Hey, hope everyone had a great weekend. I had a pretty relaxing though slightly uneventful three days. Got in some good basketball playing with the Kaiser Roll, saw Pirates 3, and worked on some screenwriting that I'd been meaning to get into for a long while. Now it's back into the fold, but man, things are rarely boring here in the entertainment biz. I come into work today and all kinds of things are goin' on at NBC. Check the entertainment news sites and welcome to the craziness that is network television ...
I'd like to make a mention of a favorite actor of mine who passed away this weekend. Charles Nelson Reilly is not someone whose career I was very familiar with until I began reading some of the articles and obituaries over the last few days, but it's no surprise to me in reading them how beloved and influential the guy was. For me, Reilly was best known as Jose Chung, a role he played to perfection on Millenium and in the X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." I've mentioned it before, but the latter is to me the greatest episode of television ever made. It's hilarious, brilliant, insightful into the human condition, and endlessly rewatchable, and it's one of the pieces of television that made me say "aha, I think this is what I want to do for a living." Reilly played Jose Chung with wit, humor, and an almost tragic sense of cynicsm. If From Outer Space is my all-time favorite TV episode, then the Millennium episode, "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" - an amazing critique of a Scientology-esque cult, is not far behind. Both, brilliantly written by Darin Morgan, present Chung as a feisty old writer searching for relevance in a world where he is known for his past successes rather than his current endeavors (even the usually business-like Agent Scully called his best-known book, The Caligarian Candidate, "one of the greatest thrillers ever written") . Chung, through his writing, is confronted with the darkest depths of humanity yet deals with them through his world-weary humor and knowing sense of truth. Reilly was simply brilliant in these episodes, and now, hearing about his long career of making people laugh, pushing the boundaries of acceptable humor, and his classic repartee with legends like Johnny Carson, I see that he was more than just Jose Chung, but a true icon of the stage and screen. Still, I can't help but remember him as the man behind two of the all-time great television guest-starring roles. Some classic Reilly-as-Chung quotes in his honor:
"I once knew your god. He worshipped me: he thought I was a literary genius. And I was then. Then he asked me what I thought of his writing and I told him: "Goopta, you stink." Because he did! I never saw a grown man cry so hard, for so long. I put my arm around him, I said, "It doesn't matter that I don't like your work! What matters is that you enjoy doing it, you must do what makes you happy." But what I didn't know was that what made him happy was to be a deity! So you are here to kill me because I once told God to not be dark. Isn't that funny? So feel free to use your Onan-o-Graph and your therapies, if that's what it takes to make you happy. And I truly mean that; good luck to you, buddy. But please allow me to wallow in my own misery in peace. And if I should look up from my "downbeat abyss" and find you a fool, that's no right of you to commit upon me a foolish act."
"I humbly add my own prophecy of what the dawn of the new millennium shall bring forth: one thousand more years of the same, old crap."
"Then there are those who care not about extraterrestrials, searching for meaning in other human beings. Rare or lucky are those who find it. For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways on this planet, we are all ... alone."
PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 3 Review:
- What can I say, I love these Pirates movies. When it comes down to these flicks, I am reduced to a 12 year old fanboy chomping at the bit to once again jump into this wonderful world of rogues, wenches, fish-people, and high seas adventure. What can I say, Pirates are the definition of cool. They were rock stars centuries before Elvis Presley ever took to the stage. As a kid, I loved nothing more than riding the Pirates of the Carribean ride in Disney World. A Pirate's life for me! I looked forward to trips to Cape Cod just to go to Pirate's Cove miniature golf course. I read up on Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. The one thing I never really got was a good pirate movie to see in the theaters ... that is until the first Pirates film came along a few years back. Since then, I've totally loved this series. I enjoyed Part 2, with all its over-the-top, cartoonish action and comic book-esque plot as much if not more than Part 1. And yeah, for me, Part 3 was another great ride that left me more than satisfied, once again drifting off into dreamland dreaming of sailing the seven seas in search of buried trasure and untold adventure.
Really though, I don't think my fanboy love for these films, and for Part 3 in particular, is without merit. The negativity I've heard toward the third film in the franchise always focuses on the plot being convoluted and the movie overstuffed. However, I really think that those who dwell on this are missing the point. The meat of the movie is really quite simple - Will Turner, Elizabeth Swan, and Jack Sparrow. Two are star-crossed lovers thrown into the world of pirates and forced to adapt to its moral murkiness and crafty characters. The third is the classic rogue supporting character - there to cause trouble, stir the pot, and leave the other characters caught between grudging admiration for his villainous charm and weary contempt of his tendency to double cross a friend at the drop of a hat. That is Pirates in a nutshell - the rest is just color. But man, what color it is.
