Affleck, you da Bat in Gotham, yo!

Unless you are living under a rock, you've probably heard that Ben Affleck has been cast to play Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman in Zack Snyder's upcoming Man Of Steel sequel, tentatively titled Superman vs Batman. Or Batman vs Superman. He'll be going up against Henry Cavill's Superman in the movie. It seems like a lot of people are unhappy about this casting decision, probably due to some of Mr. Affleck's past movies, such as Daredevil, another comic book adaptation. I understand. I didn't think Daredevil was good when it came out, and I watched it again a year or two ago, and still thought it was awful. As with most, if not all, of the bad movies Affleck has been in, I don't think his acting skills had anything to do with why they weren't good. In the case of Daredevil, it was probably mostly the fault of Mark Steven Johnson. He wrote AND directed that embarrassment of a movie.

I'm a pretty big fan of Affleck. When he's working with good material, the guy is fantastic. I think he is a natural fit for the role of Bruce Wayne / Batman, and have no problem seeing him as the character. He wouldn't have been my first choice, but I couldn't really think of anyone who was an obvious choice. I do like some of the names that have been thrown around recently, and also would have been into some of them being Batman, but I think Affleck is at least as good a fit as any of them would have been.

Speaking of being able to see Affleck as the character, I can't wait until they release the first photo of him in the new batsuit so that I can put it together with a photo of him wearing the Superman suit in the movie Hollywoodland, in which he played George Reeves, the actor who portrayed the titular superhero in the television show Adventures of Superman. Of course, now I can't help but to imagine a Ben Affleck Batman fighting a Ben Affleck Superman. You know you'd pay to watch that.

This news also got me thinking about something else. I know it was reported that Affleck already turned down directing the Justice League movie, but what if he now reconsiders, or directs the solo Batman movies? I think he'd be a natural fit considering his work on Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo, all of which were fantastic movies. And I think he's especially great as an actor when he's directing himself, and doing what he wants in the performance, rather than being directed by someone else. He's got good instincts when it comes to performing. Anyway, Affleck directing these movies might be a long shot, but at least I'm looking forward to seeing him portray Batman. Bring on 2015.

Recurring Imagery - Steven Spielberg's Shooting Stars

I plan on going outside tonight to watch the Perseid meteor shower. I try to watch the Perseids every year. There's a great spot on my driveway where I can see a very large portion of the sky. Anyway, I realized today was a good day to publish this post that I've been working on for a while. It was triggered by a recent viewing of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, one of my favorite movies.

In case you hadn't noticed or just don't remember, there are two shots of shooting stars in the movie. One right after the other. I notice them every time I watch the movie, but this particular time I was wondering whether there was any significance at all to the shooting stars. I decided to look it up on the internet. While I love the internet as a reference material, you just can't believe everything you read.

Besides reading many conflicting claims about whether or not the shooting stars in Jaws are real meteors caught on camera or optical effects that were done in post-production, what I mostly found were several rumors about the shooting stars in movies directed by Spielberg. For example, I read that the ones in Jaws are actually UFO's that the filmmakers unintentionally captured on film. Is it really necessary for me to comment on that one?

I've also read claims that the shooting stars are meant as a teaser for his movies that have to do with aliens, such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I also find that hard to believe. I think he probably just likes the imagery.

Something I read a lot was that Spielberg puts a shooting star in almost every one of the movies he directs, and that it's his signature, kind of like how Alfred Hitchcock has a cameo appearance in most of the movies he directs. I really don't think that's true either. I actually watched some of his movies specifically to look out for shooting stars, and couldn't find any besides the few I already knew about. I couldn't even find any in certain movies where the imagery would have fit right in, such as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Hook. I'm willing to believe I might have just missed them, but I'm usually pretty observant when it comes to small details in movies, especially if I'm specifically looking for them. If I'm right though, I guess people across the internet are just spouting misinformation without having looked for any evidence of their own. I'm not sure why that surprises me. Shooting stars in Spielberg movies just seems like a strange topic to be spreading rumors about.

I wanted to make a large post with screenshots of all the shooting stars in Spielberg's movies, but I thought the post was going to have a lot more images than this. So far it's just the two in Jaws, one in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and one in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. I'm not even positive the one in Close Encounters was actually meant to be a shooting star. It was rather ambiguous. There were two objects shooting through the sky, and I'm pretty sure at least one of them was supposed to be a spaceship. I took a screenshot of the other one. So anyway, here are the screenshots I collected. If you know of any more Steven Spielberg movies with shooting stars, let me know. I'll also continue looking for them whenever I watch a Spielberg movie. I'd love to add more shots to this post.

Recurring Imagery - American Bowie

The new music video for David Bowie's song "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" has certain parts that remind me a lot of the movie American Beauty. Especially the shots of Bowie and Tilda Swinton at the dining room table.

