An apt title

The follow-up to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is dark indeed. It's darker than the darkly lit darkness on a dark dark night.

It's the stuff black holes are made of.

It's also quite good.

I only make a big deal out of the dark material as my son is excited about Batman, but I really don't think he's ready for this heavy of a movie yet.

This installment takes the brooding aspects of the first film, amplifies those a bit, then trims back on the lighter moments giving us a story that gets down to business and then stays there.

The opening act introduces us to two characters at opposite ends of the behavioral spectrum. On one side we have ambitious straight-arrow district attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhart), intent on cleaning up Gotham's streets right down the last crooked con. Providing balance in this universe is The Joker (Ledger) who is a criminal with no particular motive other than being the best...er, worst criminal he can be. Money? Bah! He operates on the cheap and off the cuff. Chaos and disarray are his rewards, and he seeks those rewards with great enthusiasm. Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as "Rachel Dawes, the character who simply must be there for some reason, but who really isn't as consequential as the story would try to get us to believe."

Between Dent's goodness and the Joker's badness, Batman fills the void weaving back and forth across that fine line of morality. The story is pretty tight and told and acted well. There was a point where I was sure we were winding up to the dramatic conclusion only to get past that hurdle to continue the climb.

The acting was universally really good. Bale manages to kick a fair bit of butt while allowing Batman to be a little vulnerable. Ledger fulfills the creepy promise of clowns worldwide by practically oozing droplets of evil. Eckhart was a great choice for Dent and really owned the role, and the smaller bits by Caine and Freeman were good too. For what it's worth, Gyllenhaal did a fine job I guess. It just felt like her role was added in there because somebody thought it should be. There's just enough Rachel Dawes to be significant to the plot, but not enough to really have her character involved. It was odd. Normally it would bug me that they swapped out the actress, but her face-time was so limited that I just didn't care.

Overall it's a really good movie, it's just really dark. I wouldn't have minded some more lighter moments sprinkled in there to bring the mood up just a bit, but the storytelling was really good just the same. I'd recommend watching it, but do review it first before introducing it to your children.

Never thought I'd be watching fishing shows

Our neighbors were kind enough to introduce us to a documentary TV series out of Australia called A River Somewhere, and while I have no idea where the vast majority of the world could get ahold of this thing, it is, in a word, brilliant.

Two Aussie blokes, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch, traverse the world looking for great places to fish. The nice thing about the 13 episodes they filmed is, it's not JUST about fishing. They cover all the bits in between as well.

There is cultural commentary, scenery, exotic locations, the fishing of course, and the culinary wrap-up which is always interesting. All of this is packaged with their subtle and (for a show about rivers) often dry sense of humor. We particularly enjoyed an episode about Wyoming and had some good laughs at their entirely justifiable commentary on American existence. ("27 different types of eggs on the breakfast menu", "I ordered a bowl of fruit and the whole place went quiet")

A quick list of countries they visit: Australia (of course), New Zealand, the U.S., England, Scotland, Venezuela, Bhutan, Belize, India, and Italy.

If you can get ahold of this and enjoy a good travel show, I'd highly recommend it!

Movie grab-bag

My wife went on holiday for a couple weeks, so what's a fella to do?! Well, in my case, I really paint the town red and rent a truckload of movies so that I don't have to expend any mental energy entertaining myself. As you will soon witness, I only rent sophisticated independent art house flicks. Was it worth it? Let's see.

First up was one for the adult in the house. Tropic Thunder firmly establishes for me that there is something peculiar to a movie once Ben Stiller has been injected into it. In this case, he wrote, starred, and directed which makes for a perfect storm of uncomfortableness. This movie takes a South Park-esque approach to the movie industry, poking fingers squarely in the eyes of the action, drama, and comedy dreck that is churned out today. It's a movie about the making of a war movie that really isn't going well. The big surprise for me was Tom Cruise coming in and stealing the show with his characterization of a big studio executive. There were a fair number of other laughs to be had, and plenty of uncomfortable moments, but at the end, Tom's character was the stand-out.

Would I recommend it? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm a fan of most of the actors in it, the actors certainly seemed to be in their element, and it was certainly an interesting experience, but be prepared for full-on Ben Stiller-style humor.

With The Simpsons Movie, the review is a bit more straight forward. If you like the show, you'll like the movie. The film isn't much more than an extended version of the TV show, with the exception (addition?) of minor bits of language that would probably get crossed out by the censors.