I can't help but be blown away with Pirates 3 for its sheer overflow of artistry and craft. Sure, this is a huge big-budget summer popcorn movie, but watching the imagination and detail on display reminded me more of the quirkier works of a Jim Henson or Terry Gilliam. Other blockbusters have beasts and creatures that look to have been designed by a marketing department. Pirates has characters that look like the product of someone's very fertile imagination - straight from the page, the pen, the brush - onto the movie screen. Davy Jones and his crew alone are just breathtaking to look at - eel creatures, men embedded in rock and stone, hammerheaded humans, and a captain with a tentacled beard who has more character in his face than most non CGI'ed actors. Everything in the movie - the costumes, the sets, the f/x - just bleeds off the screen with candy-coated visual artistry.
And of course, some of the credit for that has to go to the underrated Gore Verbinski, who directs these movies with so much visceral excitement that the action tends to grab you and not let go. Some of the action scenes here are just so well-staged, they leave you smiling ear to ear. Will and Elizabeth's climactic fight scene / dance-off / wedding was a prime example - frenetic action, impeccably staged, bursting with humor, character, and fun. I also give kudos to Gore for going a little eccentric on us in this one. The scenes with Depp in Davey Jone's Locker were wonderfully surreal and trippy, the last thing you'd expect from a mainstream Disney movie, that is, unless you have fond memories of things like Fantasia and that one acid trip scene in Dumbo. But yeah, for a guy to sneak in some kind of whacked-out modern art film into the third Pirates movie ... that's kind of cool.
Character is another area that Pirates 3 just gets right. I've heard people complain about the movie being almost overly obssessed with squeezing in literally every character from the previous films and giving each his or her own little subplot. To me, this WOULD have been an issue if each little character bit didn't turn out so consistently funny and/or amusing. I mean, I can't help but love all of the bit players that help round out the Pirates universe. Mackenzie Crook and Lee Arenberg are hilarious as usual, with some particularly classic lines ("we can still use them as clubs!"). Watching the two of them stumble their way through these adventures is always a blast. I love Chow Yun Fat here. He doesn't have a huge role, but he and his band of Asian Pirates, along with all of the other international pirate lords that convene to fend off their extinction, add yet another layer of depth and coolness to this crazy fantasy world. Chow adds a nice bit of intensity and darkness to the preceedings, and it was cool to see him pop up here ("More steam!"). And even the most hardened of hearts has to smile when Keith Richards enters the fray in full-on Captain Morgan pirate garb. Just awesome ... I also love Kevin McNally as the oh-so-piratey Mr. Gibbs. He's like some great 1950's character actor transplanted from an Errol Flynn pirate movie into the present day. When he squints towards the horizon and bellows that the winds are in the Black Pearl's favor, signalling that the tides in the battle have turned the pirates' way, I mean, the kid in me wanted to jump up and clap. And then, of course, there's Bootstrap Bill, Governor Swann, Lord Beckett and the East India Trading Company, Calypso, the always great Jack Davenport as Norrington, and a wealth of other assorted pirates, fish-people, officers, and scoundrels. Is this a crowded movie? Yes, of course. But to me that's part of the delight - it's like being a kid and opening up some dusty 1970's comic book and marveling at all of the brightly costumed characters and wondering who they all are and where they all came from and how they all fit together. The details aren't so important, its the sheer spectacle of it all that makes a lasting impression.
Geoffrey Rush ... is just on fire in this movie. I said that all of these side characters were there to add color to the world of Pirates, and none so more than Rush, who is giving it 110% here, scowling the perfect pirate scowl, screaming the perfect pirate scream, saying things like "shiver me timbers" and "avast, me mateys!" with just the right amount of unrestrained glee, all the while never losing that villainous gleam in his eye. Make no mistake about it, Captain Barbosa is never having more fun than when the $#%# really begins to hit the fan, and his enthusiasm for it all is contagious. Rush's chemistry with Depp is also really great, and the two have a number of hilarious moments together, as they double cross, scheme, and compare the sizes of their periscopes.
