In a strange bit of cross-promotion, yours truly can be found acting in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedie of King Lear at Shakespeare Orange County this month. Of course, what that meant for me is for the past few weeks I’ve had to sit through the telling of this terrific, tragic tale just about every night, and so I needed something to read to lighten things up a bit.
What more appropriate way to do that than by giving Christopher Moore’s parody of King Lear, Fool (pub. 2009), a reread.

“A Fool and his money are soon popular“
For those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, allow me to recap:
The old King Lear of Britain is ready to retire and wants to pass along control of his kingdom to his heirs. In order to prevent future strife between the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall (each of whom are married Lear’s older daughters, Goneril and Regan), Lear decides to divide his kingdom into three parts, each portion going to a daughter. His trick, however, is that the size and value of each portion is determined by asking his daughters which of them loves him the most.
Goneril and Regan spew honey out of their mouths, but Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter, Cordelia, doesn’t play along. She says,

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty:

Lear, in his pride, does not take this response well. He disowns Cordelia and divides her portion between Cornwall and Albany and gives them the keys to the kingdom, though he shall still “retain the name of king”. It soon becomes clear, however, that the honey coming from the mouths of Goneril and Regan mask the vitriol in their hearts. Lear soon finds himself rejected by his older daughters, turned out into a storm with a fool, a possible madman, and a knight in disguise as his only company. His heartbreak tugs at his sanity as the storm tugs at his health.
Cordelia returns with an army, looking to set the wrong things right, and finds her father wandering feverish and delirious. In typical tragic form, by the end of the play practically everyone ends up dead, and those who survive cautioning,

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

“It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.“
In Christopher Moore’s novel, the story of Lear is re-imagined, and told through the eyes of Lear’s Fool, named Pocket. The tale through Pocket’s eyes becomes what Publishers Weekly rightly calls “a buffet of tragedy, comedy, and medieval porn action.” Moore deviates from his source material a bit in order turn the tragedy into such a ribald comedy, changing the ending and borrowing heavily from a couple other Shakespeare plays in the process. But in addition to the utterly hilarious (and vulgar) wit coming from the fool, Moore cleverly imagines scenes to fill in certain gaps in Shakespeare’s play.
Too many details may spoil the fun (and there is a lot of fun to be had), but I will say the book worked wonderfully well at keeping me smiling by the end of each rehearsal. Shakespeare purists who don’t recognize parody as the sincerest form of flattery and people who don’t appreciate a good dick or fart joke will probably not enjoy the book that much. But for the rest of you, I encourage you to pick up the book and give it a read. It’s sure to tickle the whole way through, and I lost count of the moments when I burst out into audible laughter.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

At ease, henchmen. Today I’m happy to bring you the highlights of the historical career of one of the best film editors of all time. This Spotlight seems to fall at an entirely appropriate time here at Semantink — just last week, Ben studied the glory days of comics, and Akatzen wound a 10,000 year clock with a superb recollection of Anathem. What better way to study the effects of time in film than by focusing on the skills and assets of the visual trickery of the film editor. I present to you our subject of this week’s film creator spotlight: Thelma Schoonmaker.

Schoonmaker is best known as “Scorsese’s gal,” having edited all of Martin Scorsese’s pictures since 1980’s Raging Bull (with the exception of his Rock-Docs No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Shine a Light). Known for her versatility and editing against type (dissolves, simple angle/reverse angle as opposed to MTV style fast cutting, as well as the techniques of split screen and dissolves for the documentary Woodstock, Thelma has made quite the name for herself in the world of movies, and has three Oscars and countless other awards to show for it.

Originally, Thelma tested for state department exams and sought a position to work internationally for the state department. Having been born in Algeria and living in Aruba, she didn’t move to the states until her teen years. Because of the limitations on what she could say or do in mingling situations (for instance, not able to criticize Apartheid in the presence of South African dignitaries), Thelma exited her desire for a State Department position. She placed herself in line for a job she found in the classified ads for an assistant editor, and then took a six week course at NYU to learn the basic skills of cutting on film. It was here that she was pulled by a professor to help a young filmmaker struggling with his student project. That filmmaker was Martin Scorsese.

Click here to view the embedded video.

She then cut Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door which starred a young Harvey Keitel. As you can see from the clip above, the filmmaking team already formed styles to compliment each others’ abilities.

