Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

"ncoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?"

hahaha

"and where's snoopy? i like snoopy."

This entails a whisk through history from the nineteen-forties to the eighties, with shots of masked figures shaking hands with John F. Kennedy, posing with Andy Warhol, and so forth; these are staged like Annie Leibovitz setups, and, indeed, just to ram home the in-joke, we later see a Leibovitz look-alike behind a camera. But must we have “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” in the background? How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice?

was in the book u fuckin tarddd

"anthony lane, springfield shopper. who are you and where are you going?"

wau, that username

This film could have been fantastic, a great start to a long line of sequels, but they leave no room at the end to even have a sequel, let alone want one.

A real head-scratcher from the Moviehole review ^

So the value of a movie can be found in how well it sets itself up for a sequel?!? That's certainly an original line of criticism!

that moviehole "review" by "ashley" is fake. look at the byline.

I think the byline is a typo. I'm pretty sure the actual reviewer is Ashley Hillard - a real person who writes reviews for Moviehole.

The review is far too pedestrian to be a joke.

http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/55005/

At last, a decently written review, from David Edelstein. He doesn't like it either, but at least his critique focusses on the film-making, unlike Lane's weird all-superheroes-are-fascists-where-are-the-lols? hissy fit.

That New York Mag review is pretty much EXACTLY what I'm expecting to see.

I kind of expect that, too, only that's what I'm looking forward to so this is basically confirming that the movie is going to meet my expectations.

That Lane review actually made me really angry when I first read it

Not me! You can see how calmly I reacted.

clearly!

He was just so damn smug about missing the point!

4 stars from Empire, but it was always going to be.

as I was driving through Kentucky yesterday, the oldies radio DJ said "have you heard about that movie coming out called Watchmen?". other dj said "yeah, it's supposed to be one of those animated movies isn't it?". first DJ says "it's one of those new computer animated movies... about superheros"

Ebert's review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090304/REVIEWS/903049997

huh that's a surprise

Ebert's awful taste is a surprise?

guess the critic:

Neither political satire nor camp, it fails the unique, fantasy mix of classicism and modernism that distinguished both 300 and Vin Diesel’s The Chronicles of Riddick.

Rex Reed.

Armond White

you get a cookie

guess the critic:

oh come on give us a hard one

Should I see Chronicles of Riddick?

How much do you enjoy stabbing yourself in the nuts?

don't be Riddick-ulous

It's low on my list of preferred activities.

"Combining elements of Hamlet, Dune and Vin Diesel running in slow-motion; Riddick essentially becomes William Shakespeare's first video game."

"Riddick is a loner, Dottie, a rebel. He's a simple man, like Pee-Wee Herman, who is not concerned with getting the girl. But, unlike Pee-Wee, poor Riddick doesn't even have a bicycle for companionship."

"A virtuoso exercise in world creation, a plot-heavy epic that's like a breath of fresh air in a time when movie stars and high concepts pass for science-fiction."

to bad they never got to make the sequel where Riddick marries a fruit salad

Lori Huffman http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/author/photo/10084_icon.gif sez

"...a turbo-charged, sci-fi action flick with Vin Diesel in kick *** anti-hero form ..."

I ask because I thought watching "TCoR" was a lot like genital mutilation.

Well Lori Huffman liked it. And she looks like a woman who knows action.

genital mutilation action

Also possible.

The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

Is this a retardded challop? I get this feeling watching a lot of comic book movies.

I mean "action movies be about fascist viscera" cf Kael is not new shit amirite?

Time Out New York review seemed generous.

Upshot: skip Watchmen, torrent Pitch Black

if only someone had an opinion about fascism and super-heroes

that they could share

perhaps they could make some point about a Super Man

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x80/zia_narratora/rorschach/3.png

http://rorschachsdiary.livejournal.com/

getting butthurt about anthony lanes review misses the point of anthony lane i think

ppl do like getting angry abt anthony lane, see also when he reviewed sex + the city

you miss good stuffy british zings like

One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta.” Both of these have been turned into motion pictures; the first was merely an egregious waste of money, time, and talent, whereas the second was not quite as enjoyable as tripping over barbed wire and falling nose first into a nettle patch.

and

There is Laurie, who goes by the sobriquet of Silk Spectre, as if hoping to become a top-class shampoo; she is played by Malin Akerman, whose line readings suggest that she is slightly defeated by the pressure of pretending to be one person, let alone two.

Jim Emerson, who really disliked "The Dark Night," loves Watchmen.

Despite superficial affinities (masked marvels, super-hype), "The Dark Knight" and "Watchmen" could not be further apart in style, ambition, or their approach to storytelling. One is set in a photorealistic Gotham City, shot on location in Chicago; the other in a sprawling fantasy universe that encompasses places called "New York," "Antarctica" and "Mars," but that exists only in the imagination. One takes place in a specific window of time; the other in a distorted, alternative 1985 (Richard Nixon is serving his fifth term as President of the United States) that re-invents the past and the future so as to turn the very concept of "time" inside-out. One is a mechanical, plot-driven action movie, edited in a woodchipper; the other is a dystopian science-fiction satire that doesn't so much spin an intricately tangled web of interwoven stories as create an environment in which its various elements are set bouncing off one another in perpetuity. ("Nothing ends...")

. . . So, you may find yourself wondering what the hell is happening during "Watchmen," but that's built into the very nature of the experience -- and it should elicit an appreciative smiley-smile rather than a frustrated frown. You don't feel (as I sometimes did in "TDK") that you're in the hands of a movie that just isn't very competently made. There's no question this picture knows exactly what it's doing and that it respects your ability to put the parts together. You do not, as in "TDK," have to wonder what the hell is going on between shots (why is that over there now?) because the seams are showing.

Some are saying "Watchmen" has been storyboarded within a micrometer of its life, that it's "too reverent" in its attempt to re-create the comics on the screen and therefore feels like it's been "embalmed" (clever Egyptian reference, that). OK, if that's the way you see it. Not me, though. I was, for the most part, entertained and provoked and amused by a work that stimulated my eyes and my mind, not just my reflexes. I think both Marshall Fine and Roger Ebert make excellent points in what they say above. "Watchmen" is conceived and crafted as an immersive experience, not merely a script that has been illustrated-by-cinema almost as an afterthought.

Let me put it this way: There's a shot of a swinging bathroom door in "Watchmen" (one of countless images that is not taken from the comics), that is imbued with a visual wit, a love of movies, that makes you laugh with delight even as you cringe. I watched "Watchmen" with a big smiley face on the front of my head almost all the way through. It's consistently funny, though not necessarily in a guffaw-out-loud way. Think "Dr. Strangelove," subject of humorous references that, like many things you'll recall from the movie, feel like they had to have been in the comics, but aren't.

There is Laurie, who goes by the sobriquet of Silk Spectre, as if hoping to become a top-class shampoo; she is played by Malin Akerman, whose line readings suggest that she is slightly defeated by the pressure of pretending to be one person, let alone two.

This seems to be one of the few common links I'm seeing in reviews, that Akerman is absolutely atrocious. Michael Phillips, writing in the Chicago Tribune, calls her "possibly the worst actress in Hollywood at the moment".