Culture Shock 07.26.12: Christopher Nolan's Batman ends

The credits have rolled on the final act of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and at least one thing seems clear: Nolan doesn't really get Batman.

Not to say Nolan's Batman films are bad. "Batman Begins" is a good movie, while "The Dark Knight" borders on being a great one — and it is without doubt a great Joker film, mostly thanks to Heath Ledger.

But neither is a particularly good Batman film.

That brings us to the grand finale, "The Dark Knight Rises," which is uneven, with slightly more faults than virtues, and a mess as a Batman movie, despite cribbing most of its plot straight from three Batman comic books: "Knightfall," "No Man's Land" and "The Dark Knight Returns." Two of those, "Knightfall" and "No Man's Land," weren't especially good to begin with, and none of them really goes with the others.

Throw in superfluous references to Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" — to "elevate the material," as they say, above a "mere" superhero story — and you have an overly ambitious closing chapter that takes forever to get going and, when it does, glosses over characters and events that could use more development. But the problems here are more fundamental than poor pacing and plot holes.

The problems start with Batman. Nolan sees him as a reluctant hero, looking to escape having to be Batman. We see signs of that in "The Dark Knight," with Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) looking to Harvey Dent to take over the war on Gotham's underworld. That fails, but Batman takes the blame for Dent's crimes in order to preserve his legacy.

"The Dark Knight Rises" opens eight years later. Organized crime in Gotham has been defeated by a tough-on-crime law called the Dent Act — talk about having to suspend your disbelief when it comes to superhero movies! — and Batman is in seclusion. But not only is Batman retired, so is Wayne. He has even lost track of the charities his foundation supports. And why? Mostly because he has spent eight years mourning the death of Maggie Gyllenhaal. (Or was it Katie Holmes?) It's as if Superman left Earth unprotected for five years and then finally returned only to become a deadbeat dad. Wait, I've seen that movie. It was terrible.

Nolan's Batman doesn't have the obsessive drive it would actually take to become Batman. You don't become Batman unless you're sure that's who you are in the first place. It isn't like getting bitten by a radioactive spider. So, by attempting to humanize Batman and make him more "realistic," Nolan has come up with an emotionally conflicted Batman who is less believable. That is not "elevating the material."

Nolan makes things worse by using Bane, one of Batman's least-inspired adversaries, as the main heavy. Poor Tom Hardy, try as he might, can't make Bane seem to be anything more than an absurdly pretentious masked wrestler. But at least Bane's most over-the-top line, "Your punishment must be more severe," will probably become an Internet meme.

Also wasted is Michael Caine as Bruce's loyal butler, Alfred. He gives the movie's best performance, but he gets far too little screen time.

The one saving grace of "The Dark Knight Rises" is Anne Hathaway, who dominates her every scene. She seems like the only actor having fun, and her Selina Kyle is the only character who has a believable, consistent agenda. It's no wonder there is talk about giving Selina — who is never actually called Catwoman — her own movie.

Unlike the French Revolution it re-enacts in the streets of Gotham, "The Dark Knight Rises" is neither the best nor worst of times. It's just a middling conclusion to a trilogy and a character that needed and deserved better.

Culture Shock 07.19.12: 'Safety Not Guaranteed' is worth the risk

There is a subset of romantic comedies in which one of the two lead characters approaches the other under false pretenses. Usually, the character is an undercover police detective or a journalist — a person pretending to be someone they're not.

This set-up leads to an inevitable confrontation. The betrayed character learns he or she has been lied to, and the cop/reporter/etc. character apologetically confesses all, maintaining that while everything else was false, their love is real. And it is, too.

You know this moment is coming, and if you're like me, you can spend an entire movie dreading it like a dog would dread a trip to the vet if dogs could read calendars. It's a ticking time bomb of movie clichés.

So, you must understand that it's high praise, coming from me, to say one of the best things about "Safety Not Guaranteed" is that when it gets to the scene where the reporter's cover is blown — that's not a spoiler; you know it's coming — the film handles it quickly, succinctly and moves on without too much fuss.

For those of you whose concerns aren't eccentric, know that "Safety Not Guaranteed," directed by Colin Trevorrow and written by Derek Connolly, is an utterly charming romantic comedy that will especially appeal to people who don't like typical romantic comedies.

The reporter — actually an intern — is Darius, played with her usual deadpan appeal by the geek goddess that is Aubrey Plaza ("Parks and Recreation").

When her boss at a hip, regional magazine decides to check out the story behind a bizarre classified ad, Darius is eager to tag along, as it's the first not-boring thing to come along.

The ad reads, in part: "WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. ... SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED."

That's enough to intrigue Darius, who has been isolated, aloof and generally alienated from her peers and their interests since her mother died years before.

So, Darius, nerdy fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) and smooth-talking reporter Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) take a road trip to find the person — probably a loon — who placed the ad.

Well, sort of. Jeff really just wants to use the trip as an excuse to hook up with an old girlfriend (Jenica Bergere) while making the interns do all the real work. As a journalist, I can tell you this is totally realistic.

That leaves Darius to approach the would-be time traveler and find out his story.

Kenneth (Mark Duplass) claims to have traveled back in time once before, and he is absolutely serious about his mission, which involves weapons training and an emergency plan to get a message to his future self if anything goes wrong in the past. Like Darius, he's alienated from the world around him, he just has an unorthodox way of dealing with it.

Duplass skillfully walks a fine line with Kenneth, making us root for him even as we wonder if he's entirely sane. And we also root for Jeff. In most romantic comedies, his character would be a one-dimensional jerk, but here he's a guy who is usually a jerk but also a real person. Again, as a journalist, I can confirm this is totally realistic.

That said, "Safety Not Guaranteed" is Plaza's movie to carry, and the cynical, world-weary, wise-beyond-her-years presence she bring to bear here signals that we're probably looking at the rise of a new indie-film queen.

That's not guaranteed, mind you. But then nothing worthwhile ever is.

Culture Shock 07.12.12: Sticking it to The Man in 'Moonrise Kingdom'

Clever children having to deal with not-so-clever adults is a movie trope that's far older than either Macaulay Culkin or the Goonies, and with good reason.

It's the ultimate empowerment fantasy played out against the first authority figures any of us encounter: grownups.

Director Wes Anderson's cinematic children are probably better equipped to take on The Man than most. They're ridiculously smart and preternaturally wise for their age, although not as wise as they think they are. But who is?

The Tenenbaum siblings of Anderson's 2001 film "The Royal Tenenbaums" are all child prodigies. Unfortunately, they grow up to be sad, dissatisfied and just plain messed-up adults, pretty much like most of Anderson's other adults.

If only we could all be like Peter Pan and fly away to Never Never Land and never grow up.

Perhaps that's just what Sam and Suzy, engagingly played by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, have in mind when they run away from home in Anderson's latest movie, "Moonrise Kingdom."

Set in a small New England island community in the mid-1960s, "Moonrise Kingdom" manages to be simultaneously nostalgic for a more innocent time that never was, yet clinically unsentimental about the whole nostalgia business. It's the cool, detached approach that has become Anderson's calling card, and which he perfects here, with the aid of co-screenwriter Roman Coppola, director of the criminally overlooked film "CQ." Amazingly, the result is also — dare I say? — heartwarming.

