A short review of "Pacific Rim"

I intended to write a brief review of "Pacific Rim" right after I saw it about a month ago, but it is a measure of just how underwhelmed it left me that I neglected to do it until now. Part of it might have been due to a certain reluctance on my part to criticize too harshly a movie which was clearly made with all good intentions.

I went into the theater expecting to enjoy it, having gotten revved up for it from the various trailers I'd seen before the movie's release. Plus, earlier in the summer, I'd had the great pleasure of meeting some of the guys who'd worked on the visual effects for "Pacific Rim"  (as well as "The Avengers" and several other effects-heavy blockbusters) -- they were alumni of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (as am I) and had come back to UMass as part of an event held at the school. It was very interesting to talk with them about CGi and special and visual effects. They were really nice guys who patiently answered all of my geeky questions.

So I was jazzed for the film, and enjoyed it, but came out of the theater even more convinced that we live in an age where way too much thought and effort is put towards how things look and far too little energy is expended on the story those effects are being used to support. "Pacific Rim" has some fantastic imagery -- in fact, much of the movie is simply crammed with a level of detail and realism which is staggering. It's all well done… on a visual level, at least.

I just wish more care had been taken to craft a story worthy of those effects. And in a film like this, which -- let's be honest now -- exists mostly because the director really, REALLY wanted to make a big-budget "giant mecha versus giant monsters" movie with state-of-the-art visuals, I don't think it's too much to ask that the action -- which is, after all, the main raison d'etre of the movie -- make sense and not be silly. Here's an example that really struck me as particularly dumb: One of the giant monsters, or Kaiju, is fighting one of the giant mecha, or Jaegers, in the ocean. The Jaeger grabs the Kaiju, and in an incredible display of power,  lifts it out of the water, over its head, and throws it…

… into the ocean.

That's right, it throws the monster back into the water. How, I ask, is this sort of move supposed to harm or even slightly slow down a giant creature which is totally at home in that environment? I'd have to watch the movie again to be sure -- and I won't be doing that until it comes out on DVD -- but I think this silly move is repeated one or two more times. It's just… dopey.

For whatever reason, the director -- Guillermo del Toro -- decided to not have the Jaegers stuffed to the gills with what you might reasonably expect giant mechanical fighting mecha intended to battle to the death giant creatures to be equipped with -- stuff like lots of stabbing and slashing and cutting weapons, missiles and rockets and artillery and other projectile weapons with explosive ordnance, high-pressure injectors to force bubbles into the Kajjus' bloodstreams and cripple them, electro-shock devices, flamethrowers, high-powered lasers, super-tough cable loops to strangle and decapitate, and so on -- all those wonderfully nasty bits of killing hardware you might expect to be created by imaginative weapons designers who want to WIN this freakin' war with the giant monsters. Every available surface (except those which have to be kept clear for smooth operation and movement of the Jaegers' limbs) should be studded with impaling spikes and ripping blades made to inflict maximum possible damage on the Kaiju during the Jaegers' close-in battles with these monsters. (Yes, I know there are a few such weapons on display, occasionally, but they are ludicrously few and far between.)

Instead, the Jaegers are treated for the most part like big boxing/wrestling robots -- punching, kicking, throwing and grappling with their opponents. It makes for some fun visuals, and they are amazingly well-done (it's quite incredible, for example, how realistic water simulations are these days, and a lot of the fights showcase these visuals as the Jaegers and Kaiju duke it out in relatively shallow water near the shore), but it's also… well, stupid. -- PL

ToolPen

Some years ago -- it might have been as many as ten, perhaps even more -- I saw a nifty pocket tool online and purchased it. Called the PenTool, and made by KeyGear Corporation, it immediately became one of my favorite gizmos, and to this day, I carry one with me in my shirt pocket, every day.

