No offense to anyone who found Pearl Harbor even remotely watchable, but it was a colossal heap of utter tripe with zero redeeming value. By the time the attack sequence rolled around, I honestly could not have cared less about anything that was happening. I was *bored* watching the supposedly spectacular attack sequence.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I was mildly curious watching some of it. Why are the Japanese bombing a lawn? Why are those planes strafing a random civilian car? Why does Ben Affleck want the guys on the ground to walk up a ten story tower to shoot at three planes on his tail? How is that P40 outmaneuvering a bunch of zeroes for fifteen minutes? Since Cuba Gooding Jr's AA gun can deflect low enough to hit the ship moored next to his, shouldn't he be more careful with that thing? And why is there vaseline smeared all over the lens of the camera duing the hospital scene when they could have wiped it off with a tissue?

I was also mildly curious at other points in the movie. When is Alec Baldwin going to tell the pilots that second place is a set of steak knives? Isn't there something awkward about the grammatical construct of the title of the Faith Hill ballad that ends the movie, There You'll Be? How many more times will Kate Beckinsale's English accent slip through one of her lines? On a scale of 1-10, with how much intensity will Ben Affleck attempt a Tennessee accent in the next scene? In all of Hollywood, is there a worse writer than Pearl Harbor scribe Randall Wallace, who also gave us the depth of character and complex plot of Braveheart? And is this movie going to end anytime soon, because I'd much rather go home to do laundry?

-Tom

Did they show the new Lord of the Rings trailer before it?

>Did they show the new Lord of the Rings trailer before it?

Yep.

>, but it was a colossal heap of utter tripe with zero redeeming value.

No, that was the Mummy Returns. Or Batman and Robin. Or Wild, Wild West. or the Avengers.

Pearl Harbor is not well written. It is badly edited. It is badly acted. It is jingoistic and the dialogue and scripting has the depth of a daytime soap opera. I'm tired of effects-laden movies with no depth, and nothing but the most cynical attempts at character development - I'm not one to casually dismiss a movie's obvious flaws because of some nifty special effects (quite the contrary), but I thought Peal Harbor was actually a step above the movies I mentioned in my introductory sentence.

The 40 minute attack was impressive visually (although I find PG war movies somewhat offensive), and I liked it better than any of Bay's other movies (admittedly, not saying much) because I'm so interested in the subject matter. I was actually pleasantly surprised at the fact that the attack was depicted relatively accurately, historically, and given the dramatic license typically taken with historical dramas (cough, Patriot, cough) exaggerations were relative subdued and there were few obvious inaccuracies. I thought we were in for a nightmare when I saw the trailer and the baseball games at 7:55 a.m. on a Sunday.The Arizona explosion was considerably more impressive than it was in Tora, Tora Tora.

>How is that P40 outmaneuvering a bunch of zeroes for fifteen minutes?

I actually liked the fact that the P40s couldn't outturn or outrun the zeros - I was pleasantly surprised that their capabilities weren't ridiculously exaggerated. Pretty crazy circus move at the end, of course.

>Since Cuba Gooding Jr's AA gun can deflect low enough to hit the ship moored next to his, shouldn't he be more careful with that thing?

Interestingly, friendly fire from AA guns was a major cause of injury at Pearl Harbor. There were 40 explosions in the surrounding civilian areas -- all but one of them were cause by U.S. AA fire.

> And why is there vaseline smeared all over the lens of the camera duing the hospital scene

Heh, clearly an attempt to keep things PG but show the more horrific scenes in the movie.

>When is Alec Baldwin going to tell the pilots that second place is a set of steak knives?

Heh heh, o.k., that's a good one. "my watch is worth more than your B-25". Doolittle was apparently a pretty subdued guy, who would never have had crazy coach pep talks. Still, a true hero.

Interesting historical fact: The Japanese subsequently killed 250,000 Chinese in the province where several of the Doolittle raiders landed, in retaliation for the raid.

>there a worse writer than Pearl Harbor scribe Randall Wallace

He's a stiff, all right. Pretty terrible writing.

>And is this movie going to end anytime soon, because I'd much rather go home to do laundry

It was overlong, and could have been edited into a more effective film 30 minutes shorter. I don't expect much from the "big summer" movies, however, and although I'm hoping for more from Planet of the Apes, I was satisfied by Pearl Harbor. Maybe it's a guilty pleasure because I find the historical subject matter so interesting (and yes, I realize given the subject of this thread I shouldn't have even joined in!)