"A chef salad, please."

Whoever picks the songs to be played in Cold Stone Creamery has fantastic taste in music. I was there the other day and I heard "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies, "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, and "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & The Papas. I know I was there for ice cream, but hearing the song "California Dreamin'" combined with the imagery of that glass display counter made me want to order a chef salad.

Jurassic Park 3D: Revisiting Childhood

My friend and I did end up seeing Jurassic Park 3D, as if that's any surprise. I was still undecided while writing my previous post on the three-dimensional re-release, but by the time I was done writing, I had convinced myself I wanted to see it. I'm pretty convincing.

Taking a nostalgic approach, we decided to get candy we liked to get when we were kids, just to add to the whole experience. I picked Twizzlers. A comically massive bag of Twizzlers.

As I expected, seeing Jurassic Park in the theater again was a hell of a lot of fun. As much as I enjoy watching it on my relatively tiny television at home, this movie was definitely made for the big screen. I was struck by how amazing the special effects still look. I'm guessing they touched up the CGI a little bit, at least the lighting and color matching, because it looked flawless. My knowledge about how the movie was made and the limitations of practical effects was the only thing that tipped me off when a shot employed CGI. If I didn't have that knowledge, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. No matter what kind of effect was used in each shot, to me it just looked like there was a real life dinosaur being filmed.

My motivation for seeing this re-release had almost nothing to do with the 3D, but I felt that the extra dimension might at least make the experience an interesting one. I considered it a potential bonus. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit though. It seems like a lot of people who dislike 3D movies especially dislike when a movie that wasn't made specifically to be in 3D is post-converted into 3D. But to me, I think a huge part of what made Jurassic Park 3D so enjoyable was the fact that the movie wasn't originally made to be in 3D, simply because it didn't have any of those gimmicky shots I notice all the time in 3D movies. Where something happens like a character swings an axe right in front of the camera, which I'm guessing is supposed to make the audience feel like they're about to get hit. Or where something in the composition of the shot is only there to take advantage of the 3D. The audience is supposed to be focusing on something in a wide shot, but then a character runs right by in the foreground, distracting you from what you're actually supposed to be looking at, simply to add depth to the shot. I feel like I see these kinds of shots in 3D movies over and over again. I thought 3D was to make the movies more immersive, but these kinds of shots just make me aware I'm watching a movie and take me out of it. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? So it was refreshing to see a 3D movie that had absolutely none of that going on.

One thing that really stuck out to me in the whole experience had nothing to do with the movie itself, but with the behavior of other people in the theater. There seems to be an alarming amount of people that have forgotten how to just sit down and watch a movie. I'm not even talking about the small boy with child-size 3D glasses sitting next to me who spent about 75% of the running time looking everywhere but at the screen, and also kept ogling my monstrous, seemingly endless supply of Twizzlers. He was just a young kid, so I suppose he had an excuse. I'm more talking about the numerous adults I saw pulling out their cellphones and texting during the movie, which distracts other people who are actually trying to watch it. A fantastic 20 year old movie, which was probably one of the cinematic highlights of your childhood is re-released, you pay a small fortune to see it in the theater in 3D, and you text people instead of paying attention to the movie? I don't understand you at all.

Imagine an alternate reality...

Where they make movies about the effects of nuclear weapons as an allegory for the very real threat of giant monsters attacking cities.

Ray Harryhausen

June 29, 1920 - May 7, 2013

When I read that stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen had died, I knew I had to make a post about it. He influenced and inspired so many other filmmakers, and fueled the imagination of generations of children, just as the work of Willis O'Brien in the movie King Kong had done for him as a young teenager. He is probably most known for the skeletons in Jason And The Argonauts, but I always loved his stop-motion dinosaurs the most, which appeared in movies such as The Animal World and One Million Years B.C.

One of my absolute favorite things he's done though is a project that he never finished. He started working on Evolution Of The World when he was still a teenager, around 18 years old. He clearly got better at what he did as his career went on, but there's something so beautiful about this unfinished film. The creatures seem so lifelike, and you can see the amount of imagination and passion that went into every frame. Just the other day I was thinking about posting it on this blog, but didn't get around to doing so. It would have been pretty strange if I had, because the very next post after it a few days later would have been this "RIP Ray Harryhausen" post. It seems fitting to post Evolution Of The World here now.



It's truly wonderful to see a man with a long, successful career of doing exactly what he seemed to be most passionate about. There's a lovely facebook post by Harryhausen's family that talks more about him, and has several quotes about him by a few of the filmmakers he influenced and inspired. You can also check out the "Creature List" on his official website to look at many of the creatures that he created for movies.