Gone Baby Gone

Ben Affleck is held up by some as a joke. The shining example of a lack of talent and too much publicity creating an unfairly successful individual.

Personally I think he gets a lot of crap thrown at him that others deserve more readily.

The stock line I read when Gone Baby Gone was announced with Ben Affleck as co-screenwriter and director was "I hope he directs better than he acts".

Well I think his acting isn't as consistently risible as some critics portray and I certainly think his directorial debut should be judged on its own merits, not on the receding stench of Jennifer Lopez.

Gone Baby Gone is the story of a kidnapped girl taken from a rough neighbourhood in Boston. Patrick Kenzie (played by Casey Affleck) and his professional and romantic partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are private detectives who specialise in finding missing persons. The pair are hired by the missing girl's aunt as they can get answers from people who won't say a word to someone in a uniform.

The head of the investigating department of the police, Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) initially dismisses the pair, particularly Kenzie, as being inexperienced and loud mouthed but he is forced to allow them access to the investigation through Detectives Bressant (Ed Harris) and Poole (John Ashton, probably best known for his role in Beverly Hills Cop).

It is of no surprise that Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris are absolutely superb but the real revelation is Casey Affleck. Switching between understated and violent, charming and stoic, Affleck is consistently credible and powerful.

Moments of complete fear and vulnerability are effecting to both the character and the audience and usually in films a character vomiting is a signifier of how the audience is meant to feel, but this time I was right there with Kenzie.

Yet in other scenes Kenzie is the smallest man in the room but you simply wouldn't back against him, not purely because of the audience's agreement with the film that he is the hero, but because Affleck manages to be utterly ferocious and undeniable.

At one point Kenzie has a gun pointed to his face and I thought both of the Affleck brothers' choices in the scene were enthralling. And as a friend of mine would say, the "Act Your Ass Off" moments come thick and fast with Affleck able to goe toe to toe with Freeman and Harris convincingly.

The choices in the use of camera, dialogue and the supporting cast aims to authentically portray the strange mix of togetherness and danger that only someone who has lived in such places can recognise. Boston has a real personality in Gone Baby Gone and it is the clash of class and perspective that drives the central themes of the film.

It is difficult to go into the plot without being spoiler heavy to the point of ruination, but while there are a few overly obvious pointers to where things are headed, this is a strong film with plenty of intelligence and emotion which could easily have been cloying and contrived but instead remains purposeful and provocative up to and including the final shot.

Some reviewers I have glanced at over here see this as being a film with moral ambiguity yet for me I think the moral center of the film is utterly unwavering.

The central question that is posited is "Can all reactions be forgiven in the face of utter evil?".

For some reason the current political and social climate in America as pertains to foreign policy haven't been linked to Gone Baby Gone as far as I have seen, but to me the pragmatism and moral certainty of Kenzie is a direct response to the media's attempts to cloud the correct choices.

A very solid directorial debut from Ben and a breakout performance from Casey, well worth a viewing.

Shatner Speak

So the Bionic Woman rears its pasty head again and for some reason I find myself compelled to watch.

This week I will break my review down into a more managable size.

Miguel Ferrer wants to go home now.

Michelle Ryan struggles to act, run or blink in a manner which makes one believe there is something worth sticking around for.

Katie Sackhoff could be a champion gurner and I'm pretty sure the director is shouting "Bigger!" at her with every scene.

Homophobe Man carries on being awful at every turn and his character does utterly incredulous things to move the story on and show he is willing to think outside the box. Unfortunately the box is marked "Competent".

At least there was some action. Really bad action. If you thought Beast flying through the air in X-Men 3: Murder of a Franchise was graceful then even your cataracts won't hide the amateurish jumping effects used in last night's Bionic Woman.

Nicholas Hammond would have pointed and laughed.

The revelation was that the implants leave our bionic lass with 5 years to live. I think the showrunners have an optimism that should be applauded.

Then again, Charmed lasted forever.

Can't...take...muchmoreofthis.

Shoot the Scriptwriter, Save The Series

Ahh Heroes, here we are again, still the awkward exposition, the clumsy acting and the head scratching plot holes that were evident in season 1. Such a shame that the cliffhangers and fun didn't return.

Lets do a rundown of the movers and shakers of season 2, spoilers included.