Bill Nighy is once again great here, giving an outlandish character like Davey Jones personality and pathos in what is a remarkable performance. Of all the characters here, it is Jones whose story feels most cumbersome at times, as the nature of he and Calypso's history and curse is never quite crystal clear. Still, when Jones and his tentacled beard are battling with Sparrow atop the Black Pearl's mast as it circles a whirpool and chaos ensues all around ... well, sue me, all is forgotten.
I give credit to Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly - in Pirates 3, they take back the series as their own in spite of all the numerous peripheral characters that are circling around them. Knightly in particular kind of re-centers the series here and it is her journey that takes center stage. Kiera as Swann is commanding and, well, pretty kickass in this third go-round - she even gave a pretty great motivational pre-battle speech at one point ... not something a woman typically does or gets to do in a movie like this. Bloom is decent, slightly bland as usual, but he gets the job done and nicely portrays a character who has come a logn way since Pirates 1.
Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, well, he deserves all of the credit he's gotten for just how well he's taken this character and made it his own. Here, Sparrow is presented as something of a genius, yet certifiably insane, talking with multiple versions of himself and encountering Sparrow in miniature, like something out of Evil Dead. Jack embodies this series spirit of comedic playfulness and adventure, and I loved where Jack ends up by movie's end - mostly alone, crew-less, left for dead - yet primed and ready to set sail on one more crazy adventure. A pirate's life for him, yo ho!
Okay, I've mostly had nothing but great things to say, and I feel it's important to say those great things, because I really genuinely love and respect what these Pirate movies have accomplished and I hate to see Part 3 lumped in with say, Spiderman 3, which missed the mark in as many ways as Pirates was spot-on. And yet, critics at EW, The Onion, and elsewhere seem intent on microanalyzing the plotline to death, since somehow to them the plot overshadowed everything else when to me, it was never the focus at all, simply the engine that gave momentum to the characters and the chaos of this fantasy universe. But yeah, the plot here is convoluted, and yes, at times I found myself frustrated with its seeming ambiguity. Calypso, for example - what was her deal, and what happened to her at movie's end? Did Davy Jones love her, hate her - did he want to see her set free? I couldn't rightly tell you, exactly. So there's that ...
The only other problem I have in this movie was the pacing. Part 1 was perfectly-paced from start to finish, with a potent mix of drama, action, and character. Part 2 was just nonstop over-the-top action and adventure that never let up, which turned off some but which I found vastly entertaining even if it was taking Part 1 - a fairly simple, straightforward pirate yarn, and making into something much larger that clearly, Part 1 was not originally intended to be the prelude to. Part 3 cuts back drastically on the bombastic action set-pieces from Part 2, but spends a bit too much time on the dynamics of the side characters (notably the Davey Jones - Calypso relationship and Beckett and the East India Trading Company). The Jones-Calyspo thing is just pretty muddled, and there's too much exposition that doesn't make things much clearer, instead just serving to really slow things down. Meanwhile, while the EITC's quest to destroy all piracy provides the impetus for much of the movie's conflict (since they are controlling Davey Jones), there isn't quite enough attention paid to this end of the story, leaving the EITC'ers pushed into the background by movie's end, lost among all the piratesand fish-people (except for the two officers who switch sides to Team Pirate, which is kind of a funny little side-plot). By about midway through the movie, things really do begin to drag a bit. But just when things are getting a bit dull, the action kicks in again in the last half hour or so and suddenly the movie hits its stride.
And while things do drag at times, the sheer number of cool moments throughout the film is more than enough to make up for it. The opening, with pirates being hanged by the dozen as the somberly chant a pirate tune, is simply great - a dark, memorable, cool scene. Then there's Sparrow in pirate purgatory, Barbosa in full scene-stealing mode, a killer half-man half-eel, Chow and his Asian pirates, Keith f'n Richards, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," Will and Elizabeth's shotgun wedding, the dog (~!), some surprisingly racy pirate-on-wench action on the beach, and the nice little after-the-credits "ten years later" coda to cap off the big love story. And that's only the half of it. Coupled with the beautiful f/x and character / set designs, kinetic action, madcap humor, and the awesome Hans Zimmer score, I enjoyed the heck out of Pirates 3, and I thank all involved for giving me three films that were pure entertainment from start to finish, that I look forward to revisiting again and often.
My Grade: A -
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