The plot's fairly standard. Thanks to Homer's thoughtless ineptitude, the citizens of Springfield are endangered, but they are ultimately saved by Homer's extremely dumb luck. You don't have to be a religious follower of the TV show to watch the movie, but it does help with some of the in-jokes. In particular, the town of Springfield has often been a source of speculation for fans. What actual town are they referring to?! Ned Flanders gives a good indication when he says, on a hill outside of town, that you can clearly see the bordering states of Nevada, Ohio, Kentucky, and Maine. Funny stuff indeed! So, if you like the Simpsons, check out the movie. If not, your mileage may vary.

Martian Child is a sweet drama/comedy about a sci-fi writer (John Cusack) who, a couple years after his wife's passing has sort of decided to adopt a child. The agency he deals with has a particular child in mind. A roughly six or seven year old boy who seems thoroughly convinced he is in fact from Mars.

Cusack is tentative about the adoption and about putting himself out there emotionally but ultimately decides to go ahead and give it a try.

The resulting film is often sweet and funny yet sprinkled with dashes of sadness and heart. It's an entertaining and enjoyable film for the whole family and it carries some really nice messages about love and family.

For more Jack Black goodness, we watched Kung Fu Panda. This movie was a good step for the DreamWorks animation folks in my opinion. It relies less on pop-culture references for joke material and I think overall it'll weather better as a result.

Black is the main character Po, a noodle soup maker by trade who has flights of fancy about being an amazing kung fu master. His portly physique and athletic deficits make this an unlikely prospect, but through an unlikely twist of fate he finds himself being trained by an impatient teacher for an insurmountable challenge.

It's a cute film and comes through with the message of believing in yourself and in your dreams. The humor has good stuff for kids and adults alike, and I'd recommend giving this a watch.

What we're missing

The Age of Missing Information is an informal non-scientific experiment of sorts by author Bill McKibben.

He wondered one day, in this "information age" we live in where all of this knowledge is supposedly at our proverbial fingertips, are we really any better off. So, for his little experiment, he compared and contrasted his feelings and experiences of spending a full 24 hours off, alone, camping in the woods and mountains near his home with the wonderful knowledge-base that is a 24 hour cycle of cable television.

I'll elaborate here on the TV side of things. This was not sitting around for a day straight, flipping through the channels. With the help of friends, Bill recorded EVERY channel's 24 hours of programming for all 93 channels of the cable network he had access to. At the time it was one of the largest cable markets in the U.S. He then waded through the resulting 2000+ hours of quality programming looking for the information.

This book is in some senses a bit dated. He wrote this back in 1990, and as many can surely attest, 93 channels is some quaint throwback to when cable wasn't that great, as now there are packages with channels in the hundreds. Additionally, now we have a much larger internet presence and all the "information" offered there. By the same token, this book captures many truths that still hold true today, and perhaps even moreso. People have become largely disconnected with nature. We no longer focus on the good of the community because TV (and certainly now the internet as well) tell us with brutal frequency that no, it's us, specifically it's me, I'm what's important. And I need "stuff" to affirm it. I need to tune out the planet because the planet's not so concerned with me.

There is in fact the occasional good morsel on TV, and the author concedes this, but at the same time, the way this is written serves to underline the absurdity that IS an extremely large portion of today's programming. People need a solid and significant exposure to nature in order to keep themselves grounded and to focus on the bigger picture and on what's important in life. We need the information that we can only get by spending time immersed in nature. We're getting less and less of this, and it's to our own detriment. I'd highly recommend giving this a read. It's well written and it carries a valuable message.

Star Trek

The most recent Star Trek movie from J.J. Abrams of Lost fame is a fresh take on the Star Trek universe.

"Fresh," you say? "How can it be fresh where there've been umpteen different movies and TV series...practically more approaches than there are stars in the Vulcan sky!?"

Well, I'll tell you. Ya take your space, ya take your time, and ya do a bit of tweaking and bending. The result in this case is largely excellent. This flick takes us back to the genesis of the Star Trek crew we came to know and love in the original series and earlier movies, fresh out of cadet training. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Checkov to name a few.

Abrams and crew keep the action moving along at a nice clip, the CGI is superb, the character development feels pretty good, and the story flows really well. I did have a quibble or two (to be addressed further along), but otherwise really enjoyed this adaptation. They take you on quite a ride and if you have at least a passing interest in science-fiction, I would highly recommend this movie. Go see it. You'll enjoy it.

What follows from this point is a more descriptive review of the plot, likely containing stuff that would be qualified as spoilers, so if you want to avoid those, you've been warned.

