1. Clint Eastwood is not a good director. Maybe he was once, but he is no longer choosing good scripts, and this script was utterly awful. He was also the only good actor in the film but who can blame the other actors? You should hear the lines they were fed.

2. This movie is NOT Dirty Harry 2, so wipe that idea from your head. No one is "badass," despite what the idiotic guys in the row in front of me kept saying to each other, unless you think old racist misanthropes who basically strive to save all Asian folks from themselves (the screenwriters - Nick Schenk and Dave Johanssen - clearly really believes that, although Walt (Eastwood's) methods are a little screwy, any and all non-whites would benefit from a lesson or two).

3. If you don't believe the above parenthetical statement, can I add that the amount of laughter that the white, middle-aged audience indulged in, following every racist comment out of Walt's mouth, was disturbing. Raucous, half-guilty, half-justified laughter. I kept expecting the lady next to me to actually come out and say to her husband, "Oh, Keith! Those sound like the horrible names you call our dry cleaner in private! Remember the good old days when we could just go around calling people Chinamen whenever we wanted??" Instead, she just chortled and elbowed him, and he nodded knowingly, and I died a little inside.

4. Sookie Stackhouse kissed Vampire Bill on the mouth IRL!! And SRK presented an award!!! (Wait, those are from my "One Million Reasons to Enjoy the Golden Globes Last Weekend" list, sorry.)

5. There is no subtlety in this film. I'm surprised Paul Haggis wasn't involved somehow (as he was with Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, and Million Dollar Baby. I swear I knew about none of these until I went to go hyperlink his name to IMDB. It's incredible how everything fits!). The ungrateful teenage granddaughter is forever ungrateful and bratty. The hardworking Asian is forever hardworking. The young priest is always smug. No one budges a hair from their predetermined cliche of a character, which, in turn leaves you with only a plot that is so painfully predictable (guess who gets the Gran Torino? Is it the bratty teenage granddaughter?? Or is it the Asian kid next door who he has come to regard fondly only after showing him how real men act) (i.e. like assholes?))

6. Because Clint Eastwood is involved, some sort of Oscar nomination will doubtless go to this film, as the Golden Globes demonstrated by nominating the jaunty little tune that plays during the credits as Best Original Song. Yeah, that song's called "Gran Torino," and features Eastwood himself rasping out the words "Gran Torino" a bunch, while you watch the Gran Torino driving along the street. lakdjaskdjsalkdjlsakdjlksdjla!!!!!!

7. Obvious Christ-figure overtones make me sick. Especially when it's not even an overtone, it's just the tone. Directors! Symbolism isn't really as powerful when you COME OUT AND SAY WHAT THE SYMBOL IS.

8. I can't believe movies like these are still made and praised as if people are honestly unaware that it's been made 100 times before.

9. The only reason it even gets a second star is that the plot moves along at a nice pace.

10. Also Eastwood is a good actor, even in this film. Even I can't deny that.

11. It appears that I am no longer actually making a list of terrible things about this film, so I'm not sure why I'm still numbering thoughts.

12. I think maybe I just don't want to end this review because this is the kind of movie that, when you call it stupid, every person who enjoyed it will burst into flames and call you all sorts of names. I guess because they think you're calling them dumb? I never understood that. Like, my mom HATES Daniel Neiman. I can't figure out why. I mean, I guess smugness is a problem. But it's hard to avoid that when you see a TON of movies, so many that it really takes a unique zinger to stand out from the crowd, and after while you get so bitter that you have to sit through 90% recycled material that you start seething with anger during movies that actually only deserve an eye roll. After awhile, you are in serious danger of letting your largely unwarranted hatred turn you into, holy crap, CLINT EASTWOOD IN GRAN TORINO, which of course means that you'll move in next door to Paul Haggis, hating him at first as you hate all clumsy, hackneyed filmmakers. Eventually you find some common ground (Surprise! He's a Rodgers & Hammerstein fan too!!!) and before you know it, you're showing Paul how to be more like you and less like Paul, and in the end you've done everyone a favor.

