Santo y Blue Demon contra los monstruos

Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos

Shane (of "Shane Movies" and restrictive scoreing systems fame) and I watched this at the IMA last Friday night. They had included it as part of a Mexican Film and Culture series. I mentioned that I would be review it on my oft neglicted movie blog and somehow ended up being the a guest writer on his, I guess. I think that's what happned. My mind was muddled by the fantastic wierdness and spectical that was "Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos".

Here on "Movies Born of Nerdery", I like to give credit to the source material that gave rise to celuoid supermen. In this case, we go south of the border and the world of lucha libre. El Santo, the man in the silver mask, was a combination sports hero/film star for almost 45 years.

El Santo, deep in thought.




Imagine if Hulk Hogan, at the peak of his popularity, began to star in movies as himself. In those movies, he would fight vampire women, martians, and zombies. Santo made over 50 of this type of movie. Yes, many are laughingly bad, but that is part of the appeal. In these films, Santo and frequent sidekick, Blue Demon, are well dressed crime fighters who drive fancy cars and deal in harsh justice.

Amongst the worst/best of these films, is the one we will review today, "Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos".

The Movie
I tried in vain to find a link to the opening credits, in which each member of the cast, including Dracula (who looked like the lead singer of Panic at the Disco), Franquestin, Wolf Man, a 97 year old guy in bandages as the mummy, a vampire gal, and your new cinema hero, Ciclope, akwardly walk into frame from behind a hill and are introduced via giant red script.


El Ciclope




This movie has everything, hunchback midget re-animators named Waldo, evil twins, Frankenstein's holding torches, and one guy, nameless throughout, that just stands there.

The guy.....



He did nothing. He just stood there in the lab and .... that's it. I kept holding out hope he was the unnamed weapon of last resort, or would turn on his master, but no. He just stood in the cave lab, away from the action, mostly just distracting me.

At one point, there is also a 15 min dance and song section. I think they filmed it for another movie that was never finished and just stuck it in there as filler. It made no sense for it to be as long as it was otherwise. Even the actors watching it looked bored.

Cinematicly, this movie is a nightmare. Scenes that don't end, they just cut away. There is no pacing or subtlety. Even the fight scenes, which star people famous for fighting, look like they were making it up while they filmed it. It was poorly acted, poorly written, poorly filmed, poorly edited, and the entire score was one guy playing conga dramaticly.


This is perhaps the greatest movie I have ever seen.

It all came together when Santo has to fight the entire monster squad in the ring, because........

You know what? It doesn't matter why he has to do it. He is El Santo, and you're not!


20/20

V For Vendetta

V for Vendetta

Remember, remember the fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I know of no reason the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

The Comic

Alan Moore's 'V for Vendetta' is best described as Batman meets "1984."

V is a terrorist, wearing the mask of famous British terrorist, Guy Fawkes.
It's easy to gloss over the terror at first. After all, the pseduo-Nazi regime ARE oppressing and torturing people they consider unfit or undesirable. In the opening chapters of the book, there is an enjoyable irony felt when the government calls V a terrorist. After all, V is the good guy.

But V is a terrorist. He blows up populated buildings, killing hundreds of civilians. He refuses to accept anyone else's point of view and he fanatically believes his view is the only way to see things. He murders cold-bloodily and deliberately tortures people to insanity and death. He manipulates people to be his unwitting accomplices, regardless of their feelings. He tortures and brainwashes Evey until she sees his point of view.

Don't forget, V is the good guy.

While Moore's "Watchmen" dealt with post cold war fear, "V" takes advantage of our desire for justice and the irony that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The ideas of the book are greater than the sum of it's parts. A swashbuckling ubermench getting revenge on his makers, the slow drawn out mystery of who our hero is, the slow realization the hero is not always heroic. Very similar to both "Watchman" and "From Hell" Moore tends to get distracted about 3/5ths of the way through his story. He starts telling stories within the story, which can feel like he was getting paid by the page and needed to stretch it out. I could have done without them.

Still, it's a good piece of comic lit from one the the very best at it.

Movie

When I heard 'those Matrix guys' were trying to tackle this as their first post-Matrix film, I had my doubts. "V", while being a little flashy, was a lot of exposition and deep thinking and I saw how well they handled that with "Matrix 3-What Were We Thinking." And further more, how were they going to do it in post 9/11 America?

What ended up on screen was an effectively watered down version. Gone were the overt drug and religious overtones. The villainous government heads were no longer shown as idealistic as V himself, but seaming evil for evils sake. The bullet time action seemed to be there in order to have slow motion daggers spinning in movie previews.

Hugo Weaving pulled off V's wordplay and gave a gentleness I had not read into him previously.

