Santikos Cine-opsis

As far as faux-topian sci-fi alternate reality crime dramas go, you could do much worse than “Surrogates”, a robot whodunit with a lot of brain and firepower that sometimes jams but still ends up hitting its target.

We learn early on in “Surrogates” that robotic human duplicates were initially created to restore movement to the disabled, but were then coopted by the military as drones, and eventually released to the general public.  15 years later, 98% of humans live their daily lives through robotic surrogacy, where they can apparently feel all sorts of emotions and stimuli, and yet, feel no pain and are in no danger.

That is, until some jerk on a crotch rocket starts EMP-ing people’s surrogates and melting their brains.  So the FBI sends Bruce Willis and his robot partner Radha Mitchell (whose Surrogate apparently had a defective acting chip) to investigate.  Along the way, Brucey has to unplug from his surrogate and see the world as it really is…a fake, superficial shopping mall of lies built to keep the public distracted and quiet (take that, audience!).

He also has to deal with a radical group of non-surrogate users known as “humans” (or meatbags, an apparent derogatory term for those who reject surrogacy), as well as the inventor of Surrogates who was Steve Jobs-ed from his company during a power struggle and whose son was one of the people killed by the aforementioned crotch rocket jerk.  Not only that, but Willis also must battle through corporate legalese and government cover-ups before he ends up randomly googling the truth about the surrogate attacks (one of the lamest reveals I’ve seen in a suspense movie in a while).

All of this is of course very exciting and explosion-y (especially a wild car chase between the all-human Willis and a surrogate who has apparently downloaded some sort of grasshopper mod from the app store).  But my problem with “Surrogates” is that it turns out to be another movie that uses state of the art technology, shown in giant theaters, to warn us about the dangers of embracing state of the art technology. By the way, did you know that “Surrogates” has a web site where you can create your own surrogate and link to the movie for twitter updates?

Now, I’m not saying that it’s hypocritical for a movie based on the dangers of overdependence on technology to advertise using online social networking, but…oh yeah, that is what I’m saying.  But you can fan them on your Facebook page!

21st century hypocrisies aside, I think the movie does a good job of being an entertaining way to say “Hey!  You!  Quit pretending to be a hot blonde in Second Life and go outside and throw a ball around!”  I just think that if you need a movie to tell you that, then you’re probably not going to get the message even if you see it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go set my fantasy football lineup.

I just finished watching “The Horse Boy”, a touching and very real documentary about an amazing family and the lengths they went to help their young child overcome some of the behavioral difficulties associated with autism.

And by lengths, I mean riding horseback over Mongolian countryside to perform a game of psychic-twister with some ancient reindeer-herding shaman.

I know!  Cool!  I had no idea I’d be this enthralled by a movie called “The Horse Boy”, but here I am at 1:35am still excited about how a very hard to reach child was helped by shamanic rituals to live a more normal life.

At the risk of getting too personal (even for a blog), there are autism related cases in my family history, and the respect and honesty in which parents Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff discuss and attempt to treat their son Rowan’s autistic fits is gripping and emotional, without being melodramaic or exploitative.  And both parents are quick to caution that they are not suggesting that all parents of autistic children hop on a horse and roll up on some reindeer farmers in the Mongolian highlands.  But what the film shows us is that parents of all children can accomplish astounding positive changes in their children by being observent to the desires of those children.

The movie is touching without melodrama.  It has a message, but doesn’t preach it.  And even though I have persnoal experience with autism in my family, watching “The Horse Boy” even gave me a higher understanding of the disease; not from a textbook perspective, but from a family behavioural viewpoint.  The family’s trip to Mongolia is a metaphor for tenacity and compassion….and, more selfishly, to figure out how to get their kid to use the bathroom and quit screaming inconsolably for hours at a time.

“The Horse Boy” is just now beginning to pop up in local theaters, and thankfully for S.A., we’re one of them.  In fact, writer and producer Rupert Isaacson will be in town TODAY at the Santikos Bijou theater for a special screening of the film, followed by a Q&A session.

This is a serious request from me to you, the quiet readers and spam solicitors who read this blog.  GO TO THE SCREENING!  You will have a better understanding of the world of autism, and possibly your own world, for having seen this movie.

Now, all plugs aside, I promise that I’ll be back to normal, shredding some stupid movie with wooden acting and a crappy plot by next week (I plan on seeing “Jennifer’s Body”).  But until then, you’re getting shmaltzy JT.  And schmaltzy JT tells you to get your butts down to the Bijou by 6pm Sunday so you can talk to an amazing family and watcah a documentary that will leave you wanting to find a palamino, a sherpa, and a teepee camp full of reindeer shaman.

What: Uber-special screening of “The Horse Boy” followed by Q&A with the dad from the film

Where: Bijou Theater, Crossroads Mall

When:  6pm book signing, 7pm movie, 8:30pm Q&A

Why:  Because you can rent “Love Happens”, and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” will still be there next weekend.

So DO IT!  Then give me some feedback and tell me what you think.

“A stitch in time saves 9.” — some wordy seamstress

There are contradictions aplenty in “9″, the new post-apocalyptic CGI PG-13 children’s parable directed by Shane Acker and endorsed by Tim Burton and “Wanted” director Timur Bekmambetov.   “9′ is a computer animation film denouncing technology.  It’s heroes are machines…but the villains are machines, too.   Questioning authority is good, but science without soul leads to destruction.  These contradictions are the interwoven cloth that encapsulates 9, a puppet brought to life to save a world destroyed by a monster robot who brings other monster robots to life, which he accidentally brings to life while trying to save the life of another sock puppet who had saved his life previously.  It is then up to 9 to (make sense of and) fix his mistakes, and in so doing, fix the collective mistakes of all mankind.  That’s a lot to live up to for a googly-eyed voodoo doll that looks like a gingerbread man inside a potato sack haz-mat suit.

“9″ the movie plays out like a cross between “Wall-e”, “Edward Scissorhands”, and “The Matrix,” but since 3 references aren’t enough, let’s just go ahead and add “The Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, “Final Fantasy”, “The Seven Samurai”, “Toy Story”, and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (at least visually).  There.  Now we have 9 references for “9″.

And that’s one of the “9″’s problems. I think that the reason the film’s message gets so muddied is because “9″ started out as an Oscar-nominated short film, and was then expanded to feature length.  Now, I know that this is how many independent movies are made…first as shorts, then stretched into a full length later on to become more marketable.  Only in this case, much of the movie feels like filler…some sort of patchwork plot to link the action scenes together.

That being said, much of the original’s creativity makes it onto the big screen.  There are cute moments and endearing characters, cleverly created villains and wild action sequences.   The crazy robot snake-spider fight scene is one of my favorites, but nothing compares to watching one of the sock-robots sit on an empty tin can and giggle when he sticks a magnet up to his head, like some sort of EMP LSD.

It’s those scenes that make “9″ worth seeing, and its contradictions worth forgiving.  I believe that’s because, as we find out in the film, we put ourselves into our creations.  Maybe its fair then that this creation inherits both our good intentions and our hypocrisies.