Stevereads Goes to the Movies!

We here at Stevereads have just returned from the Grand Odeon Movie Palace, where we treated some wretched interns to a picture show (unbeknownst to them, they're all being sacked on Monday, so we figured it was the least we could do), and we have a declaration to help the rest of you clarify your lives:

"10,000 b.c." may very well be the greatest movie ever made.

Some of you will no doubt already have seen this film's trailers, showing snarling sabertooths and herds of mammoths, and you may be thinking it's not the thing for you. But we're here to assure you: this movie is even better than its trailers!

It's directed by Roland Emmerich (he also "co-wrote" it with Harald Koser), the sooper-genius who brought us all "Independence Day," the nearest thing we here at Stevereads have ever had to a religious experience (topping even our brief marriage to Ethel Merman), and this is evident right from the start - the audience knows they're in the hands of a master showman, and really, what more can an audience want than that?

The movie (narrated by Omar Sharif, who's got to be 200 years old - we'll have an intern check, might as well get some use out of the little twerps before Monday, right?) revolves around brooding young mammoth hunter D'Leh (played by toxic tobacco addict Steven Strait), whose childhood sweetheart Evolet (extremely accomplished young veteran Camilla Belle) has been abducted by evil warlord Affif Ben Badra (that's the actor's name, incredibly enough, not the character's ... we just liked the sound of it: my girlfriend's been kidnapped by Ben Badra!). D'Leh assembles a band of heroes, including Cliff Curtis as somebody called Tic Tic (a dippy name, yes, but he's the best thing in the movie) and toxic tobacco addict cutie-patootie Reece Ritchie as Moha (also a dippy name, but Ritchie's the real thing, as Peter Jackson saw and as all the world will see when "Lovely Bones" comes out), and the bunch of them set out to save the girl. Nonstop adventure ensues!

This movie's nay-sayers (there are bound to be a few) will inevitably carp about the heavy use of CGI to bring all the prehistoric beasties to life (the carnivorous ostriches alone are enough to make you swear off poultry); they'll no doubt say this CGI stinks, that it doesn't look believable, etc. To which we have two responses: A) how would they know, never having laid eyes on a mammoth? and B) they're just plain wrong. The special effects in this movie are wonderful - an eye-popping evocation of a world so strange you have to remind yourself periodically that it's Earth.

Which isn't to say "10,000 b.c." could do double-duty as a documentary, far from it: virtually every detail that's scientifically knowable is done wrong in the movie. Species that never overlapped are shown cheek by jowl, and anachronistic technology abounds. Probably there are wretched little smeagols blogging about such discrepancies even as we speak. And their efforts entirely miss the point.


The point is, this is a fun movie. It's got fast-paced directing, great special effects, some attempts at character backstory, two slightly-unpredictable character epiphanies, and a rousing climax. It isn't Bergman, and it isn't trying to be.

That having been said, there is some good acting in the film (good as the material allows, anyway). Belle has excellent timing and a fresh vivacity about her, and Strait (who although fairly one-dimensional in "The Covenant," managed to steal a scene or two in "Sky High") is very effective as a young man racing to put his life back together.

And all those mammoths! They are as clearly the stars of this show as the gigantic alien spaceships were of "Independence Day," and they represent a huge (no pun intended) step forward from the days when directors needing mammoths had to drape shag rugs over long-suffering Indian elephants and hope for the best. The CGI prehistoric creatures sell the movie - even if nothing else in it were done well, "10,000 b.c." would still be worth seeing just for its megafauna.

But lots of other stuff is done well - our interns left the theater happily chattering about how much they enjoyed the movie - how much more they enjoyed it than they expected they would. We predict that come Monday it'll be crowned the #1 movie in the country, and we urge you all to make time this weekend to take it in. We're confident you'll enjoy yourselves.

In the Penny Press! Three Coins in a Fountain!

Three points of interest in last week's New Yorker, each more disturbing than the last.