Natalie Portman was fun, enchanting and bald.

Stephen Rea seemed asleep, but I think he was going for dejected.

My ongoing love for John Hurt lives on as he worked his scene stealing Big Brother-y face on a screen.

Battle Royale - Book or Movie

Book : It's Alan Moore doing underground social commentary with well spoken terrorists.

Blade II

Blade II

First, the comic.

Blade is half-vampire. His mother was bitten while he was in utero. Being half-vampire he has superhuman strength, agility and healing, like a vampire. Being half-human, he can go out in the sun, eat garlic, look on crosses, enter without permission.... the point being that he has none of the weaknesses of vampires, except the thirst for blood.

In classic self loather style, he decides to kill all the vampires, because.....well, they are vampires.

So, he gets a mentor/weapon smith by the name of Whistler, who whips up a serum to help him fight the thirst. He gets to to be the urban Van Helsing, complete with a fade hair cut, swords, a bandoleer of stakes, and a trench coat.

The problem with Blade in the greater Marvel Universe is that unless it's vampires, there is no reason for him to be there. He's kind of limited. He tends to stick around other 'evil hunters', like Ghost Rider, Brother Voodoo, and Doctor Strange. He is a C list hero. Which is maybe why Marvel took a chance with him on film. What can they lose?

There has never been a definitive Blade story, so my rating for the comic is based on his accumulated history

10/20

The Movie

Oh, Guillermo del Toro. You did something cool here. Following the not bad/not great first movie, del Toro focused on the horror aspect of the vampires. These were not only the brooding, pale vampires of the original film, but animistic bloodsuckers more akin to crackheads than to lofty immortals.

The plot is almost cookie cutter in its sequel formula. Movie 1: Beat the big bad. Movie 2: Join forces with the previous big bad to fight the thing that wants to kill you both.

In this film, it's the Reavers. Mutated vampires that attack humans and vampires both.

Thanks to del Toro's history with practical effects, the monsters look wet and realistic.

Snipes doesn't have to have a lot of dialogue. He can keep his sunglasses on all the time and try to be bad ass.

Stealing the show is Ron Perlman as a member of the Bloodpack, a group of vampire special forces that had been training, until the threat of the Reavers, to track down Blade. You can guess how that worked out.

The sequel is a greater movie than the first. While it contains a shift in style, it is a shift for the better. Solid performances from Kris Kristopherson, Perlman and even big bad Luke Goss.

del Toro ended up using Perlman for the title role of Hellboy and even used Goss as the big bad in Hellboy II. (Both recommended)

14/20

Constantine

Constantine

The comic:

John Constantine was was the punk rock dark magician protagonist of the DC comic Hellblazer. John would wander through London's back alleys, cigarette dangling from his lips, in Chandler-esqe squabbles with the agents of both Heaven and Hell. His back alley deals were for spell components. He spit in God's face as much as he did Satan's. He was a drunk, arrogant, limey, son-of-a-bitch that you couldn't help but like. It was wonderful, weird, and just my flavor of sacrilegious.

He was created by Alan Moore, the British God on High of comic authors. Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and ... (Kent goes on for about ten more paragraphs, but we have spared the reader the pain of it all. Just get the point that he's really important) ... and his wonderful re-boot of Swamp Thing.

His creation went on to be written by many others, like Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and many others. But the character of Constantine, when written well, was a occult con man who suffered from self destruction and a hero complex.

The story the movie takes the most from is one written by Ennis called Dangerous Habits. Constantine is dying of lung cancer. It showed a desperate man who might not live to see his next con. He triple crosses the princes of Hell, selling his soul to all three, without the others being aware. Once he reveals this, they now have to keep him alive. Were he to die, they would have to wage war on each other for the rights to this one soul. Now, they have to fight their father, Satan, to keep him from killing Constantine. That's how you do a twist, if you are writing for grown nerds. 17/20

I loved this character and was prepared to hate the movie. They were not calling it Hellblazer, they were calling it Constantine. John is blond, and was originally based on Sting. They got Keanu. It was in L.A., not London. It had the LaBooof kid in it.

I did not go to see this in the theater, and for me not to see a comic movie on big screen is an exception. I ended up being wrong.

The Movie:

17/20

This was a well written movie. It was thrifty in it's exposition. To be able to take the uninitiated and bring them into the world of a hard drinking, chain smoking, on call demonologist and not lose them is a trick this movie pulls off. It does not try to overwhelm you with big movie magic, it goes for creepy instead. I believe it works in this aspect.

Keanu is passable as Constantine. He has the dejected look down and most certainly got lung cancer during this movie, as he smokes the entire movie, except when it counted. I will get to that in a moment.