After this, Thelma worked on several documentaries, most notable of which is the iconic Woodstock. For this film, she was able to bring musical performances out of a simple cinematic experience and make them more dynamic. Schoonmaker earned her first Oscar nomination for this film, but, oddly, was still not allowed to be a member of the editors’ union.

At the time, there was a catch-22 with the editors’ guild. You couldn’t edit a feature film unless you were in the union, but you couldn’t become a member of the union unless you cut a feature film. Thus, it wasn’t until TEN YEARS LATER (1980) that Thelma was able to cut a feature film and become a member of the union… mysteriously. She says, to this day, that she doesn’t know who pulled their weight to get her into the guild (she guesses it was Pacino).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Her first feature as a member of the union was Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, which also earned Thelma her first Oscar. Filled with gritty black and white sparring, boxing matches choreographed like dance routines, and improvised scenes filmed with multiple cameras led to a completely refreshing film dynamic that translated perfectly from life to script to screen, Raging Bull is not only one of the greatest films of all time, it’s an amazing foray into the blessed relationship between Scorsese and Schoonmaker that continues to this day.

With Goodfellas, we were treated to freeze-frames and long tracking shots to create a rocky road from the top of the world to the fall from grace. Notice how, in the scene below, we don’t cut away from Henry’s attack of this dude. It’s all in one take, such that we are not given the chance to look away. We’re this deep in Henry’s world, we’re not allowed to break away.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In The Color of Money, each and every game of pool was suddenly granted a personality and tone of its’ own, some with long lingering dissolves, and others chopped into jump cuts and overhead fly-on-the-wall shots. Here’s one clip of Tom Cruise ruling the school, with only a brief cutaway that serves us a wordless moment of introduction between Cruise and Paul Newman.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the late ‘90s, Schoonmaker and Scorsese brought to us a classic, sprawling epic in the life story of the Dalai Lama.  Kundun allowed the filmmakers to take their time in a personal recollection of the spiritual and political leader, and the result is a colorful, true spectacle. That attention to detail was combined with character-based cross-cutting in Gangs of New York, another historical epic focused on cultural and moral diversity in 19th Century New York City.

Schoonmaker won her second Oscar for snipping The Aviator, the biography of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. Like most of Scorsese’s films, The Aviator is devoted to detail — from the costumes, music, and design to the carefully chosen shots and editing. Simple transitions to show the passage of time and also reveal Hughes’ devotion to his creations as much as his lovers. Notice the quick cutaway to DiCaprio’s foot in this scene, which hints at his OCD taking effect.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For  The Departed, Schoonmaker won her third Oscar, and Scorsese his first — for the kinetic and erratic chopping in a film that combined extended takes, simple match-cutting dialogue scenes, quick-slick jump cuts that made cell phones cool for once, and a flowing nature between scenes that helped us understand a fairly complex plot.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most recently, both filmmakers combined their knowledge of the history of film styles in the elaborate and swell-paced thriller Shutter Island.

Up next for the acclaimed editor is Scorsese’s 3D adaptation Hugo Cabret. Let’s see what she can do with the exploration of 3D in the period piece adaptation — I’m sure it’ll be something great.

Thelma Schoonmaker is a true treasure in the history of film, now more than ever, as she, like Scorsese, respects and pays homage to (and builds upon) films and techniques of the past to improve upon the movies of today. This quote from her applies to forays from young filmmakers: “From MTV on, the speed of editing has increased, and that is now entering into narrative editing. People are not relying on good shots to tell the story, and I don’t think you can sustain that kind of cutting for the full length of a film.”

You are dismissed.

