I, Robot. She, angry.

While watching the trailer for I, Robot before Kill Bill Volume 2, I could feel my wife tense up. Christina is a devout Isaac Asimov fan, and though it's been several years at least since I read the original collection of short stories, it was fairly obvious that the tone of the film is considerably different from the author's deliberate set of mental exercises with the Three Laws of Robotics. From the trailer I could see why she was upset -- the robots in the trailer seem to actively revolt against their human masters, a concept almost unthinkable in the controlled landscape of robotics in Asimov's world. I was inclined to agree -- it doesn't feel right, somehow.

Then I discovered that Alex Proyas directed the film. Proyas directed the mysterious (if somewhat plodding) Dark City, one of the most cerebral science fiction films of the last decade. How could this champion of ideas turn a science fiction masterwork into a big dumb action movie? The answer, I hope, is that he didn't. This short featurette includes a few interview answers from Proyas himself, who points out that in the Robot books that one or more of the Laws may appear to have been broken, but it always turns out that they haven't been. Bent? Yes. Interpreted in a skewed fashion? Perhaps. But broken outright? No.

There's never been any doubt that I was going to go see this film. Too many flashing lights. Too many cool robot effects. And Will Smith! But I will try harder to get Christina to go with me. Since Proyas displays an understanding of the "Three Laws" narrative concept, and since he did such an incredible job with Dark City, I'm going to put my trust in him and try to maintain an optimistic approach to this film. I don't think he has betrayed Asimov's vision. Bent it a bit to fit cinematic needs? Yes. Interpreted it in a skewed fashion? Perhaps. But betrayed it outright? No.

"Hellboy" vs. "Kill Bill"

I came out of Hellboy thinking that the first two-thirds of the film were terrific, and the third act just failed miserably. There was too much action without motivation, too many anguished looks without an audience understanding of why exactly it was our hero was doing what he was doing. And no, I don't buy that "it was his destiny" or "it was in his nature" arguments. For an hour Del Toro painted a picture of a sympathetic -- if somewhat rough around the edges -- hero, and at the last minute Hellboy began to aid the villain in initiating the apocalypse. Supposedly he did this to save the life and soul of his true love (a woman whom I found to be pretty drippy, especially for a character played by Selma Blair), but what exactly are he and his girlfriend supposed to do in a world overrun by demons?

I digress. The point is that the script failed at the end, as so many action film scripts do. We have all been let down by too many pictures that just didn't know how to end themselves properly. These movies substitute climax for resolution, and fall back on the cinematic shorthand of walking off into the sunset when what we really want is the closure of a character's story arc. Hellboy was only guilty of these points to a minor degree, but it certainly did not have a proper -- or properly explained -- ending.

Kill Bill Volume 2, fortunately, has a nearly perfect ending, and for me it simply cements Quentin Tarantino's place as one of the great masters of film. Say what you like about his fanboy tendencies and the self-indulgent monologues he gives to his characters (one inhabitant of this second installment delivers a speech about Superman that is textbook Tarantino and still relates to the story), the man can write one helluva script and I have never once felt cheated by a plot development in one of his movies. There have been many pictures that, after I watched them, I said to myself "Jeez, I could have done better than that." But with Tarantino -- and most especially with Kill Bill -- I don't think there are very many people who can do what he does.

But man, does he have to take five years to do it each time?

Timecop

Our review of Jean Claude Van Damme's Timecop is now available at Stomp Tokyo.

He's making a movie

Chris Magyar, formerly of Diary of a Tuber fame, has taken responsibility for the state of quality entertainment and started making a short film in Denver. He's even writing a production journal so we can watch over his shoulder as the film gets made. "Make a Killing" (the blog) is a really interesting look at what happens when a movie watcher becomes a movie maker.

(Full disclosure: Scott and I contributed a few jokes to the script. So yeah, we'd like to see it succeed.)

Busy behind the scenes

Yeah, I've been kind of quiet lately because there are all sorts of projects underway. Such as:

• A new tenant at Bad Movie Planet, which necessitates a redesigned home page for that site (it's not live yet).
  
• A redesign of Filmboy (still in the planning stages) so Jeff can start updating his own site. Because of all the other stuff I've got going it often takes a week or longer for his reviews to get posted.
  
• A new site based around a certain favorite character from childhood (still in the design stages)
  
• An upcoming B-Masters roundtable
  
• Other projects either too obscure, boring, or overdue to mention here
  
• A recent garage sale (clutter gone, bank account slightly happier)
  
• My day job
  

I've been searching high and low for a decent content management system and come to the conclusion that what I really want is a decent web site management system. I don't care so much that I have to upload files, I just don't want to have to work so hard at getting the pages to look good and at making small changes site-wide. After much mucking about with systems like PHPNuke and Xoops and SiteFrame, I (re-)stumbled upon Blosxom, which is billed as a blogging tool but is really an incredible piece of simple-yet-powerful code. I initially rejected it as too simplistic, but after dealing with complicated installs and even more complicated interfaces and templates, I find it may just be exactly what I need.

I'm glad there are tools like Blogger and Wordpress for web-interface driven web site management, but for some of my needs I'm happier using a text editor and an FTP client while still reaping the benefits of a CMS.

Motley Fool steals our April Fools joke

Last year, for April Fools Day, Scott and I replaced our home page with this page, which claimed that Stomp Tokyo would be shutting down because Hollywood had learned from its mistakes and we were confident that no more bad movies would be made.

This year, I got an e-mail from The Motley Fool. It looks like this:



Coincidence? Or did they just recognize a great April 1 joke when they saw it?