13. I have no idea where I'm going with this. If the onslaught of amazing movies that I just know is coming (to herald the coming of the Academy Awards) takes any longer to get to Richmond, this kind of thing might continue to happen. I make no promises. Save me, Revolutionary Road!

I found myself in New York (for those of you who have a map on their basement wall with pins in it, following my progress around the world) this weekend, and I got pumped about seeing something different and special that we wouldn't get here until two weeks before it came out on DVD. And...nothing! I guess there is a lull right before Oscar contenders burst onto the scene, and it's possible the cinematic world could be holding its breath in desperate anticipation of this Friday's Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but whatever the case may be, my options were limited. So we escaped the rain and the crowds and ducked into Ghost Town.

If you haven't seen the BBC version of The Office, you haven't lived. Or, more accurately, you haven't experienced the uniquely soul-crushing mortification that Ricky Gervais's David Brent* can cause. Gervais is so associated with the character that it's difficult to separate him from David in other shows and movies (like HBO's Extras), yet somewhere along the line, Ricky clearly met and carefully studied a former roommate of mine. This dear fellow (you are close to my heart, dude), who eventually became a fine, upstanding, caring creature, was formerly quite content living life as a tidy little snot. Bertram Pincus, D.D.S. (Gervais) is not so misguided that he thinks he's happy this way, it's just that he thinks this is the way things have to be. People are obnoxious, everything is stupid, you live alone, you die alone, let's just get on with it.

Gosh, it even makes my heart break just to remember it. He gets better, of course, but at a slower, more realistic pace than you might expect from a film of this ilk. I mean, the rest of the movie is classic romantic comedy drivel that would be in danger of collapsing into an overly silly heap, but Bertram Pincus, D.D.S...he's the kind of character that can elevate even a horribly-titled film about ghosts living in New York City. Well, whatever, I guess some sort of device had to set the wheels of poignancy in motion so that Bertram can find the motivation to change his tune, and it might as well be ghosts who need closure or something. Greg Kinnear can phone it in all he wants, it doesn't matter. Everyone in this film is just a backdrop to the least glamorous person in it -- a dentist who becomes a tiny bit happier. Who says a horribly-titled romantic comedy can't be beautiful?** Turns out all you need to do is just provide it with an overdone framework, next to which an extraordinary talent looks even better. Maybe you keep a couple of other goals in mind too, like not casting the reigning starlet, or directing it with an elegant hand, but after that, you should be set.

I can't guarantee that if you see this film you'll be surprised or amazed or astounded, but chances are, you will wonder why it feels so different. 'Tis the long lost shadow of the everyman! And, except for the whole talking to ghosts thing, maybe it's OK to watch someone's life change in a more ordinary way. It can't be Stardust every year, right?***

*You may know the character as Steve Carell's Michael Scott.
**Answer: a lot of people.
***Ricky Gervais is actually in Stardust too! Totally coincidence, I swear.

[rating 3.5/5]

4 stars!

(from my review at RVAnews)

"The producer of the American Pie movies made a film adaptation of my favorite book."

The very idea is enough to cause one's chest to constrict in horror, even as you scramble to get to an advance screening. Even thinking about it now, after I've actually seen (and approved) the film makes me shiver a little. Although, if you think about it, it's actually a win/win situation for someone like me, because if I hate it, even the pain of seeing something I love so much get unflinchingly bastardized and misunderstood won't be enough to dampen the pleasure of making jokes like "Sorry, director Chris Weitz! No room for teen cliches here! Take your red cup full of Natural Light and go home! MILF! Stifler! Warm apple pie!"

Yikes, as you can see, I've lost a little of my zazzle. I never got to come up with any particularly cutting jokes in order to defend the honor of one of my most treasured pieces of literature. Nope, not while these visions of polar bears ripping each other's faces off dancing in my head. Because the brilliant worlds created by author Philip Pullman are one thing to read about but quite another to see projected onto a giant screen in rich, glowing color. The lights, the costumes, the actors, the music, the sweeping scenery...this movie is a movie among movies. It's thrilling and startling and above all, as totally and completely creative as all movies with that kind of huge budget ought to be.

