A John Carter length nap

Alas, my attempts to see a movie in the theater on vacation last week were foiled.

It shouldn't have been so hard. The trip included a total of nine nights, seven of which were spent in easy range of numerous movie theaters. I totally could have gone out to a late movie once my family had gone to bed, even if the plan for my wife and me to go to a movie together never transpired.

But it just didn't work out, in part because I had targeted a specific night late in the trip to do it, and that night ended up seeming like the wrong night when it finally arrived. Of course, the theater in Portland where I wanted to see Seeking a Friend for the End of the World didn't make it any easier on us -- it was playing the movie, but only at 3:15 in the afternoon. Only two weeks into its run? Shame. We could have seen it at another theater, but that was the one we had targeted for its cuteness and proximity to Portland's Old Port district, where we hoped to get a drink afterward.

When Wednesday night the 4th clearly wasn't going to work out, I mentally scrambled to see if I could make the next night work out, but the rain on Wednesday night conspired against me, as the city of Portland shifted its fireworks display (which we were supposed to attend) ahead by one day. I ended up glad I had never mentioned it at all, so as not to make my family think I'd been conspiring to see a movie for part of our limited time together. (See here and here for fuller discussions of why I love seeing movies while out of town.)

My last play was for Saturday night, the night before our departure. We were staying in my sister's intimate loft apartment near Boston's Logan Airport, and there was an idea that my sister and I might need to clear out while my wife stayed home and tried to get our son to sleep -- especially important given that we had to get up before 5 to leave for our 7:05 flight. But when we didn't get home from dinner until well after 9, it was clear that this opportunity would also go by the boards.

Well, thank goodness for having to rouse our son so early. As a result, I somehow got to watch an entire 132-minute movie, without interruption, on our flight home.

After our trials on the flight over, I didn't think I'd have a shot at watching even one of those in-flight 30-minute sitcoms. Our son is still under two, so he qualifies as a "lap infant," meaning we don't need to buy a seat for him. Great savings, but it made for a terrible quality of travel. He spent the first three hours of that flight wriggling and kicking and trying to make life miserable for everyone around him. Fortunately, we succeeded to the extent that he only really made it miserable for us. My wife hilariously attempted to watch the in-flight movie, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, despite our son pulling out her earphones every two minutes. (Or "Journey 2: Mystery Island," as the flight attendant had called it.) Me, I can't even wade into a movie if I know that kind of nonsense is awaiting me.

But my son was considerably more docile at the start of this flight home. He still had more sleeping to do. In fact, I began to stress out when he had already gotten himself into a comfortable sleeping position, torso on my wife's lap and legs on mine, but the movie had not yet started. I needed those two things to align perfectly if I wanted any shot at getting through a whole movie.

I figured I had a better shot at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I guessed would be about 100 minutes (looking it up now, I see it's actually 123). That was the movie they had announced we'd be seeing. When the Walt Disney logo and an image of Mars were the first two things to appear on screen, I knew we weren't in India anymore.

The first thing that bummed me out about John Carter starting was that I wanted to watch it on a big screen. I knew it wasn't supposed to be good, but I thought our new home TV would be a good place to take in its Martian vistas, which promised to be the best thing about the movie.

The second was that I knew it was about 2 hours and 20 minutes long. And I figured there would be almost no way the little sleeping cherub in our laps would still be either cherubic or sleeping 2 hours and 20 minutes from now.

Well, it couldn't have worked out much better. There were a few twitches and small awakenings, and even a retraction of his legs off my own. But it was only just before the credits were set to roll that my son returned to the waking world, and it was a groggy return uncharacterized by lunges at our headphones.

The movie itself? I liked it fine. Yes, it has all the problems everyone says it has, but I applauded its ambition, and also the visual whimsy Andrew Stanton clearly tried to bring to it. There were some pretty successful attempts at humor, like the scene in which Bryan Cranston is interrogating Taylor Kitsch, and dutifully progresses through the same speech despite being repeatedly interrupted by Kitsch's escape attempts. Each time Kitsch head butts Cranston or dives through a nearby window, the scene picks back up in a new location, with Kitsch newly recaptured, and Cranston picking up where he left off in the speech. That kind of thing really worked -- but the movie needed a lot more of it.

Now that I'm back, I need to get out to the movies big time. It's been nearly a month since my last theatrical screening: Prometheus, way back on June 12th.

However, I may target Beasts of the Southern Wild, and just save Seeking a Friend for DVD -- an unfortunate outcome, since I really wanted to support it by seeing it in the theater.

So my wife and I will probably have that date to see Seeking a Friend, in the end. It'll just be on our couch sometime this October.

Shutting Eddie Murphy up

No hidden commentary here. I just think this is a good idea for a movie.

Will it be a good movie? That's another question.

Due mostly to the divorce between Dreamworks and Paramount/Viacom, this film has been caught in limbo for the better part of four years, as most of the principal photography occurred in 2008. The fact that there were reshoots last year makes things seem worse for A Thousand Words. The fact that its release date bounced around within 2012 makes them seem even worse. And the fact that it was not screened for critics is kind of like the death knell.