Both Sam and Suzy are classified as "problem children." They read too much and have ideas of their own. So when first love hits them, they run off, camping gear and borrowed record player in hand, on an adventure.

Not exactly hot on their trail are Sam's well-meaning but clueless scout master (an unusually likable Edward Norton), sad sack policeman Capt. Sharp (Bruce Willis) and Suzy's unhappily married parents, Walt and Laura (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand).

With their bad marriages and bad careers and lost loves, the adults are a pretty miserable bunch. It's telling that the only grownup character who has his act together throughout is Bob Balaban's omniscient narrator, who hints to us at the very beginning that he's read ahead in the script.

Basically, he cheated.

The screenplay is full of great lines, and Norton and Murray are both in scene-stealing form, but none of that would matter if Gilman and Hayward weren't up to the challenge. They carry the film and make it seem easy, which is likely a testament to Anderson's direction.

This is filmmaking with authority, which is ironic given that authority appears to be Anderson and Coppola's main target for ridicule. No authority figure is left unscathed, whether it's Capt. Sharp and his deflated ego or the pompous woman from Social Services — identified simply as "Social Services" and played with bureaucratic bluster by Tilda Swinton.

The only people who seem capable of carrying out a plan are our young protagonists and, later on, Sam's fellow scouts.

Minor spoiler: It's no accident that Norton's Scout Master Ward only has his moment of triumph after being relieved of command.

This is a more hopeful Wes Anderson than we've seen before. He leaves us charmed and cautiously optimistic. Maybe, unlike those Tenenbaum kids, Sam and Suzy will grow up to be OK.

Culture Shock 06.28.12: Time to give 'John Carter' a second chance

The intrigue and incompetence that led to Disney's "John Carter" becoming one of the biggest flops in movie history would probably make for an interesting movie. Perhaps a screwball comedy.

Even the poster used to promote the movie is dull.

It really takes a concerted effort to so mishandle a film that it joins the ranks of "Heaven's Gate," "Ishtar" and "Howard the Duck."

Especially when, unlike those films, "John Carter" is actually pretty good, and definitely worth reappraisal now that it's available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Everything from the title — not "John Carter of Mars" or, better still, "John Carter and a Princess of Mars," but just plain "John Carter" — to the lackluster, inept marketing campaign made "John Carter" out to be a dreary bore.

But "John Carter" isn't boring. It's just "old school." It's an old-fashioned, swashbuckling adventure yarn of the sort Disney used to know how to sell very well — 40 years ago. True, there's nothing here we haven't seen before. But the source material, Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel "A Princess of Mars," has been strip-mined by other storytellers for nearly 100 years. You can see its influence in everything from Superman and Flash Gordon to "Star Wars" and "Avatar."

Those imitators, however, can't rob Burroughs' tale of its intrinsic appeal.

It begins in the American Southwest, in the years following the Civil War, when disillusioned Confederate solder John Carter (Taylor Kitsch of "Friday Night Lights"), who has lost both his home and his family, accidentally activates a portal that transports him to Mars — or, as the locals call it, Barsoom. In the lower Martian gravity, this strange visitor from other planet is a virtual superman, able to leap modest-sized buildings in a single bound.

It's an ability that soon comes in handy, first when he's captured by the Tharks, a race of 15-foot-tall, four-armed warriors who live in the Martian wastes, and later when he finds himself a pawn in the never-ending war between two rival city-states: the enlightened city of Helium, ruled by Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds of "The Woman in Black"), and the despotic Zodanga, led by Sab Than (Dominic West).

All Carter wants is to return home, and the last thing on his agenda is getting caught up in another planet's civil war. But he runs into a complication when he rescues Tardos Mors' daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), who may know how to return him to Earth but would much rather him stay to fight for Helium.

And they may all be pawns in the game being played behind the scenes by the mysterious figure portrayed by Mark Strong ("Sherlock Holmes").

Kitsch proves to be a real surprise. He's not the first actor who comes to mind when I think of John Carter, but he brings more charisma to the role than I'd expected. It helps, too, that he has a solid supporting cast, especially Willem Dafoe, via motion capture and CGI, as the Thark leader Tars Tarkas.

Director Andrew Stanton ("Toy Story") keeps things straightforward, and the screenplay by Stanton, Mark Andrews and novelist Michael Chabon retains the spirit of Burroughs while making some necessary updates, such as casting Dejah Thoris as less of a damsel in distress. (This Dejah can hold her own with a sword and a slide rule.) With the exception of an unavoidable infodump in the second act to bring our heroes up to speed, things move at a lively pace.

But the real stars here are Nathan Crowley ("The Dark Knight") and Michael Giacchino ("The Incredibles").

Crowley's gorgeous production design brings the bustling city of Helium to life, while Giacchino's lush, romantic score, sweeps us away to the adventure.

Forget that "John Carter" is officially a flop. It's time to get your mass to Mars.

Culture Shock 06.21.12: Bring me the head of George W. Bush; feigned outrage strikes again

When historians look back on the first two decades of the 21st century, they may well conclude that the defining characteristic of our age is feigned outrage.

This is not how you get ahead in politics.

It began in 2004, when TV viewers were terrorized by 0.5 seconds of Janet Jackson's exposed nipple during the last Super Bowl halftime show anyone remembers. But it came to a head last week with George W. Bush's head, or, rather, a facsimile of it, covered in a shaggy wig and stuck to a pike in the final episodes of season 1 of HBO's "Game of Thrones."

These are the things we're supposed to get upset about.

We're told — by people who know nothing of American history — that Americans are polarized as never before. Actually, quite the opposite.

We agree as never before. The consensus is shifting on some issues, from marijuana legalization to gay marriage — both of which slim majorities of Americans now favor — but most people don't really disagree about a lot.

Unfortunately, this makes life hard for politicians, pundits, professional activists and others whose livelihoods depend on people being at each other's throats. So, partisans of Team Red and Team Blue go around looking for things they can pretend to be angry about, and then try to make you and me angry about them, too.

These are, usually, not serious issues. How can they be? Team Red and Team Blue agree on so much. A president of one party gets a national mandatory health insurance plan enacted, and the other party, which says it is against mandatory health insurance, nominates a challenger who enacted the same insurance plan in his own state. From the size and scope of government to issues of war and peace, there are no serious disagreements among our leaders or the opinion makers who orbit them.

So, bring me the head of George W. Bush.

The head, not meant to be President Bush's head but just the head of some unlucky bloke who got his noggin lopped off, as happens to so many "Game of Thrones" characters, appears in an episode that first aired more than a year ago. No one noticed. The producers commented about the head when season 1 was released on DVD, saying they needed a head to put on a spike and the head of the former president happened to be what they had lying around. No political message was intended, they said. Again, no one noticed.

Until last week, when, suddenly, feigned outrage struck again, with Team Red scribblers like the New York Post's Andrea Peyser saying this was yet another example of the liberal Hollywood elite slamming wholesome American values. Never mind that getting beheaded by the repugnant, inbred King Joffrey is, if anything, an honor that puts you in pretty good moral standing.

