The endorsement: "District 9"

Best sci-fi movie I've seen since ... uh, well, Wall-E. Still, this flick has everything: humor, heart, and most importantly, brutal and disgusting gore and violence. Makes Watchmen look like The Sound of Music.

The girlfriend didn't like it much.

By the way: You know who needs a cute alien boy who saves the day, Will Leitch, you heartless douchebag?

THIS GUY.

P.S. -- So it's been a while. Explanation, offered with no apology: I keep friends and aquaintances more up-to-date via Facebook these days.

The alexwayne.com review: Watchmen

Apparently, Watchmen did about $55 million in business this weekend, good enough for first place but not really spectacular or anything. This doesn't surprise me. Most of that money must have been made Friday and Saturday, because at my 5 p.m. Sunday showing, the theater was better than half empty. And at least ten seats were taken up by some teenage girls who giggled throughout the movie. I strongly suspect they had not read the graphic novel.

I have, which gives me a certain perspective on the movie. I thought it was very good, not excellent. As I suspected would happen, some of the dialogue that seemed cool in the comic book didn't translate so well to the big screen. Parts of the movie seemed a little hokey. And the soundtrack was just terrible. At times, it was as if the director had chosen songs in order to deliberately make already, uh, delicate scenes seem even more hokey. Example: An impotent character finally manages to have sex with the female lead. Musical accompaniment: Some kind of Marilyn Manson-ish remake of "Hallelujah." Seriously. Bottom-level creativity there.

Anyhow, I wonder what folks who hadn't read the comic thought about the movie. About midway through, one of the major characters disappears from Earth, reappears on Mars, and proceeds to build this giant glass clock/spaceship thing and float around for a while, pontificating on the nature of man. It was a bit disconcerting even to a fan of the comic. I suspect that stuff like that contributed to the non-spectacular gross.

There's been a lot of debate about the ending of the movie, which is completely different in practice (though not in effect) from the book. But here's the dirty little secret of Watchmen: The book's ending is kind of stupid. I didn't love the ending of the movie, either, but it does make a certain kind of sense that the book didn't. 

There was one pretty tremendous acting performance that deserves mention: Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Far and away the best performance of the movie -- although he admittedly has the meatiest role. (Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a great job as The Comedian, too.) Nobody in film today plays a creep as well as Haley -- if you've seen Little Children, you know what I mean. He has a curious bio on IMDB -- from 1993 until 2006, he apparently did not work in film. Nobody ever said Hollywood is smart.

(Speaking of: the Oscars this year were a complete fucking farce, aside from Heath Ledger winning Best Supporting Actor. And since it's been like forever since the Academy Awards and I'm late to this conversation, I'll leave it at that.)

Anyway, I cautiously recommend Watchmen. Be aware that it's not a typical superhero movie and also that it is, like, hyper-violent. Some of the gore even took me aback, and I'm not easily taken aback. And if you haven't read and enjoyed the comic, I think there's a pretty good chance you won't like the movie.

Is that still a recommendation? Eh, go see it.

Been a while, eh?

Some things that have happened since last we spoke:

1. My alma mater won another football championship. We rule. However, I sympathize with people who say that Utah, or USC, or even Texas (a far weaker argument) ought to be recognized as the "real" national champions. Florida is merely the BCS champion. Which is still more than the Utes can say, so suck it.

2. Charlie LeDuff wrote the best piece of journalism I've read so far this year. LeDuff is an interesting story. He won a Pulitzer at the New York Times for writing this. Then he left the paper, under kind of myterious circumstances, and landed at the Detroit News. I like to think that he figured a city as awful as Detroit can't help but be full of great stories.

3. We got a new president. I was on the Mall for the inauguration (working, I'm afraid). It was crowded and very cold. And to those folks who say there shouldn't be money in this "economic stimulus" bill to fix up the National Mall, I say, have you seen the place lately? It looks like a bomb went off. Is that what you want the nation's premier national park to look like?