Stefan

>there a worse writer than Pearl Harbor scribe Randall Wallace>

You mean this Summer Blockbuster only had one writer? That's odd. Usually it takes 10-20 to write a truly bad script.

Erik, I've seen the new LOTR trailer online and I thought it was just great. Exactly the emphasis I wanted to see, hopefully the movie lives up to it. "But no one knows where the ring is right Gandalf? Gandalf?" (or something like that).

Anyone know where this trailer can be downloaded? I wanted to show it to my wife but the feed is atrocious!

I'll see Pearl Harbor eventually, with misgivings, so long as it doesn't have a dirigible in it.

-Andrew

I'm reminded what Famke Janssen (sp?), of Jean Grey in X-men fame, said of Affleck, whom she dated for a while. Something like, "he's good looking but eventually you realize he's not very interesting and there's nothing going on upstairs." :)

I think Time's reviewer likened one of his attempts at emoting in Pearl to "the look a caveman would get trying to understand a yo-yo." Good visual, eh? ;-)

>Anyone know where this trailer can be downloaded

Yeah, you can grab it here, Bub:

http://www.movie-list.com/l/lordoftheringstrilogy.shtml

Good site for movie trailers.

Stefan

Excellent site Desslock, thank you. Very convenient and very fast downloads for me.

And boy did I get that quote wrong... ah well, t'was a poor feed I viewed earlier.

>"Maybe it's a guilty pleasure because I find the historical subject matter so interesting">

That's funny, 'cause I'm rather insulted that Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer thought they could do such a profound incident justice. Arrogant jackasses... Disrepecting the memories of our veterans...

Brad Grenz

>I'm rather insulted that Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer thought they could do such a profound incident justice. Arrogant jackasses... Disrepecting the memories of our veterans

How did you find they did that, by the way? Just by going near a historical topic, or were there historical liberties that you thought were disrespectful?

Just by having bad acting/simplistic motivations/dialogue? Frankly, a majority of war movies are guilty of that as well.

I found it disrespectful to an extent. Even though the attack lasts over a half hour, its essentially a sideshow to the extremely poorly done love triangle. I also found it offensive that the only heroic actions depicted during the attack (with the notable exception of Cuba's character) are performed by the fictional heroes. I'm sure there are numerous instances of real-life bravery that occured, but the audience doesn't see any of that. And I really disliked the rah-rah of having them get airborne and taking out a few of the Japanese planes. That part seemed like it was lifted from Star Wars instead of history.

A critic here (in area I live) pointed out the Tokyo raid, while welcome in its morale boost, did nowhere near the kind of damage the movie shows. Oddly enough, the movie done on the raid back in '44 (30 Seconds Over Tokyo) showed how little damage it did and that was while the war was still in doubt.

"That's funny, 'cause I'm rather insulted that Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer thought they could do such a profound incident justice."

I am convinced that they NEVER thought that, never considered that in any way as a motivation. Their only motivativation was money (and maybe a little reputation enhancement), and their vehicle was spectacle.

"I found it disrespectful to an extent."

This is far worse than simple disrespect. It is gratuitous and offensive. The more I think about it the sicker and angrier I feel.

At work today I heard a guy talking to an acquaintance about how great it was, how incredible it was. He revealed to her that he'd worked on it as a lighting guy. "You work on so many of these things, and so many are crap. It's great when one turns out as good as this one." And I wanted to reach over and smack him upside the head. Great? Buddy, even the lighting was a mess. Come on.

At first I left feeling I'd seen some good images, some incredible visuals. I left feeling that I'd seen the best Michael Bay film so far. But I just could not shake that feeling of being offended, and that has cast a shadow over everything else. Yes, Armageddon was manipulative, but at least it was in the service of fiction and confection, and did not pretend to anything else.

Amanpour

I've got the Pearl Harbor press kit, and FWIW, they did invite about 80 Pearl survivors to view the finished film (they screened it on an aircraft carrier deck right near the Arizona memorial) and they all loved it.