Did William Shatner get upset when the makers of the "Halloween" movies put a bleached-out Shatner mask on their lumbering serial killer Michael Myers? I think not.

But HBO folded. It pulled the offending episode from iTunes and its HBO Go service, and it stopped shipping new DVDs.

All this because of trumped-up outrage over an "offense" it took the offended a year to notice. Don't think I'm picking on Team Red. Team Blue over to our left is no better.

Remember when getting really upset about something Rush Limbaugh said was a thing? Yet most of the people claiming to be upset were probably delighted, because it turned Limbaugh's otherwise unremarkable target, Sandra Fluke, into a martyr and gave Team Blue an excuse to engage in one of its favorite sports — beating up Limbaugh for saying something stupid.

Maybe someday we'll go back to being outraged about things that matter. But not today.

Culture Shock 06.14.12: Not much spark from this 'Prometheus'

Thirty-three years after he showed us that in space no one can hear you scream, director Ridley Scott returns to the movie franchise he unsuspectingly launched with 1979's horror/sci-fi masterpiece "Alien."

But with this very loose prequel, you'll scream more out of frustration than fright.

"Prometheus" is exasperatingly thick-headed sci-fi masquerading as smart science fiction.

As with a 1980s slasher movie, it's the kind of film where the plot moves forward only because the characters are idiots. While that's excusable when you're dealing with frisky teenagers and camp counselors, it's unforgivable when you're dealing with the hand-picked crew of a scientific research ship bound for a distant moon, light years away from Earth and any hope of rescue.

These people are presumably professionals and actually follow safety protocols.

Well, if you really think that, you're wrong.

"Prometheus" opens with an alien seemingly sacrificing himself in order to seed a planet — maybe Earth — with his DNA. It's the first of many symbolic moments involving life, death, sacrifice and life from death.

These are eternal themes, but they deserve more coherent treatment than what they get from "Prometheus" screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, the man who executive produced "Lost" to a unsatisfying end.

Flash forward to an archaeological expedition on Earth, decades in our future. Two scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) uncover a 30,000-year-old cave drawing of a giant alien seemingly giving us directions to a point in the heavens.

Flash forward a few more years, and the ship Prometheus has arrived in orbit around the alien moon.

Awakened from two years in suspended animation, Elizabeth informs the crew of biologists and geologists and other experts they're there to find the aliens she believes created life on Earth. And when one crew member expresses some skepticism about this wild claim, Elizabeth admits she has no evidence, but "it's what I choose to believe."

Shaw is a religious zealot, and so is Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in the least-convincing old-man makeup ever), the dying gazillionaire whose corporation bankrolled the expedition. And so, too, are the aliens. At least that's one interpretation.

Unfortunately, it isn't just that "Prometheus" is ambiguous, which can be a virtue, but that it doesn't seem to know where it's going with any of its ideas. And when it comes down to the basic stuff, it fails miserably.

It isn't just a matter of characters doing stupid things. As boneheaded as the characters are, the science of "Prometheus" is worse. We're told the aliens and humans have identical DNA. Not similar, but identical, and this is a major plot point. But if true, this would mean the aliens are just ordinary humans, and clearly they are not.

The treatment of genetics and evolutionary biology in "Prometheus" contradicts all known science. It's creationism with extraterrestrials.

Yet the biggest problem with "Prometheus" is the way it wastes everything good about it. A scene involving an emergency surgery is as harrowing as anything in "Alien," the production design is gorgeous and Michael Fassbender delivers a brilliant, eerie performance as the android David, who emerges as the only likable character even when he's up to something suspicious.

The good points, including Scott's direction, are overwhelmed by the flawed screenplay.

Yes, "Prometheus" makes you think. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Culture Shock 06.07.12: Movies more scared of sex than you think

Movies and television take a lot of heat for promoting supposedly immoral, promiscuous and irresponsible sexual behavior.

But when it comes to movies that actually make sex their main focus, you may be left wondering why anyone has sex in the first place. Sex in these movies is awful, joyless and nothing good ever comes of it.

On second thought, that does sound like a pretty irresponsible depiction of sex, just not the one we've been led to expect.

Two recent films are Exhibits A and B. The first is "Shame," newly released on Blu-ray and DVD.

Directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender, "Shame" follows Brandon, a 30-something business executive in New York, as he goes blankly from one sexual encounter to the next, until the arrival of his emotionally unstable sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) upsets his routine.

We're never clued in to what it is, but the two clearly are carrying around a lot of old family baggage. Sissy is needy, and Brandon resents her for it. Meanwhile, he's trying and failing to meet his own needs through meaningless sex — a strategy designed to fail because meaningless sex is, by definition, meaningless.

Brandon is the poster boy for sex addiction. He has lots of sex but never enjoys it, and he keeps right on going.

Yet, despite depressing movies like "Shame" and a few high-profile celebrity cases of suspect credibility, one fact remains: There is no such thing as sex addiction.

I know. This is not what the doctors on TV tell you, but stay with me.

Sex addiction is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, and there is no scientific evidence that it exists. So says David J. Ley, clinical psychologist and author of a book pointedly titled "The Myth of Sex Addiction."

Most people have sex because they like it. But while that might make for good late-night viewing on Cinemax, it doesn't carry the day with art-house filmgoers.

That brings me to Exhibit B, Steven Soderbergh's 2009 film "The Girlfriend Experience" (Blu-ray, DVD and Netflix instant) starring former adult-film actress Sasha Grey.

Grey plays a high-class call girl whose clients are mostly Wall Street 1-percenters during the darkest days of the Great Recession. A woman who sells sex and men who sell mortgage-backed securities — it's a juxtaposition perfect for Soderbergh's ideological ax-grinding.

She makes decisions based on astrology-like personality guidebooks, and they make trades based on voodoo economics. Or something like that.

Grey's character, Chelsea, is destined for disappointment because she is commodifying sex, but that's not the worst of it. What she offers her clients isn't just sex, but companionship — a "girlfriend experience."

It's that she does this for money that makes it doomed in Soderbergh's eye. It makes her like the buyers and sellers who ruined the economy then took off on a trip to Las Vegas to gamble literally, not just metaphorically.

Yes, when a well-heeled Hollywood director wants to criticize sex, of course he compares it to the business world.

Here even Cinemax shlock is judgmental. When the lonely housewife played by Shannon Tweed decides to become a call girl, you just know someone is going to get murdered.

If you pay for sex, you'll have to pay.

Culture Shock 05.24.12: 'Wicker Man' followup is more of a straw man

The original 1973 version of "The Wicker Man" is a horror classic. The 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage is an unintentionally hilarious diversion.

This scene is better without context.

Unfortunately, "The Wicker Tree" — director/writer Robin Hardy's completely unnecessary followup to the 1973 film, which he directed from Anthony Shaffer's screenplay — is neither.

It's neither good nor bad enough to be entertaining, and you find yourself wishing the inevitable and unsurprising conclusion would just hurry up and arrive already.

Not quite a sequel and not quite a remake either, "The Wicker Tree" tells basically the same story as "The Wicker Man," only with a much less interesting and far more grating cast of characters.