The Bennets

Noah (HRG as he is also known) is working a menial job in order to keep his profile low, he tried to play nice but his moronic boss annoyed him so a finger lock and a talking-to later and he takes a coffee break whenever he damn well wants to.

Some might wonder why Noah isn't just keeping completely out of sight, particularly as he can apparently afford a shiny new Nissan (got to keep the show sponsors happy) for his perky daughter Wolverine.

Noah is the sly spy as ever and has plans to bring down his former employers from the inside, but there is a snag. One of the 8 remaining paintings of the future has Noah's horn rimmed glasses shattered by a bullet hole with him still wearing them. Save the HRG save the world?

Claire is trying to not bring attention to herself by never answering a question in class and avoiding any sort of social interaction. Just like any normal High School kid. Perhaps the next part of her brilliant strategy will involve wearing a black trenchcoat and muttering about hunting season in the cafeteria.
Fortunately for her, a foppish rebel with his own secret (he can fly, like Nathan, apparently they ran out of new powers), pretends to be an infinitely boring version of Christian Slater in Heathers and takes a shine to her and floats outside her window gazing at her from afar.
Some would call this creepy (and reminiscent of Superman Returns) but no, he's just smitten and he forces Claire to admit to her power and they go and fly around a bit and kiss in a non-threatening manner.
Last season Claire was destined to die. This season she is destined to have a clumsily brief entry into the Mile High Club.
Their burgeoning relationship is threatened though as it turns out the boy that Claire could give a flying f@#! for has had a run in with HRG in the past. Riveting.

The Petrellis

Nathan Petrelli wonders around drunk sporting a huge beard while wearing suede and talking to a grizzly bear called Ben, who is his friend and they go on adventures. He mutters about how he survived the giant explosion he heroically sacrificed himself for but we all stick our fingers in our ears and try to forget that episode ever happened.

Peter Petrelli is being attacked by a viciously stupid amnesia plot and some even more ferocious accents. Begorrah. He has kept all of his powers except for his ability to keep a shirt on.

Their Mom has been marked for death and may join Sulu in leaving the Titanic when the waters got chilly.

Matt and Mohinder

Matt and Mohinder try to raise Molly Plot De La Device as she struggles with nightmares and visions of this season's villain. She also struggles with being convincing when speaking but she's young, let's not dwell.
Matt thinks he is now Jackie Chan in Super Cop while more closely resembling Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz.
Mohinder is in league with Noah in trying to take down the organisation he now works for. He gets inside the belly of the beast as his own blood is the only cure for the deadly plague killing people with powers (for more see the Legacy Virus story in Uncanny X-Men throughout the 90s).
Brilliantly, he keeps in contact with Noah on a standard mobile phone that he even uses at the evil company's own buildings. They'll never figure out what is going on, or where Noah is or even shoot him in the eye in the near future.

Last Year's Popular Character

Hiro is in Japan in the 1600s forcing an English Wolverine (not the Cheerleader Wolverine, easy to confuse, but theres a new powers drought going on) into becoming the hero he idolised as he listened to profoundly dull stories as a child.
He sends messages to his friend Ando by placing them in Kensei's sword hilt. Fortunately noone in the ensuing 400 years bothers to look at the bottom of the sword's handle which reads "Open This Ando, Not Anyone Else Please"*.
Hiro makes us all feel like true heroes as while he can travel back in time we can see the future with amazingly obvious clarity.
He also sends us back in time to an age when Comics didn't have a recap page and we had to suffer through 4 pages of annoying exposition every single issue.

The Dynamic Duo

Maya and Alejandro Herrera desperately scramble to the United States to use the fantastic health system ( sorry couldn't resist) and find a cure for Maya's deadly power which makes her cry black toxic tears that kill all around her in a devastatingly uninteresting way. Next week they reach the border and find their ultimate enemy: Robo-Romney and his appeal-to-the-base immigration policy.

Scary Spice

Sylar is in the middle of a jungle, recovering from a gut wound which somehow made him lose all the powers he has learned. He discovers that after murdering Illusion Girl he can't use her abilities either. The audience discovers this all seems far too convenient to take seriously.

The Sanders

Niki drops Micah off with Uhura so she can do a job for The Company as they have promised to cure her of the Legacy Virus. Noone cares.