But, to be honest, you should really just use it as a visual guide, a series of illustrations maybe, or an accompaniment to the printed page. Not that I'm one of those poor souls who believes every film adaptation should faithfully represent every single bit of its parent book. Different medium, different set of tools, I say. It's not possible for the complexities of Pullman's language to come through in a film, much less the full extend of the intelligence he uses to create a world in which humankind and its culture has just progressed a tad differently than ours did. The movie doesn't have the luxury of going off into tangents or playing with word origins. Its goal is to tell the story of the novel while showing off its bitchin' effects. And combining those with an almost perfect cast (Dakota Blue Richards is perfect as the untamed, tale-spinning, fiercely courageous Lyra, but somehow the genteel voice of Ian McKellen doesn't quite fit with a giant, angry armored polar bear), the film more than succeeds at what it sets out to do. Even Nicole Kidman's blonde Mrs. Coulter - a seemingly far cry from the curvy, dark-haired villain of the book - was chilly enough to satisfy, and if anyone other than Sam Elliott had been cast as Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby, I might have walked out as fast as the young kids in our theater the minute the polar bears started sparring.*

So with all this glorious big-budget fantasy filmmaking at hand, so what if the story is dumbed down a little? These books aren't even for kids anyway, not really. I mean I'm positive your particular kids are astonishingly bright, but the average 8-year-old is just not going to understand theological questions about the soul, divinity, and free will. Not to mention that a lot of the brilliance of Pullman's idea - infinite worlds coexisting in parallel - depends on a fairly classical knowledge of history. Been hearing some of the rumblings from religious quarters about this film? This is no Harry Potter. They actually have something concrete to protest with this one, no doubt about it. Although it seems to me that the book's message that the organized, magisterial church is distorting religion for its own greed isn't exactly revolutionary -- the battle between the clergy and individual interpretation of one's faith has been going on for centuries, we all know that. And even if it hadn't, who cares. I didn't see anyone protesting the Chronicles of Narnia. It helps the book/film's overall premise anyway to have an angry religious group telling you to boycott it ("See? SEE how the Church wants to control you??"). The positioning of the Church as the villain is watered a bit in the film -- the word "Church" is everywhere replaced by the word "Magisterium" -- but never fear, it'll surface. It must, if they plan to make the other two episodes in the series.

But the movie is clearly trying to capture the attention of both a young audience and a mature one, so it hands you a simplified summary of what's going on straight away. Within the first five minutes of the film, a narrator is telling you things that it takes you chapters to discover in the book, but it just serves to provide a nice knowledge base, so that you can focus on the action without worrying too much about deciphering the scientific delights of the story. And even though the book is certainly a thinkpiece, Weitz (who also wrote the screenplay) still had plenty of material at hand to transform into an action-packed tale. The diminutive Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon (a daemon is the outward representation of your soul that manifests as an animal - kinda like a pet that can read your mind) get into so many scrapes and run into so many amazing characters in so many different places that it's more than enough to warrant a movie version. Like Star Wars, this trilogy takes advantage of several different types of settings, so if frozen tundra isn't your bag, look forward to major changes in the future. And like Lord of the Rings, the scenery is stunning. Lyra and friends crunch across an icy landscape that is so convincing as to be almost uncomfortable in its bleakness. Lovely cinematography not just of "the North," but also the dusky rooftops of Lyra's Oxford and the academic environs of Jordan College give a promising preview of what is to come. For if you thought Lyra was pretty brilliant in her own world, wait until she bursts into some others. This one, to turn a phrase, is just the tip of the iceberg.

*ARMORED BEARS!! FIGHTING ARMORED BEARS!! May I recommend a pleasant evening at Enchanted if you have young children?

