Ang Lee's Grouchy Hulk, Sleeping Audience

Fox News Online ^ | 6/18/03 | Roger Friedman

[TheBigB]

Let's talk about the upside first: The computer-generated Hulk is indeed very realistic and convincing. In fact, all the special effects are good, very subtle and artfully done. There's rarely a time when the computer side of this movie doesn't pay off.

[weegee]

The webs are organicly produced. So is spit. I'd assume that there would be traces of DNA in the residue.

As to him being able to formulte a web compound. The kid was a science nerd. Now he's just a nerd (no brains).

[weegee]

That may have been around the end of the first 25 years. I think it was in one of the other Spider-Man titles, not the Amazing... storyline.

[Burr5]

Well, I've seen enough commercials to know that this "Hulk" is NOT "realistic" looking at all. It is so damn fake that my kids, 9 and 7, and I laugh out loud half the time.

And this from film-makers who are bragging that Gollum in The Lord of The Rings is no great shakes, and that THEY have finally gotten the CGI character thing right. Every single thing they bragged about is 180 degrees out of phase with their delusional hyperbole.

Screw 'em. Can't wait for Return of the King.

God, I don't care about The Hulk.

[Skywalk]

My mother and I both agreed that while we enjoyed seeing it in the theater(though it had some slow parts, several now that I think of it) we CANNOT get ourselves to watch it on cable, even though it's on and 'free.'

That I have no great urge to buy the DVD or watch it on cable even, shows that the movie just isn't that good(for me.)

[AppyPappy]

I think she was referring to the treatment of women.

[Skywalk]

I disagree with your take, to an extent.

I do agree that the commercial shots do not offer a great glimpse of the effects, but the people who've actually seen it in the theater tell a different story(Including our own mhking, who got a hold of a DVD)

Also, Gollum in commercial shots on our little screens in quick preview cuts would probably look mediocre as well. In fact, I remember when a bunch of "fanboys" were whining about how "fake" Gollum looked. Now we realize that those fanboys consistently bash ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that comes down the pike. It's their way.

Gollum is also a creature that spends most of his time in the shadows(though not exclusively) or dim light and is part of an overall fantastical setting. Nearly everything around the Hulk is realistic, except for his 15 foot green form. That will exacerbate any differences we see between the effect and its surroundings. ILM is no slouch when it comes to effects and I do NOT believe they created some hack work in this movie, I refuse to believe that until I see it.

That said, LotR is the best thing to happen to cinema in decades. I eagerly await its conclusions.

[Britton J Wingfield]

It's really hard to believe that Spiderman, A Simple Plan, and Army of Darkness all came from the same director.

Don't forget Evil Dead II, Darkman, and The Quick And The Dead.

[Burr5]

So we agree on LOTR. Nuff said there. But these "Hulk" guys made a point of one-upping the incredible work P.J. and WETA did on Gollum. And EVERYTHING I've seen (at least 8 shots) of The Hulk have looked fake as hell. I don't care what "fan-boys" say about it. BTW, backgrounds in CGI shots can be manipulated in a zillion different ways, including the color of every inch of the screen. Dark or light isn't the issue.

Plus you'd think that if they have ONE star attraction they'd show some decent footage of him (it) in all the trailers.

[ASOC]

ROTFLMAO - Bill the Cat rules!

[wafflehouse]

right on brother!

[MarkL]

When I was much, MUCH younger, I thought that she was the cutest thing I had ever seen in Labarynth, with Muppets and David Bowie.

BTW, I saw a special deal at Target: Two fantasy/muppent movies in one package: The Dark Crystal and Labarynth! What a great combination!

Mark

[Frank_Discussion]

Then you recognize my tagline, I assume?

[BallandPowder]

Powder..patch..Ball FIRE!

She was also inhumanly beautiful in "Dark City", a great, underrated sci-fi film. Roger Ebert is on the wrong drugs more often than not these days, but his review of Dark City nails it.

Read the review, now I gotta go find the movie to watch!

[RogueIsland]

What ever happened to Mr. Fix-it?

Mr. Fix-it and Wolverine were a great team.

[Arkie2]

"Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won. Here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. –May the wings of Liberty never lose a feather." –

[Dennis Dun and Kurt Russell from Big Trouble In Little China]

[discostu]

But the science nerd aspect never got played well in Spidey, it's a good thing to drop. After he figured out the webshooter he did very little science, not like Reed Richards or Tony Stark.

