guardians of the galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy is the feel-good film of this summer. It is colorful, funny, and not afraid to be silly. The kid and I saw it twice while we were on vacation. It wasn't that there weren't any other movies that piqued our interest, it was just that we had so much fun the first time around we figured what the heck, let's see it again. That sort of devil-may-care, in search of a good time attitude  permeated the film. It was infectious.

There were so many things that I liked about the movie. It captured my fancy, much like the original Star Wars film did when I first saw it (more on that tomorrow). It has a bitchin' soundtrack (check back here for details on that on Friday), and some truly memorable, lovable characters (I'm looking at you, Groot). I am not particularly invested in the Marvel universe or superhero movies in general, but I am definitely on board to see more adventures featuring Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot. And the film had Benicio Del Toro, so win-win.

Here they come, L-R: Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Star Lord (Chris Pratt), Groot (Vin Diesel), and Drax (Dave Bautista)

"Groot's the only one of you who has a clue."

The movie doesn't just reference a seventies movie vibe, but also shares its quirky sensibility with other sci-fi/fantasy fan favorites like Buckaroo Banzai and The Fifth Element. There's even a touch of The Wizard of Oz to the motley crew that joins Peter Quill, AKA Star Lord, on his galactic adventures.

We saw the movie in New Jersey, at a Bow Tie Cinema, which added to the whole nostalgia appeal of the experience. No IMAX, no 3D, no "big" movie-going experience. Just popcorn, drinks, a decent-sized screen, and a cool movie. Now don't get me wrong, I love the IMAX screen at our local multiplex (although I loathe 3D). But I also really love this more laid-back, cheaper ticket, local theater approach. It would make me want to start going to the movies more often, like I used to, seeing whatever sounded interesting, instead of weighing the pros and cons and the cost. So far no Bow Tie Cinemas in Florida. Hopefully that will change soon.

One of the other interesting things about this mega-movie that I have noticed is that it isn't (so far) over-merchandised, like so many other aimed-at-kids films seem to be. Wandering around Target with the kid recently we noticed there were a couple of LEGO themed sets,  few action figures (but no Gamora) and some school notebooks featuring the characters, but not much else. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and paraphernalia, on the other hand, are omnipresent.

I think I can probably hold off watching it again until it hits Blu-ray, but the internet offers some fun links in the meantime to feed my Guardians fix.

a movie that needs both a colon and a hyphen in its title

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol opened in IMAX theaters last weekend with great results and will open wide this week. Studios are hoping that this week's word-of-mouth will encourage audiences to view it in IMAX, which is of course a little more expensive. But if there is any film that someone might want to see in IMAX, this would be the one, if just for the greatly publicized death-defying stunt that Cruise pulls as he rappels Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world. But that sequence, as spectacular as it is (and it truly is), is just the tip of the movie's iceberg. Icebergs are practically the only thing Cruise's Ethan Hunt doesn't go up against in this fast-paced thriller. He and his IMF espionage team break out of a Russian prison, and into the Kremlin all before his stunt in Dubai, which is just the first half of the movie.

That's Cruise, Tom Cruise

The plot is something about Cruise and Co. needing to stop a nuclear warhead being set off — why the villain (Michael Nyqvist) of the piece wants to do that is never adequately explained, but seriously, who cares? People are in the theater to see Cruise in his impossible, unstoppable form. While I was watching the movie I couldn't help but marvel at 49 year-old Cruise, truly a madman. Not in the mean-spirited sense that the internet likes to imply, but he is a fool for his art. The man will do anything to get people in the seats, to entertain them.

Why else would he perfect his trademark high knee, arms pumping running style (and be sure that he is always running)? Or make such a physically demanding movie when he could settle back and drink G&Ts by the pool, or just do comic cameos like he did in Tropic Thunder? Certainly he is his own worst critic — a lot of his stunts seem expressly designed for him to prove to himself he's still got it, but again with that main motivation to get us into the theater. I expect Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol will do just that. Its main box office opponent in the thrills department this week was the new Sherlock Holmes film, which didn't do as well as expected (although I'd like to see that one, too). When it opens wide next week it should clean up.