David Yates, 2007

4 out of 5 stars

(from my review at Lost At Sea)

A few hours before I sat through the endless fantasy-type previews that predicated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (yes, you may refer to it as Harry Potter Is Disturbingly Muscular if you like), my favorite favorite NPR employee, Kai Ryssdal, referred on the air to Ms. Rowling’s brilliantly marketed franchise as “that Potter book.” Ah, Kai, you are so right, I thought, at least as far as the movies go. The last one, Goblet of Fire to the in-crowd, was so forgettable that I had written off the films as a progressively weak visual money-maker aimed at those so HP-obsessed that reading a mere book does not satisfy them.*

Gary Oldman is like Johnny Depp's older, less flashy, almost as hot brother.

“There is simply too much going on in these later books,” I said to myself (and probably anyone within earshot), “to reasonably fit into one movie.” Two years later, Order of the Phoenix promised to uphold my theory, especially since the film seemed to have been practically forgotten by the media, due to the irrepressible excitement of the final book’s impending release.** Harry is a little more sophisticated now, a little more troubled. He’s annoyed with his friends, he can’t figure out girls, and he has zero patience for anyone telling him what to do – that’s a pretty good summation of a 15 year old, I think. Luckily, cute little Firebolt-ridin’, spell-spoutin’, owl-lovin’ Daniel Radcliffe has grown up into someone who can change with the character. Unfortunately, the movies are so brief that Harry is really the only character that is explored in any depth, but that’s okay. In this film at least, he’s interesting enough to carry it. And let’s be honest, it’s not called Neville Longbottom and the Affinity for Plants. Harry is the main event, and Radcliffe is earning his keep.

Harry goes blind and his friends try to trick him into believing that he's relaxing on a beach when actually they just threw some salt on the floor of the Gryffindor common room. Assholes.

David Yates’s direction has a lot to do with the compellingness of Order of the Phoenix as well. The last film seemed to recognize that the entire story wouldn’t represent well in two hours, but the end result felt as though someone had attempted to abbreviate the bigger parts so as to make way for little, insignificant parts that may be hilarious and meaningful in the book but get too much screentime and distract us from what is really going on. Yates cuts out a fair amount of Rowling’s prose but somehow, it works. Instead of touching lightly upon everything, he has enough time to linger on key moments, drawing our attention to some really good jokes, letting us absorb Harry’s frustration to the fullest extent, and finally, finally getting in some good old-fashioned romance.

This is as far as it gets, thank goodness, because I'm not convinced anyone's had a talk with Harry yet about the birds and the bees. Maybe in the next one, Snape will sit him down and go over it. Haha JK, Dumbledore has way more experience.

Purists, of course, can never be satisfied. Right at this moment they’re complaining happily about the lack of screentime for Tonks, the absence of Rita Skeeter, and the (blessed) elimination of the rooms and rooms Harry has to go through before he has his final battle (I don’t have an encyclopedic memory, don’t worry, I just finished the book a couple weeks ago). Movies aren’t books and shouldn’t be treated as such. They work with different ingredients and present a much less detailed final product. There’s a reason that the special extended editions (which don’t even begin to approximate the complexity of the wordy tomes upon which they are based) of Lord of the Rings are available separately – sometimes Tom Bombadil and his endless songs make you want to slit your own wrists and don’t deny it!

This kid (Evanna Lynch) was tops as Luna Lovegood.

David Yates is making the next film, too. I’m guessing somebody else noticed the improvements. We’ll see how he does next year, at which point I will have reversed my opinion on the value of editing after someone leaves out one word of The Golden Compass and my heart explodes into a million pieces.

*I’m not “hatin’” here. I am no better. I LEAPT out of my seat during The Golden Compass preview and practically SHOUTED “That is literally the BEST children’s book in the HISTORY of BOOKS and CHILDREN.” Even the trailer made the pulse quicken. Holy crap.

**Many thanks to ol’ J.K. for ending it when she did. Teen dramas never ever survive college. Unless you have a guy with flip-up sunglasses and a girl named Whitley.

I wish I could wrap it up right there, because really, that’s as far as I can get with the good points. Call me crazy, but I can’t fully get behind a film that is entirely lacking in that unfortunately necessary aspect of filmmaking, what the ancients called “story.”

