopes that the task force could conclude its business within six months, allowing the beginning of a rail election campaign by the summer.

Not to mention the money for this - spending my money to convince me to waste more of my money.

Selling bonds would require permission of City of Austin voters (or Travis County voters, if commissioners decided to throw in some borrowed money as well), and Capital Metro under state law cannot build and operate additional lines without voter approval. This could mean simultaneous elections by the two sets of mostly the same voters, McCracken said, one to borrow the money and the other to allow the project.

So we will probably have the best of all possible worlds - we will vote to have the system, but not to pay for it. Oh, who am I kidding - the people of this town have proven time and again they will vote for any new expenditure put before them.

No one knows what this would cost at this point.

Yeah - no shit.

Capital Metro in 2006 proposed spending about $230 million to build a streetcar line from downtown to Mueller; the agency has revised that cost downward to $210.4 million. But what the mayor is discussing would be much more extensive, including a spur to the Triangle and a several mile run out to the airport that would have to include crossings of Interstate 35, Texas 71 and U.S. 183.

McCracken, in fact, has another extension in mind, this one to Zilker Park.

If there's one bozo on the council I hate more than Wynn, it's McCracken and his half-baked city planning schemes. Oh, and little Jennifer Kim, who just decided she didn't mean to upset the panhandlers, and is willing to pay them more of my money to prove it.

Look, here's a simple idea. You want to move people around from downtown to Meuller or the Triange or wherever, here's a brilliant idea - RUN A BUS LINE THERE. What is more likely is that you already do, and PEOPLE AREN'T USING THEM. You think shiny new streetcars will be more trendy than buses, so people will start using them. What will happen is some people will switch from buses to streetcars, but no additional traffic, and then you will be stuck with a streetcar route that cannot be changed.

Look guys, I know you council folks have a severe case of San Francisco envy - you're still steaming over the fact they thought of banning plastic bags before you did. I'm not particularly interested in living in San Francisco, or Seattle, or Portland or whatever other West Coast shithole city you think we should be turning into. You like it so much, fucking move there yourself.

iTunes Colors IX: Orange

Song titles in my collection mentioning the color "orange" = 2

Miles Davis: "Orange"
Rubert Hine: "Orange Song"

Movie Review: Transporter 2

Well, there's mindless action films, and then there's this. It takes mindless to a new level. There's not much of a plot here - some bad guys try to take out a roomful of drug agents with a virus by infecting a kid, who infects his father, who infects everyone else. There was probably four hundred easier ways to make this happen, but there you are. Once the plot is discovered, none of the "good guys" inform the authorities about it until the infection has been spread, presumably to at least hundreds of people, although that aspect really isn't explored here. And of course, only our unstoppable hero, Jason Statham, can track down the bad guy and get the cure.

So, not much of a plot. Also not much in terms of production. I understand that impossible things are supposed to happen in this universe, but there are two CGI car jump stunts in the first half hour that make the bus jump from Speed seem like documentary footage. Not much joy in the hand-to-hand action either, although I did enjoy one fight late where Statham takes down a dozen men - with a fire hose.

I was all prepared to give this film the requisite two stars, but unfortunately they also threw in a couple of technological goofs that I just couldn't get past. My favorite one: Statham breaks into a security room, finds a picture of one of the bad guys, uploads it to a handy iPod (really?), then uploads it from the iPod to his Audi (really??), then uploads it from the Audi to a random police computer that a friend of his, fresh off the plane from France, happens to have access to (really???), who then uses an unfamiliar search program to locate the identity of the person in the picture in about thirty seconds and get his location back to Statham (really????).

I know, I know: The Rule is "nothing you see a computer doing in a movie is possible." But this one was just too stupid to ignore. It's not really as bad a movie as my other one-star specials this year (like Norbit), but that's what you get for misusing an iPod. One star. 

(Oh and I forgot - the DVD cover has Statham blasting away with two guns John Woo-style. That actually never happens in the whole film. It might have been better if it did.)

iTunes Colors VIII: Yellow

Song titles in my collection mentioning the color "yellow" = 4

Porcupine Tree: "Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape"
The Beatles: "Yellow Submarine"
Elton John: "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
Chick Corea: "The Yellow Nimbus"