Quick clips for Thursday February 26

Dainipponjin is Japanese for effed up

I ask you this now, humble blog readers: How do you resist a movie in which moderate-to-intentionally-awful computer effects are used to render a big fat guy who fights crazy monsters in Japan? Made in 2007 (predating a certain cocked han), this is the story of a drunk boob who tries to fight off evil but only makes things worse and people hate him. Devin over at Chud.com has seen it and said that it's surprisingly more of a character piece than you'd think...but whatever, it has a giant dude in a diaper fighting monsters. It's pretty much all I've ever wanted. Here, take a look:



Now, this comes to us from Magnolia/Magnet, who have been doing some pretty cool things with their "Six Shooter" series of genre-based weird films. Sometimes they sound totally unappealing to me (like Donkey Punch, a suspense film centering around an inadvertent death caused by...well, if you don't know, I'm not going to be the guy who takes your innocence from you) and sometimes they sound like Big Man Japan (which, by the by, is an awesomely intentionally shitty translation). I'm a big fan of originality and I have a feeling like this is as original as it gets.

Marvel would like you to commit to them for the rest of your natural life

Seriously? I mean...seriously? So, if you haven't heard, Marvel hit upon a deal with Sam Jackson to keep him as Nick Fury in the Iron Man/Avengers universe. This is awesome. What is staggering...and I mean knock-your-eyebrows-off crazy, is that he signed a NINE picture deal. NINE pictures. That's so many, that in order to emphasize it, I spelled it out instead of using the numeral just so I could capitalize it. NINE. Wowza. Apparently, this is now status quo for them (at least for certain roles) and may have been one of the reasons we're not getting Emily Blunt as Black Widow (still say Scarlett Johansson is trading up, but whatever). I'm of two minds on this: (1) You will obviously lose out on a LOT of good, talented people who have careers in front of them and don't want to be saddled with NINE superhero movies. Would Christian Bale do a NINE picture deal? Hell, SAM JACKSON almost didn't take a NINE picture deal, and he will literally agree to anything (I once dared him to punch a nun...nun got punched). I can't fathom the talent that will walk away from deals like this. Now, I know you don't have to sew everybody up for NINE pictures (we don't need villains with NINE picture deals), but you're still looking for a Thor and a Captain America, and I think that takes some seriously good names out of the running (still say John Hamm for Captain America...for God's sake, Tina Fey even noted that he looks like a cartoon pilot...do you need more than that?). (2) It is crazy cool for continuity. Marvel is obviously trying something new here, attempting to position themselves for on-screen comic book adventures that feel like the ones we read. Hell, they may be more coherent and consistent than the ones we read. We get to see Nick Fury in different Marvel movies as the same guy. We get to see, basically, on-screen crossovers. That's incredibly cool. The key is going to be finding the balance. I hope they're willing to go down to a SIX picture deal in order to land the right people (like, we don't need the Black Widow in our Thor movie). This is creative thinking, but could be creatively restrictive to actors. I officially have no strong opinion either way but am fascinated to see how it plays out.

Lost recap: I done told you Ben was gonna kill him

Let's dive right into the recap, because (again) not a lot happened but it means a great deal.

1.) We opened with a cool scene of the two people who rode the Ajira Air flight that we care about besides Lupidus and the rest of our gang: I don't remember their names. Creepy looking dude explored the hydra station, snagged a shotgun, lied about it to the chick who was taking Sayid somewhere, and then talked to a newly alive John Locke. Great opening. We know now that the plane landed (I'm guessing thanks to Lupidus's knowledge of the "good coordinates" given to him by Farraday in the past), and that Lupidus took off with some stuff after the landing. More importantly, we know that the six were removed from the plane during the flash of light and that they were not on the plane when it crashed. The reason? My guess is they were over the island when one of the time flashes came and they slipped back in time with the other people on the island. So, the people Locke is with are in 2008 and Jack's gang and Sawyer's gang are in the past. Got it?

2.) We see Locke land in Tunisia and have an AWESOME conversation with Widmore. More on him later. Basically, he says that "A war is coming" and John needs to get back to the island and that he'll help him. He assigns Abbadon to drive him around and help him. They meet with all of the Oceanic Six but Sun (because John was going to keep his promise to Jin about not bringing her back). All of them shoot him down. He then finds out that Helen is dead. He loved her, and now she's worm food. He is sad. After Ben guns down Abbadon, John goes driving around...oh wait, I forgot the worst part of the whole show: WALT! After weeks of my bitching and crying, my desperate NEED for them to prove to me that Walt's storyline wasn't simply abandoned material, that he still MEANT something to the show...Locke talks to him for two seconds on the street. That's it. "Hi John" "Hi Walt." "See you later." "Okay." That's it? Really. If I'm scoring the breadth of "Lost" out of 100, Nikki and Paolo lost about 5 points off that score...this loses about 10. Now, that could be gained back by cool things happening later, but I am SOOOO disappointed in this jettisoned storyline that I can't put it into words. You screwed the pooch on this one gang. No question about it.

3.) Okay, anyway, so Locke is all sad because he's a loser (again); he's a leader no one will follow and a coward. So, he decides to follow Abbadon's implicit advice and Richard's specific suggestion and kill himself. But Ben shows up...and does it for him. The scene was chilling and cruel, with Ben playing on Locke's cowardice. Locke allows Ben to convince him of things because he doesn't WANT to lead, he wants to be important without having to actually sacrifice himself. This is why Jack is the real leader between the two, because he would die if needs be to get his goals accomplished.

First, a little about the Jack thing: The way this whole death played out really reinforced the Jack = Jacob theory to me. First, because Locke CLEARLY isn't a leader and Jack is. Second, because we know now that Locke isn't Jacob and that was always the only other reasonable answer.

Second, my friend and fellow Reader writer Ben, not the murderous pathological liar Ben, didn't much care for the scene of Locke's murder. He basically held that Ben's motivation seemed to contrived and that the whole thing didn't play right. I, on the other hand, LOVED it. And not just because it was the most outlandish prediction I've ever been 100% right on (yessssss!) but because it finally put the ideas we had about Ben Linus to rest once and for all. No, no he is not secretly a good guy. No, he isn't "trying to do the right thing," no matter how sincere he appears to be when telling us that. He is a ruthless, cold-blooded, lying, heartless, in-it-for-himself murderer and if you don't believe me, rewatch him strangling the life out of John Locke in order to get ahead. The question now becomes "is my enemy's enemy my friend?" Meaning, does this mean Widmore is a good guy? Think about it: Yes, Keamie's tactics on the island (like killing Alex) were way out of line...but how do you possibly stop Ben Linus? Widmore knew all of Ben's tricks, what with having lived on the island himself, so he knew that stopping him could take a well-armed, well-positioned army. But he also included Farraday, chick-with-the-face-who-was-too-small-for-her-head, and Miles...wait a minute! Crazy thought: Widmore was 17 when...HE FIRST MET THOSE THREE. This explains why he would include those seemingly disconnected individuals on this trip; in fact, Abbadon was the one who contacted them and found them, per Widmore's instructions, because he KNEW they had to go to the island because he met them in the past. Uh oh, that's serious nosebleed time travel thinking there. Sorry about that. Anyway, is Widmore a good guy? Question of the day.

Overall, good episode. I'm going to start grading them now, I decided. I would give this one a solid B+, losing out on the A because of Walt. Now EVERYBODY is back on the island. Let's get this show on the road.