AFTERTHOUGHTS (105)
WELL, IF IT ISN’T OSCAR 2009


For the record, going into the awards night, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire had 10 nominations spread over 9 categories (it had 2 of its songs going up for Best Original Song), and by the time Wolverine brought the show to a close, it had 8 to its name.
Brilliant!
That’s…


Slumdog Millionaire
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Achievement in Directing (Danny Boyle)
Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy)
Achievement in Cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle)
Achievement in Film Editing (Chris Dickens)
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures [Original Score] (A.R. Rahman)
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures [Original Song] (“Jai Ho,” Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar)
Achievement in Sound Mixing (Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke, Resul Pookutty)


And in the one foregone conclusion of the night, Heath Ledger was awarded a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his hypnotic work in The Dark Knight.

In some of the other performance categories, Kate Winslet took home the Best Actress award for Stephen Daldry’s The Reader (it should be noted that Daldry also directed Nicole Kidman to her Oscar for The Hours), while Sean Penn was honoured with Best Actor for his work on Gus Van Sant’s Milk (Van Sant also steered Robin Williams to an Oscar as well).*
Dustin Lance Black’s Original Screenplay award for Milk should also be noted at this point.


On the awards night itself, it certainly had a different feel to it, with its own fair share of priceless Oscar Moments (Boyle’s Tigger bit; Kate Winslet’s da’s whistle).
So, congratulations, not just to everyone involved with Slumdog Millionaire, but also to Hugh Jackman (The Reader bit in the opening musical number was hilarious), Bill Condon, and Michael Giacchino. Good on all of you! (And to Winslet, for giving Peter Jackson that shout-out in her speech.)

* I recommend both Milk and The Reader, making a point to see the latter also doubling as a very nice cinematic way of bidding adieu to Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella.
Additionally, reviews of Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight can be found in the Archive.

Parting shot: Though I’m an avowed David Fincher fan (who’s still greatly miffed about the past Oscar shut-out of Zodiac), I’ve still to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, thus, my non-mention of its specific wins above. (How do I know if I’m happy about the wins if I haven’t seen the movie yet?)

Parting shot 2: It was neat seeing Janusz Kaminski (and his Oscars) in the Pineapple Express comedy short, even if the short itself was pretty uneven.

Parting shot 3: I just have to wonder why the “live” broadcast over ABS-CBN 2 was edited, leaving out (among other things) all 3 shorts categories and the end credits…

(Images courtesy of AMPAS and latimes.com [Oscar statue, photo by Albert Watson], impawards.com [Slumdog Millionaire OS], time.com [the Joker image from The Dark Knight], and ew.com [Oscar night images].)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (96)
EMPIRE’S! 50! GREATEST! COMIC! BOOK! CHARACTERS! [2 of 5]
THE X-MEN EDITION

Though I’m pretty much a DC fanboy (and always have been), the one Marvel title that I loved way back when was ­The Uncanny X-Men, back in the classic Chris Claremont era.
And naturally, I was rabid over Grant Morrison’s New X-Men.
Filmwise, I wasn’t bowled over by Bryan Singer’s first pass on the material, though I love X2. Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand was, like Spider-Man 3, a mess that had too much going on in it.
Hopefully, next year’s Wolverine spin-off will have learned from past X-film mistakes…
I also loved Sir Ian McKellen’s Magneto, more so than Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who is already, let’s face it, a pretty good fit. (Though I do think Magneto’s helmet in the film looks terrible…)


30 Emma Frost (aka: The White Queen)
Bad girls in comics are always so useful that they tend to reform and become at least semi-goodies (cf: Catwoman, Elektra).
Emma Frost was introduced as an exceptionally nasty—and explicitly perverse—villainess, running a school for evil mutants in competition with Professor Xavier and high in the councils of the nefarious Hellfire Club (in homage to the famous ‘Touch of Brimstone’ episode of The Avengers).
Marvel made her a qualified goodie in the X-Men spin-off Generation X, and writer Grant Morrison reinvented the character when he took over New X-Men and wasn’t allowed to use his original choice, Storm.
Now an actual X-Man, Emma remained the manipulative slut fans loved to hate—and caused a minor kerfuffle when she began a ‘telepathic’ affair with Cyclops, long-term partner of Jean Grey.


Despite strong competition, Emma has consistently worn the most striking lingerie (and little else) in comics—the covers for her brief solo series Emma Frost are basically porn star poses.
FIRST APPEARED IN UNCANNY X-MEN #129 (1980)
CREATED BY CHRIS CLAREMONT AND JOHN BYRNE


9 Magneto (aka: Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, The Master of Magnetism)
Magneto is... complicated.
A Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who is determined to save his fellow homo superior from the fate of his fellow Jew, he sometimes seems fated to repeat some of the Nazis' mistakes, pursuing the subjugation of homo sapiens in favour of homo superior.
He is—as producer Tom DeSanto told Bryan Singer when he was trying to persuade him to make the first X-Men movie—Malcolm X to Professor X’s Martin Luther King.
His ‘by any means necessary’ approach has seen him commit hideous atrocities in the past, including the sinking of a submarine full of sailors, and yet he’s not evil—not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway.
Even though he’s traditionally their number one nemesis, he has been known to actively align with the X-Men, even taking over as the team’s leader/teacher in the absence of Charles Xavier, while he’s previously had a relationship with Rogue.