Rachael Weisz is the love interest/desperate sister of a demonic suicide victim. I had no issue with her in this role. Plus, she's so cute when playing tough.

Open letter to LaBooof. Stammering is not acting, unless you are Michael Cera. You, sir, are not Michael Cera. Kinda glad you died in this movie. Glad they didn't use the alternate ending that had you with giant angel wings looking all dopey.

Stealing the show is Tilda Swinton. There is a scene with her character, Gabriel, talking to Constantine in a library. They have a religious argument about the difference between faith and belief. It's a wonderfully written piece. Kind of heady for a comic movie, but it works.

Overall, I did enjoy Constantine. While the movie took liberties with the source material, it also did so with the germ of the character intact. With one notable exception...

After getting around that cancer problem, at the end of the movie just when Constantine would usually smoke a cigarette, he instead stuck a piece of gum in his mouth. That was the biggest issue I had with the transition from page to screen. The Constantine I know would go back to smoking, flipping off the world. I imagine that the Powers That Be had something to do with that, but it still stuck in my craw. Luckily, my dental insurance covers craw impaction.

Battle Royale: Comic Vs Movie

Winner: Tie

The movie did a great job of reducing a lot of backstory and still being able to pull off the occult-noir theme the books do so well.

Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass

Before I go into Kick-Ass, we have to talk about Mark Millar. This Scot was seen by the comics community as a bit of a wunderkind. Since about '89, comic writing has been going through a bit of British Invasion. It started with Alan Moore (Watchman) and Neil Gaiman (Sandman). The last ten years have been ruled by Morrison (Animal Man), Ellis (Transmetropolitian), Ennis (Preacher) and lastly Millar. Millar became know for writing a 'wide screen style' of story. Beyond just bare knuckle brawling in back alleys, his stories were more like Michael Bay summer blockbusters. I loved his Ultimate X Men stories. Authority and The Ultimates were like action films from the 80's. Big, loud and unashamed of it's bad-assery. He began to get clever with some of his original titles. Wanted (which will appear here soon) was a double twist of the screw, with the villain actually winning the war against the supes, and going so far as to erase their existence. Chosen, which will be called American Jesus when it hits screens, had a last page reveal that I didn't see coming. (Plans call for Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn to helm this as well.)

Now to Kick-Ass the comic.

Using the 'tried and true' Wombat McClaine rating guide of a score of 1 to 20, I give the comic a 13/20.

Artist: John Romita Jr.

I am not a fan of the artist, JRJR. This was his most interesting work, but it still has a flatness that I cannot seem to overlook. Each face seems to be a different form of rhombus full of lines that I guess mean to show texture.

Writer: Mark Millar

I guess that all the bad-assery he had already shown us had made me expect more, or at least something different. We've seen superhero deconstruction pretty consistently used as a story line since Watchmen. Basing Kick-Ass in the 'real world' was a nice plot device, if you care at all about the characters. The sad part is how I had trouble caring about a nerdy little comic geek. I mean, that's me! How can you make him un-relateable when is supposed to be me?

Hit Girl saves the book, and the movie too. She is equal parts Sin City's Miho and Smurfette.

Had the book been about her and Big Daddy, I would have enjoyed it more.

Instead, I just got bored with the story. It felt like it was trying to be shocking. But since Millar had consistently shelled us with over-the-top plot devices, we were too numb to feel it.

Kick-Ass the movie

15/20

Millar's basic story benefits from editing. The dower tone of the comic is replaced by a dash of goofy (God don't let me say whimsy) teenage fun. The movie's Kick-Ass is more fun than the one on the page. He's still no hero, but easier to root for.

Chloe Moretz has been given a direct pass to Fan Boy Heaven for her part as Hit Girl. She stole the show. Expect to see lots of her at Halloween this year. Mostly boys cross dressing, but write it down, this will happen. They will also say "c*#t", so just be ready for it.

IMDB also told me she is the voice of Darby in "My Friends Tigger and Pooh." Bet she lost that gig after this.

Nic Cage... I am still making up my mind on his performance. He played the part doing an Adam West style of delivery. I...kind of liked it....I guess.

While I enjoyed Matthew Vaugh's Layer Cake, I did not care for Stardust. He also did the right thing by changing key parts of the comic to better fit the screen. Kick-Ass does get the girl, for example, instead of getting his ass kicked for being a faux-mosexual.

I have been waiting for a good superhero comedy for a while now. While Mystery Men holds a place near and dear to my heart, I wanted something less parody and more ..... ironic, I suppose.

Battle Royal: Comic Vs. Movie

The movie. Rarely does a movie improve on the source material, but this is one of those cases.