Warner Bros. invited a number of bloggists to take a gander at 26 minutes worth of Watchmen footage and, scandalously, our man Leonard Pierce was not among them. They’ll pay for this. Kevin Kelly of Spoutblog was among them, and if you simply can’t wait for a minute-by-minute breakdown, he’s got it. “As the footage opens, the Comedian is sitting back watching Richard Nixon give a speech on television about aggression from the Soviet Union. He’s having a cup of tea and enjoying a cigar, just a quiet evening at home. He starts flipping channels and settles on a commercial for Nostalgia Perfume from Veidt Industries, with music provided by the idyllic velvet tones of Nat King Cole. Just a quiet evening at home for a former costumed vigilante. That is, until a figure dressed in black busts his door down and proceeds to kick his ass all over the place before hurling him out the window. As he hurtles to the ground, his iconic smiley face pin, now with a dollop of blood on it, lands beside him, providing the iconic cover for the graphic novel, and the most identifiable image from the Watchmen universe.” Yeah, that’s how I would have done it, too.
At Scanners, Jim Emerson makes the case that movie critics are the best political pundits. “One of the things film critics do for a living is to pay close attention to how people behave, and how that behavior is presented through visual media. This applies not only to actors playing characters, but to people who play themselves, in fictional or nonfictional settings, on and off the screen. It should come as no surprise to learn that some of our best movie critics have backgrounds in psychology. When Bill Clinton said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman,’ it now seems impossible to believe that he fooled anyone at that particular moment. But if any movie critic misread Clinton's voice and body language, that critic should have been impeached.”
The Cooler announces the Politics & Movies Blog-a-Thon, to take place between Nov. 4-9. “The parameters are these: Your post must deal with politics and movies. Simple as that. If that means you write an appreciation of a political-themed drama like The Candidate, perfect! If that means you analyze a documentary like No End In Sight, that’s great, too. If instead you want to dive into the deeper political themes of a blockbuster like The Dark Knight, be my guest. Politics and movies are the essential ingredients. Go forth and be creative.” I’m guessing we’ll participate in some fashion.
At Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny flicks an old chestnut off his plate. “I can't honestly say if this is more of a personal quirk than a reflection on genuine critical principle, but one thing that drives me right up a wall is the complaint, apropos a given film (okay, apropos a given film that I happen to be fond of), ‘I didn't care about the characters.’ The word ‘care,’ admittedly, gets right up my nose almost as quickly as the word ‘relate’ does…Of the films that are unspooling at the New York Film Festival, it's Steven Soderbergh's Che that's eliciting the most sniffy care-bear reactions, this notwithstanding the fact that the film isn't really asking you to care, not in the traditional sense of getting cozy with its title character, being roused by his victories, going all snurfly at his eventual fate. It is not, however, an entirely objective film, particularly as one appreciates the effects of Alberto Iglesias's score (and the music does in fact go a bit mournful at the very end). But the film is an environmental immersion and an examination; it's not designed to get you going.”
And in List-o-Mania this week, Cracked looks into the 6 Baffling Mistakes Every Movie Criminal Makes. Number 4 is Working with Far More People Than Necessary. “You know those girls on Myspace who have 23,138 friends? It doesn't matter to them that no human being needs that many friends, or that no person could maintain a reasonable level of sanity with that many people bugging them to hang out. The large number makes them feel popular and validated. Well, Hollywood thinks that criminals are pretty much the same.”