Speaking of whom, meet Beth and Steve (Brittania Nicol and Henry Garrett). They're a young couple from Texas on a mission trip to bring Jesus and their contemporary Christian musical stylings to the poor lost souls of Scotland. Never mind that, last I heard, Scotland was a mostly Christian land. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, Beth and Steve have the good fortune to find one village where the locals all still worship the "old gods."

And by "good fortune" I mean horribly bad fortune.

Yet the locals seem strangely welcoming of the two Texans, even if they aren't the least bit receptive to their message, happy as these Scots are to remain in their blissful paganism.

Clearly, something sinister is afoot, what with village leader Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish) practically twisting his mustache at every turn. But our two young heroes, with their purity rings and pledges of chastity until marriage, are oblivious to it all.

They're dumber than a bag of rocks, and every time Steve grins, you just want to punch him in the face. (And, yes, he wears a cowboy hat everywhere. Even in church.) If you're looking for an unflattering caricature of Texans, Christians or kids who go to contemporary Christian concerts, this is it. Perhaps a better title for the film would have been "The Straw Man."

The pagans don't come out of this any better, especially Sir Lachlan, who turns out to be a cynical manipulator, exploiting his people's beliefs for his own benefit. It's the same one-dimensional religious baddie we've seen in a dozen other films, only this time he's a pagan.

If the message here is that all religion is bad, it would have been far more honest and effective at least to have characters who resemble human beings with genuine human beliefs. In the original "The Wicker Man," you can sympathize with Edward Woodward's upright but woefully naive Sgt. Howie. Beth and Steve, however, invite only ridicule.

And, let's face it, McTavish, in a role originally intended for Sir Christopher Lee (the original film's magnificent Lord Summerisle), is no Christopher Lee. (Who is?) Alas, Sir Christopher is here relegated to a brief and pointless flashback, which serves only to remind us that "The Wicker Tree" might possibly be watchable if Lee were in more of it.

Unfortunately, Lee, who turns 90 on Sunday, injured himself on the set of another movie and had to back out of the starring role.

But really, I'd settle for a deranged Nic Cage, running around in a bear costume, punching women in the face and screaming about bees.

It wouldn't be a good movie, but at least it wouldn't be boring.

Unlike the 2006 edition of "The Wicker Man," "The Wicker Tree" is sadly lacking in YouTube-friendly moments of absurdity. It just plods along, going exactly where the other two films went before, but taking a far less scenic route to get there.

Culture Shock 05.10.12: 'The Avengers' is assembled with care

Fair or not, the comparisons to Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" are inevitable, especially with his forthcoming sequel "The Dark Knight Rises" waiting in the (bat) wings.

But while Nolan tried to pry Batman free from the genre conventions of superheroics by placing him in a more-or-less realistic setting — not always successfully — Joss Whedon has turned "The Avengers" into the ultimate superhero film, one that embraces its conventions with unapologetic glee.

While "The Dark Knight" is a great film, and obviously a showcase for the late Heath Ledger, it's not necessarily a great Batman film. But "The Avengers" is a great superhero film — one that reminds us why the superhero genre has been so resilient.

Whedon's accomplishment is even more impressive given the logistics involved, taking the pieces of a superhero universe established across five previous films — "Iron Man," "The Incredible Hulk," "Iron Man 2," "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" — and forging a seamless whole.

The result is much like the Marvel comics on which "The Avengers" is based. It's a fully realized superhero world, where it makes perfect sense for a demigod out of Norse mythology to interact with a man in an American flag costume and an egotistical billionaire with an invincible suit of armor.

The story begins with Thor's power-hungry brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who has been cast out of Asgard, forming an alliance with a mysterious alien race to take over the Earth. But to do so, he needs an Asgardian relic called the Tesseract, which can open a portal through which the alien army can invade. The Tesseract, however, was lost centuries earlier, eventually falling into the hands of the Red Skull during World War II before being lost again and recovered by Howard Stark, the father of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). Now it belongs to the global security/spy agency SHIELD, led by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), which has its own plans for it.

But before SHIELD's plans are complete, Loki steals the Tesseract, forcing Fury to call on an unlikely group of heroes to save the day, if they ever stop fighting amongst themselves.

Apart from Iron Man, there's Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), alter ego of the Hulk; Steve Rogers, aka Captain America (Chris Evans); the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner); and Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

It's a lot for Whedon to juggle, but almost everyone gets a chance to shine. (Sorry, Hawkeye. Better luck in the sequel.) As usual, Downey's Stark owns every scene he's in, and Ruffalo brings both a warmth and a simmering intensity to Banner. But the real surprise here is Johansson, who gets the meatiest part and makes the most of it, from her hilarious first scene to her emotional showdowns with Loki and the Hulk. Whedon, creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," is known for his strong, butt-kicking heroines, and he delivers again here, while also peppering the script with the snappy dialogue that's become his other calling card.

"The Avengers" also features yet another indispensable supporting performance from Clark Gregg as SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson, who has been a fan favorite since he first appeared in "Iron Man." For this outing, Whedon casts him in the part of the Everyman, who is more than a little starstruck when confronted with his childhood hero, Captain America.

It's Coulson who sums up why movies like "The Avengers," with their old-fashioned battles between good and evil, are still important. When Steve Rogers wonders if his star-spangled Captain America costume isn't too old fashioned, it's Coulson who says the world sometimes needs a little old fashioned.

Maybe now is one of those times.

Culture Shock 05.03.12: Don't open your door to this 'Raven'

This is an idea that should work. Take a real-life writer known for his explorations of murder and the macabre, and embroil him in a murder mystery of his own.

But "The Raven" seems as lost as any maiden whom the angels named Lenore.

John Cusack stars as a man who answers to the name Edgar Allan Poe. While this Poe has the same name as the famous poet and claims to have written that Poe's works, he doesn't really seem a lot like the historical Poe he's meant to be — even allowing that this is an alternate history in which Poe pursues a serial killer.

Perhaps it's because this Poe is also in love, seemingly having put the memory of his dead wife Virginia — inspiration for many of his works — behind him.

Well, it wouldn't be a Hollywood movie without a love story shoehorned into it, would it?

Poe did court other women after his wife's death, but they're omitted here. In this case, the object of Poe's affection is Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve), whose father (Brendan Gleeson), quite naturally has no desire for his daughter to marry a disreputable, drunken and impoverished poet like Poe.

As plot points go, this seems far too familiar.

But why dwell on that when we have a murderer on the loose? And the particulars of his murders seem familiar, too. Intentionally so, leading Detective Fields (Luke Evans) of the Baltimore police to suspect they are all based on Poe's stories.

So, how do you catch a killer whose methods mimic the stories of the city's most notorious writer? You enlist that writer's help, of course.

So, Fields and Poe are on the case, collecting clues even as the morgue collects corpses.

Director James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta") is still trying to shake all of the bad habits he picked up while working for the Wachowskis — including the unwelcome, if brief return of "bullet time" — while the screenplay never delivers the twists and turns needed for a good mystery.

The one unsatisfying twist we do get tries to put a new spin on the historical Poe's final days, which remain the subject of speculation.

