Every time I’m in the mood for something just so completely off-the-ball weird in a short video format, this Muse video always hits the spot. I mean, how can you not like a kung-fu spaceploitation spaghetti western? Also, keep an eye out at the 3:13 mark — and not for the sex scene, pervs! — but for the shot of the camera crew in the mirror.

I am in utter awe. Set designer and current Emily Carr student Lance Cardinal created a working, beautifully-accoutremented Muppet Show theatre, with elaborate rigging and consummate attention to detail.

It’s nice to see a fellow Vancouverite making such wonderful things; it’s always cool seeing the collective geek cred of this fair Pacific Northwest city swell with the dedicated and unabashed nerdery of its creative citizenry (see also: desktop siege weapons).

It’s probably a bad idea to read too deeply into the strange synchronicitys of media releases, but given the unsettled nature of the times we’re living in (what with the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear difficulties; and all the continued political instability in the Middle East), it does seem kind of strange that we’re seeing (or have recently seen) not one, but FOUR major media releases about alien invasion.

The first would have been Skyline, which was utterly forgettable. Even the CG aliens and mecha were… kinda bland. It didn’t help that it had a ridiculously disjointed plot and relatively unlikeable main characters. The best thing that could be said about it is that portrays something seldom seen in alien invasion movies — the utter demoralization of Earth’s defenders, without the usual cinematic pablum of a heroic rallying to destroy and push out the aggressors.

Battle: LA is then the logical follow-up for Skyline (not surprising, considering that the same visual FX went into both movies, an issue that could have led to Sony suing the directors of Skyline for basically being hired to work in Battle: LA’s FX, only to use those same effects in a movie released four months earlier). This one is a more traditional alien-invasion scenario (in the vein of ID4) coupled with a thinly-veiled US Marines recruitment advertisment. As expected, the good guys win, the bad guys retreat, things go boom.

If it had been left at this, I’d chalk it up to the Deep Impact / Armageddon effect, except for the presence of Falling Skies.

It’ll be interesting to see a longer-format alien-invasion series, as that should allow for a larger exploration of many of the issues that arise from the ongoing occupation of the planet and the depredation of the human species by a vastly technologically superior foe. Plus, Noah Wylie does make for a charismatically earnest leading man, and my love for disaster porn means that I’ll make some effort to follow the show as it goes on.

What really made me question this overall invasion zeitgeist was wandering into the Inversion website, which seems to be a video game whose core mechanic is basically the Half-Life 2 Gravity Gun, writ large and first used by aliens on an unsuspecting Earth.

So, is there something going on? And I’m not talking conspiracy-theory-crazy here; just that the overall mood of the entertainment-seeking audience seems to be be keyed to watching humanity get decimated by unfathomable forces from beyond this world. That’s kind of disheartening, on the whole. Hopefully we’ll see a reversal of this trend when someone announces a My Little Ponies – Friendship is Magic movie or something.

The Wondercon trailer for Green Lantern feels significantly better? more appropriate? more true to the source material? than the previous one, even if it does offer less character development. The CGI still looks a little plastic-y, but it’s definitely a step above what’s been seen before.

Hobo with a Shotgun! (Rutger Hauer!)

I began the movie-watching year with True Grit (a bit late, true) then last week, the TNMC went and saw Rango. It’s probably one of the most fun movies I’ve watched all year. It’s almost too earnest to be a kids movie, but this fact is disguised by the comedy and by the meta-references all throughout. I mean, a movie starring Johnny Depp as the Chameleon-With-No-Name (sorta) gets a cameo of Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson? That’s…. deliciously loopy. Oh, yeah, so here be spoilers, of a sort.

A lot of the movie’s musings on the nature of the West will probably be lost on a majority of its officially-intended audience, but I found it a truer meditation on westerns than the aforementioned True Grit (which, while technically competent and masterfully told, was about more straightforward than you could usually get from the Coen brothers). Rango’s homages, comedic asides, and heroic journey (which is made even more telling by its use of the Mariachi Greek-chorus) harkens to the whole of the western oeuvre, not just Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, but every Sunday afternoon Black Hat / White Hat cowboys-an-injuns serial. This really shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that Gore Verbinsky directed the whole shebang, and he does seem to have a talent for lovingly deconstructing and re-integrating the best things out of a genre (see also: the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie).

It’s interesting to see how Verbinsky chose to direct this project by sticking all the actors in  a skeletal mockup of the town of Dirt and environs letting them have at it. I’d love to see a side-by-side view of the animated movie with the actor’s reference in the director’s cut DVD, but for now, this Youtube video will have to do.

Is it me, or do I keep hearing a bit of the Hunter S voice coming outta Johnny Depp?

They got a lot of really recognizable voice talent out for Rango, and overall it was nice to see it used appropriately, though it was criminal how few lines we actually heard out of Claudia Black. Still, Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake was an inspired bit of casting. The movie’s done pretty well for itself, but I’m kind of hoping we don’t see a sequel. Some things are more complete when it’s had its moment, and then wanders off into the sunset.

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Have some bonus music from Rango — Ride of the Valkyries, with Banjos!

The kindest thing that can be said of Tron: Legacy is that it was watchable, and that it had an awesome soundtrack (which is getting a remixed version come April). At its core, it was a cheesy popcorn flick, marred by an overcommitment to its cool graphics and an underwhelming use of its source material, and lacking a consistency of vision in the execution of its digitized environment. I have no complaints on the acting side of things; it’s not as if they were given Shakespeare level material to work with, and it’s always nice seeing Michael Sheen chewing the scenery (not to mention Olivia Wilde playing the kick-ass naif).

So, it was with something akin to shock and joy that I viewed the teaser trailer for TRON: The Next Day (TR3N? Whatever the next title will end up being).

It seems odd to see a Tron movie set so strongly in the real world, but in hindsight, that was what I found most lacking in Legacy. Aside from the placeholder setups in the beginning and a few callbacks here and there (Dillinger’s kid! played by the awesome Cillian Murphy), there was less of a connection between the two worlds than there was in the first movie, and I think that’s why Legacy seemed to lack soul (too computerish, perhaps, and far less human).

Now I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy a Tron movie without its digital world or cool graphics, but my interest is definitely piqued. I do hope that they get Daft Punk back to do the soundtrack, though part of me thinks that a Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross-esque collaboration may work better with the more human setting. Time will tell how this movie shapes up, but I think they’ve already got my TNMC vote, for sure.