Celluloid Heroes

If we die, it will be not be for gold, but for glory.

The high-tech motion capture technique that director Robert Zemeckis uses here has improved considerably since 2004’s The Polar Express, but not enough to recommend that he use it again. True, the creepy thousand-yard stares have been cut down to about a hundred-and-seventy-five yards, but when it comes to inserting lifelike characters into fantastical environments, there is more effective technique called using actors, that worked much better in little film called 300.

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Fuck the itinerary.

Wes Anderson films are not set in the same world in which you and I live. If they were, every member of The Royal Tanenbaums would have been strangled by someone close to them. Even if the three brothers travelling by the Darjeeling Limited do not try our patience to the same degree, it is still hard to imagine them occupying the same physical universe as the rest of us. That is either a testament to the writer/director’s imagination or a damning statement about his grip on reality. For the moment, I will give Anderson the benefit of the doubt and endorse the former view.

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Folks sometimes take me for a nincompoop on account of the shabby first impression I make.

If one had no other reference with regards to the American West, they might gather from this movie that Jesse James’ notoriety came from his ability to talk people to death. Well, most of the jaw-jackin’ in this movie comes from the titular coward, but there is no shortage of talk and a relative dearth of the gunplay that one expects from a typical horse opera.

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The victory of Blu-ray over HD DVD means that it is now safe (well, safer) to whip out the credit card and plunk it down on a player. However, is it a good time to buy or are you better off waiting? The answer to this question is, as usual, “it depends.”

In this case, the factors are how much you’re willing to spend, your current home theater setup, and what you demand from your movie viewing experience.

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