So even though it strikes me as such exploitive hokum in most respects, I figure if those guys liked it there must be something redeemable in it. :)

I still think The Rock was Bay's finest moment while Armageddon was pointless trash. I think it became a hit because of that darned Aerosmith song. ;)

If you want respectable war films you should watch Turner Classic Movies Memorial Day marathon, which has included some chestnuts like Pork Chop Hill, They Were Expendable and Paths to Glory. None have cheesy romances or Gen-X actors, BTW. :D

>did nowhere near the kind of damage the movie shows. Oddly enough, the movie done on the raid back in '44 (30 Seconds Over Tokyo) showed how little damage it did and that was while the war was still in doubt.

The war wasn't still in doubt in '44. Lots of bloodshed to come, however.

I didn't think Pearl Harbor exaggerated the damage caused by the Doolittle raid -- it basically just showed 16 planes dropping a few bombs on a port factory. It was always intended as a morale boasting/damning mission, and I thought the movie communicated that accurately.

Stefan

>"How did you find they did that, by the way? Just by going near a historical topic, or were there historical liberties that you thought were disrespectful?">

Mostly it is that these guys make bad movies. And to spend 200 million dollars making a crappy movie about such an important, tragic event and then draggin a bunch of verterans and servicemen to the obscene, 5 million dollar premiere IN Pearl Harbor on the deck of an aircraft carrier... Film makers should have some kind of sense of what they are capable and qualified to do. I know better then to try and make a blockbuster about the bombing of Hiroshima. I couldn't to the subject justice and if I tried to turn it into a summer blockbuster... God help my soul.

Anyone with any interest in the subject would be better served if they stay home and watch the History Channel for a while. Your average documentary could portray the bombing of Pearl Harbor just as dramatically as a movie but without all the Hollywood bullshit and PC-ification. Incidentally, I'm rather nausiated by NBC's attempt to cash in on "Pearl Harbor-mania" with that Tom Brockah special.

Brad Grenz

There's no way I'd ever see Pearl Harbor, even for free, cuz it just looks way too lowbrow and pandering to me. BUT this thread did inspire me to download the Lord of the Rings trailer just now and let me just say this: OH. MY. GOD. Peter Jackson just may pull this off. I haven't wanted to think about it too much, out of fear of disappointment, but I was really heartened by the trailer's dark, adult tone.

Yeah Jeff, the first trailer was the happier magical side. My family finally got me to read the Harry Potter books (sigh, and I really like them too), that trailer looks just about perfect as well.

Imagine trying to please an army of a million kids (and their geeky parents)....

-Andrew

Yeah, I think this movie's gonna be a good one! I've always liked the story, and this looks to be a good portrayal! And, is it just me, or does Liv Tyler make a really good-looking elf?

Yeah I saw the Harry Potter trailer at E3 and was also impressed by that one, which *really* surprised me, maybe even more so than LOTR. I really had my hopes dashed when Chris Columbus signed on to do HP, but I gotta say, that trailer perfectly captured the mood of the book (no idea whether the movie will do the same, of course!). If the movie *is* as good as the trailer, though, it is gonna make a SHITLOAD of money. Great books, too, for sure, dude.

Gad, I hate that I actually read a Harry Potter book (my three kids love 'em) and liked it. I mean, how can I be a snotty, cynical curmudgeon (sp) and like something that is so hyped? Argh.

Pearl Harbor did suck. Ah, that feels better...

I haven't read anything Harry Potter yet. Don't know if I will or not -- at least for a while. I'm sure that when I have kids, they'll love 'em, and I'll end up reading them then.

Harry Potter is good because of what it comes from. "Stuff you've read before":

A lot of Roald Dahl, a bit of EB White, some King Arthur, some Disney, a bit of Tolkien (circa The Hobbit), some Oz (thankfully not the HBO series), etc., she took stuff that worked before and added her own mythology.

She mashes all that together with brisk readable prose that makes the kids reach and think and the adults get all nostalgic and smile. Since its smart stuff (for young adult reading) the hype trend is sort of an anti-Pokemon (though I hear those games are good).

In other words Lackey... I really wish this sort of thing got hyped more often!

Green: Alan Rickman as Snape? Brilliant!
-Andrew
PS: Sorry I diverted this thread. We were talking about Pearl Jam or something?

>In other words Lackey... I really wish this sort of thing got hyped more often!

You wished the Harry Potter books got hyped more often?

Uh, yeah, I *never* hear about those things...

-Tom

No Tom,
I wish all the "smart stuff (for young adult reading)" out there got hyped more.

Clear was that not un?
;)

"No offense to anyone who found Pearl Harbor even remotely watchable, but it was a colossal heap of utter tripe with zero redeeming value."