So, it falls to the movie's star to carry us through, but Cusack, while likable, has little to work with. His Poe occasionally hints at the moodiness of the genuine article, but just when that seems to be going somewhere, he has to be happy again because he's in love. His mood swings are dictated by what the plot needs at the time. The only time Cusack really seems to be Poe is when he is launching an attack on one of his literary rivals — something the real Poe excelled at.

It's almost a given that movies that take shots at critics are made by people who don't expect to get favorable reviews. Now, I don't take it personally, but "The Raven" isn't especially kind to critics. One of them even ends up beneath Poe's infamous pendulum, and fittingly he's named Griswold, after a real-life Poe rival who did his best to tarnish Poe's reputation after his death.

It's one of the few, fleeting clever bits that only Poe enthusiasts will recognize and appreciate, although I find myself wishing Griswold had been the killer — a Salieri to Poe's Mozart — because there are no feuds quite like literary feuds.

Another clever moment hints at the posthumous rehabilitation of Poe's literary reputation among French critics before American critics finally started to take him seriously.

And what would Poe, no slouch as a critic himself, have made of what's been made of him in "The Raven"?

The real Edgar Allan Poe's life was filled with enough tragedy, drama, heartbreak and rivalries to make a pretty compelling movie. I wish someone had made that movie instead of this one.

Culture Shock 04.20.12: It is a cabin, and it's in the woods

When it comes to "The Cabin in the Woods," there are two kinds of reviewers. There are reviewers who give away the entire plot, and there are reviewers so afraid of ruining the experience they say almost nothing about it.

I will say this about "The Cabin in the Woods." It involves a cabin that happens to be in the woods.

I'll also say this: Even before the movie's title flashes on-screen, it's clear "The Cabin in the Woods" is not your typical horror movie.

It gives off a certain vibe. It's a little different.

The result is the most entertaining horror movie since San Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell," which in tone and pacing, "The Cabin in the Woods" resembles, if you also crossed it with the first "Scream."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say "Cabin" is a fast-paced, funny, quirky horror movie that knowingly plays with the genre's well-worn conventions. If you at all like horror movies, you should see it. If you live and breathe horror movies, this one was made for you.

And if you don't like horror movies, you should reevaluate your life choices. Then you should see it.

But, fair warning, unless you've seen a couple of "Friday the 13th" or "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, you'll probably leave the theater wondering what on Earth you just experienced.

That is a risk you should take.

Now that I've heaped as much advertising-friendly praise on "Cabin" as I can spare, I can't promise I won't mention the plot.

The men responsible for "Cabin" are producer/co-writer Joss Whedon ("Firefly") and director/co-writer Drew Goddard ("Lost"), who bring to the proceedings the same genre-subverting approach they honed on Whedon's TV shows "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel."

Take our cast of characters, for instance. We have the obligatory "good girl" (Kristen Connolly), a jock ("Thor" star Chris Hemsworth), his girlfriend (Anna Hutchison), a brainy guy (Jesse Williams) and a stoner (Fran Kranz). So far, so good. These are the same college-age stereotypes who have run screaming from machete-wielding maniacs since 1978.

But the good girl isn't all good, the jock is a bit of a brain, the brain is a jock, the girlfriend isn't a total tramp and the stoner is a bit too wise to play the fool. Why, they're almost like real people.

Not to worry. These are minor details, easily corrected so as not to interfere with your viewing enjoyment. By the time our potential corpses meet the creepy old man at the gas station, all is going according to plan.

Or is it?

As I said, it's not your typical horror movie. I mean, I can't even really tell you about the two best characters, Sitterson and Hadley, played by Richard Jenkins ("Six Feet Under") and Bradley Whitford ("The West Wing"). To do so would mean giving away more than I, in good conscience, feel comfortable giving away.

I will say Sitterson and Hadley get all the best lines, and apart from plot twists that seem to come from out of nowhere, the one thing you should expect from a Joss Whedon production is stiff competition for "best lines."

If there is a potential for a weak link here, it's first-time director Goddard, but he maneuvers through the twists and turns like an old hand. And maybe that's because, in a sense, "The Cabin in the Woods" is a movie horror fans have all seen before.

Except that it isn't.

Culture Shock: 04.12.12: '80s cartoons strike back — again!

Netflix has a section of children's programming it brands "Just for Kids," but pretty soon, I bet, a lot of 30-somethings will be clicking entry to relive part of their bygone youth.

Come to Cobra. We have cookies.

Last week, the video-streaming and DVD-rental service announced a deal with Hasbro to bring new and vintage cartoons based on Hasbro's toy franchises to Netflix's library of "watch instantly" offerings.

At the heart of the deal are Hasbro's latest cartoons, some of which are already available on Netflix instant: "Transformers Prime," "G.I. Joe: Renegades" and new versions of "Pound Puppies" and "My Little Pony." New seasons will appear on Netflix after they air on Hasbro's cable channel, The Hub.

I bet all of those college-age fans of "My Little Pony" — known as "Bronies," or so I've heard — are planning celebratory keggers even now. (Who am I to judge? When I was in college, I watched Nickelodeon's Canadian-import soap opera "Fifteen" every week — despite the shame that comes with watching any Canadian TV show that isn't "Kids in the Hall.")

But for those of us who watched weekday-afternoon cartoons during the 1980s, the big news was that the Netflix/Hasbro pact also included the original "Transformers" (before Michael Bay got his grubby hands on it), "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" (before Stephen Sommers did the same) and "Jem and the Holograms" (which no one has yet turned into a terrible live-action movie).

All three '80s classics will join Netflix's lineup later this year.

These shows are the forbidden fruit of children's programming. All were very popular in their day and built followings that even now still support comic books, T-shirts, DVD collections and retro-'80s-style toys. And all were derided when they originally aired as "half-hour toy commercials" because they were all based on Hasbro's popular toy brands.

Those of us who actually rushed home after school each day to watch "Transformers" or "Jem" didn't care one way or the other about commercialism. We just wanted to watch what were, at the time, the best cartoons around. (This was before "Batman: The Animated Series" upped the ante for action/adventure cartoons.)

Unfortunately, an unholy coalition of professional worriers, seeking to shield children from the twin bogeymen of commercialism and fantasy violence, agitated until Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990, which put restrictions on advertising during children's programming and mandated that broadcasters air more "educational" shows. The bottom line is the Children's Television Act made cartoons like "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe" less economically competitive in the brutally competitive world of TV syndication.

And that's partly why afternoon television is now wall-to-wall TV psychologists, TV doctors and TV judges — who just happen to be exactly the sort of professional scolds who demanded the federal government take action against cartoon commercialism in the first place.

If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that was the plan all along.

But revenge, as the Klingons say, is a dish best served cold. Today, Hasbro has its own cable channel, which is exempt from the rules that plague over-the-air broadcasters. So, Hasbro can produce new "My Little Pony" cartoons and sell My Little Pony ponies to the Bronies, and there's not much the killjoys at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood can do except mutter to themselves as they hand wash their Chairman Mao T-shirts — brand loyalty for commies.

And for those of us who refuse to pay another $50 a month to upgrade to the channel tier that includes The Hub, there's now Netflix, where the childhood Congress stole from us lives again.