Micah is upset at leaving Las Vegas as his father D.L. Shadowcat is there, underneath 6 feet of dirt and a tasteful headstone. Niki tells Micah whenever he wants to visit with Dad she will make it happen. Hopefully this isn't a death threat.


So that is how things stand 3 episodes into the 2nd season and apparently the viewership is shrinking quicker than The Atom in a cold shower.

This cannot be a surprise to many people as there just isn't anything to get excited about so far and a lot of each episode seems to be filler, putting the characters out of each others' way until they can come back together again and have a communal letdown like last season.
The tension has palpably slackened and a lot of the glaring faults of season 1 are starting to become the only things to judge the second season on.
The second story arc needs to pick up faster than a speeding bullet.


Look, up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's Kristin Bell!

Save us Veronica Mars, save us!

*Translated from the Japanese and ludicrous.

Plastic Appendages

Last night was a chance to catch the second episodes of NBC's The Bionic Woman and Life.

I was willing to give Bionic Woman the benefit of the doubt and thought my good friend the Admiral was being a little harsh in his review of the pilot episode last week.

I hoped that the second episode would improve as much of the exposition had been done with.

The following contains spoilers.

What a crock of dross.

The episode opens with the funeral of the ex-Eastender's boyfriend, which is kind of out of the blue in some ways but either a) this is a nice turn from the usual injury that is easily survived or b) a painfully uninteresting surprise to be revealed later in the series.

Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) has responded by getting hammered at a bar (apparently the nanotech doesn't cure poisons) and dives on the nearest bloke that smiles on her and breaks his rib amidst some clumsy fumbling in the bathroom. The tryst is interrupted by Jonas Bledsoe (the woefully wasted and patently bored senseless Miguel Ferrer) her shadowy benefactor who explains to her what his company does.

"We're a private clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organisations from ending civilisation as we know it, to put it simply we save the world."

Did Miguel Ferrer read that line and think "Hmm do I play it with a rushed "Someone Shoot Me Now" glance or a "Just think about the money" sneer?

This episode strives so hard to be cool and smart and does it through so many cliches it is staggering. Anyone can write better lines than some of those perpetrated in here, and I'm including those advertising hacks who write for local second hand car dealerships.

Our Bionic Lass discovers that her supposedly dead boyfriend had a dossier on her stretching back 2 years before they met. She finds it not by use of her Bionic Bits (tm) but by noticing a loose floorboard that she'd somehow managed to always miss before, even though it is an obvious health and safety hazard and would normally have one of those bright yellow plastic signs sitting next to it.

The Bionic Cockney (c) has to go into school as her little sister has been smoking the reefer but she manages to talk her out of trouble so she can still do the talent show that week.

I thank watching Moonlight last week that I didn't black out halfway through this subplot, it girded my brain for such zombifying mediocrity.

Jaime meets up with never before seen friends so they can congratulate themselves on being successful and thereby making our hero question whether she should be doing more with her life.

Jaime tries to figure out where she's going with her life by reading a self-help book in a bookstore and it just so happens bigot-of-the-month Isaiah Washington arrives and offers such philosophical gems as:

"Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," and "Maybe you just need to find out uh what Jaime Sommers has to offer the world, that's all."

Dr. Phil take notes as this fellow is out to save the world, one badly conceived character at a time. As he walked into shot I thought about how he got another job since his escapades in Grey's Anatomy and also if we weren't intentionally supposed to automatically assume we would be seeing him as part of the shadowy organisation very quickly. They couldn't have seriously thought this was a set up to a twist could they?

Jaime walks out of a coffee house and spots a woman about to jump off a roof next door and saves her. That may seem like a random event mainly due to it being ridiculous.

The main plot is introduced after an apparent biological weapon has been used in a small town, killing a number of people and Manly Woman (played by Molly Price who surprisingly wasn't in Spandau Ballet) thinks she should investigate as it may be a test run for something bigger.

The Bookstore Homophobe shockingly turns out to be working for Jaime's new company as she signs up to save the world and heads out with Manly Woman (a butch Eddie Izzard) to solve the mystery.

Thanks to the power of her bionic ear, Jaime hears a survivor noone found for some unexplained reason and who is immune to the toxin for another unexplained reason and is important for another unexplained reason. She does however explain that it was odd that a gas truck spent all morning driving around town in a circle. Elementary my dear Watson!

