Walking Taco

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out this weekend, and in almost every conceivable way it is the polar opposite of 2008’s Frost/Nixon. The former is, from what I have read, a typical Michael Bay exercise in excess: explosions, lightning-paced editing, the hottest young stars, blazing weaponry, insane chases, and more explosions. The latter has none of these, and its leads are virtual unknowns–especially compared to the headlining actors in Transformers: RotF. But it is this limited canvas with which director Ron Howard paints a very interesting, engaging, and (dare I say it? Yes, I dare!) entertaining movie about…well, about little more than a series of TV interviews between a talk show host and the former president.

Movies based on plays are a tricky proposition for today’s audiences weaned on the theatrical bombast of directors such as Michael Bay, Tony Scott, and the Wachowski Brothers. Not to mention their forebears, the great Lucas and Spielberg. Whereas movies often employ special effects, realistic audio, blaring soundtracks, and a host of other tricks to enhance the viewing experience, plays instead offer, for the most part, only dialog cemented by good ol’fashioned acting. And this is why adapting a play into a movie is a somewhat daunting task for any director, but Ron Howard manages to pull it off quite nicely.

In many ways, Frost/Nixon is the spiritual successor to Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men. Both are based on plays. Both are about well-nigh untouchable political figures brought down by unlikely young spitfires. Both feature extended dialog-heavy sequences with no changes in setting. Music and special effects are used sparingly, characters are well-defined and interesting, and yes, both movies feature none other than the estimable Kevin Bacon. But whereas Reiner’s 1992 movie was a largely fictionalized account of military justice loosely based on the experiences of young military lawyer Donald Marcari, Ron Howard’s film is about the verbal toppling of none other than Richard Nixon himself.

Frost/Nixon follows the tale of David Frost, a talk-show host who hatches a plan to get Richard Nixon to admit to wrongdoing while in office and apologize, on camera, to the American people. His preparation and interview methods are better suited to the theatrics of a boisterous TV personality, and I enjoyed seeing him come face to face with the political powerhouse that is Mr. Nixon. What kept me entertained through the dialog-heavy film was the constant sense of awe and wonder with which Mr. Nixon is portrayed–not awe for his politics, but a healthy respect for the type of man he was: an extremely savvy politician who was not to be trifled with. Michael Sheen’s portrayal of the young, eager David Frost who is forced to come to grips with his own shortcomings and find a way to, as in A Few Good Men, get an extremely powerful man to admit to his own wrongdoings, even though it will cost him dearly, is impeccable. The two men eventually come to a mutual respect for each other, and it is this character journey that makes Frost/Nixon as entertaining as anything Michael Bay could ever do.

Well, not that a few explosions wouldn’t have helped a bit…

Drama Michael Bay, Plays, Ron Howard, Transformers

I live in Minnesota, was raised in Nebraska, and have spent much of my life enjoying the benefits of the corn-based economy of the midwest. I enjoy my steaks medium rare, my corn sweet, and my corn syrup appropriately high-fructosed. Nonetheless, I thought I’d check out Aaron Woolf’s documentary about two guys who try to find out what’s really going on with America’s obsession with corn, and in the process learn a little about farming and agriculture, not to mention their own heritage as well. It’s a well-crafted film, but while Woolf does a nice job of exploring what it means to be a modern-day farmer, there is also enough limitations of the movie to really explore the issue fully.

The premise of the movie seems benign enough: two strapping East Coast lads set out to plant an acre of corn so they can find out what happens to their crop once its all growed up and ready to set out on its own. So they head off to Greene, Iowa, where (it turns out) their great-grandfathers both grew up together. They rent an acre from an old lifelong Iowa farmer and set about tilling, planting, fertilizing, and eventually spending the night with 180 bushels of their own corn. Along the way we find out about how much farming has changed in the past several decades, how our desire for cheap food has led to an explosion in corn production, and why High Fructose Corn Syrup is basically like drinking liquid secondhand smoke.

And this is where I take issue with King Corn. Sure these two guys have good intentions, but an acre of corn? Really? That’s how they’re going to find out how corn works its way into our daily diet? Why not just skip the pseudo-farming altogether and get right to the point? That being, as near as I can tell, that because government subsidies and technological advances have led to such massive increases in corn production, we now eat a lot of corn-fed beef and consume a lot of high fructose corn syrup. And they do have a point there: grass-fed cattle live better than their corn-fed counterparts, produce higher quality beef, and aren’t actually being slowly killed by the food they are eating. HFCS is not exactly good for us either, so bonus to the dudes on that one too. But it’s not as if the filmmakers are exposing some kind of long-held secret or anything. They also don’t have a very large pool of individuals to interview for the project: a professor here, a farmer there, and an anti-climactic interview with Earl Butz, the former US Secretary of Agriculture, don’t exactly make for a bulletproof argument.

So while I applaud Woolf’s intentions, I don’t know that I really learned a whole lot from King Corn that I didn’t know already. I’m guessing (though not certain) that the same would be true for most folks. Still, the movie is interesting enough to watch, and I recommend it for anyone who is interested in what goes on behind the slick veneer and shiny packaging of most of the foods we eat every day.