[discostu]

I think that plot was in Spectacular, never my favorite of the Spidey comics.

[LanPB01]

"Dark and gloomy", the critic says. I hope so! I'm glad to hear that a director is willing to take the subject matter (even if it is from a comic book) seriously.

[weegee]

I read a comment on the Jimmy Corrigan graphic novel by Chris Ware. It was in some article on the state of comics (distribution, finding a new audience, etc.).

Some creator had overheard a woman who picked up the book, looked through it, and said that she wouldn't read it because it looked so "sad".

I say that is exactly why she should have read it. That she can find emotional attachment/concern for some fictional characters who are simply lines on paper shows that the Chris Ware acheived one of his goals. Unlike Art Spiegleman's Maus, this is a work of fiction and tackles a less threatening subject than the Holocaust.

Here's a review of the book for those who are unfamiliar:

goodreports.net

The best-known comic book character in the world is Superman. It makes a kind of sense then for the Man of Steel to make a cameo appearance at the beginning of Chris Ware’s brilliant graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan. As Jimmy watches from his office window in downtown Chicago a man dressed as Superman jumps from the top of a neighbouring building and falls to his death. There are no superheroes in Jimmy Corrigan’s world.

The hero of Ware’s story is neither a kid nor very smart, but rather a "lonely, emotionally-impaired human castaway." His place of employment is a cubicle, the Dilbert prop that has become our favourite metaphor for contemporary isolation and anomie. He seems to be only in his thirties but already looks like an old man. At least once a day he phones his mom.

The story is concerned with Jimmy’s attempt to understand the secret past that has been riding him like a genetic ghost all his life. It begins with his receiving a letter from the father he never knew asking him to come visit him in Michigan. When he gets there he is introduced to a family history that includes an adopted sister and a grandfather, also named Jimmy Corrigan, whose story is told at length in flashback.

Grandfather Jimmy is another human castaway, having been abandoned by his father during a trip to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The Fair’s White City is the symbolic center of the novel - an unreal, artificial world that is both indifferent and cruel. Its image becomes the novel’s theme.

Jimmy Corrigan isn't for kids, and it certainly isn't meant to be fun. The tone throughout is one of unrelieved loneliness and depression. Crutches and walkers symbolize emotional disabilities. Personal relations are only forged with great effort, and always end in pain. In a dream sequence Jimmy imagines that he has become a metal man so that he can’t be hurt by human contact. Joy, even the joy of a child, can’t penetrate the envelope. The only time we see either Jimmy smile is when Jimmy Sr. is played for a fool by a school mate who later takes the opportunity to humiliate him.

The art of Jimmy Corrigan, its dull colouring and smoothly vacant backgrounds, provides a perfect complement to the novel’s melancholy. The figures are drawn with thick black outlines that emphasize their separation from a geometrically pure and inhuman world (cubicles, clapboard rooming houses, the White City). The faces of secondary characters remain hidden, turned away or concealed behind body parts, thus increasing our sense of isolation. And even Jimmy is an alienating site. His old-fashioned clothes exaggerate his prematurely aged physique while his eyes look like a couple of milky pinholes punched into a saggy lump of pink clay. It is as though Ware is daring us to walk away.

It is an amazing book, with perhaps the most amazing thing about it being the way Ware, writing for serial publication at the rate of two pages a week for the past seven years, manages to control such a complex visual narrative and give it the kind of shape it has. With its interest in race, history, family and identity it has something of the status of an American epic, while its cool eye and ad-art background help make it into an ironic pop statement on unpopularity. It will have to be read more than once to be appreciated fully - but most readers will find the extra time well spent.

[weegee]

What did Peter keep going to college for then? Didn't he even become a professor at some point?

I think that someone else ran with the photography angle and made him a fashion photographer.

Too many fictional characters don't hold mundane office jobs. They are lawyers, working out of the office (my people are on it). Others work in the glitzy world of entertainment.

It's bad enough that peers try to tell kids not to study. Don't need retrocontinuity telling kids that it's cooler not to be a brain as well.

Popeye ate spinach and kids ate spinach as a result. The spinach didn't make Popeye who he was but then again he wouldn't be "Popeye" without it.