Tom, I told you Gladiator was a great Summer Blockbuster.

Compare with Pearl Harbor, or even The Mummy Returns. So many summer movies are just awful! It was a pleasure to watch one last year that was actually pretty damn good.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

What's wrong with The Mummy Returns? I saw it over the weekend with my kids and really enjoyed it. The special effects and action sequences are great, and that's 80% of the movie. The dialog could have been better, but it's an expensive B movie. Even the kid actor managed to be tolerable, which is something you can't say about Episode 1.

They even minimized the screen time that the Rock had. Perfect!

Speaking of Episode 1 vs. The Mummy, I really liked the first Mummy. But I've heard little about The Mummy Returns, and what I have heard is that it's not as good as the first one. What that your impression too, Mark?

I enjoyed Mummy Returns (though I forgot everything the moment the lights came up and the credits rolled), but I felt the characters were more quirkily charming in the first flick, and The Rock was simply a waste of money and poor special effects. Some of the latter effects involving him aren't up to the standards of a good computer game's CGI cutscenes. :)

Friday's the 20th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark opening (or any of the "good" Star Wars movies), BTW. I thought for sure Paramount would either re-release it briefly or finally bring the DVD out, but it looks like neither. Anyway, a chance to remember when summer movies made you say how great they were rather than say, "Well, it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was!" or "My kids stayed awake through it!" :)

BTW, "Pearl Harbor" by Ernest Arroyo is a fine coffee table sized photo book (bout $19) about Pearl. While parts are certainly grim, esp. the mass burials required after the battle, there are nice profiles every other page of real-life heroes (including Cuba Gooding Jr's character) who did one thing or another so someone else could live or died trying to get their P-40s airborne (many died running to their fighters or just after takeoff). Maybe the most heartbreaking was a ship chaplain who let 15 men get out of his room's porthole ahead of him as their ship began to roll over, but was unable to get out after them. It's a shame the movie didn't take a few minutes to spotlight a few of those.

It also has some interesting details I didn't know. The Enterprise was steaming back to Pearl and send three squadrons (18) of Dauntless dive bombers to scout ahead of it. They ran into the Japanese planes and six of the U.S. planes were shot down. If only they had instead sent up some Wildcat fighters to scout ahead.....

Dead Japanese officer pilots were buried at Pearl (though separately from the U.S. bodies) with full military honors.

Radar in its infancy was so poor it couldn't tell the operators how many planes, the sizes, the altitude or friend 'or foe at all. So while the Hawaii radar did pick up a big blotch coming from the east, it really did stand to reason it was B-17 bombers flying in as scheduled. A real shame.

My last Pearl movie dig. Why would fighter pilots be allowed to fly B-25s they'd never flown before, much less try to get them off an aircraft carrier? Pretty sure that didn't really happen. :) (waits for Desslock to disagree with him. :)

"Speaking of Episode 1 vs. The Mummy, I really liked the first Mummy. But I've heard little about The Mummy Returns, and what I have heard is that it's not as good as the first one. What that your impression too, Mark?"

The sequel is more exciting as an action flick. The first one's probably a more interesting story, inasmuch as mummy stories can be interesting. You have to check your brain at the door for both of them.

The worst thing about the second is the dialog, which is a series of lame attempts at being snappy that never works.

Geo, yeah, the CGI for the Rock at the end was pretty cheesy. I chuckled when I saw it.

Heh, don't know about Desslock, Geo, but I sure won't disagree with you. In fact, that whole business about a fighter pilot at the controls of one of Doolittle's raiders is in the whole movie's spirit of pure hokum. In fact, Doolittle's pilots, while they received special training in taking off in the short distance allowed on the carrier deck, weren't even told what their mission was until after the Hornet left the dock. So how could a fighter pilot volunteer to fly bombers on a mission he couldn't have known about? Also, fighter planes may have changed a lot in 60 years, but fighter pilots' egos have not. It's damned hard to imagine a fighter jock requesting a transfer to bombers.

Title of Wall Street Journal review of Pearl Harbor: "Snore-a! Snore-a! Snore-a!"

Runner-up for this month's best strapline: a whiny rant about the sorry state of modern neo-naziism, reprinted by Harper's under the heading "Mein So Called Kampf"

Some other place called it "Bora Bora Bora".