Sure, there’s a premise. The world has gone nuts in the last twenty years, and people have simply lost the ability to reproduce. Using a classic technique of futuristic filmmakers, Cuaron plants some peripheral news stories and advertisements, from which we glean a couple of explanatory details: other major cities are toast, Britain perseveres, and the government hands out suicide kits in case it all gets too, too terrible. The rest of the world wants to live in England but England resists, and the subsequent fighting allows Cuaron to create a grey and black rubble-filled landscape, reminiscent of a post-blitzkrieg Europe. In the least surprising surprise ever, somebody gets pregnant for the first time in eighteen years and has to be kept safe.

So what’s the lesson here? We’re being punished by infertility because…what? We didn’t take care of the environment? We had some sort of plague? We didn’t eat organic food? We didn’t love one another? Even those semi-lame reasons would be better than nothing, which is what Children of Men gives us. A whole lot of nothing. No reasons, no purpose, no solution. There are good people and bad people, but we’re not told why the good are good and the bad are bad. There’s chaos and destruction, but we don’t know how it started and we certainly don’t know how Britain was spared.**

Basically, the film tells us that if we’re not careful, our future could turn really bleak really fast (the characters constantly hint that the decline began somewhere around 2007, implying to the 2007 captive audience that we should act fast before the despair is upon us!), and boy, I would almost be convinced if I knew what we’re supposed to be careful about.

For a film that looks really cool and has you on the edge of your seat and all that, the Google image search for "children of men" reveals a whole lot of pictures of people just talking to each other.

It doesn’t help that I just read The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), which also deals with a future gone to rot due to infertility and an effed up social system. Reasons for this are eventually made clear – reliance on chemicals, xenophobia, and a feminist movement that was used and twisted beyond all recognition. The consequences, though lacking in explosions and grit, are much more terrifying, the more so because we can actually see attitudes and behaviors in our present moving towards a future that doesn’t seem so fictional anymore. Next to great works like A Handmaid’s Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 28 Days Later and even 12 Monkeys, Children of Men is ultimately empty and soulless. Even Soylent Green was more motivating because, I’m sorry, no matter how much it would blow to live in a world with no new life, it would blow way, way more to have to eat Grandpa.

*However, specks of blood on the camera lens immediately negate suspension of disbelief. If someone is hiding behind that pile of dirt with Clive Owen and filming his distress, why isn’t he being helped by the cameraman, etc. etc.
**Manners.

I wish I could wrap it up right there, because really, that’s as far as I can get with the good points. Call me crazy, but I can’t fully get behind a film that is entirely lacking in that unfortunately necessary aspect of filmmaking, what the ancients called “story.”

Sure, there’s a premise. The world has gone nuts in the last twenty years, and people have simply lost the ability to reproduce. Using a classic technique of futuristic filmmakers, Cuaron plants some peripheral news stories and advertisements, from which we glean a couple of explanatory details: other major cities are toast, Britain perseveres, and the government hands out suicide kits in case it all gets too, too terrible. The rest of the world wants to live in England but England resists, and the subsequent fighting allows Cuaron to create a grey and black rubble-filled landscape, reminiscent of a post-blitzkrieg Europe. In the least surprising surprise ever, somebody gets pregnant for the first time in eighteen years and has to be kept safe.

So what’s the lesson here? We’re being punished by infertility because…what? We didn’t take care of the environment? We had some sort of plague? We didn’t eat organic food? We didn’t love one another? Even those semi-lame reasons would be better than nothing, which is what Children of Men gives us. A whole lot of nothing. No reasons, no purpose, no solution. There are good people and bad people, but we’re not told why the good are good and the bad are bad. There’s chaos and destruction, but we don’t know how it started and we certainly don’t know how Britain was spared.**

Basically, the film tells us that if we’re not careful, our future could turn really bleak really fast (the characters constantly hint that the decline began somewhere around 2007, implying to the 2007 captive audience that we should act fast before the despair is upon us!), and boy, I would almost be convinced if I knew what we’re supposed to be careful about.