Currently in the films, he’s depowered, and living life as a human—which, for him, is purgatory. But we’re sure his powerless state won’t last for long.
FIRST APPEARED IN X-MEN #1 (1963)
CREATED BY STAN LEE AND JACK KIRBY


4 Wolverine (aka: Logan, James Howlett, Patch, Weapon X)
Originally conceived as a villainous means of giving Hulk a bit of a workout, but swiftly retooled as a conflicted hero, Wolverine’s always been a character comfortable with shades of grey, and it’s his contradictions and complications that enable him to be all things to all geeks.
So he has an unmatched capacity for violence (even berserkery) and finely honed animal instinct, but is capable of tempering his highly emotional reactions with cold-blooded calculation where required.


And he’s no mere thug: his studies in Japan and long history of travel, espionage and trouble-finding have given him a knowledge of differing cultures, he speaks a number of languages, and has a deep appreciation of ice-cold beer (see, for example, Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, where beer brings Wolverine back from a hypnotised state).
Also, he has the sort of facial hair that generations of young men have grown up aspiring to.
FIRST APPEARED IN HULK #181 (1974)
CREATED BY LEN WEIN, JOHN ROMITA SR


The above write-ups are from Empire’s list.
For more on the above characters (including who Singer saw as his potential White Queen), just click on their names; the entire list will be accessible from there.

In Part 3—Afterthoughts (97)—we note some characters from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

(Images courtesy of greghornjudge.com [Emma Frost and Wolverine, art by Greg Horn]; artofhagan.com [Magneto, art by Brian Hagan]; about.com [Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto; photo by Nels Israelson]; and marvel.com [Emma Frost, New X-Men cover art by Frank Quitely, Wolverine, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine].)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (91)
OUR IMMORTAL BELOVED

ew.com has put forward a list of favourite immortal characters in popular culture, and among them are…


Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensei (David Anders), in Heroes


Dream/Morpheus/Sandman, in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman


Legolas (Orlando Bloom), in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy


Pinhead (Doug Bradley), in the Hellraiser films, based on Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart


Tomas/Tommy/Tom Creo (Hugh Jackman), in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain

Also on the list, Tilda Swinton’s Orlando, Laurence Olivier’s Zeus, Alanis Morissette’s God (though I would have much preferred Emma Thompson in the role), South Park’s Satan, and The Matrix’s Oracle.
You can check out the entire list by clicking on any of the immortals above…

(The Absolute Sandman Volume Three wallpaper courtesy of dccomics.com; all other images courtesy of ew.com.)

reVIEW (39)
THE PRESTIGE

When I first got wind of the film adaptation of The Prestige, it got me fired up and looking forward to it like nobody’s business. What can I say? It just sounded like one of those totally geeky films.
Consider: brought to us by Christopher Nolan (the man who’d not only given us Memento, he’d also just successfully re-launched the Batman franchise), it was a film based on a World Fantasy Award-winning novel about feuding magicians that was going to bring together Wolverine, Batman, Gollum, and the Goblin King, all on one screen. Oh, and Alfred too. And Scarlett Johannson.
Geekapalooza, here we come.

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is “The Great Danton,” and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), “The Professor,” two magicians caught in a bitter rivalry sparked by an on-stage tragedy early on in their careers. From that point on, misery is writ large in their lives, as their obsessions gradually consume their very humanity.
Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Christopher Priest, The Prestige is a smart and imaginative period piece that cleverly intersects with real life by featuring Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) as a pivotal character in the proceedings. But the two magicians and the wizard aren’t the only ones warping the audience’s perception.
Like The Great Danton and The Professor, Nolan himself pulls a couple of tricks from his directorial hat. The beauty of The Prestige though, is that everything’s in plain sight, and still, that ending packs a wallop.
And it isn’t even like a Sixth Sense smack-you-on-the-upside-of-your-head plot flip. No, The Prestige’s climax is arguably a subtler construct.

To use the magician’s lexicon, the film has two ultimate “prestiges,” one prosaic and realistic, the other improbable and astounding. Both, if you (as they implore throughout the course of the film) “watch closely,” are readily revealed to the audience. Not underlined and explicated, mind you, but revealed.
Thus, neither comes as a real surprise at the end. Somehow though, in my case at least, the subconscious refused to fully consider the ramifications of these truths, because to do so would acknowledge the extreme and terrible lengths both men were willing to go to for the sake of their art.
Thus, they’re there, but not there. Because in spite of the light that Nolan shines on these truths, it’s really what’s going on in their shadows that will ultimately bother and disturb.

It’s a dark and tragic tale Nolan tells, and he tells it with that masterly skill he constantly displays in his films. It helps, of course, to have a great script (co-written with brother Jonathan), and a constant cinematographer like Wally Pfister in your corner (nominated for an Oscar for his work on The Prestige), shooting a cast like this one.*
There is a shadowy allure to The Prestige that makes it difficult to resist this cautionary tale of the steep and horrible price of revenge and jealousy and obsession.
If you haven’t seen this one, please do.
And keep in mind… watch closely…

* Pfister was also nominated for an Oscar for Nolan’s Batman Begins.

Parting shot: A review of Batman Begins can be found in the Archive.

(The Prestige OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; novel cover art courtesy of fantasticfiction.co.uk; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)