Boxer vs. Schwarzenegger – not even close

It’s two years away, but Schwarzenegger isn’t impressing anyone right now.

Addendum: Schwarzenegger is refusing almost a billion in stimulus money for the unemployed, even though he’d previously promised to buck the party line.  Rush’s stranglehold is complete.

Please, please, please read the novel first!

The trailer looks good, though already some of the lines have dumbed down the Watchmen storyline.  There’s an obsession in popular film these days to explain everything in the dialogue because they don’t trust the audience to have the brains to figure it out on their own.

It opened tonight at the Broadway Theater.

I’ve already said my piece. I am trying to keep my children from seeing Lord of the Rings before they’ve had the opportunity to experience the novel.  I’m reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to him before he sees the film.  I just hope he can reach the appropriate age to read the very intense graphic novel before the experience is denied him.  The novel is so intricately layered and an emotional roller coaster which explores in unmatched complexity the fine line between good and evil and specifically whether certain acts are unjustified even if you are trying to save a world.  It applies to the war on terror.  It applies to the good intentioned communist mindset upon coming to power.  It applies to every consideration of violence as a means to a just end.

There is one copy in the Fortuna branch of the library.  I’ve lent my copy out, but I should have it back soon.  The comic store on Broadway should have copies.  Get it.  Read it.  The movie will probably be out for awhile, and it’ll probably come to Garberville a couple months down the road.

Lastly, it’s not what you think.  It’s much more.

Addendum: A review which seems to validate some of my fears.  Some key passages:

Alan Moore, who has refused to have his name on the movie (ditto its Moore-based predecessors, “V for Vendetta” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”) and who has declined all reimbursement to protest the entertainment industry’s fundamental lack of respect for intellectual property, counts as a bona fide visionary.

His 1986 comic book is a landmark in the history of the form, a masterpiece of pop cultural angst, filtering Cold War nihilism and disillusionment through the inspired pulp idiom of mundane masked crimefighters and one genuine, possibly radioactive, superhero.

….

But too many key scenes ring hollow, undermined by flat staging and tone-deaf treatment. One of them is the ridiculous moment when Dr. Manhattan’s faith in humanity is restored by the revelation of …

Well, see it for yourself, and then compare with the infinitely more nuanced passage in the graphic novel.

….

The considerable limitations of Swedish-Canadian actress Malin Akerman are cruelly exposed as Laurie, aka Silk Spectre II, and if Matthew Goode (playing Adrian Veidt) is the smartest man in the world, then we’re really in trouble.

….

I guess an honest reproduction of a great comic book is better than the trivialization that often passes for adaptation, and in this case the material is so ingrained with audacious ideas the movie can’t be counted a complete cop-out. But if it was really going to honor the original, “Watchmen” had to put the fear of God in us, to rekindle that prospect of imminent nuclear annihilation that haunted the Cold War world. And it had to remind us these rather sorry comic book characters were, as Moore insisted, more human than super.

Snyder flunks that test. Yes it will hit the box office like a tidal wave, but ultimately the numb, enervating “Watchmen” is living on borrowed time. No smiley face here.

but I will watch it, hopefully this weekend, and make up my own mind