Watchmen (*** ¼) (spoilers)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

What the fuck is this shit - didn't 'half' used to be Alt-172? Where the fuck is 1/2? No, I didn't mean a quarter star, I did not mean to give the movie that. It's three AND ONE HALF stars for Watchmen. Jesus Christ, I would pay two hundred dollars for a buckling spring keyboard that had all the extended ANSI characters on them, towards the top or side or something.

Let me get this bit out of the way from the get-go, so you can determine whether or not this review will provide any value to you: the opening to Watchmen features a set of opening credits that is probably the high water mark of ... well, I was going to say "genre," but credits aren't a genre. But the entire movie is about alternate history, so let's go ahead and shunt ourselves into one where opening credits are their own genre, and awards are given for them, and in that, the Silhouette (a very minor character in the film) re-enacts this photo for Victory in Europe day.

I'm not even going to get into my own issues about the bob cut, I knew I was in for a great movie with that bit.

(The opening credits have been pulled by Warner Bros, but they are currently up right here. Be quick.)

http://www.justpressplay.net/movies/mov ... nline.html

But here's the thing - and everyone I know has already seen it, so Captain Metropolis is gonna turn off the "spoilers!" sign - the very first living photograph listed depicts the original Nite Owl saving the parents of frigging Batman.

I had to go back and look when I read this on the net. Yeah, that's Thomas and Martha Wayne, all right. DC owns the IP for both Batman and Watchmen, so there isn't even a bit of doubt in that sense. What I'm trying to say is:

1) Best credits I've ever experienced
2) The amount of detail in this film is staggering

It's EVERYWHERE. And not just in relation to the comic book, although that's present. The stuff that director Zack Snyder cared enough to put in drives home the fact that people actually cared about making this film. The folders on Ozymandias's GeOS-style computer. The fact that the Comedian uses a Silk Spectre zippo lighter. Watchmen, the movie, is brimming with content. Chatlog time!

Pinback: Watchmen is four (4) minutes shorter than Benjamin Button.
ICJ: ...

And Pinner, Kathy and I made jokes about who the President would be when we got out of Benjamin Button! What kind of asshole would then say that Watchmen was rushed?

Watchmen needed another half hour - it didn't need more scenes, it didn't need more content, but it was like people interact with their senile grandparents, just rushing through it and trying to squeeze everything in. The part that sticks out to me is when the Comedian guns down a woman in Vietnam and then just immediately starts talking to Dr. Manhattan like nothing happened. And yes, I'm sure to the character the Comedian, shooting people in the face is no big deal. Everyone here's been desensitized to violence thanks to first person shooters (confidential to Col. Grossman, US Army: you were right about everything, they really ARE murder simulators, haw haw haw) so it's not like we wouldn't make the same choice, but there was a certain, I don't know - the pacing was a bit off? There was little build-up, little tension? It wasn't as dramatic as it could have been?

This is a fairly weak complaint. A stronger one is that the character of Ozymandias was butchered (it is seriously surprising to learn the role he plays in the comic - in the movie, who else could the Republic Serial Villain, sorry, Comic Book Villain be?) for time reasons. Also, I don't mean literally butchered, ALTHOUGH now that you mention it, there is a scene where (etc.).

It was good. I liked it. The comic's still better though.

*** AND A HALF OUT OF FOUR.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I'm gonna link this so I can remind myself to read it later. It's a transcript of a round table discussion about the comic from a while back:

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton ... nt-page-1/

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are there.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Another thing I learned today (more spoilers): the Simon & Garfunkel song, "The Sounds of Silence" was written by Paul Simon after JFK was shot.

It was playing during the Comedian's funeral... in Watchmen, the Comedian is the guy who killed Kennedy.

[bruce]

What the fuck is this shit - didn't 'half' used to be Alt-172? Where the fuck is 1/2? No, I didn't mean a quarter star, I did not mean to give the movie that. It's three AND ONE HALF stars for Watchmen. Jesus Christ, I would pay two hundred dollars for a buckling spring keyboard that had all the extended ANSI characters on them, towards the top or side or something.