Yo, Joe.

Culture Shock 04.05.12: Roger Corman is modern Hollywood's unlikely father

Jack Nicholson hiding behind his hands as he struggles to stay composed is the most emotionally honest sight I've seen in a movie this year.

That moment of truth comes in Alex Stapleton's heartfelt new documentary "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel."

For the first decade of Nicholson's career, producer/director Roger Corman was the future star's one source of steady work, both as an actor and as a screenwriter. And despite taking a few good-natured jabs at the films they made together — Nicholson says Corman occasionally made a good movie "by mistake," but he wasn't in any of them — Jack clearly has a lot of love and respect for his old mentor.

The rest of Hollywood has rarely felt the same, forcing the soft-spoken Corman to become its most unlikely rebel, forging a successful career that is even more notable for the other careers it launched.

Stapleton's film doesn't make the — admittedly grandiose — comparison, but Corman comes across as a Moses-like figure: He led others to the Promised Land but couldn't enter himself.

"Corman's World" is that story.

When he didn't get the credit he thought was his due for helping bring 20th Century Fox's "The Gunfighter" to the screen — he was an uncredited story editor on the picture, which was a hit for Fox — Corman decided he would produce and direct his own movies. He developed a method that included shooting fast, shooting cheap and avoiding hassles like getting the proper permits.

From outward appearances, Corman is the least likely guerrilla filmmaker ever, yet he became the most successful.

He produced films on his own and, when he needed larger budgets, with American International Pictures, which released Corman's best works.

Corman has never been a darling of critics. Some of his earliest films even he will admit aren't very good. But the Edgar Allan Poe movies he made with Vincent Price stand with the best horror movies of their day, and Martin Scorsese, who got his start directing "Boxcar Bertha" for Corman, holds up the 1967 LSD film "The Trip," starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper, has a worthy effort.

Corman's reputation today is largely the product of the directors, screenwriters and actors who learned their craft on Corman's sets.

Many in the generation that reinvented the movies in the late '60s and early '70s — Scorsese, Fonda, Hopper, Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola — got their start with Corman.

But Corman himself could never make the leap to mainstream respectability.

His one stab at it was 1962's "The Intruder" — William Shatner's first lead film role. Unfortunately, this blunt look at race relations in the South was too controversial. "The Intruder" became Corman's one flop.

He'd never make that mistake again.

Despite once saying he was "almost" a communist, Corman succeeded as the ultimate movie-making capitalist. His audience — his customers — were always right.

The judgment of the market is the only authority Corman really respects. All other authorities are oppressors to be challenged or at least circumvented.

Today, despite finally receiving an honorary Oscar, Corman still works on the fringes, producing a somewhat lower class of B movies to sell to what used to be called the Sci-Fi Channel.

Meanwhile, the movies that fill the multiplexes are the kind of movies Corman used to make — only with bigger budgets.

It's Corman's world after all.

Culture Shock 03.29.12: Returning to a deliriously bad 'Frankenstein Island' movie

The "Frankenstein Island" wrap party didn't go as planned.

It's surprising that a movie set on a scenic island populated almost entirely by attractive young women wearing only leopard-print bikinis could be this bad. It has so much going for it.

But in this case, the movie is "Frankenstein Island," which while made in 1981, would have seemed cheap, tacky and hopelessly outdated in 1951.

Just imagine how it seems 30 years later.

Actually, you don't have to imagine. "Frankenstein Island" is back, this time as the latest video-on-demand offering from Rifftrax, the post-"Mystery Science Theater 3000" movie-riffing project of MST3K alums Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, who were the show's movie-mocking leads during its Sci-Fi Channel years.

Originally conceived to riff on recent Hollywood films, Rifftrax has devoted a bit more attention in the past year to vintage B-movies that would have been perfect targets for MST3K. Recent Rifftrax titles include 1978's "Buffalo Rider" (think "Grizzly Adams" without a plot) and "Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe" (1990), starring former pro wrestler and future conspiracy theorist Jesse "The Body" Ventura as a bounty hunter from outer space.

The most unintentionally hilarious of the bunch is "Frankenstein Island," but that just means Mike, Kevin and Bill have even more material to work with.

The writer/director responsible for "Frankenstein Island" is Jerry Warren, whose 1966 movie "The Wild World of Batwoman" is one of the strangest films ever to get the MST3K treatment. In fact, "Frankenstein Island" is full of past MST3K offenders.

Katherine Victor ("The Wild World of Batwoman") plays Sheila Frankenstein, who is carrying on her grandfather's work, whatever that was, because in this movie it's something way less straightforward than reanimating corpses. She's joined by veteran character actor Cameron Mitchell ("Space Mutiny"), who seems to have been paid for one day of work and spent all of it in a cage.

Also on hand is Steve Brodie, who appeared in "The Wild World of Batwoman" and "The Giant Spider Invasion."

Tain Bodkin, who had a small part as an apocalyptic preacher in "The Giant Spider Invasion," shows up, too. In his first scene, he does an impression of a fire-and-brimstone preacher for no apparent reason other than to remind us of his earlier role.

What viewers in 1981 made of that is a mystery.

Finally there's horror icon John Carradine, who at this point in his career was crippled with arthritis and taking small roles in terrible movies. He portrays the disembodied spirit of Dr. Frankenstein, a part that probably took half a day to shoot and didn't require him to be on set with the other actors.

The plot goes something like this.

A hot-air balloon crashes on a remote island, stranding four men and their dog. But they're not alone. There's a tribe of women in leopard-print bikinis who spend all of their free time dancing and carrying logs. The rest of their time they spend trying to avoid capture by a few slovenly thugs who kidnap them for Sheila Frankenstein's experiments, which have something to do with reviving her 200-year-old husband Dr. Van Helsing. (Try not to think about that.)

Or maybe Sheila is trying to turn people into werewolves. I'm really not sure.

Anyway, the props literally look like dollar-store Halloween accessories, which they literally are, and Carradine seems confused whenever he appears, which is exactly how this movie left me.

It's a deliriously bad film, and Mike and the guys are in top form making fun of it.

You can download "Frankenstein Island" for $9.99 at Rifftrax.com.

Culture Shock 03.22.12: Before 'Hunger Games,' there was 'Battle Royale'

Stop me if you've heard this before.

An authoritarian government takes children from their homes, drops them in an isolated setting and forces them to fight to the death until only one survives.

That's the plot of "The Hunger Games" — based on Suzanne Collins' best-selling young-adult novel of the same name — which opens Friday in theaters nationwide.

It's also the plot of "Battle Royale," a controversial film that became a blockbuster in Japan more than a decade ago but is only now reaching our shores — officially, anyway.

Until now, Americans — even Netflix — had to rely on imported DVDs from Asia and the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, "Battle Royale" has a small, but loyal, following in the U.S., despite not getting an official release here until this week, when Anchor Bay Entertainment issued "Battle Royale" on Blu-ray and DVD in order to capitalize on the "Hunger Games" hype.

Like "The Hunger Games," "Battle Royale" began as a novel, in this case by Koushun Takami. "Battle Royale" then inspired a manga adaptation, published in America in 15 volumes.

