Cami and I saw The Prestige on Saturday and it’s still messing with my head. Good gravy, I love me some Christopher Nolan. I don’t know what is about his directing style, be he shoots sceens like I envision them in my head. I don’t know if that makes sense, but sometimes there are just directors that you vibe with. He has a big-budget sensibility, but it looks so effortless. Things aren’t overladen with CGI and he doesn’t look like he’s trying to force something visually. He’s the anit-Michael Bay. He shoots films like someone who is confident in their ability. I really dig his work.

Of course, half of the Nolan mystique is the material he chooses and The Prestige is pure gold. I loved the twists and turns. I loved that the showed you how some of the more simple tricks were done. It really sets you up for the larger tricks and leaves you scratching your head.

Like Memento, Nolan does a great job playing with time. Leaping backward and foreward through the narrative, he uses the diary entries of the two leads to tell the story. It takes a deft hand to tell the story almost entirely in flashback without the audience realizing it. The plot has twists and turns, but you never get lost. I don’t want to talk too much about the plot, though because it is such a joy to watch the movie unfold at it’s own pace.

I’ve been dying to talk to someone about this movie all weekend. After seeing it Saturday night, I had dreams about it in my sleep. I woke up on Sunday and it was still running through my mind. I keep thinking about it, even now. Very few movies these days keep their grip on me for this long. In fact, next to The Departed, I would say this was one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

The performances were great all around. I gotta give Hugh Jackman credit. Seeing him in movies like this do a good job of reminding me that this guy is way more talented than the X-Men films would lead you to believe.

That said, this isn’t Jackman’s movie. The Prestige belongs to Christian Bale. His brooding performance anchors the whole film.

It’s funny. When Cami and I came home that night, I turned on the TV and Batman Begins was on HBO. It really got me thinking about Bale and the roles he chooses. Between The Prestige, Batman Begins and American Psycho, there is a clever little commentary about the nature of duality. The person you are professionally and the person you are in your free time. It made me wonder if this wasn’t some kind of statement Bale was making in regard to the committment to his craft. Remember, this is the guy who dropped 60 pounds at the risk of his own health to play a deteriorating insomniac in The Machinist.

Actors don’t typically raise these kind of thoughts in my head. I watch their performances and say either "That was good" or "That was bad." I never think about the larger artisitc statement. At least not with most actors these days. I look at someone like Bale and think to myself "This is an actor that’s going to be around for a long time."

At any rate, those are my thoughts about The Prestige. I can’t really get into much more without ruining it for you. Maybe those of you who have seen the film can chat me up in The THorum and we can trade theories and ideas.

Oh, okay. I can say this. Even though today’s comic is (crudely) about Scarlett Johansson, hers was by far the least necessary performance in the film. You could have replaced her with any other actress and gotten the same result. Frankly, I thought Rebecca Hall’s performance as Bale’s jilted wife were far more affecting.

Sorry to end on such a down note, but it’s really the most I can talk about without ruining things! Would everyone please go see The Prestige so we can have an open and honest conversation about the film?!

Talk to you all later!

There’s probably a better joke to be had making fun of either Saw III or Babel. But frankly, I couldn’t muster the creative juices because I couldn’t bring myself to care about either film.

Saw III comes out this weekend and it’s more of the same Rube Goldberg torture devices, excessive gore and puppetry. It’s astonishing to me that they’ve made a new Saw film every year since the first one came out in 2004. At first, the success of Saw indicated that you could have a huge hit filmed for very little money and I was impressed by it’s efficiency.  But now, Hollywood knows a deal when they see one and it’s become part of the machine, so to speak. They can keep churning out Saw films for next to no money and keep raking in huge box office. It’s difficult not to be jaded about the whole thing.

Although I am not a fan of horror, Saw should have been right up my alley. I appreciate the complexity of the death traps and can realate more with a killer who views his victims to be as stupid and selfish as the audience does. This, as oppose to the usual slasher flick where the killer is pretty much killing because that’s what the script demands. At least here they are miming some kind of psychological profile.

But at the same time, I view horror as one of the most disposable of genres. For every original movie Pyscho, Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th movie (and yes, even Saw), it’s only a matter of time before it’s dilluted into celluloid mush. Studios can crank out dozens of films at no cost because they can hire no-name actors for victims. You see what happens when they cast famous people. Since we’ve already identified with them as an audience for their exploits, the never get offed. There’s nothing at stake and no thrills. So studios have learned to keep it cheap, keep it low to the ground and keep raking in the big bucks.

It’s a little insulting to you as a viewer, if you think about it. Essentially it says, "You’re not worth creating something that was more thought out."

Babel, on the other hand, seems to be death by introspection. While the concept of communication, the barriers to achieve it or the complete lack thereof is interesting conceptually, I have no interest in watching Brad Pitt and his stubble sweat it out in Morocco for two hours while Kate Blanchett cashes another check for depicting a woman bleeding out in a hut. It looks ponderously slow and IMPORTANT (!) and boring as all hell.

I’m fine with movies that make you think, but at the risk of sounding ignorant, I’m not a big fan of films set in the Third World. I don’t know if it’s because of the poverty they represent or just the phyical locations. But something about them just makes me uncomfortable. They never look like a place you would want to visit for 20 minutes let alone 2 hours. That dry, parched sensation. The grime. It’s unsettling. That’s probably the point, but if you’re going to try and teach me about the difference between the haves and have-nots… well, there’s no way for me to get out of this statement without sounding like a complete fool.

The more I think about it, I think it’s just the desert locations. The barren nothingness. Truthfully, the scenes on Tatooine in the Star Wars movies are some of my least favorite for the same reason. Maybe I’m just turned off by hot temperatures?

At any rate, that’s all I have for today. Don’t forget that copies of "Theater Hopper: Year Two" arrived early and are in my hot little hands as we speak. Cami and I are doing our best to fill out envelopes and send off all the pre-orders before we go to Wizard World Texas on November 9. So if you’d like a copy for yourself, don’t hesitate to order!

Have a great weekend!