It's gone through at least two iterations that I know of. That first one I purchased had a yellow barrel, and with the PenTool's hexagonal cross-section, resembled a standard yellow pencil… which was a little odd, because it had nothing in common with a pencil outside of that shape and color. The later models -- one of which you see in these photographs -- were all black, except for the tips, and they also incorporated a new bit of functionality in the form of a swing-out blade, partly serrated, in the cap.

The ToolPen in the above photos functions as a pocket knife, a flat-bladed screwdriver, a Philips head screwdriver, and a ballpoint pen. If you keep the cap on the flat-bladed screwdriver end, it depresses a small button on the barrel of the ToolPen, which retracts the pen point into the Philips head end, protecting the point until you want to use it, at which time you just pull the cap off the flat-bladed screwdriver end, and the point pops out about a sixteenth of an inch.

On one face of the hexagonal plastic cap, the name of the product -- "ToolPen" -- is molded into the cap, and two faces away from that is the name of the company which made it ("Key Gear Corporation"), also molded in.

Except for the body of the cap and possibly the pen reservoir which is hidden (and I've never taken one of these apart to see what it looks like), the ToolPen is all metal. While not a heavy-duty tool, it is solidly built.

It's also incredibly convenient, and I have used it hundreds -- no, probably thousands -- of times since I got that first one. 

Unfortunately, since I bought those original ToolPens (and one year I purchased about a dozen or so to put in Christmas stockings), the product seems to have disappeared. I can't find a site online which sells them, and while I haven't done truly exhaustive searching, it seems that Key Gear Corporation is no longer in business.

Being a big fan of handy pocket tools, I have collected a number of them over the years, and have yet to find one as simple, convenient and useful as the ToolPen. I would hate to think that when the one I have wears eventually wears out or breaks, I won't be able to replace it. 

So we come to the point of this entry -- I'm asking my blog readers if they have seen any ToolPens for sale anywhere online or in a brick and mortar store. If you have, and can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it! -- PL

View from our new back yard

Lazy, stupid misuse of great words #1: countless

I'm not sure if this will become a regular feature of this blog, but I thought it was time to rant a little bit about something that aggravates me every time I see it, and I see it a lot these days. I am referring to the egregious misuse of the word "countless", which is defined by dictionary.com as follows:

adjective
too numerous to count; innumerable: the countless stars.

Synonyms 
numberless, endless, myriad, unlimited.

For some reason, in recent years, many writers have decided that rather than say "many" or "dozens" or "hundreds" or "thousands" or "millions", which would be far more appropriate and accurate in each respective case, they will use "countless", which is essentially saying that there is an infinite number of __________ … which, unless you are talking about, for example, stars in the infinite universe, is at the very least a WILD over-exaggeration.

And it gets to a sublimely ridiculous point with some of these misuses of "countless", like the one I saw on the back cover of a DVD at Barnes and Noble yesterday. I'd never heard of the group "Lady Antebellum", was intrigued by the name, and picked up the DVD to see what it was about. I flipped it over and read the following bit of copy on the back:

Really? "Countless" awards? Too many to count? I went to Wikipedia and looked up "Lady Antebellum", and in the entry for this group, there was a helpful listing of the various awards they have won since the group was formed in 2006. I counted forty-five -- a very impressive record, to be sure, but not even REMOTELY coming anywhere close to being "countless". I think pretty much anyone can count to forty-five in under a minute.

Why couldn't the copy writers who worked on this DVD just say "dozens", or "more than forty", or even just accurately say "forty-five so far"? How about the old reliable, which served well for a lot of years (and still does, in my opinion): "many"? I think it is due to an all-too-common phenomenon of our age which I think of as "witless exaggeration", a close relative of "ludicrous hype". This grotesque misuse of "countless" seems to be creeping into text everywhere… and it makes me cringe every time I see this great word so poorly, stupidly used. -- PL

A brief review of "Man of Steel"

Here's my short "Pro/Con" review of the new "Superman" movie, "Man of Steel", which Jeannine and I saw today:

Pros:

-- Special effects are well done.