Pump those arms and legs, Tom, a sandstorm's coming

Cruise's fascinating adrenaline junkiness aside, what was most interesting to me was director Brad Bird's (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) seamless transition from animation to live action. It was Bird who insisted on filming in IMAX vs. 3D, God bless him. I am so sick of dull 3D and want to see its over-priced gimmickry go away. There's nothing wrong with a huge screen, like the old classic movie houses of yesteryear, especially for a film like this. Bird expresses this sentiment more eloquently:

"Part of the pitch of 3-D has always been “It’s more immersive.” And I agree that added depth perception is immersive, but you dim the image down and now I’m taking a step back. You put on glasses and now I’m taking another step back ... I feel like multiplexes and the shutting down of the grand old theaters have taken a lot of the showmanship out of presenting movies. There used to be a thing such as “first run.” The meaning of “first run” is gone now because on opening day you can see a brand new movie on a good screen but it’s more likely you’ll see it on a crappy screen. ... To me, the best example of showmanship now is IMAX. I pushed to shoot in IMAX, and Paramount went along with me ... the image quality – you can’t get that any other way … you really feel it when it’s in IMAX. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to do a whole film that way." — L.A. Times

The view from up here is spectacular

Almost 30 minutes of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was filmed in IMAX, including the thrilling shots in Dubai. But the script also has lots of humor, which is a very welcome counterpoint to Cruise's Ethan Hunt, who most of the time is required to be deadly serious, although even he is allowed a few well-placed one-liners. The comedy comes mostly from his team members Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner. The team is rounded out (and very curvaceously) by Paula Patton, who is much more than just a pretty face, as she quips and kicks butt as well as the rest of them. Fans of Lost will also enjoy a blink-or-you'll-miss-him cameo by Josh Holloway. Hopefully Hollywood will take note how very much at home he was in an action-adventure movie, albeit briefly.

There are quite a few visual set pieces besides Dubai — a car chase in a sandstorm, an automated multi-level parking garage in Mumbai (full of product-placement BMWs). There were also some amusing uses of technology. As the gang pulled off one maneuver after another, sometimes using just an iPhone I couldn't help thinking, "Disarm a nuclear warhead, track a bad guy in a sandstorm: they've got an app for that." But mostly Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is entertaining. It's not a "ride" — one of my most-hated Hollywood parlance used to sell a movie. It's a full-frontal assault on your senses. It's take-no-prisoners, full-speed ahead. Just like the character of Ethan Hunt, just like Tom Cruise.

Related articles

• 10 Things Parents Should Know about Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (wired.com)

like a rolling stone

You know when you have that moment of recognition, when the meaning in a song's lyrics, which you have been singing along to for quite some time, becomes clear? I can picture the exact moment, when I got what Mick Jagger was singing about in Brown Sugar. It wasn't a life-changing moment or anything. The song isn't particularly deep and it's quite misogynist, but I was suddenly not just mindlessly singing along to the chorus anymore.

It was a raining, and I was sitting in the back seat of my dad's car, rolling up newspapers. He owned and ran a local weekly newspaper and Wednesday was publication day. I sat there, stuffing them into plastic bags, so when he tossed them out the window to deliver them, they wouldn't get soaked in the rain. Because no one likes a wet newspaper. My dad's paper was The Hometown News, where he was not only the editor and publisher, but chief reporter, photographer, and frequently, delivery man. I was in junior high and bored with having to help out. I would have much rather been over a friend's house after school watching Match Game on television than stuck here in the car driving through suburban South Jersey developments with Dad. And then Mick started singing about black girls and I grew up, woke up, a little.