The first up is David Denby, the reliably schoolmarmish maiden aunt of movie-reviewing. In the issue in question, he reviews 'Shooter' and '300' - and oh, he isn't happy about either. Like every other reviewer in the country, he mysteriously, inexplicably, unaccountably refuses to call Mark Wahlberg a BAD ACTOR. Denby goes only so far as to say "Wahlberg has an unpretentious air about him," which is similar to all the other softpedalled evasions various critics have been using. The origin of this is not far to seek: Wahlberg got an Oscar nomination for 'The Departed.' It wasn't in any way conceivable on the face of the planet a SENSIBLE nomination - the so-called performance was cussing only - but it instills FEAR in the trembling hearts of professional movie reviewers, an inherently cowardly lot (with one or two notable exceptions, as the readers of this blog well know). That nomination means the utterly talentless Wahlberg will be treated to nonsense phrases like 'has an unpretentious air about him' for at least a few more crappy movies, instead of anybody just saying he can't act worth a crap.

But as bad as that-all is, Denby's ultimate reaction to 'Shooter' and '300' is even worse. He lowers his granny glasses down to the tip of his nose and pronounces that these two movies together "feel like the products of a culture slowly and painfully going mad."

Geez. Go to bed, Aunt Bea. They're only movies.

More disturbing was Jane Kramer's piece about the relationship between the forces of radical Islam and those of the Vatican, in the person of the current Pope, the Nazi Benedict XVI. Kramer tries her level best to portray things in a calm, reasonable light, but it completely doesn't work.

Try as she might to paint a veneer of civility over everything, Kramer can't really disguise from her readers the plain fact that the great religion of Islam is currently being spearheaded - and gaining its characterization in the West - by a narrow cadre of reactionary fanatics intent on violence and radicalism ... and that the great religion of Roman Catholicism is currently being spearheaded - and gaining its characterization in the Middle East - by a narrow cadre of reactionary fanatics intent on wealth and insularity. Not since the Battle of Lepanto have the two religions been in a worse position to talk to each other.

The blame is about equal, but it need not have been, if another man sat on the throne of St. Peter. The former Cardinal Ratzinger, in his brief time in charge at the Vatican, has proven even less interested in the daily lives of ordinary Catholics than his predecessor - which, during his predecessor's long and oblivious life hardly seemed possible.

But the problem is deeper than the fact that Ratzinger clearly prefers the palaces-and-parades style of Catholicism of earlier centuries. Nazis share a particular mindset that's disasterous in the present crisis: they not only aren't willing to entertain the viewpoints of others, they regard the EXISTENCE of viewpoints different from their own with a loudly snickering contempt. The Nazi Pope Benedict XVI is no different in this regard - at the exact moment when all men of influence on both sides of the question should be striving to develope some kind of dialogue, both side are afflicted with leaders constitutionally incapable of doing so.

In a perfect world, Ratzinger would be sitting in a Swiss jail for his orchestration of the murder of Pope John Paul I. Alas, this isn't a perfect world. One almost envies the Buddhists.

But the most disturbing thing in this issue of the New Yorker wasn't an article at all but a picture accompanying an article. The piece is a profile of British chef and all around lout Gordon Ramsay, about what an ogre he is to his loyal staff, how gratuitously vicious he is to his loyal staff, etc.

You're supposed to come away hating Ramsay, a petty tyrant made possible only in the ridiculous micro-culture of haute cuisine. He's a blip (that is almost certainly the ultimate source of his much-vaunted all-purpose rage) and of no consequence whatsoever, so that's not the disturbing part.

No, the disturbing part is the accompanying photo of Ramsay. He's standing against the grey steel backdrop of a restaurant's kitchen, and he's holding a little lamb up to his chest. The lamb is alive and looking in the direction of the camera, and the composition of the piece is so elegant and strong (it's by the always-reliable Jillian Edelstein) that you're a minute before you realize that you're not looking at a cuddly picture - Ramsay is holding up a MENU ITEM.

It's a quietly staggering image, not least because of the horrible portrait of the human in the frame. Most of you will never have spent any quality time with a lamb, so you'll be unaware of their nature. If so, allow us to confirm what your own eyes can tell you: they're open-hearted and goofy and entirely GOOD. They lose some of the goofiness when they grow up into sheep, but they still stay entirely good.