-- The explanation for the "S" on Superman's costume is slightly clever.

Cons:

-- The movie is too long and too loud.

-- It has about one percent of the charm of the first Christopher Reeve "Superman" movie. A lot of that is due to the lack of chemistry among most of the major characters, and the general humorlessness of the script. Kevin Costner gives it his all as Jonathan Kent, Superman's adoptive father, but he isn't provided much to work with, script-wise. (There is one moment near the end of the movie, when in a flashback there is a nicely-lit closeup of Costner, and it struck me that if an "old Superman" movie were to be made in the next few years, he would be well cast in the lead role.)

-- Amy Adams is horribly miscast as Lois Lane. I like Adams as an actress, but she just cannot pull off the worldly, tough-as-nails reporter thing that Margot Kidder did so effortlessly in that aforementioned first Christopher Reeves "Superman" movie. 

-- The storyline is gibberish. This is supposed to be a "realistic" treatment of the Superman mythos, and it fails miserably on almost every count. To pick one supremely ridiculous moment: After people have seen young Clark Kent demonstrate bizarre abilities like extraordinary strength (as in the scene where a whole bus full of his school mates are saved from certain drowning when Clark lifts their bus -- which has plunged into a river -- out of the water, and in other scenes which we don't see but which are referred to in dialogue), Pa Kent -- who is about to be killed in a tornado -- waves Clark off, telling him with the gesture that Clark can't take the risk of revealing his special abilities… even though he already has. So Clark lets his beloved father die when he could have easily saved him, and probably in a way which would be no more outre than any of his other exploits up to that point in his life. It's a hugely stupidly contrived moment.

-- Here's another head-scratching bit: There is something on Krypton called "The Codex", which supposedly contains all of the information for the DNA of every  Kryptonian yet to be born, and before he sends his newborn son off in the little spaceship which will save him from sharing the destruction of Krypton, Jor-El somehow transfers this information into the genetic structure of baby Kal-El's body. So… in this highly advanced, star-faring super-technological society which is Krypton, we are supposed to believe that THEY DIDN'T MAKE MORE COPIES OF THIS CODEX THING??? Its data can be somehow stored inside the body of a baby without taking up any significant space therein, but it can't be copied onto the Kryptonian equivalent of a thumbdrive or DVD?

-- This supposedly "realistic" treatment of the "Superman" mythos couldn't come up with a satisfactory way to explain why at some points Superman can do anything and at others he is too weak to do what needs to be done… relying instead on the audience being expected to believe that all Superman needs to do to overcome occasional weakness is to grit his teeth and put on a pained expression, and somehow he will find the requisite strength.

-- We're expected to believe that the people of Krypton have the ability to construct and operate starships which can fly all over the galaxy… but they still can't find enough natural resources to save their planet? And they can't save anyone when Krypton is in its death throes except for baby Kal-El and the mooks on the "Phantom Zone" prison ship? What -- were all their space-capable vehicles in the shop or something?

-- Superman's red and blue suit looks NOTHING like any other Kryptonian garb we see in the movie, with the exception of the shield-shaped emblems on various chest pieces. And it's just suddenly THERE -- no explanation, no rationale… nothing you might reasonably expect from this much-vaunted "realistic" version of "Superman".

I don't think I'll be going back to see this one again. -- PL

"GOLDEN DREAMS: The Art of Ruth Sanderson"

I've admired Ruth Sanderson's beautifully-painted fantasy artwork for quite a few years, but only got to know her recently. Over ice cream cones at the local sweet shop near her studio in Easthampton, MA, Ruth told me about her plans to self-publish a hardcover volume reproducing much of that artwork in a retrospective of her more than thirty-five years as an illustrator. The book will be titled "GOLDEN DREAMS: The Art of Ruth Sanderson", and Ruth has begun a "Kickstarter" campaign to get this project rolling. You can find it here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1378966880/golden-dreams-the-art-of-ruth-sanderson