This English- language translation by American comic-book writer/illustrator Keith Giffen, upset some fans because it added a "reality television" element — absent in the Japanese version — that ended up prefiguring the reality-show element in "The Hunger Games."

But the similarities between "The Hunger Games" and "Battle Royale" really end there.

"The Hunger Games" is ultimately a PG-13 movie aimed at kids and starring a likable heroine with a silly name — actually, everyone in "The Hunger Games" has a silly name — who serves as a role model for girls everywhere.

"Battle Royale" is nihilistic, brutal, bloody, darkly satirical at times and, without giving too much away, the kind of movie in which any character you think of as a likable role model is going to end up dead, probably done in as much by their own naivete as anything else.

In the movie, which differs somewhat from the book, the Battle Royale program starts in response to a student strike.

It's an effort by the government to assert control over an increasingly rebellious youth population.

To that end, each year a class is sent to a remote island where its members must kill or be killed.

Apparently, Battle Royale is what happens when governments don't have wars to send their youths off to die in.

While some of the students break off into groups and try to cooperate with each other, they have to fend off attacks from above in the form of psychotic teacher Kitano and from within in the form of equally psycho classmates. Some of them, however, have a plan to fight back, provided they can hold off disaster long enough to carry it out.

Here's the twist: Unfettered death and mayhem perpetrated by teens on teens has never been so much fun. "Battle Royale" is sick and twisted entertainment for people who realize the whole idea of making children kill each other is sick and twisted.

So, you might as well roll with that.

"Battle Royale" is the master work of the late director Kinji Fukasaku, otherwise best known for the loopy, over-the-top sci-fi epics "Message from Space" and "The Green Slime," as well as the Japanese sequences of "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

And it stars the great comedian and actor "Beat" Takeshi Kitano in the deadly serious role of a former teacher who methodically ensures the 21 boys and 21 girls of class 3-B get down to the business of killing one another.

It all reaches absurdist heights.

But in the absurd is usually where you find the deepest truths.

Culture Shock 03.15.12: 'Dangerous' book sees everything in 'Shades of Grey'

"Fifty Shades of Grey" is also available in
a convenient paperback.

For all of the publishing industry's ups and downs as it adapts to an environment of e-books and the Internet, it's still rare for any single book to shake up the status quo on as many levels as has the new best-seller "Fifty Shades of Grey."

First, you see, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not your typical best-seller.

Not that most best-sellers have especially impressive literary pedigrees, but "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes from a very lowly estate indeed. It began as fan fiction — and not just ordinary fan fiction, but "Twilight" fan fiction.

Fan fiction is itself a "gray" area — a shadowy world where mostly anonymous authors write mostly atrocious stories of legally suspect status featuring other writers' characters. The Internet is full of these stories, where sex scenes are plentiful, inventive and almost invariably bad. But no one makes money off fan fiction, and most professional authors are sensible enough to leave these besotted typists alone.

Then, sometimes, a fanfic writer or a particular work of fan fiction will gain a following.

That's what happened to British writer E.L. James, a former TV executive turned fanfic phenom. Her racy "Twilight"-based fan fiction became so popular she changed the characters and expanded the story into a novel — the first novel of a trilogy, actually.

It then took off, alighting atop the New York Times and Amazon e-book best-seller lists, which brings us to the second way "Fifty Shades of Grey" is helping change everything.

After becoming a very successful e-book — and having a small print run published by something called The Writer's Coffee Shop — "Fifty Shades of Grey" has been picked up by a major imprint, Vintage. It's scheduled for publication (again) on April 3 and, as I write, ranks No. 5 on Amazon's chart. This is the new way of things: publishers turning the self-published into the really published.

And, thirdly, this is all the more interesting given the book's content, which happens to involve bondage, sadomasochism and power exchange. The book is heir to "The Story of O" and that "Sleeping Beauty" trilogy Anne Rice wrote under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure — except, judging from the free sample I downloaded, nowhere near as well written. (But what does one expect of a novel that started as fan fiction based on another, badly written best-seller?) Maybe "Fifty Shades of Grey" is actually closest to the last several Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels that all of Laurell K. Hamilton's earliest fans love to complain about?

Maggie Gyllenhaal learns the "proper"
way to take a letter in the cult film
"Secretary," also starring James Spader.

Even the title, "Fifty Shades of Grey," evokes the name of James Spader's character, Mr. Grey, in the kinky S&M romance "Secretary."

So, this is where things get really fun, because now "Fifty Shades of Grey" is dangerous. (The word "disturbing" gets thrown around quite a lot.) And that leads to absurdist spectacles in which professional worriers fret on chat shows about the horrible, horrible things perfectly reasonable, adult women are reading of their own free will.

Does Dr. Drew Pinsky realize that he comes off like a sexist jerk when he goes on the "Today" show and worries about the erotic fantasies of women who read "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Probably not.

This one book, "Fifty Shades of Grey," demonstrates how a novel can, via new technology and publishing models, rise from a literary ghetto, elevate an obscure author to transatlantic fame and generate controversy with sensational — but actually quite common — subject matter.

Maybe I should have kept working on that trashy "X-Men" fanfic I started 10 years ago? I could be famous by now.

Probably not.

Culture Shock 03.08.12: McQuarrie brought Lucas' 'Star Wars' vision to life

Without Ralph McQuarrie there probably would be no "Star Wars." And if there were a "Star Wars" without him, it wouldn't look like the "Star Wars" we know.

McQuarrie, an illustrator and conceptual artist, painted the first visual depictions of George Lucas' galaxy of long, long ago and far, far away. When Lucas sought studio backing for "Star Wars," he used McQuarrie's paintings to sell skeptical movie executives on the film.

And when Lucas couldn't describe to his production designers and special effects technicians what he wanted, he let McQuarrie's illustrations do the talking.

"When words could not convey my ideas," Lucas said, "I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.' "

McQuarrie died Saturday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 82.

Soon after news of his death broke, the first tributes appeared on YouTube — sideshows of his paintings synchronized to selections from John Williams' "Star Wars" score, each one as good a reason to skirt copyright as any.

It was McQuarrie who designed the iconic look of Darth Vader, modeling Vader's helmet on those worn by samurai. And before any footage was shot, he had visualized the climactic attack on the Death Star.

Looking back at McQuarrie's earliest illustrations for "Star Wars," it's striking how similar they are to the finished film — and yet how different. There's a strangeness to some of those paintings. Maybe it's how C-3PO looks a lot like the robot from "Metropolis." And in the very earliest sketches, you get hints of a "Star Wars" that never was, a "Star Wars" Lucas still called "The Adventures of Luke Starkiller."

Others are reminiscent of the NASA concept art you used to find in books published in the 1960s and '70s, when it seemed like a future with daily space flights to huge spinning wheels in the sky was just around the corner. The similarity isn't accidental. Before he helped Lucas envision "Star Wars," McQuarrie was an aerospace illustrator for Boeing and an animator for CBS News' Apollo coverage.

McQuarrie's paintings gave "Star Wars" fans their first peek behind the scenes of the space saga. The illustrations appeared in some of the first official "Star Wars" magazines and were mixed in as inserts in packs of the first "Star Wars" trading cards.

