Summer’s well on its way and while I’m not sure that a lot of people plow through book after book over the course of the summer the way they once did (at least, not without it being a school reading list), NPR is compiling a heck of a good list by talking to authors about what books they recommend to others.
It’s a great and simple concept I wish I’d thought of myself, even if I disagree with at least one of the choices (I find The Golden Compass to be a pretentious bore, but that’s clearly not a universally held opinion).
Check it out.
It seems like everyone else may not have enjoyed Superman Returns as much as Jenn and I did, but the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel is getting good early reviews (warning: spoilers!). It’s the next film we’re planning to see in theaters this summer (maybe the only other one), so I’m thrilled. (Thanks to Kate for the link. My favorite movie reviewer also likes it.)
I’ve been playing the snot out of the new version of Sid Meier’s Pirates game in anticipation of the movie. It’s a great update of the classic, although there sure is a lot of dancing in this version. I also miss the watercolor paintings of the Pirates Gold version in the mid-1990s. The 3-D animated cities are nice, but I think the watercolor images had a lot of charm. (And yes, I said dancing earlier — one of the many things you can try to do in this game is sweep governors’ daughters off their feet and in addition to fencing with their fiances, giving them jewelry and rescuing them from pirates, they really want a man who can dance, and put it to the test. A lot.)
And next summer, of course, just in time (in theory) for the third Pirates movie, there will be a MMORPG version of the film, along with at least one other challenger. Aarrrrh!
So, Jenn and I went and saw Superman Returns on Saturday and we liked it, a lot.
I went into the movie with a lot of skepticism. Star Wars fans all seemed to hypnotize themselves into liking Revenge of the Sith, and I was concerned that so many comic fans liking the new Superman movie was something similar. In this case, I needn’t have worried.
In the end, I only have minor quibbles. Everything I was worried about (the kid, Lois being engaged) worked out great, the Super stuff was beyond awesome and the visceral impact of seeing Superman “return” five years after 9/11 was weirdly cathartic: I haven’t been to a superhero movie where a lot of people in the audience were crying before, but people were absolutely bawling when Superman was re-revealed to the world after the first big rescue of the movie.
Brandon Routh isn’t the world’s greatest actor, but neither was Christopher Reeve. But both had the decency that Superman (especially the Cary Bates-drawn Superman of the 1970s radiated) requires. Worst haircut ever, though.
Kate Bosworth, while not my first choice for Lois, made the character semi-appealing to me for the first time ever (Action Comics was my very first comic book and I subscribed to Superman with my allowance money through the 1970s), although at the end of the day, she’s still kind of a bitch. But Singer clearly saw Lois Lane as Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, and Bosworth was even dressed the part. That sort of manic, well-meaning but steam-rolling character actually could make Lois charming, if the writing ever fully catches up to the interpretation (it never has in the comics — there Lana Lang was always clearly the better love interest, Betty to Lois’ Veronica).
Kevin Spacey split the difference with Gene Hackman’s over the top version of Lex Luthor (did I mention that this film is an explicit sequel to the Christopher Reeve movies?) and a more realistic Luthor for an audience that has seen Oz and the Sopranos. His comments about prison were a great grounding in reality and his personal attack on Superman at the edge of the cliff (you’ll know it when you see it) is one of the great iconic images that I suspect will be recycled in the comic books for years to come.
The rest of the cast was fine, although I think Frank Langella was badly miscast — sorry, Frank, but you’re a bad guy, not a generic cipher but generally friendly editor type. But boy, has Parker Posey fallen from her indie film queen days.
Spider-Man’s Daily Bugle was always more realistic as a newspaper (even if that newspaper was the New York Post) than Superman’s Daily Planet, and this movie was the first time the Planet seemed like an actual newspaper (the LA Times, in point of fact, down to a lot of the decorations in the Planet building), although Lois asking questions that were answered in the press packet about the shuttle was annoying. (Although maybe only to me.)
I think the twist everyone saw coming was handled very well, and Lois’ fiance, rather than being an anchor around the neck of this film, actually added a lot to the proceedings from where I’m sitting, because it definitely gave the feeling that life had moved on and here was a guy that the audience couldn’t really dislike and who fills the roles that Clark left empty in both of his personas when he left Earth. (It also proves that he annoyed me as Cyclops in the X-Men movies because Cyclops is annoying, not because the actor is. Cyclops has always sucked.)
Without question, though, this is Superman at his most Super in any film or television show. Kudos to the creators for making it look hard for Superman, which isn’t something that always happens in the comics.
I give this a four out of five stars.
Bring on Pirates 2.