It looks like this will be a gorgeous book, and there are also some nice goodies associated with the various pledge levels, including at the higher end some original paintings! I've just signed up, and hope you will as well. -- PL

Some thoughts on "Star Trek: Into Darkness"

(Some people have asked whether I've seen "Star Trek: Into Darkness" yet, and if so, what I thought of it. I think the question arises from my strongly negative and disappointed reaction to the first J.J. Abrams attempt to do a "Star Trek" movie. (You can find these comments in three separate blog posts: http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/star-drek.html, http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/star-drek-2-more-musings-on-new-star.html, and http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/star-drek-3-further-thoughts-on-new.html.) Well, I have seen "Into Darkness" -- twice, in fact, to try to give myself the opportunity to see if what I perceived on first viewing held up on the second -- and the fact is that this movie just left me… dispassionate. I just couldn't get myself too worked up about it. Perhaps it's because it almost exactly fit what I was expecting, after the first one. Anyway, I suppose I should say something about it, if only to go on record. So here goes…)

Ever have a "jaw-dropping" moment? You know, when you see or hear or read or realize something so momentarily stunning that your mouth opens involuntarily, your jaw literally pivoting downward? It happens sometimes in movies… like back in 1976 when the first "Star Wars" opened with that amazing scene of the rebel ship fleeing before the Imperial Star Destroyer which looms onto the screen from above, and just keeps coming, and coming, and coming… or when the Tyrannosaurus Rex steps through the ruined security fence in the first "Jurassic Park"... or when the armies of men and elves clash with the forces of Mordor on a huge, teeming battlefield in the prologue to the first "Lord of the Rings" movie.

Sadly, these days, it all too often happens not because something is visually stunning or conceptually mind-blowing, but because it is just staggeringly stupid. Or lazy. Or both.

I had at least one of those jaw-dropping experiences a few weeks ago when I went with my wife to see the new movie with the title "Star Trek: Into Darkness". Sorry… I just can't bring myself to call it "the new "Star Trek" movie", because -- like J.J. Abrams first attempt -- it is not, to me at least, a "Star Trek" movie. It embraces practically none of the essential spirit of "Star Trek" as I comprehend it. Instead, it strikes me more like a movie made by someone who has had "Star Trek" described to him a few times, so he gets some of the basic stuff (there's a spaceship called the Enterprise, it's captained by a guy named Jim Kirk who has a Vulcan first officer named Spock, and a ship's doctor named McCoy, and there are enemy aliens called the Klingons, and so on) but he doesn't really grasp the whole picture.

Much like the first of J.J. Abrams' movies with "Star Trek" in the title, his second one -- "Star Trek: Into Darkness" -- is a noisy, fast-moving, entertaining mess. I have to praise the visual effects and special effects artists working on this movie, as they did some great stuff. The shots of the Enterprise emerging from the ocean were quite spectacular, for example. However, as very often happens these days, the visuals far outstrip the story and the script in quality and coherence. I'll try to touch on a handful of examples. (This is by no means an exhaustive list.)

In the beginning of the film, as Kirk is running through the red jungle, a large creature rears up in front of him, and he stuns it with his phaser. Dr. McCoy steps up from behind the downed creature and says "You just stunned our ride!" Then they continue to run through the jungle for another minute or so before deliberately leaping off a cliff into the ocean, following which we see them zooming under the surface (using some kind of turbo-boots or something) toward the submerged USS Enterprise. The question then arises: If that beast Kirk stunned was their "ride", where -- given what followed that scene -- were they planning to ride it to?

(I should also make note of the bizarre throwaway line from Kirk, referring to the scroll-like artifact he's carrying as he runs from the alien natives, about how he earlier saw them bowing and/or praying to it... so he just stole it. Huh?)