It's $150. And it's not quite buckling-spring but it's close.

http://www.matias.ca/tactilepro2/

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Bruce, that looks like a normal ... well, weird. I found a bug in Chrome.

I had written more.

I had said something like:

Bruce, that looks like a normal keyboard. Don't get me wrong, my bluff has been called, and I cannot actually justify dropping $200 on a new keyboard, but still: I imagined a keyboard with like 400 keys. One for

... AND THAT IS WHERE CHROME FREAKED OUT! I typed in Alt-171 and it went apeshit.

Anyway

Yeah, a separate key for 1/2 and a separate key for 1/4, but their ANSI equivalents, not what I wrote in this sentence.

I also demand one key that does the Cntl-G thing for a BELL.

[bruce]

Yeah, you beat me to it.

I have the white one. Which is discontinued. Which DID have all those keycaps.

Fuckers.

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Oh. Well, there is clearly a market if it's sold out. I am a captain! Of industry!

It's great to see you back here, by the way, though I have been getting my dose of One of the Bruces through Usenet.

[bruce]

I'm with Jonsey:

Best Opening Credits EVAR.

Top-ten Soundtrack.

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I'm about three quarters of the way finished with the director's cut.

It adds about twenty minutes of content.

My earlier objections of the thing seeming too rushed (even at 2 hours and 45 minutes) are no longer true. The twenty extra minutes, I don't know - give the thing time to breathe.

Twenty minutes. The difference between something that was fun but rushed to fun and correctly paced. I guess I hate the fact that we live in a world where TWENTY MINUTES ooOOOoOooo! had to be shaved off this thing to satisfy... who? It's easy to blame the executives, the suits, the corporate masters. But you can go two ways with it:

1) Our culture would resist against the three hour and six minute version of this thing.
2) There are idiots in filmmaking making idiotic decisions

What it comes down to is another blow for the theater experience. Why waste your time? If you like something, it's coming out six months later on a format that looks just as nice at home as it does at the cinema, and you get the proper version of whatever it is you want to see in the first place.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

One of the things I did for Pantomime was research what Mars would look like from Phobos. Well, I devoured everything I could about Phobos. It's the closest moon to its planet that we know of, it's ultimately doomed and probably going to settle as a small ring around Mars one day, it's irregularly shaped and got a giant crater on its side.

So this caught my eye tonight, watching Watchmen:



Phobos is closer than the Moon is to Earth, but because of its tiny size it would only look a third as big, from Mars, as a full moon does on Earth.

Deimos is farther away AND smaller. It would look like a bright star does here on Earth, when viewed on Mars.

PANTOMIME FUN FAX: I did a piece of "cover art" for it, that's on the Interactive Fiction Database. The sun isn't to scale. Mars isn't to scale. I also added Earth, which is the blue dot in the center. I went into Photoshop and added a single green pixel to represent Venus. I don't think anyone's ever noticed it, and I don't think that's to scale, either.

[bruce]

So this caught my eye tonight, watching Watchmen:



Phobos is closer than the Moon is to Earth, but because of its tiny size it would only look a third as big, from Mars, as a full moon does on Earth.

Deimos is farther away AND smaller. It would look like a bright star does here on Earth, when viewed on Mars.

I'm so, so glad that someone else in the world noticed this. Amy punched me when I started bitching about it.

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I really hope we land something on Phobos at some point and take photos. I'd love to see what the sky looks like with FRIGGING MARS where it is all day. I can read stuff like how Mars is x times bigger than the moon looks from earth, but I want, desperately, to see it.

I think the Russians are the ones landing shit on Phobos these days? This requires more investigation.

[Bugs]

I agree about the opening credits... My favorite was the depiction of that famous image of hippies putting flowers in soldiers' rifles, with slightly different results.