Sgt. Angle

Semantink Publishing to release first trade paperback:  MYTHOI Book I: Birth
Semantink Publishing has finished production of, and is releasing, their inaugural trade paperback (TPB),
MYTHOI Book I: Birth on Friday, September 10th, 2010.
The MYTHOI Birth series, from creator/writer James Ninness and artist Jed Soriano, sets the foundation for what is
to come in the 60-issue run, introducing protagonists to general audiences worldwide. MYTHOI Book I: Birth is not
a linear tale, but five individual stories that touch on the rich beginnings of MYTHOI’s primary characters: Wiglaf,
Taros, Yuki, Vito and Touch.
Fans of this series will find the TPB loaded with extra inclusions, including:  script to page progressions,
sketch pieces from MYTHOI artist Jed Soriano, sketch pieces from MYTHOI TPB cover artist Kevin Warwick, an
introduction from writer Michael Fountain, an afterward from series creator/writer James Ninness and a previously
unreleased MYTHOI Birth tale by James Ninness and artist Yanglyn Ou.
MYTHOI Book I: Birth will be available exclusively at Semantink.com online store.  The TPB will retail at $19.99
upon its official release (a $2.00 discount is available for pre-orders until Friday, September 10th, 2010).
Whilst MYTHOI Book I: Birth does take place in the MYTHOI universe it is not part of the 60-issue series, “set
now, not the now of mythological fiction, but the now of flesh and blood monsters where nightmarish beasts have
skin, folklore wears clothes and the dreams of humanity hitchhike the roads of earth” (Semantink.com).  Those
wishing to follow the series proper (#1 and #2 are out now) may do so by downloading individual issues at Se–
mantink.com’s store or Drivethrucomics.com.  Digital issues are $0.99 each, with plans to release each six-issue
arc in TPB format.
Semantink Publishing  –  www.Semantink.com
SEMANTINK PUBLISHING is first and foremost a company dedicated to quality, not quantity. We believe that taking the time to read anything should be a rewarding experience, whether it’s a comic book, a novel, a magazine or the back of a cereal box. A great story, like good food, takes time to prepare and that means we won’t churn out twenty properties a week to fill your shelves and take your money. Instead we’re going to take our time crafting stories so that you can (we hope) spend your time enjoying them. We want you to stare at panels of art for a few minutes, or maybe relax as you digest a line of text. It’d be nice if you looked forward to your time with us, as we look forward to sharing with you. In short, Semantink wants you to find the meaning of print, each time you read us.

Season 2 is on it’s way and I thought I would post the first few official production images from the upcoming second season.

Lets be honest, GLEE is fun, campy, and in a way it’s incredibly smart. I honestly can’t wait to see what the writers have in store for us this season. The rumor I hear is that we may even get a Britney Spears episode. I don’t think I’d hate that.

I guess we will just have to wait and see. September 21, 2010.

Keep dancing,

Admiral Eo

1) The machines should have capabilities that robots currently do not possess but that living machines do possess. The first of these are self-regulating or homeostatic qualities such as “self-repair, self-reproduction, and energy self-sufficiency.” Obviously, machines do not possess these abilities (yet), but they would be greatly appreciated in almost any application.

2) Living machines need to learn how to self-organize and create physical attributes based on a complex environment. This means that the machines need to learn how to organize their neural and physical functions to match their purpose and environment rapidly.

3) Biomechanical researchers need to spend more time coming up with mathematical theorems and equations for the propagation of the above topics on living beings and systems in order to apply them to their robotic counterparts.

The concept of living machines would have far reaching implications on the general populace and on the way we think about technology generally. The machines would cease becoming objects and the relationship between man and machine would mutate to a symbiotic relationship between living organisms to accomplish the all-inclusive grand act of survival.

So what kind of work has been done so far on biomachinery? A lot, really, but the definition is still up for debate. There are plenty of machines that are shaped and designed after animals, but these are really more of biology-inspired machines: biomimetic engineering. To qualify as biomechanical, a living organism must be used in the manner that a machine is. Here is an example of a very simple machine that was developed for water purification by the name of Living Machines. Note that the microorganisms that are used for the purification of water were specially designed and created in a lab. A sustainable environment is created for the microorganisms and the system is essentially self-sustaining. This qualifies the same kind of drive as the definition that was offered earlier above. The machine must be capable of sustaining itself as well as completing the task for which it was designed. This is a link to the work of Eduardo Torres-Jara who is developing a protocol for a robot that “eats.” In this case, the act of eating is to find electrical current for which to power its batteries, but the act of self-regulation for the robot brings it one step closer to functioning in a homeostatic manner. Though the original design and implementation of robots that look for their own power-source has been shortcut into the aggregation of solar cells on many robots, there are a few that rely on actual chemical breakdown of food. This link shows the “Chew-Chew” train which is made up of many blocks of living fuel cells that are microbacteria. The bacteria is fed sugar-cubes and the sugar-cubes are broken down and used as energy just as a living organism uses them. Another piece to add to this developing technology is the work of Dr. Ben Whalley from the University of Reading. He has built the world’s first cyborg; the machine (if it can still so be called) is piloted by the brain of a rat that is kept in a bell jar and transmits data via bluetooth impulses to the robot. The robot can learn (since the primary interface is the brain of a living organism) but the entire design of the “body” is robotic. Here is a video of the object at work:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So what does the future hold for biomachines? Quite a bit, truthfully. The applications are beginning to trickle down, but scientists are theorizing that certain bacteria can aid in electrical conductivity and with the application of genetic replication and the ability to engineer organisms to do practically anything, the future of biomechanical engineering seems wide open. Next week, I’ll delve a little more into the science of genetic engineering to look at obscure topics such as cloning, genetic replication, genetic mutation, and their role in the development of human civilization.