Documentary Corn, Midwest, Woolf

In the late 1990s I heard lots of chatter about some dude named Robert Downey, Jr. Apparently he was an actor who was in rehab a lot, from what I gathered, and there was also some sort of connection with the TV show Friends. Then came the new millennium and he faded into gossip magazine oblivion, only to be all the rage again when Iron Man was released. This was a movie I, regrettably, never saw in theatres. I do have the mega-ultra-edition DVD courtesy of my brother from last Christmas, and before that my wife and I watched it on Netflix, so perhaps I can retain a smidgen of street cred there.

The movie itself is more like a prequel than anything, as Tony Stark, played by Downey Jr. (can I just say Downey from here on out? I believe I shall.), spends much of the first half in a cave constructing the beta version of his famous iron suit. After that he spends the next 30 minutes building and testing version 1.0, and is actually only Iron Man for the final act. His stint as a superhero, in fact, is limited to one brief incident involving the rescue of a handful of villagers being bullied by his former captors from when he was in the cave at the beginning of the movie. So the title should really be something indie-ish or alt-culture like Becoming Iron Man. I doubt that would have flew well with most mainstream moviegoers this side of the Ross Film Theatre, though.

Without dwelling too much on somewhat misleading premises, though, I must say that the movie is, above all else, just really entertaining. And much of the fun of the movie comes from Downey, who plays his role as the gabillionaire playboy without a conscience to the hilt, chewing every scene he’s in and gleefully asking for more. He’s just fun to watch, whether he’s bantering with top military brass (Terrence Howard, inhabiting a role that should have gone to Cuba Gooding Jr.), playfully chiding his personal assistant, the ever-elegant Gwynneth Paltrow, or copping an attitude with his sidekick–an omnipresent computer voiced by quintessential “that one guy!” Paul Bettany. The movie could have probably been called “Iron Man Eats A Bowl of Fruit Loops” and it would have been just as fun to watch.

Of course the special effects are off the hook, the music is catchy, the acting all around is solid, but kudos really go to Mr. Dryer Sheet, who reminds us why some movie stars really are stars.

Action Robert Downey Jr.

I have long been a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, ever since seeing his massive biceps and front tooth gap on promotional posters for the Presidential Physical Fitness award back in elementary school. Here was this gigantor dude telling me that if I only did enough pull ups and got to 20 centimeters on the sit-and-reach that I could get a little patch and the President himself would personally come and congratulate me.

I never got the medal. But, many years later, my admiration for Arnold only increased when I saw Terminator 2 in my friend’s basement, and ever since I have had somewhat of an odd admiration for not only the man’s charming ability to anchor a movie but to be a positive influence in the world of physical fitness (a decade of steroid usage in his youth notwithstanding).

However, until recently, I had not seen the movie that launched him from Austrian obscurity to international superstardom: Hercules in New York Pumping Iron. It’s the story of the 1975 My Olympia contestants, one of whom is the five-time defending champion, Mr. Schwarzenegger himself. The documentary follows the paths of a handful of contestants as they rise through the ranks of lower competitions only to end up together in South Africa for the final championship. While I’m no weight lifter, I was very interested in these men who spent hours upon hours every day lifting weights at the gym, with the one goal of winning the bodybuilding competitions. Arnold’s cockiness throughout the film was diffused by his natural charm, and by the end I grew to have a much greater appreciation for the entire bodybuilding scene, but also for the man behind the T-800 makeup.

Documentary Schwarzenegger, Terminator

Recently I was discussing Enterprise with one of my friends.  I told her that the show felt too stilted, and often uninteresting, as if the creators had some sort of list for qualities a show should have and would check them off one by one as they completed an episode.  This episode more or less typifies my thoughts about the show in general, partially because its focus on Travis Mayweather’s home life/background story seems a bit too forced and contrived, and also because the subplot about T’pol and horror movies back on the Enterprise felt a little too tacked on. It seems as though Berman and Braga were sitting in a room one day and thought to themselves, “Hey, we don’t know much about our navigation fella. Let’s do a show on his family, or something.” And thus was the genesis of “Horizon.” Mayweather gets notified that his father, captain of the cargo transport vessel Horizon, is on his way to that big shipyard in the sky, and fortunately the Enterprise is heading in a direction that just so happens to take them near the ship. As soon as they arrive we find out that Travis’ dad has already passed away, his brother is now captain of the ship, and his mom, who acts just like the Oracle from the Matrix, keeps the ship running while passing out nuggets of wisdom and advice like a human PEZ dispenser.

Meanwhile, Tucker invites T’pol to watch the original black-and-white Frankenstein because he wants her to experience a horror movie. She resists at first, but once again we have the non-human character make all kinds of observations about human behavior while growing more human herself. Again, this subplot just doesn’t feel natural. It’s kind of interesting, but at the end of the day it seems like it arose out of the need for a subplot, not the desire to truly explore human emotions. Travis, as anyone could have predicted, is having trouble dealing with his father’s death. His brother doesn’t like his Starfleet sibling to come back and act like he knows what it’s like to be on a cargo ship again. Their mom plays the middle, they all get in a bad scrape, and by the end of the show we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about overcoming differences, putting aside old conflicts, and working together as a team. Awww.

It’s not that the episode was bad, it just wasn’t as good as it could have been. And that all stems from a lack of true characterization–most of the cast seems like they are merely inhabiting a role rather than playing true characters who live and work together on a starship. But we’ll keep plugging away and see how the rest of Season 2 plays out.

Star Trek: Enterprise Enterprise, Horizon, Mayweather