For a film that looks really cool and has you on the edge of your seat and all that, the Google image search for "children of men" reveals a whole lot of pictures of people just talking to each other.

It doesn’t help that I just read The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), which also deals with a future gone to rot due to infertility and an effed up social system. Reasons for this are eventually made clear – reliance on chemicals, xenophobia, and a feminist movement that was used and twisted beyond all recognition. The consequences, though lacking in explosions and grit, are much more terrifying, the more so because we can actually see attitudes and behaviors in our present moving towards a future that doesn’t seem so fictional anymore. Next to great works like A Handmaid’s Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 28 Days Later and even 12 Monkeys, Children of Men is ultimately empty and soulless. Even Soylent Green was more motivating because, I’m sorry, no matter how much it would blow to live in a world with no new life, it would blow way, way more to have to eat Grandpa.

*However, specks of blood on the camera lens immediately negate suspension of disbelief. If someone is hiding behind that pile of dirt with Clive Owen and filming his distress, why isn’t he being helped by the cameraman, etc. etc.
**Manners.

I think it’s safe to say that our current moviegoing culture is tolerant if not celebratory regarding fantasy movies. Narnia was a big deal last year. Then there’s Harry Potter, and of course Lord of the Rings was the world’s first film project to rake in an actual gazillion dollars. However, something about the new release Eragon comes across as laughable and ridiculous. Is it the dragon eggs? Evil princes? John Malkovich?

Maybe I’m wrong and director Stefen Fangmeier* will revolutionize filmmaking as we know it, and the world will never be able to return to its former pre-Eragon state. Luckily, I have someone to prepare me for this lifechanging possibility. What follows is an interview with moviegoer Cam, who had the good fortune to catch an advance screening of Eragon last week. His experience intrigued me, and I asked him for a few minutes of his time so that we the public could better comprehend what it’s like to offer up 104 minutes of your life to the dragon.

"Arrrgh!!! I hate destiny!!"

So, Cam, was it like a fantastical mind-altering drug that changed the way you see the world?
It really was, Susan. It was like a little blue pill, shaped kind of like an egg. Every time I saw the egg, I got a vision of the future. It was bleak. It was two dimensional. It was a future without a past and, strangely enough, without a foreseeable future. It lived purely in the moment, and suspended all disbelief of its own existence. Sound crazy? I know. I could hardly believe it myself. I just didn’t think they made movies like this these days.

Who was your favorite mystical beast and what do you think this says about you?
That would have to be the back-story. It was so mystical, in fact, that it never even appeared in the movie. What it says about me? Well, Susan, I think it says I HATE FAIRY TALES WITH NO MEAT ON THEIR BONES.

"So, I said to the evil prince, 'There's NO WAY you're going through with your plan,' and he was all 'Oh yeah?' and I was all 'Yeah!'"
"You're dreamy. Is that an egg?"

Did you totally jump when the mystery of Eragon’s heritage was revealed? (I know nothing about the book this film was based on, but I’m assuming that’s gotta be part of it.)
There was no jumping, but there was a lot of wiping my face from forehead to chin with the palm of my hand, like a working-class father of seven who’s just been handed a pink slip two weeks before Christmas.

If you could recast the main characters, who would you choose?
Your question is obviously presumptuous of my disliking this film, which is on target, but you know Susan, I just don’t know if that would cure the problem. Jeremy Irons can be great when he’s allowed to say what he wants (see his instructions on how to keep kids out of a parent’s bedroom from his 12/13 appearance on Conan. John Malkovich is obviously a very capable actor as well, but here he’s caged by a crap role with a crap script and one failure of an evil deputy whose character would have at least provided some comic relief, were it to have been played by Christopher Walken. So I guess that’s your answer: Christopher Walken would make a better evil deputy than Robert Carlyle. Go figure.

"Wait, we're a video game."

