"UP!" and at 'em.

Pixar continues its glory days run with "UP!" A story about a lonely widower (with a fleghmy growl just like Lou Grant's) doesn't really scream commercial potential but Pixar has the traction to take a whack idea and stick to it. One glaring thing about "UP!" is the utter lack of license-ready intellectual property templates. The Nickelodeon set isn't going to be clammoring for cuddly Ed Asner dolls and in this day and age, that's a pretty bold concept for an animation studio, almost unheard of in a business that relies on gimcrackery for a sizable portion of revenue.

Like its predesescor "Wall-E", "UP!" is at its best when it lets the pictures do the talking. A silent backstory set-piece in the first half outshines the rest of the film. This is a fairly straightforward outing for Pixar. Despite its eclectic premise, the bulk of the story is a pretty standard journey tale. Pretty and well-executed as it is, "UP!" seems a bit more story-oriented than the last few Pixar joints without a lot of technically impressive razzle-dazzle. The short that precedes it "Partly Cloudy" has anthropomorphic clouds that seems designed to show-off some neat technical tricks and is quite enjoyable.

And as for the 3D aspect, don't ask me. I "opted out" and chose the plain 'ol 2D experience (on celluloid.) But unlike certain parts of "Coraline" nothing in "UP!" seemed like it was designed or optimized (or forced) for 3D maximization. No pokey screen thrusts or jabbing fingers. And that suits me just fine. Apologies to James Cameron, but I think we all know that the current 3D revival is a bit of a wash-out artistically. Maybe it helps sell some tickets but it adds ZERO to the movie experience. Zero.

The Toothless Granny From Hell

Dang, but it seems like Sam Raimi has not helmed a non-arachnid related project in about a zillion years. "Drag Me To Hell" is a nice little return to cheesy excess from the fella that brung us "Evil Dead" and "Darkman." Gorehounds will bitch and moan about the PG-13 rating but Raimi knows what buttons to push and which particular streams of viscera can spout out of which particular orifices without getting into trouble with the ratings overlords. Its something of a cat and mouse game really. To say this is a tame outing - just enough Grand Guignol to get the myspace crowd into the multiplex - would be missing the point. If you wanted to compile a list of the various spews and splats of "Take Me To Hell" a more restrictive rating would not seem far off the mark, at least on the page. It's the small judgements that make the difference. Not lingering too long on the dead kitten or too closely on the blood splatter helps to keep the gross-out factor in check. An unrated directors cut would seem like a natural for the DVD release but I don't think it's really going to improve upon anything.

The A.V. Club review by Scott Tobias puts it nicely:
"That PG-13 rating may sound like a liability for a director who once hosed Bruce Campbell with torrents of blood shooting out of the walls, but Raimi makes a sly asset of this limitation. Just like other PG-13-rated horror movies, the film relies on shock effects instead of blood, but Raimi pushes those effects to a full-on visceral assault."

Star BLECCH!*

"Luke Perry meets the new waiter at the Peach Pit."

Much ado was made by Trekkies (there are apparently many on the internets) over the anachronistic** inclusion of the Beastie Boys rollicking "Sabotage" in J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" make-over (more specifically, the song appeared in one of the trailers a few months ago.)

The tune in question fits in rather nicely methinks. A young Kirk take Dad's vintage Corvette for a joyride and gets chased by "The Man." He turns on the radio*** - an oldies station presumably - and hears the Beasties.

More ado was also made a few months ago when ol' Billy Shatner started posting rather embarrassing homemade videos kvetching about whether he was or wasn't invited to appear in Abram's "Trek."

Let's tie this all together in a neat little conspiracy, shall we?

Many moons ago, "Celebrities at their Worst" unearthed a hilarious audio outtake of Bill Shat arguing with an audio engineer about the pronunciation of a certain word.

And what word was it that made Shatner set his Phasers on stun?

Wait for it...

The word was:
SABOTAGE.

Shatner pronounced it (roughly) Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee. The engineer gently corrected him and "Captain James T. Jerk" got all snippy and snarky. Some folks have sided with the Shat and pointed out that maybe "Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee" is an acceptable alternate pronunciation (especially for a rogue Canadian) but I'll leave that debate to William Safire.

Personally, I think Abrams pwned Shatner.

*To be fair, the film wasn't Blecch-ish at all. But I can't resist the temptation to give a shout-out to vintage Mad Magazine-style Yiddish-influenced neologisms. If you have a problem with that, go Portzerbie your furshlinger mom.

**Technically, I don't think it could be termed "anachronistic" - but I don't know what else to call it. Maybe "pandering" is a better term.

***Actually, it wasn't the radio but some fancy, branded gee-gaw that was an obvious product placement.

*snik* Arrrrggghhh! *snik*

"Splish, Splash, Wolverine was takin' a bath..."

I'm not putting it in the same category as "Spiderman 3" but "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is a bit of a bust.

The X-Men flicks never quite did it for me. The suspension-of-disbelief threshold rises exponentially with an entire team of super dudes. Strangely enough, the two Fantastic Four outings almost pull it off with sheer goofiness and unintentional camp. The X-Men franchise is a lot less tongue-in-cheek and suffers for it.

This doesn't bode well for the forthcoming Avengers movie (not to mention the likely J.L.A flick.)

Hugh (not gay) Jackman does a decent job looking menacing and macho. It was cute the first time he assumes the hunched-over bodybuilder pose and runs towards his foe (while screaming to the sky: ARRGGGGHHH!) - scraping his adamantium pocket-knives along the ground - but it got a bit old fast.

Say, around the twentieth time.

Also, his hair always looks a little too neat. I smell another bad movie wig.

I've read quite a bit of X-Men in my day and while I sometimes get bored watching overly familiar backstories unspool (bit by a spider? Check!) - this franchise assumes a bit too much familiarity on the part of the audience. And I'm not really certain that it's coming from the film or comic continuity. I didn't really know who was who half the time. Spidey and Batman can probably dispense with detailed origin tales on-screen. They are pretty damn iconic but the X-Men universe is rather convuluted and not exactly a "no-brainer." It's been rebooted and retro-conned so much that this movie could have actually used a bit more of an intro. But billing this as being the titular origin story is a bit of a stretch. Most of what makes Wolverine so -umm- Wolverine-ish is barely even touched on, much less explained.

Not much of a story here in any case, especially without the preceding installments. This is not a work that would stand well on its own. And nothing particularly heroic as far as I can see. Yeah, they killed his girl, he swears revenge etc. But the turnaround in the climax sort of negates all that and makes it a bit silly. And, in the beginning - when Wolfie is involved in some clandestine dark-ops team - they never really explain what the point of the whole enterprise is. Hell if I know what it is. Some sort of sketchy, Dick Cheney Blackwater off-shoot I guess. For the most part it's never really clear if they are good guys or bad guys. (Well, until the raping that is.)

There are precious few eye-candy moments to save the day - at least none not already familiar from the trailer. "Transformers" had a pretty fucking stupid story but damn if it didn't have a pretty high quotient of slam-bang cool stuff.

It's not boring, but it's not exactly interesting either.