Prometheus

"Why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused only to be disappointed and punished...like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse..."
-Edwin Abbott Abbott

Ridley Scott's "Alien" is famously about a group of "truckers in space" who, out of contractual obligations, must investigate an unidentified object deep in space, where no one can hear you scream. Their ship becomes a haunted house, as a chest-bursting alien hunts them down. Here, in Scott's prequel "Prometheus," there is no economic reality but instead a thirst for knowledge and the reminder that curiosity kills. Its scientist, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), and her fellow scientist and lover Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) believe they have discovered an invitation from an alien species on a far away planet. These aren't simply aliens, but in fact some kind of scientific creators of human beings. Their project is funded by an aging Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), and their crew features a groovy yet hypothesis-providing captain (Idris Elba) and the supervisor of the operation, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a stern, by-the-book woman, as well as an android (Michael Fassbender), practically in control of everything.

I couldn't help but constantly compare this movie to "Alien," as I should have, and compared to "Alien" it disappoints. Some might argue that it would be unfair to compare the two, considering that living up to the legacy of "Alien" is too difficult a task. But many find James Cameron's "Aliens" to be superior to its predecessor, so the comparison is fair. Whereas "Alien" is one of the most visually stunning films of all time, "Prometheus" often is a mess, overboard in its computer generated imagery, looking like a cheap computer game and not utilizing its impressive sets enough. While "Alien" features one of the greatest casts in cinematic history, only Fassbender provides a comparable performance.

But is "Prometheus" a bad film? Not really. It has its moments and indeed gets better as it goes. It prefers, for better or (more often) for worse, to tackle bigger questions than the conventional horror approach of "Alien." Here in "Prometheus" there are questions on the origin of humans and end of times. Some have complained that there are too many questions left unanswered, but remember that one of the screenwriters is Damon Lindelof, a creator of and screenwriter for "Lost," a show famous/infamous for not revealing many answers. But the questions are unnecessary, as is the teasing of its audience as it hops from enigma to enigma. There are strange holograms. One of the crew members is poisoned. Another is somehow impregnated with some sort of alien; she figures out how to get a machine to perform a Cesarean surgery on her...the absurdities continue.

But as mentioned before, Fassbender is terrific in the film. His character is David, the film's android, and is impossible to ignore, simultaneously serving as an intelligence compass for the crew and yet having a cruel lack of emotion. The only times he does seem to emote are when he either is jealous that he's "not a real boy" or when his fierce loyalty to his master compromises the safety of others.  He playfully apologizes as he seemingly is aware that his actions are making the situations more dangerous. One can find obvious influences from "2001: A Spacey Odyssey," "Lawrence of Arabia" (which David studies), and one would imagine the previous "Alien" films, but Fassbender has stated that he avoided watching those. But other than this, there is not too much else to write about, and it unfortunately feels like a missed opportunity. There are talks of a sequel, but for better or worse, it seems like "Prometheus" should be the final installment and serve as the "Godfather Part III" of the series.


Alien, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Michael Fassbender, Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, cinema,  film, flick, motion picture

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The Jerk

Steve Martin is one of the few comics clever enough to come up with a story about an awkward white guy born a poor black child. His character, Navin, can't quite clap to the rhythm of the gospel music his family loves so much and he usually prefers Twinkies and tuna sandwiches to his mother's fried chicken. And so he finally tells his mother that he feels as if he doesn't belong in the family, to which his mother, played by Mabel King, finally relinquishes a simple fact: that he was left on their doorstep as a child and they've raised him ever since. "You mean I'm gonna stay this color forever?" he asks in shock. But his mother assures him that she would love him even if he were "the color of a baboon's ass." Still, he needs to explore the outside (of Mississippi) world; he takes his father's advice (the Lord loves a working man...and don't trust whitey) and sets off. This is how "The Jerk" opens.

From there he comes across a wide variety of characters, including a circus daredevil named Patty (Catlin Adams), whom he writes about to his family--"My friend Patty promised me a blow job." What a kind soul she is, Natin's naive family says out loud.  Navin is a character so stupid yet so content and kind. He's Chaplin's Tramp, only less politically correct and more sexually aroused. (The Tramp never asked his ladies if they would imagine him the next time they slept with their boyfriends.) He has a desire to "be somebody" and is excited when he has accomplished this task by appearing in the phone book. From the beginning, we are audience to Martin's remarkable comfort for a total embrace of awkwardness. His movement, seemingly so difficult for anybody else but undoubtedly easy for him, fits perfectly.

Unfortunately, the humor becomes too obnoxious at times. Most audiences probably found the obnoxiousness of some scenes--like the shooting cans moment and the scene where Navin insists he doesn't need anything (except for essentially every item he passes on the way, including a chair and remote control)--to be the high points of the film. To me, they were not. But I did enjoy Martin's performance, which set the stage obviously for the rest of his movie career. I also liked its Mel Brooks-style bravery and desire to make audiences squirm in a fashion Sasha Baron Cohen now utilizes. I also appreciated that Martin and director Carl Reiner understood that it was sometimes necessary to slow down the tempo (something quite a few comedies fail to do today), as was the case with his sweet scene with Martin and Bernadette Peters singing "Tonight You Belong to Me."

There's something thought-provoking about much of Martin's work (though I couldn't figure out any allegorical meaning behind the cat juggling scene and now don't think I was supposed to). Martin is America's famous philosophical comedian; an Emmy-winner by age 23, a man who spared himself of the celebrity drug excess of the 1970s, and while it may be a while since "The Jerk," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," he is still remarkable, even if he's the straight man in a romantic comedy like "It's Complicated." On a personal level, it was one of the great joys of my life to direct a production of his play, "WASP," at university. A comedian acting as a rock star, with a combination of philosophical absurdism, fake hubris, and downright sophomoric silliness, Steve Martin is, as Steve Carell humorously put it, a national treasure.       

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