Our house was always a Beatles house. My mom was a huge fan. She used to play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from Sgt. Pepper to lull us to sleep at bedtime. I wasn't really familiar with the Stones, who I lumped in with my mom's music. We heard them on the radio—Ruby Tuesday, As Tears Go By—but Mom didn't have any of their albums. When I was old enough to start buying my own records I was into a later British invasion— the Clash, the Police, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. I did become familiar with a few Stones songs that were popular when my bands were ruling the airwaves—all from their Some Girls album, which was apparently a bit of a comeback for the band at the time—Miss You, Beast of Burden, Shattered.



When I moved to New York to go to art school the first place I lived, the Parsons dorm, was a high-rise off Union Square Park. My dad was the opposite of thrilled and kept referencing Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park. I was a little scared to be out of the house and on my own for the first time in my life, but mostly thrilled. Andy Warhol's studio was a few buildings up from the dorm and I used to see him walking around the neighborhood quite often, always flanked by two tall blonde young men. Our building was also the home to the fashion illustrator Antonio, who frequently had celebrity visitors. The only way to get upstairs was by the elevator, so one day some bedraggled freshmen art students got to ride a few floors with Mick Jagger, who got off at Antonio's floor. I thought at the time that Jagger was visiting on a professional assignment, but apparently Antonio was a great friend of Jagger's long-term companion and eventual wife, Jerry Hall.

Antonio discovered Jessica Lange in 1974. He discovered Jerry Hall and lived with her in Paris at the beginning of her modeling career. ... [he] also discovered Grace Jones and Tina Chow.—Wikipedia

The other evening our local PBS station was featuring the 90s Julien Temple documentary, Rolling Stones: Live at the Max, apparently the first IMAX concert film, as part of its end-of-year pledge drive.

One of the first attempts at presenting an entertainment film in the IMAX format was The Rolling Stones: Live at the Max (1991), an 85-minute compilation of concert footage filmed in IMAX during the band's 1990 Steel Wheels tour, edited to give the impression of a single concert.—Wikipedia

I had never seen the film before, or the Stones in concert. Jagger was 48 when the film was made. He and Keith seemed pretty congenial, more so than they might be these days. There were so many songs in the film that made me realize I need to spend some iTunes dough. Even though I may not have been fed a steady diet of their music as I was growing up, somehow they must have infiltrated my subconscious—Tumbling Dice, Paint It, Black, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil—are still fabulous and just as outrageous as ever.

O.K., I've got to track this down.

Brown Sugar is in no way my favorite Stones song, but it did wake me up to the fact that not all of the music from mom's era was bright and sunny. The Stones are the ultimate bar band. While I was watching the concert, even with all the pyrotechnics and Mick's larger-than-life posturing and stage crawling, I could still picture them in a smoky, dirty, bluesy little dive, just playing, playing, playing. Letting their gritty, wonderful songs come through. As Keith Richards says in his recent biography Life,

To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart, is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. 

The Stones have definitely managed to give us some wonderful stabs to the heart. What more could poor boy do?

Related articles

• Listen: The Rolling Stones 'Gimme Shelter' Deconstructed (rollingstone.com)
• Mick Jagger or Keith Richards? (telegraph.co.uk)

night at the Smithsonian

We caught the new Night at the Museum flick recently at the Smithsonian in IMAX. What fun. I would have enjoyed it anyway, but working at the Smithsonian gave me some extra laughs and cringes and shrugs. The best Smithsonian moment was when the Air & Space museum came alive, although I had to look the other way at the "new" graphics on the front of the building. But no matter.

There was just enough Robin Williams as Theodore Rex, monkey slapping, and Easter Island "dum-dumming" to go around, as well as some new tricks. Ben Stiller was great, and I think the film is even better than the first one, although that may be because I've only probably seen that one about fifty times (or it just seems that way), so novelty is always refreshing...

Owen Wilson is still my favorite tiniest cowboy, Amy Adams as Amelia Earheart gives Stiller a run for his money, but Hank Azaria is absolutely brilliant as the "bad" Pharaoh, speaking for some reason in a pseudo-Boris Karloff voice and just having the best time ever. As did we. If you catch it at the Smithsonian, Madame Tussauds has leant a few wax figures as an extra treat.