I won't go into detail about how stupid the "Cold Fusion" device to stop the volcanic eruption is, except to point out that if you are going to invent a ridiculously dubious, mostly magical technology, perhaps it would be a good idea to create a name to go along with it which does not already exist and which refers to something completely different.

While the hand phasers still have the physical parts which spin around to change power settings, at least in this movie they don't show this dorky bit of pointless action happening.

There are still some shots of what is supposed to be the engineering deck of the Enterprise which appear to be filmed in some kind of lightly redressed brewery. This was beyond ridiculous in the first film, and seems even more so here.

What the heck IS "transwarp beaming", anyway? I thought that it was established in the first movie as a way of successfully beaming someone or something onto a ship traveling at warp speed. Well, in this new movie, it apparently has evolved to the point where it allows someone to be beamed from Earth all the way to the home world of the Klingon empire, which I believe is way the heck off in space. (Of course, maybe it isn't, in this new and illogical "Star Trek"-inspired universe, as -- near the end of the movie -- it only takes the Enterprise and that other ship (the name of which I forget right now) a few minutes to travel by warp all the way from that Klingon home world to Earth.)

The Spock-Uhura romance thing is just as silly as in the first movie -- maybe even a bit sillier, with their relationship basically played for a few lame laughs as they bicker pointlessly.

Abrams seems to think that having the characters in this movie shout their lines most of the time and spend a lot of their time on-screen running around really fast and shooting big guns that make loud noises is a great way to make an action-packed movie. Well, I guess for some people that is exactly the way to go about it. I prefer a little more thought to be put into my action movies. For example, when someone yells "Fire phasers!", I expect to see beams of light blaze forth from a starship's phaser emitters -- NOT some silly-looking rockets trailing smoke. This actually happens -- in a scene near the end of the movie, I think it's Admiral Marcus who, on the bridge of the USS Bigger Than The Enterprise yells out "Fire phasers!", and the very next shot is a cut to the exterior of his ship… and a bunch of what look like little rockets, trailing smoke, come zooming out of his ship toward the Enterprise. How does something that dumb make it through to the final edit of a film like this?

So we get near the end of the movie, and the Enterprise is going to be destroyed unless Kirk can kick -- yes, literally KICK -- a misaligned piece of hardware back into place, hardware which is unfortunately inside a chamber flooded with dangerous radiation. Set aside for the moment the incredulity you might feel about this highly advanced starship not having remote-controlled devices which could accomplish this basic physical act without exposing any of the crew to fatal doses of radiation… and instead marvel at the fact that J.J. Abrams somehow got the "powers that be" who own the "Star Trek" property to agree that ripping off the key, climactic moment from the earlier (and far superior in almost every way) "Star Trek" movie "The Wrath of Khan" and pasting it into the end of his movie was actually a good idea.

Seriously, as I watched this bit, my jaw literally dropped. The only significant difference between the actions in this scene and the one from "Wrath of Khan" is that it is Kirk, instead of Spock, who sacrifices himself to save the ship. And then, watching Kirk die (well, he is really -- as famously described in "The Princess Bride" -- only "mostly dead", saved by an injection of Khan's "super blood" moments later), Spock, the emotionless Vulcan CRIES. He's only known Kirk for a few months, maybe… and he CRIES??? Everything about this scene is forced. Everything about it feels contrived, and not cleverly so.

It worked wonderfully in "Wrath of Khan" because it made sense, and because it built on three years of the original "Star Trek" TV series and the relationship of respect and affection between Kirk and Spock which was developed over those three years through multiple adventures. In addition, it dovetailed beautifully into the advancing age of both the characters and the actors playing them, with the subtext of how one faces death. It wasn't a forced cheat like it is in this new movie.

I hope I live long enough to see this "rebooted" "Star Trek" rebooted yet again by someone who actually cares about the universe of "Star Trek" which existed before and also cares about good storytelling. I am not going to hold my breath, but who knows? As the line from "Wrath of Khan" goes, "There are always possibilities…". -- PL