SuperSatellite ||

Well, the current buzz now is all about the new Superman movie.  Probably rightfully so.  Thanks to the juxtaposition that Brett Ratner provided, we know Brian Singer is pretty well the man when it comes to making a successful comic book movie, although I give a lot of credit to Christopher Nolan too.  Robert Ebert, however, appears to disagree, at least a little.  By the way, Mr. Ratner (a.k.a. Mr. Shithead), fuck you very much for X-Men 3.

Let me be fair in saying that I don’t think I’ve seen any of the first four Superman movies ever, and given my knowledge of the matter, missing III and IV doesn’t exactly hurt my feelings.  And having seen (and loved) Batman Begins, I have faith in the ability to sort of “re-invent” a franchise, without being unfaithful to source material.  My problem is not so much with that, as it is with Superman himself.

Let’s face it, as far as Superman goes, he’s pretty damned generic.  Sure, he was one of the first (1938 was the first printing I believe), but at the same time, they went a little overboard.  He flies, he’s bulletproof, he’s super fast, super strong, has freezing breath.  It’s like as time went on, it started to be like playground battles:  “Oh yeah?  Well I’m fireproof and I burn you to a crisp!”  “Nuh-uh, because I’m EVERYTHING proof, and everything flies off me and blows you up!”  His one weakness?  Kryptonite, from his home planet, Krypton.  Come on guys, can we try a tad harder here?  I’m fucking begging you.  I guess maybe it was clever and awesome back around World War II, but nowadays we appreciate somewhat more developed ideas.

Which brings me to my single largest problem.  He’s not human.  And we casually brush the fact aside like bad guacamole.  I want my heroes to be, you know, something I can relate to.  Even The Thing started out as human.  That’s all Batman is, and Spiderman and the X-Men are human enough.  And if the hero isn’t human, at least they usually originated on this planet.  But Superman is pure alien.  He just conveniently looks like us.  That makes forget that he isn’t so much a super “man,” as he is an average alien (thanks Lindsey!) who arrived here on a space ship.  For Christ’s sake, he doesn’t even need to breathe oxygen, he just does it to look fashionable.  What would happen if the Kryptonians decided to use Earth as a penal colony for their undesirables (assuming they hadn’t been destroyed of course)?  We’d all be fucked, that’s what.  The convict Kryptonian serial killers and rapists would have bent Clark Kent over and crammed that fancy cape and prancy spandex right up his super asshole, and I guaruntee the Man of Steel henceforth would just be known as “that guy with the perdy mouth.”

So I’ll go see it.  Not because I have any warm spot for Superman, but because I trust Brian Singer and I trust Kevin Spacey and I trust some nobody named Brandon Routh.  If they were smart enough to tell Nicholas Cage that he couldn’t be Superman, then I guess they got something right…I never really read any comic books as a kid (but hey, where’s my Iron Man movie?), but I find a lot of enjoyment in their cinematic adaptations.  Why this is I can’t really explain.  I guess just catching up on some lost youth.

***WARNING: The following may contain information people waiting to see X-Men 3 might want to avoid***

Well I was finally able to appease my desire to see X-Men: The Last Stand. If Brett Ratner is ever allowed near enough to this franchise to influence it in even the remotest way, I will hunt him down and deliver unto him a beating perhaps only George Bush deserves more.  Let me be blunt, the movie wasn’t garbage, but it also wasn’t on par with the first two.  It wasn’t quite so bad as when Joel Shumacher took the reigns of Batman, that practically measured as a violation of the Geneva Convention as a crime against humanity; but Ratner’s reckless treatment, and lack of compassion or appreciation for the subject is apparent almost from the word go.  The Last Stand was to X-Men as Terminator 3 was to that trilogy.

Here are the main problems.  New characters were shallower than a kiddie pool in winter.  For bad guys, I suppose that’s fine given their disposable nature (did anyone besides Magneto even make it through the final scene?).  But Kitty Pryde, Angel, and Beast were simply inexcusable.  Call it bad writing, bad editting, or bad directing, had those characters not been there, you wouldn’t have missed them.  And oh my god….a can of beans could have played Storm better.  And not those good Bush’s baked beans, the cheap ones, from Aldi’s.  Letting Magneto rip out her vocal box for no reason would have been better than making me listen to Berry deliver the lines.  I guess that’s not new news though…You know why Famke Janssen was such a good Phoenix?  They knew when to have her shut up.  I can see it now: “Okay Miss Janssen, stand right there by the green screen, now look…left….more…Perfect!  Thanks, you can go home, we’ll CG the rest around you.”  Every now and again you find yourself thinking “Oh yeah, Phoenix is just sorta….standing…over there.”

Anyway, all told, an average movie.  Glad I saw it, and I’ll probably buy it I have no doubt, but there was a lot of room for improvement.  I can only hope the Wolverine movies are handled better.

On the subject of movies, Ghost Rider, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Clerks 2, and Nacho Libre should help fill in the gaps nicely.

I took Isis to the vet to get her allergies taken care of Thursday.  She was pissed.  Mostly it was good though, because now she’ll stop scratching, and I get to laugh as she walks around with all her paws wrapped up so that she can’t use her claws until everything takes effect.  It’s even better when she tries to jump up on the chair, but completely falls since she can’t latch on, heh.

I was full of good ideas lately.  I found this slick piece of software called KPlaylist.  Got it running on the server which is finally healthy again.  Let’s me stream my music off the server wherever I am to listen to it.  If you want access to it and think you deserve it, beg.  Yeah, you heard me, beg.  Like a bitch.