In that photo, Gordon Ramsay is holding up the best invitation to vegetarianism imaginable. Because it's not just the ogre Ramsay - it's every three-star restaurant, it's every no-star restaurant, it's every snack-shack and kiosk and McFranchise from one end of the world to the other. That lamb's innocent, goofy face - the face of a PERSON, someone markedly different from the other lambs with whom she was born -(and, needless to say, someone very different from Ramsay) represents the right way, and Gordon Ramsay with his puffy carnivore's face represents the wrong way.

Here in America, at least on the two coasts, the choice is always there and always easy: don't be Gordon Ramsay. Eat no meat harvested from innocent, loving beings, eat no bloodkill. You can go the whole length on your own if you so desire - you can disavow everything that isn't strictly vegetable and leave it at that - but at the very least, you can - we all can, no matter how enamored we've been in time of bacon, that sacred provender of the gods themselves - skip all bloodkill, regardless of how we might once have loved such things. Let that poor doomed lamb, not the Gordon Ramsay inside, have the final say.

Stevesees! '300'!

We here at Stevereads are fully aware of the awesome power we hold over the hearts and minds of the blogosphere. We won't say the knowledge humbles us (that wouldn't be very believable, now would it?), but it does keep us mindful lest our slightest offhand endorsement send the multitudes scurrying out to buy, watch, or snort something that may end up disappointing them.

In a perfect world, we would simply refer you all to Locke's website (which, I agree with him, would really have to be called something a little less creepy than 'lockewatches'), where he would hold forth regularly on all the movies and TV that catches his fancy. You've all seen a glimpse of what that would be like; say what you want about either one of us, but one thing we certainly share in common: we both know how to entertain the troops.

Unfortunately, unlike the rest of us here at Stevereads, Locke's got stuff to do the live-long day. We'll get what he gives us, but a long, rambling website is only in the cards if Santa is very, very good to us.


In the meantime, we here at Stevereads shall shoulder on with our adjunct corollary, Stevesees! True, our impeccable taste in judging movies and performances took a little bit of a pecking at Oscar time, but the memory of the blogosphere is notoriously short, so we can forge ahead with our head held high!

Especially when this installment of Stevesees deals with a sure-fire winning bet. That doesn't happen often, so it's an easy joy to do the reporting when it does.

Of course we're referring to Zach Snyder's film version of Frank Miller's sparse, visionary graphic novel '300.'

Over at the great new literary website Open Letters, the talented young poet/novelist/literary critic John Cotter inaugurates a regular feature called 'Peer Review,' in which the critical reactions to a given thing are put under the microscope and assessed for their various woolly tendencies and drifts. If we did that here for '300,' this entire entry would degenerate into a spittle-flecked rage-fest such as the Interweb has never seen.

The Boston Herald talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and gave it two thumbs up 'from the Third Reich.' The Boston Globe talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and went on about how its subtext was the straights versus the gays. The New York Times talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and went on about the analogies to the Iraq War and American xenophobia.

All of which makes you want to lock all professional reviewers in a small room and then lose the key.

'300' is the story of King Leonidas and his loyal band of Spartans who held the Hot Gates pass against probably no more than 50,000 Pesians and Persian allies (in Herodotus' original account, it's about 100,000; in Frank Miller's graphic novel, it's rounded up to a million - gawd only knows how many it is in the movie). They knew they would die (according to Herodotus, that is - it should be borne in mind throughout ALL discussions of the movie that in all likelihood the events it depicts never in fact happened at all), and just as in Miller's 'Ronin,' that knowledge gives the Spartan almost superhuman abilities.

Almost superhuman. They all still die. But in the process, a movie is delivered the likes of which the waiting world has never seen. There were glimpses, yes - in 'Sin City,' and in Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' - but absolutely nothing in all of cinematic history prepares the customer for the experience of watching '300.'

It isn't at all like watching a video game. It certainly isn't, as one critic maintained, like watching your buddy get a lap-dance. It isn't a grey wash of CGI with no heft or meat on its bones.