The film jumps right in with an anomaly in space (don't they all) out of which pops one pissed off Romulan. The Hulk...er, Nero, is angry and he has a bone to pick with a certain Vulcan, and he's so enraged that he travels back in time to exact his revenge. It's in this opening bit that we get to meet Jim Kirk's father who performs some moving heroics of the self-sacrificing nature to save the vast majority of the crew on his ship including his wife and actively-being-born son.

We're then treated to a brief interlude of young Jim and Spock going through various adolescence fun followed closely by some high level views of their Starfleet Academy time. We also get to meet Bones and Uhura in here and see some nice character development touches that fall in line really well with history. Kirk is of course the cocky swaggering ladies man, Spock's pretty well got his emotions under control, Bones is prematurely old-man-grumpy, and Uhura adapts quite readily to the extra short skirt female cadets wear to entertain the fellas on the bridge.

A distress call comes in (as they do), these young cadets are put into action right away since all the other big and important ships are off somewhere else (as they always seem to be), and, due to the high level of danger involved, death followed by exceedingly rapid promotion are the order of the day and it doesn't take long for our young cadets to be in charge of the whole shootin' match (I bet life insurance is VERY difficult to get in their line of work).

The distress call, as it turns out, is from a much larger ship with far superior fire-power from the future piloted by our good friend Mr. Nero. He chased Old Spock (also coming in from the future) into this dimension because he felt betrayed by Old Spock with the result that a whole bunch of Romulans had died. His plan is to systematically eradicate the Federation by means of drilling into Federation planet surfaces and dropping in "red matter" which, as we all know, turns the planet into a singularity (aka. a black hole). First stop, Vulcan. Percentage-wise, not very many Vulcans survived. After that, Earth was the next stop where (in my opinion) the biggest surprise of the movie occurred.

Using their massive drill they proceed to start making a hole right next to the Golden Gate bridge. This is a long tendril of a drill dangling from the Romulan spaceship which is still up in orbit. At one point, the good guys swoop in and blast the drill, severing it from the mother ship. The falling debris - in a HIGHLY uncharacteristic movie moment - MISSES the bridge! See??? THAT is truly unexpected. Given the choice, directors ALWAYS take out the national monument! Such restraint is rare indeed.

I digress...

The good guys save the day of course, rounding out their little band of merry space travelers along the way. Again, overall, the movie was loads of fun, enjoyable to watch, and I sure hope they can continue in this line of thought.

My one beef with it, and frankly I thought this was a really odd shortcoming after all that other excellence, was the bit about the "red matter." A quick look around the web and this red matter business wasn't well received. The matter in question was brought into the plot by Old Spock in his ship as this quite large red ball of...er...well...matter, suspended in a vacuum container. A single drop of this stuff extracted, stuck in a container, and dropped into a hole in a planet is enough to set off the chain reaction that turns the planet into a black hole.

Fine, it's black hole juice, but there's no real explanation for the stuff, where it comes from, why it's there, what's Old Spock doing with it (and with SO MUCH of it), etc. Some super Trek nerds could probably set me straight on this, but for the general population, it looked like a giant brain fart with the plot. Seems like they could've concocted something like super-anti-genesis torpedos (from the Wrath of Kahn era...only, ya know, more superer) and had a more plausible scenario. There's more than one way to destroy a planet after all. So there ya have it, the one obvious weak link (in my opinion) of a pretty solid story.

The primary intent with the plot as they laid it out was this. Now that Nero has come back to the past fairly drastically altering events, they have a LOT of room to follow this story down whatever rabbit holes they so choose. Here's hoping they take time and write compelling scripts for future installments.

Now, go see it.

Femme Fatale

Merriam-Webster offers two definitions of Femme Fatale:

1 : a seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations2 : a woman who attracts men by an aura of charm and mystery

To be fair to the movie, the dictionary definition says nothing about seducing or attracting men with their acting ability.

This is not to pick on Ms. Romijn, the female lead. All of the performances were largely phoned in. Antonio didn't do anything particularly special here, and neither did anyone else. The plot, for its part, is actually pretty good and this could've been a better movie had the director saw fit to insist on better performances from the cast.

The basic plot synopsis is this. Rebecca royally shafts some bad people early in the flick then disappears for a number of years, only to be brought back to public awareness by struggling paparazzo Antonio. She then, as a master planner, cooks up a plan to manipulate Antonio into appearing to have taken her hostage for a significant ransom. The bad guys, having harboured a grudge and seen her tabloid pictures, show up to throw a wrench in the works.

As you can see, there's enough plot there to, cleverly written and acted, produce a pretty good movie, but they throw in a decent twist on top of that as well.

So...recommendations... Um, it's ok cable fare or if you're in it for the boobies or something, but I wouldn't say it's worth paying to watch.