Coriolanus

"Coriolanus" is the next step in my long evil plan to see every good movie ever made.  Now I only have a million more to go.  I should be done by this time tomorrow, I think.

Since this is a good movie, that means I get to write a positive review.  "Coriolanus" was written by William Shakespeare, who is easily the best screenwriter in Hollywood, but oddly never seems to ever get that Oscar he so desperately deserves.  "Coriolanus" is one of his more obscure plays, and having seen this movie, why?  This is also the directorial debut of Ralph Fiennes, and he stars in the movie too.  Shakespeare, to his misfortune, didn't get much say in the artistic development of this movie, because he clearly wanted this to be set in the ancient Roman Republic, but Fiennes instead casts it in depressing modern-day Eastern Europe.  These creative differences led to Shakespeare taking his name off the final movie, and instead they gave screenwriter credit to the imaginary pseudonym "John Logan"*.  But despite this behind the scenes acrimony, "Coriolanus" was a great movie, something that Mr. Shakespeare should be proud of.

"Coriolanus" is a political tragedy where the titular Gaius Marcius Coriolanus throws away his future in the Roman Republic for hating the people and refusing to compromise.  Its also a violent war movie, with an awesome action scene (but sadly only one).  This is like a fully modern war drama only with Shakespeare's special brand of incredible writing which is arguably the greatest work the English language has ever produced.  Its hyper modern, where BBC news anchors on TV have replaced the traditional Shakespearian character of a Herald.  Instead of togas and spears there are officer uniforms, business suits, and machine guns.  A lot of Shakespeare movies set themselves in modern times, but usually stylized Victorian times or a Fascist Britain, "Coriolanus" goes so far as to have cellphones in it.  So go out and see it immediately if you can.  Definitely one of the best movies of 2012 so far.

Kara

Here's a seven minute video from Quantic Dream, the makers of "Heavy Rain", that interactive movie game from a few years ago.  "Heavy Rain" was a game I skipped over mostly because of how weird and inhuman the characters looked.  If this new video is any indication, the Uncanny Valley is truly dead, and that's what most game bloggers are going to be buzzing about.  Honestly, I couldn't care less about any of that, because this video is quite simply beautiful.  The technical innovations are dwarfed by the brilliance of the dramatic scene here.  Just watch:

"Kara" is a pretty basic SciFi concept, androids coming to life.  You could probably be cynical and point out that its been done a million times before, but its probably not been done this well*.  In just a seven minute scene, "Kara" sets the stage for what could be an amazing story, which is actually a pretty good parallel for what Quantic Dream has been trying to do for years now.  They've been out to create the perfect digital human, an artificial person much like Kara herself.  In this video I'd say they've succeeded, beating out both their original "Heavy Rain" and really beating out Square Enix's "Spirits Within" from over a decade ago.  They also seem to be facing the fact that their digital humans are little more than commodities to be sold, and in a few nude scenes, purposefully designed masturbation pieces.  Then they ask themselves, what if their characters really were alive, and so "Kara" is born.  But I don't know if its just technology that makes this a success.  I don't care about the tech, I just want to see more of this story.

Act of Valor

Now for a movie that's slightly more relevant than a WWII movie that probably isn't even playing in your theatre anymore:  "Act of Valor".

Now "Act of Valor" is not a good movie, let's start with that right now.  As a matter of fact, its probably considerably less fun than "Red Tails" and if I really needed to choose between the movies I'd go with Lucasfilm rather than the Pentagon.  But I really feel bad saying that, because "Act of Valor" is one of those movies you really want to be really good.  Because this is a movie made by the Pentagon starring active duty Navy SEALs fighting in exact combat tactics, often using live ammo.  These are the supreme badass warriors fighting around the world for the American way, doing their thing on camera.  Of course, you can't just have a movie about combat exercises, you do need things like plot and characters and dialog and stuff.

So obviously "Act of Valor" does a really kickass job with its action scenes.  They're easily the most authentic combat scenes of modern warfare of any modern movie.  And its all real people doing real things.  That truck that blew up?  That's a real truck.  And that's a real submarine and a real helicopter and a real boat and real dudes jumping out of the plane.  Its not a CG cartoon wonderland like well... every other movie that's been made in the last ten years, basically.  So right there "Act of Valor" is a respectable movie, not to mention how it honors the world's most awesome badasses.  However, beyond the action scenes, this movie has very little to enjoy.  The plot is thin, and really the characters, acting, and script are um... lousy.  But I feel so bad saying that, because god bless these guys they're trying.