Instead, '300' (not 'Sin City,' in which the black-and-white only served to make the seams show - in addition to the known fact that no movie featuring Josh Hartnett in any capacity can possibly be good - nor yet again the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, in which the effects were seamlessly enslaved to the live action) is the very first example of a completely equal marriage of men and machines, of effort and effect.

This movie, this thing, is like nothing ever created before. Time and again, while watching it, the viewer is struck by that one fact: I've never seen anything like this before.

It's not just the exotic imagery and broad vistas - although no imagery has ever been more exotic, and no vistas have ever been broader (except maybe in Akira Kurosawa's 'Dreams,' but even that was circumscribed by non-CGI boundaries). Every single frame of this magnificent movie looks better than it could ever have looked with entirely live actors on an expensively-purchased soundstage in Lower Belgravia. This movie is the moviemaking of the future, at least if movies care about spectacle in the future. In recent memory, only 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' even comes close to it for sheer self-confident otherworldliness.

Here is the sheer eye-popping wonder of the Siege of Gondor, but entirely without the sense of scrimping for cost. Here is the baby-archangel sequence from 'Brazil,' but entirely without the virtually visible strings attached.

It isn't all spectacle - contrary to what every single reviewer has maintained, there's quite a bit of good acting in this movie. Butler himself is quite good as King Leonidas, and his supporting cast turn in uniformly strong performances, especially considering the fact that they were emoting and responding in many cases to empty sceens and blank backgrounds.

There are, then, human elements a-plenty to this movie. But there's no doubt about it: they aren't its point. Its point - its challenge - is to up the visual ante for all future 'epic' movies. In fact, watching this movie - being subsumed into it, really - made me yearn for this same amazing technique to be applied to EVERY epic storyline out there. In the hands of a director as game and capable as Zach Snyder, just imagine how many eye-feasts like '300' could be enfleshed in gorgeous, reality-warping, unprecedented visuals. The technique of '300' would at last make possible a living rendition of Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso' (you all snicker, but only because you haven't read it ... if there is anywhere in literature a precursor to comic books, Ariosto is it) (and yes, I'm aware that a very fragmentary, very partial two-hour 'adaptation' of the 'Orlando Furioso' was already filmed, a weird, utterly unsatisfying movie starring a very young Ron Moss ... but geez! It's SUCH a small fraction of the whole it doesn't warrant serious consideration), or the full panoply of the Mahabarata (once again, yes, I'm aware of the BBC adaptation from a decade or more ago ... in this case a much, much worthier version, but still cripplingly limited when compared to the original), and most of all, most achingly of all, Homer's Iliad - not the latest effort by Wolfgang Peterson, worthy though I alone seem to find it, but the real thing - gods romping everywhere at their will, action in outsized portions - that has never been captured and has never been ABLE to be captured, before now.

Notice I'm not punch-drunk on this new technology ... I'm not, for instance, saying it could be used on a work such as 'War and Peace' (which is, nevertheless, badly in need of SOMETHING ... great works of literature shouldn't languish as long as this one has in between viual adaptations) or even 'Life and Fate.' No, I'm only talking here about works that beg for a gigantic canvas, shot through in unbelievable colors and shapes.

The 'Lord of the Rings' movies are pretty nearly perfect, it's true; but 'The Lord of the Rings' as a novel veers constantly between the high epic and the wee folk boiling potatoes - it couldn't have made use of the techniques of '300,' at least not in the way I'm suggesting. Peter Jackson handled his material with confident genius, but there are no boiled potatoes in '300.' as everyone who's seen it would readily acknowledge. It's grand-scale entertainment, and as such it's beyond comparison with anything that's come before.

One thing above all others: there isn't even a hint of homoeroticism in this movie. Unless all these critics are saying so merely because our Spartan heroes where no shirts and have buff bodies - which, if true, would be pretty damn dumb. The Spartans are topless to denote an easy, offhand fearlessness; the Persians are decadent and effeminate not for petty sexual reasons but to display the enervating effects of unlimited wealth and power. This movie is above all a daring thing, and daring things are always vulnerable to cheap jibes

We here at Stevereads urge you all to ignore such cheap jibes, even the jibes you yourself might already have thought up. Go and see '300.' Go and be amazed.