Then the evil mercenaries appear in the middle of their own biological hotzone for some other unexplained reason except that it is time for our pasty-faced heroine to bionically kick some arse!

She goes toe to toe with a Blackwater reject and basically gets smacked around and squeals until she lands a bionic right hand on his chin. And then he gets back up, which kind of undermines her status as a devastating powerhouse. Fortunately the fight is therefore prolongued so a stunt double can round house kick a tin of paint into the mercenary's head.

They then run away (without the diabolical special effect) and Bigot's Eye for the Queer Guy turns up all dressed in black with some friends (who wear balaclavas so they can deny working with Isiaiah Washington) and saves Manly Woman and Bionic Woman.

It turns out Manly Woman was right and this is just a test run (because you only really know if a lethal airborn toxin works for sure when it has been tried in a suburb) and the bad guys want to ship over 20 trucks to cities across the country that night.

Shipping them at the same time as the test run to make it more difficult to stop them would have just used up too many quarters on toll roads. Or something.

Miguel Ferrer turns up dressed in black and yawning like he is wearing pajamas with other ninja soldiers who then stop the bad guys with one flashbang and stern voices.

Jaime stands around pondering her new life while doing nothing (maybe her batteries were low) but is sure she has done the right thing and goes off to see her equally pale sister at the talent contest where warm smiles and a sudden realisation that I had lost an hour of my life occur.

Why on this increasingly polluted Earth would you get past the pilot episode and then spend most of the next episode adding more exposition? Did blurry running really cost that much to do in the pilot?

Plot twists are signposted with the cunning subtlety of a nuclear explosion, actors get to sound like they want their Mommy now when delivering utterly shocking dialogue and Michelle Ryan might be getting a hankering for jellied eels about now.

A scrotum-shrivellingly bad episode.

But worry not, Life is here and after getting the exposition-fest over in the pilot episode we get to see Damian Lewis acting up a storm and the best procedural police drama in years.

Or we get to see Damian Lewis hoping the writing gets as good as the pitch meeting and yet another bloody Scooby Doo mystery.

A bride is murdered on her wedding day, the groom is outside the hotel near the pool drinking tequila and mumbling incoherently covered in blood.

So I guess it'll be the deputy from Veronica Mars who walks in and out of shot in the first 10 minutes who murdered the bride for very little reason then.

50 minutes of supposed misdirection later and Old Man Guy From Veronica Mars pulls off his mask and states "I would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you pesky-ginger-Zen-Detective-types".

Life is an example of a good idea that falls apart when written by lazy hacks who stick to regurgitated scripts while praying to whatever God despises them that the audience is too stupid to notice.

Then I slept fitfully and had nightmares about Lost being this bad when it returns.

On the bright side Smallville is on tonight and Moonlight tomorrow.

I swear it is all a conspiracy to make Heroes seem watchable.

Superman: Doomsday

There is an odd relationship between DC's animated division and the comic book source material; time and again, the animated versions are frankly more interesting.

To me anyway.

In my mind when Batman speaks I still hear Kevin Conroy, Superman has never been more interesting than in Justice League Unlimited (outside of Christopher Reeve that is) and Michael Rosenbaum's best performance of a DC charcter certainly isn't as Lex Luthor, it is as The Flash.

On the other hand I'm much more likely to enjoy a Marvel comic, yet their animated efforts so far have had the style and grace of a severe genital rash.

So when DC announced a range of direct-to-DVD films based very closely on the source material I was intrigued, when it was anounced the esteemed Mr. Timm would be producing I was sold.

The first title to be released from the new crop of ventures is Superman:Doomsday.

The original source material has some good character moments but is mainly a slugfest followed by navel gazing followed by a ridiculously contrived build up to a silly return.

So as I sat down to watch the DVD I had mixed expectations.

I don't want to get too spoilery so I won't go into miniscule detail, though the main plot is pretty obvious if you've gone as far as reading the title. If you haven't read the comics and don't want to know anything at all then I'll just say that the film is a success and an example of how arse-kicking a fight with two super humans can be.

Superman is voiced by Adam Baldwin who does an admirable job as the big boy scout though there isn't much difference in tone when he plays Clark Kent, but as we don't really see much of Clark in this film it isn't a jarring problem.