To young fans back in 1977, it was a strange, new side of "Star Wars" we hadn't seen in theaters.

There is real power in McQuarrie's art. A painting for "The Empire Strikes Back" depicting Luke Skywalker running from his crashed snow speeder with an Imperial walker closing in the background manages to be just as menacing as anything in the movie itself.

McQuarrie worked on the original "Star Wars" trilogy as well as related projects like "Shadows of the Empire." But by the time Lucas was ready to make the prequel trilogy, McQuarrie was ready to bow out.

And maybe that's just as well, considering how the prequels turned out. Even he couldn't have saved them.

Besides "Star Wars," McQuarrie contributed to the original "Battlestar Galactica" and films like "E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." He designed a new USS Enterprise for the proposed "Star Trek: Phase II" TV series. And he won an Oscar for the special effects in "Cocoon."

We may never be sure what the future will look like, but we know what it's supposed to look like. It's supposed to look a lot like a Ralph McQuarrie painting.

'We're not a team. We're a time bomb'

Your inner fanboy will hulk out.

Avengers assemble.

5.4.12

Culture Shock 02.23.12: 'Artist' makes Oscar case loud and clear

"The Artist" is nominated for 10 Academy Awards and is favored to win at least a couple of the top prizes, including Best Picture and Best Director for Michel Hazanavicius.

That's good because "The Artist" is easily the best of this year's nine Oscar-nominated films.

Still, it's a shame that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' antiquated, arbitrary and sometimes just plain bizarre rules — the same rules that allow the Academy to continue ignoring Andy Serkis' brilliant motion-capture performances year after year — don't allow Jack Russell terriers to compete for Best Supporting Actor.

Otherwise, Uggie, who steals "The Artist" as easily as he might steal a sausage, would end the streak of supporting actor wins Christopher Plummer has racked up this awards season.

The Oscars always say more about Academy voters than they do about the year's best films, so it's best not to take them too seriously — or seriously at all most years.

(Nine Best Picture nominees, and the Academy still manages to snub 2011's two best films not titled "The Artist" — "Young Adult" and "Drive"? It's insane.)

When the Academy recognizes the year's best film as such, it's usually a happy coincidence. I think the last time that happened was "Silence of the Lambs" in 1991.

We're due for another happy coincidence, and "The Artist" — backed by the Weinstein Company's hype machine — just might provide it. Never mind all that Weinstein hoopla, "The Artist" is a magnificent, magical piece of work.

"The Artist" is set during Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies, an era Hazanavicius and cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman capture beautifully in sparkling black and white, taking full advantage of the narrow, old-style 1.37:1 aspect ratio to give us gorgeous vertical scenes such as one taking place on a staircase.

George Valentin (Best Actor nominee Jean Dujardin) is one of the silent era's biggest stars, with a trusty canine sidekick (Uggie) and admiring fans such as Peppy Miller (Best Supporting Actress nominee Bérénice Bejo), herself an aspiring actress working her way up from bit parts in chorus lines.

Peppy's timing is perfect. She has a voice for sound, and the studios are looking for new talent to usher in the dawn of talking pictures.

Meanwhile, George's star is fading, and when his studio drops him, he sinks his own money into making a silent movie — just as the Great Depression looms. Not the best of timing for long-shot bets.

"The Artist" features a solid supporting cast, including John Goodman as a cigar-chomping mogul, Penelope Ann Miller as George's disillusioned wife and, especially, James Cromwell as George's faithful chauffeur. But this is Dujardin and Bejo's movie to carry. And because "The Artist," like the movies it honors, is a "silent" film, they do so without saying a word.

Yet the artist isn't really a silent movie. It uses music, sound and silence to create an alternate universe where everyone "speaks" in title cards and spoken conversations are some scary, science-fiction monster from the future, ruthlessly invading the present.

In that silence, too much is left unsaid. George's wife keeps her unhappiness and disappointments mostly to herself. George and Peppy remain quiet about their mutual attraction. And the secrets they keep from each other could lead to disaster for them both.

Hazanavicius may have a nostalgic fondness for the silent era, but in the end he and "The Artist" side with the talkies — and with talking.

If Uggie could talk, he'd say he deserves that supporting actor award.

Culture Shock 02.16.12: 'Chronicle' chronicles why teens shouldn't have super powers

Super powers are wasted on the young.

Andrew Detmer's life is miserable. He's an outcast at school. His mother is bedridden with pulmonary disease. And his father — stepfather? I was never sure — is an alcoholic who does little but collect dust and disability payments, except for when he takes time out of his busy schedule to slap Andrew around.

That's the poverty-row setup for "Chronicle," the first feature film for both director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis (son of director John Landis).

As if looking to make himself even more of a social pariah, Andrew starts "recording everything" with his new video camera. Why? He never says. Certainly not to have evidence against his abusive dad, even though Andrew captures plenty.

Is Andrew just a narcissist in spite of his crippling shyness? That would explain some of what follows.

One day Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and Matt's friend, the super-popular Steve (Michael B. Jordan), stumble across a pulsating, crystalline object of presumably extraterrestrial origin and — presto! — all discover they've developed super powers.

From there, our newborn superheroes use their superhuman abilities to make life better for everyone, especially for poor, miserable Andrew and his family.

Stop. That must be a different movie, because that's the opposite of what happens. Even the obvious thought of going to Las Vegas and using their telekinetic powers to strike it rich at the roulette tables, so Andrew can afford the medicine that keeps his mom alive, is beyond our three geniuses.

Instead they practice their abilities by playing practical jokes and, after they get the hang of flying, tossing a football around at (at least) 6,000 feet.

Even Spider-Man tried to profit from his powers before Uncle Ben guilt got the better of him.

We see all of this through Andrew's camera and the cameras of others.

Yes, this is another "found footage" movie, and this time the gimmick doesn't appear to serve any purpose except to provide an in-story excuse for the movie's lo-fi look. "Chronicle" has a modest $12 million budget, and most of it seems to have gone into the grand finale — an old-fashioned superhero smack down at the site of Seattle's Space Needle.

It's not giving away much to say that one of our three super-powered protagonists eventually starts to go bad and must be stopped. Hint: It's probably the one who behaves like a sociopath long before he reaches his Columbine moment.

Before that, though, we watch as Steve helps Andrew use his powers to become popular while Matt goes off on an unnecessary subplot to win the affection of Casey (Ashley Hinshaw), a classmate who, coincidentally, is also recording everything on video — "for her blog," she says.

There might be an interesting movie here somewhere about people who feel compelled to constantly film and take pictures of themselves, but as an undercurrent to a movie about kids who have never heard that "with great power comes great responsibility," it gets lost.

On the flip side, the story of how having super powers changes — or doesn't — the lives of Andrew, Matt and Steve gets equally lost by having to compete with the found-footage approach to the material.

There is no reason "Chronicle" couldn't have been shot as a conventional movie. That "Chronicle" wants to be the latest heir to the checkered legacy of "Blair Witch" and "Cloverfield" only makes the exercise almost as frustrating as Andrew's home life.