I saw Mummy Returns and (for the second time) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Need I say, CTHD was by far the better movie? Mummy was fun though.

Can someone explain the ending of CTHD to me? (Perhaps in a new thread marked *SPOILER*) I don't think I get it. Why?

I liked the subtitle of Salon's review of "Driven."

"Sylvester Stallone's homoerotic car-racing actioner delivers something between 'Speed Racer' and gay porn."

"Can someone explain the ending of CTHD to me? (Perhaps in a new thread marked *SPOILER*) I don't think I get it. Why?"

I told you guys they needed subtitles. At this point any mention of CTHD actually makes me physically angry. It's easily the most overrated and overhyped film since Blair Witch Project.

Insert Erik/Bruce/Tom "monocle popping out of my eye" joke here.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

p.s. I still say that Erik does clever better than any of you guys. Although lately I get the distinct impression that _Erik_ doesn't even do Erik any more. The ultimate piece de resistance would be Erik taking a staff position at Adrenaline Vault. That would be the ultimate subversion, like Kaufman's wrestling phase.

CTHD's not a "literal" film so if you're trying to watch it as you would, um, Pearl Harbor, you won't "get" any of it. :) The ending's a metaphor of sorts. I guess. Maybe.

I enjoyed it, but I thought Zhang Ziyi's character was such a little, um, bundle of negativity you just kind of wanted to send her to counseling rather than focus the movie on her. :) By the time the flick went into wide release I think you couldn't see it without all the good reviews weighing down on one. I used to always try to see flicks as soon as they opened locally so I could judge the flick itself instead of thinking "oh those reviews are so full of crud." :)

Well, I couldn't resist, and I went and saw this turkey last night. I agree completely with Tom's analysis of the movie, except that halfway through it I wasn't thinking of laundry I could be doing, I was thinking that I could be watching Braveheart on USA.

Aside from the endless cliches, what bothered me most about the movie was that, while it was superficially historically accurate, it played so fast and loose with the details that it finally came off as wholly unbelievable. The Afleck character especially bothered me (aside from, as Tom noted, the actor's fitfull attempts to affect a Tennessee accent). We are supposed to believe that he went from Eagle Squadron pilot in the Battle of Britain, to P-40 pilot stationed in Hawaii on Dec. 7, to B-25 pilot in the Doolittle raid. Never mind that every phase of that scenerio is historically impossible. The Eagle Squadrons (there were 3 of them, not just 1) were made up of American civilians recruited into the RAF. It would have been a flagrant violation of neutrality for AAF officers to have participated. The Eagle Squadrons went into action in February of 1941, several months after the end of the BOB. Eagle Squadron pilots did, in fact, transfer into the AAF, but not until Sept. of 1942, some 9 months after the U.S. entered the war. Of course, none of them ever flew a B-25 off a carrier deck.

As for the real-life pilots that the two leads are supposedly based on: AAF Lts. Ken Taylor and George Welch. They were officially credited with downing 7 Japanese planes between them. They did not, however, accomplish that by engaging in 15-minute turning fights with Zeroes. Basically, they took off right behind the Japanese attack stream and immediately found themselves immediately in favorable firing position.

Oh, and neither Welch nor Taylor ever flew a B-25, and they would probably have been very surprised to learn that they were involved in a love triangle.

"By the time the flick went into wide release I think you couldn't see it without all the good reviews weighing down on one."

I saw it the first time right after it came out, without much expectation. I just wanted a fun martial arts movie. I wasn't too disappointed, but I found it slow at parts and I didn't like the ending. I was also annoyed by all the flying.. wasn't expecting that.
There were 3 or 4 actions scenes that I really liked, though.

>In fact, Doolittle's pilots, while they received special training in taking off in the short distance allowed on the carrier deck, weren't even told what their mission was until after the Hornet left the dock. So how could a fighter pilot volunteer to fly bombers on a mission he couldn't have known about?

I don't know the background of Doolittle's pilots, but the raid depicted in the movie was certainly exaggerated for dramatic effect. Aside from the fact that Doolittle wasn't a speech-maker, more notably there was no need to strip out the armour/weaponry of the B-25s to lighten them for take off. They certainly didn't take out the B-25 rear guns and replace them with brooms, heh.

Interestingly, 8 of the Doolittle raiders were captured, 3 of whom were executed and one died in captivity. The other 4 survived the entire remainder of the war in captivity. Amazing.

Stefan