This Superman is strong, confident and heroic but also smarter than he is often presented, bearing a resemblance to the brilliant Grant Morrison representation, Kal-El spends his off-time trying to cure cancer in between making small suns and chatting with his robot companion in the Fortress of Solitude.

He also spends time giving Lois Lane some super-lovin' as they have been intimate for a few months although astoundingly he has not divulged his "secret" identity, something Lois calls him on with much chagrin.

Perhaps the least natural voice in the film, Anne Heche plays Lois (who the film centers around) and her portrayal seems to be slightly influenced by Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance in Hudsucker Proxy, which can be distracting, but she earns forgiveness as she pulls off some key emotional moments, particularly on the porch of the Kent farmhouse.

As is obvious, I am a Whedonite and a complete fanboy when it comes to many of the cast members of Buffy, Angel and Firefly (see Adam Baldwin in Superman and Chuck for evidence) and so Lex Luthor being voiced by the formerly peroxide blonde James Marsters is a real treat.

Lex is fantastic in this film, he is the super-genius that Alan Moore envisioned (he comes up with a cure for muscular dystrophy while staring out of a window...then sends it off to be turned into a more profitable long term treatment) and he is also completely self-absorbed and ruthless. His obsession with Superman as presented here is not just a simple jealousy of power but almost a twisted, poisoned love of what the Kryptonian represents, and an intense need to destroy it.

Marsters knows how to switch from menacing to glib as well as anyone and the arrogance that is always Lex's weakness is intertwined with a powerfully dangerous Machiavellian nature effortlessly.

Although the film is mainly shot from Lois' perspective, a hefty proportion of its success depends on how menacing Doomsday is, which is a difficult proposition as he is in essence a bony-hided Hulk with less dialogue.

Fortunately, someone at Warner Brothers offered fellatio to the censors and got this film a PG-13 while allowing the violence to be eye-opening. In many cartoons, when a tank is blown up, the driver and gunner will jump out the moment before and run to safety. The jet that is shot down explodes while the pilot's parachute safely opens for all to see and no death occurs.

Superman: Doomsday is a different animal. Not only are there no parachutes but the jets crash into buildings and populated streets, Doomsday picks up one soldier who screams in terror, then we cut away as we hear a loud crack as the behemoth breaks another victim in half.

Doomsday not only threatens, he murders and he does it brutally.

When the titular characters face off it is explosive. Only a couple of fights in the JLU animated series have equalled such raw majesty and force as streets are levelled, windows shattered and buildings flattened by Superman and Doomsday's confrontation (a note to Bryan Singer, for the next Superman film please have Supes beat the piss out of somebody rather than get bludgeoned by street thug number 4, and let's have Superman do something that involves being awe-inspiring other than being the world's greatest fork-lift). The difference in this film is people die, the stakes are raised and when one of them falls it is a memorable moment, you can believe one has given his all to beat the other.

There are a lot of smart choices in the aftermath (including an iconic image involving the red cape that is effecting, but not lingered on) and having the marvellous Ray Wise (to be seen in Reaper reviewed here by Canyon) as Perry White full of bluster and concern for Lois as he reminds her "He ain't around to pull your ass out of the fire anymore" gives a true sense of a world in shock, scrambling to come to terms with a new age.

There is a nod to the relationship between Superman and Wild Wild West in a fun cameo

to interject some respite from the tragedy just as things get darker for the supporting cast.

I won't go into the rest of the plot as it deviates from the original comics' convoluted progression and though the final denouement is too convenient I found it was still satisfying.

Along with a slightly weak ending in comparison to the rest of the film the only decision made through the film that bothered me was the character design. Lex perhaps a little too thin making him seem alien in appearance.

Also I think there was concern that the style was too close to that of Superman: The Animated Series so cheekbones were added that frankly look silly at times and make some characters look ugly, particularly Superman.

Superman: Doomsday is an entertaining film that certainly gives hope for the other animated films being worked on, in the extras is a preview of the movie based on Darwyn Cooke's seminal The New Frontier, with a 50's Superman voiced by Kyle MacLachlan, Wonder Woman played by Lucy Lawless and in even further geekery, David Boreanaz as Hal Jordan.

In the animated films being released by the two big comics companies, DC's polish and use of their characters makes Marvel look positively anaemic.