"Act of Valor" really makes me feel conflicted.  I guess I could trash this movie like I did "Red Tails", but that would make me feel like a bully to people we all should respect.  Yeah, this movie isn't very good, but its not like the Navy SEALs couldn't make another movie, with maybe a better script, and well... a real actor.  And just saying that feels mean.

Red Tails

Today I went to see two separate mediocre military movies, one being the remarkable Navy SEALs epic, "Act of Valor".  This is not that movie.

"Red Tails" instead is George Lucas' latest movie that isn't an unnecessary 3D remake of a crappy Star Wars prequel.  Its a hundred million dollar epic based on the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed all-Black WWII fighter group, made with an all-Black cast and a ton of CG.  Notably it was not directed by George Lucas, nor was it written by him, but he came up with the idea, had all the money, and even personally directed reshoots after the main filming was over.  Yeah, Anthony Hemmingway has the director's seat, but how much of a director was he really?  So what we're seeing is George Lucas' vision brought to the screen.  And if you're a "Boondocks" fan, Aaron McGruder was the co-writer on this thing.  Its not entirely "Star Wars Episode VII: Red Tails", but its about 50% that.

As you might have noticed, I'm about two months behind on "Red Tails", and I truly have no excuse of any kind.  But luckily I live very close to what Hollywood calls the "urban market", so there are theatres near me still playing it.  Also thanks to lots of hindsight, we can conclude that "Red Tails" was a total flop and since then George Lucas has declared that he's done making Blockbusters, which honestly is something I couldn't help but meet with more than a small degree of sadness.  Yeah, George Lucas has been the Internet's punching bag for more than a decade, and really after so many failures the guy could use a nice success.  He was trying something different here than fiddling with Star Wars or Indiana Jones, and that's something worth celebrating*.   This was a labor of love for him, somehow it took him twenty-two years to make this Tuskegee Airmen movie, and I really wish it worked out.  But no... it just didn't.

"Red Tails" is a pretty mundane movie, actually fairly boring.  I guess its better than a Star Wars Prequel, but still, really an unremarkable piece of work that nobody is going to remember in two years.  But for fun, let's see why:

Iran Crisis

Right now the entire Iran situation is scaring the crap out of me.  Right now, Iran, a nation that has been on America's "hit-list" for about a decade now ever since President Bush listed it in his Axis of Evil speech, is currently on route to a war with Israel over its nuclear program.  This could result in the first war between nuclear powers in history, with Israel and Iran trading blasts across the Middle East, and the inevitable involvement of the United States.  President Obama has already positioned ourselves in an anti-Iran posture, hoping to choke the Iranian regime to submission with an oil blockade.  We have committed ourselves to stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb, which would be fine, but our ally, Israel, wants to smash Iran's potential to build a nuke, which means that we bomb the crap out Iran's nuclear sites and go to war with them immediately.  Israel might just want to move unilaterally, which might drag the US into a full-scale regional war, and after that, nobody knows what will happen.

Luckily for the world right now, President Bush is not in office, instead we have the far more cautious Obama.  If anybody recalls "the Bush Doctrine", those rules of military intervention meant that the United States could invade any country it wanted entirely on its own to defeat a threat to American security.  In the Iraq invasion of 2003, that was based entirely on the false assumption that Saddam Hussein was building Weapons of Mass Destruction, which lead to a nearly-decade long quagmire of police-keeping in the destroyed nation and absorbed Bush's entire presidency.  According to the rules of the Bush Doctrine, Iran is building WMDs and we probably should have invaded them already.

Obviously we don't want a war with Iran.  Do I need to explain what the downsides would be?  Even if its a limited war simply to bomb Iran into abandoning its nuclear program, it would be a disaster for Iran, and a mistake for American use of force.  If we went for an all-out regime change invasion, it would probably be at least as troublesome as the Iraq War, only in a much bigger nation with a more powerful and stable regime being torn down.  Right now, I'd say Obama is actually walking the right path with Iran.