What was the one single best part of the film?
It would have to have been the point when I realized how fun/appropriate it would have been for me to start screaming “EXIT THE DRAGON! EXIT THE DRAGON!”

Do you find that your life has changed now that it’s getting around that you’ve seen an ADVANCE SCREENING of ERAGON?
Well, I do feel I have an advantage over those who don’t see this movie and are duped into seeing the overtly hinted-at sequel via the notion of “Well, I missed the first one, but it must have been good enough to warrant a sequel, so…” Consequently, I’ll be 10 dollars richer than those fools, and that’s all the “change” I need.

*That guy has no choice but to become a director of a movie about dragons.

I think it’s safe to say that our current moviegoing culture is tolerant if not celebratory regarding fantasy movies. Narnia was a big deal last year. Then there’s Harry Potter, and of course Lord of the Rings was the world’s first film project to rake in an actual gazillion dollars. However, something about the new release Eragon comes across as laughable and ridiculous. Is it the dragon eggs? Evil princes? John Malkovich?

Maybe I’m wrong and director Stefen Fangmeier* will revolutionize filmmaking as we know it, and the world will never be able to return to its former pre-Eragon state. Luckily, I have someone to prepare me for this lifechanging possibility. What follows is an interview with moviegoer Cam, who had the good fortune to catch an advance screening of Eragon last week. His experience intrigued me, and I asked him for a few minutes of his time so that we the public could better comprehend what it’s like to offer up 104 minutes of your life to the dragon.

"Arrrgh!!! I hate destiny!!"

So, Cam, was it like a fantastical mind-altering drug that changed the way you see the world?
It really was, Susan. It was like a little blue pill, shaped kind of like an egg. Every time I saw the egg, I got a vision of the future. It was bleak. It was two dimensional. It was a future without a past and, strangely enough, without a foreseeable future. It lived purely in the moment, and suspended all disbelief of its own existence. Sound crazy? I know. I could hardly believe it myself. I just didn’t think they made movies like this these days.

Who was your favorite mystical beast and what do you think this says about you?
That would have to be the back-story. It was so mystical, in fact, that it never even appeared in the movie. What it says about me? Well, Susan, I think it says I HATE FAIRY TALES WITH NO MEAT ON THEIR BONES.

"So, I said to the evil prince, 'There's NO WAY you're going through with your plan,' and he was all 'Oh yeah?' and I was all 'Yeah!'"
"You're dreamy. Is that an egg?"

Did you totally jump when the mystery of Eragon’s heritage was revealed? (I know nothing about the book this film was based on, but I’m assuming that’s gotta be part of it.)
There was no jumping, but there was a lot of wiping my face from forehead to chin with the palm of my hand, like a working-class father of seven who’s just been handed a pink slip two weeks before Christmas.

If you could recast the main characters, who would you choose?
Your question is obviously presumptuous of my disliking this film, which is on target, but you know Susan, I just don’t know if that would cure the problem. Jeremy Irons can be great when he’s allowed to say what he wants (see his instructions on how to keep kids out of a parent’s bedroom from his 12/13 appearance on Conan. John Malkovich is obviously a very capable actor as well, but here he’s caged by a crap role with a crap script and one failure of an evil deputy whose character would have at least provided some comic relief, were it to have been played by Christopher Walken. So I guess that’s your answer: Christopher Walken would make a better evil deputy than Robert Carlyle. Go figure.

"Wait, we're a video game."

What was the one single best part of the film?
It would have to have been the point when I realized how fun/appropriate it would have been for me to start screaming “EXIT THE DRAGON! EXIT THE DRAGON!”

Do you find that your life has changed now that it’s getting around that you’ve seen an ADVANCE SCREENING of ERAGON?
Well, I do feel I have an advantage over those who don’t see this movie and are duped into seeing the overtly hinted-at sequel via the notion of “Well, I missed the first one, but it must have been good enough to warrant a sequel, so…” Consequently, I’ll be 10 dollars richer than those fools, and that’s all the “change” I need.

*That guy has no choice but to become a director of a movie about dragons.