But the idea is good. Make a comic known for his motormouth linguistic skills shut his trap for most of the movie and see how funny he can be without relying on verbal gymnastics. The timing is perfect, coming right off the first silent film winning best picture since Wings. Who knows if the audience would have been in this same frame of mind back in 2009, when it was supposed to be released.

However, it seems legitimate to worry whether Eddie Murphy's latest public relations troubles will have an impact on his box office drawing power. Although your average joe is not necessarily privy to the behind-the-scenes goings on of awards shows, the fact that Murphy was supposed to host this year's Oscars, but stepped down, became pretty big news. Of course, even fewer of your average joes know who Brett Ratner is, so the fact that Murphy stepped down in deference to the firing of Ratner for making homophobic slurs (always the class act, that Brett Ratner) is probably not generally known. All that's known by most people is that Murphy was supposed to host, but didn't. In a way, I guess he shut himself up.

Well, I won't be seeing A Thousands Words in the theater of course. While I said I like the idea, I haven't trusted Murphy enough to see a movie of his in the theater since -- well, since Shrek I guess. That was 11 years ago. Neither do collaborations with director Brian Robbins give me much hope, if their previous two -- Norbit and Meet Dave -- are any indication.

But I will be seeing my third movie of the 2012 release year this afternoon after work, reviving an old post-clockout tradition that has pretty much subsided since my son was born. My wife is going away for the night tomorrow night, so as my reward for extra parenting duty this weekend, I'm heading straight to the theater after work and getting home in time for bath and story time. (Incidentally, these trips may become more regular in the future -- my wife told me I didn't need a special occasion to do them. Score!)

I'll be watching Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. Most likely in 3D.

One of my readers in particular will warn me away from this, but I have enough reason to think it might be good that I'm willing to venture it. Besides, I've got a gift card to one of the local movie theaters, so there'll be no money leaving my pocket.

At first I was planning to choose between The Lorax and John Carter, and I had an interesting way to determine which it would be. I decided that whichever movie had the higher Metascore would get my gift card dollars this afternoon, since I knew the Lorax Metascore, but the John Carter Metascore would be new to me as of today. Since both were movies I'd wanted to see originally, before being scared off by them, I thought this was a perfect way to break the deadlock.

But then I saw that John Carter was a full 40 minutes longer than The Lorax, and that just tipped the scales too much. The shorter movie would prevail.

Just to see what would have happened, though:

The Lorax - 47
John Carter - 52

For my wife's sake, I'm glad I made this decision in advance.

John Carter had me at "hello," lost me at "how are you?"

When I hunger for new cinematic visions that seem to represent a clear departure from things I've seen previously, John Carter is the kind of movie I think of.

Or so I thought from the first trailer, anyway.

Here's that first trailer:



Of course, everything that was minimalist, ominous and visionary about this first trailer felt pedestrian in the trailer I saw last week, before either Tintin or War Horse.

Here's that trailer:



Now I think it just seems like any other gladiator movie, any other ripoff of Star Wars, with one shot that seems like a ripoff of Avatar (which itself was a ripoff of oh-so-many things).

So I don't know where I stand with respect to John Carter. Am I excited to see it? Watching that first trailer again just now, I felt so. Watching the second trailer again reminded me that I might not be.

I think it gets at the difference between a teaser (which, even at 1:45, the first trailer essentially is) and a trailer (which tells you more of what the movie is essentially about). And so that explains the title of this post, which you thought was just a clever riff on the oh-so-current cultural reference, Jerry Maguire.

See, the teaser is kind of a "hello." It says "Hi, I'm a thing. You may or may not have known I was a thing, but this footage is designed to give you that knowledge and get you a little excited." A teaser is great, because it leaves open the possibility that the movie could go in so many different directions from what you're seeing. How skillful, for example, to give us the detail that this man started in 19th century England before ending up on Mars. That bit of information is meant to give you the Keanu "Whoa" reaction.

However, once the full trailer is revealed, it can no longer hide what it's about. That's the "how are you" -- literally, how is the movie. How do those images we've seen coalesce into a story.

And that's where John Carter appears to trip. Clearly, Disney thought its best bet to get a big audience on the first weekend (still almost two months off) would be to highlight the movie's action. You'll notice that 19th century London makes no appearance whatsoever in the second trailer -- that only confuses people who came for an action movie.

But what we're left with is a bunch of lame Star Wars prequel stuff, including gladiator footage that seems to be right out of Attack of the Clones (that was the movie where they fought in an arena while chained up, right?). Then there's a bit of warmed-over Braveheart ("He will fight for us!") or any of the countless movies that involve a rallying speech to an underdog army.

I guess I'm giving away the change in my excitement level by the poster I chose to accompany this post. If I'd still been in giddy-teaser-phase, I might have led with this poster, which is even listed as the "teaser poster" in the file name (I hadn't consciously realized there was such a thing, but it makes as much marketing sense as a teaser trailer):


Oh, how I long for those days when John Carter could still have been about anything.

John Carter seemed to have the cross-genre potential of a movie like Cowboys & Aliens, where elements of our past and elements of a science fiction future fit together naturally in a way that both expands and blows our mind.

Oops, except Cowboys & Aliens didn't pull that off, either.

Here's hoping John Carter pulls it off better than Cowboys & Aliens. If it doesn't, not only will it fail to be the first awesome movie of 2012, but it may not even be worth watching on video.