When I was coming up with a blog for this week, I got it into my head that I would do a look at comics that had “jumped the shark”. I was pretty excited about the idea, but as I went digging through my longboxes, looking for the exact point when THE AUTHORITY started to suck, I couldn’t help but be struck by an amazing sense of nostalgia. As you might know if you have read my blogs before, my knowledge of comics doesn’t extend much farther back than the 1980s, but looking through the archives of all the serial adventures I read when I was younger, I couldn’t help but sit back and remember the way things used to be (way back at the turn of the century). So, with that in mind, today let’s take a walk down memory lane together, shall we?

Remember when Wildstorm was the place to be? Not so long ago, from about 1995–2005, Wildstorm was the go-to spot for comic book creators big and small to get their rocks off. Just look at a few of the titles the company was putting out over that span: ASTRO CITY, PLANETARY, THE AUTHORITY, DESOLATION JONES, SLEEPER, GLOBAL FREQUENCY,STRANGERS IN PARADISE, RED, and the entire ABC line by Alan Moore (TOP 10, TOM STRONG, PROMETHEA, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN). Week after week, month after month, If you picked up a Wildstorm book, you would get something different and enjoyable. The company that had started out as Jim Lee’s baby studio saw itself grow into an beautifully diverse creator driven imprint, and the sales reflected it. Sadly, nothing lasts forever. Today, the company has pared down it’s line to properties with established sales records like THE AUTHORITY and WILDCATS, and begun moving towards a line up filled with licensed properties like  WORLD OF WARCRAFT and DANTE’S INFERNO. Creators that used to go to Wildstorm for creative freedom have since moved to smaller studios or publishers (Alan Moore and Warren Ellis for example). The only bright spot in a now severely pared down lineup is Brian K. Vaughn’s EX MACHINA (which will sadly be ending soon). So what happened to the amesomeness that was Wildstorm?  I think the reason the company declined was twofold. First, editorial control increased. Where once, creators could play around in the Wildstorm universe as they saw fit, editors eventually stepped in and tried to bring a level of line-wide quality that was previously unseen. While I appreciate what the company was going for, the big name creators that sought out the WU for freedom, no longer found the imprint quite so appetizing. An example of this would be the Mark Millar/ Editorial fight about content in THE AUTHORITY. The second reason is limiting the company focus to a core set of books. The whole reason books like PLANETARY and EX MACHINA exist is because Wildstorm used to take chances in their publishing schedule, but sadly, those days are gone.

Remember when John Byrne was the baddest motha-f*^%$ on the planet? I touched on this last week, but there was a time when John Byrne was crazy hot. Supernova hot. He was so hot, he could crap in a piece of tinfoil, sell it as earrings, and people would line up to buy it hot. In the early to late-1980s, John Byrne sold books, and with good reason: He made books awesome. Byrne’s pencils helped make X-men into the mega-franchise that it has been for the last 20 years. He gave the Fantastic Four their best run since Stan Lee. His revamp of SUPERMAN took a tired character and made him exciting again. Even Byrne’s smaller work like NEXT MEN was beautifully drawn and written. Heck, he made WEST COAST AVENGERS a must read. So what happened? Well, some would say that Byrne is still awesome sauce, but they would be wrong. Over the last decade, Byrne’s stories have become tame and his artwork has become far too loose. Don’t believe me? Go look at his revamp of SPIDER-MAN. If you can’t find it anywhere, it’s because it blew. Look at Byrnes art on THE ALL NEW ATOM or DOOM PATROL, and you will see line work that is not as crisp as it once was, and storytelling that is bland. I think what happened to Byrne is just a simple matter of age. A great many creators lose their connection to readers over time (Chris Clairmont, Jim Shooter,  Herb Trimpe, Carmine Infantino, and Frank Miller (who doesn’t really count because he just went crazy)), and I think that Byrne might just be reaching the end of a very long and wonderful career.

Remember when X-MEN was the hottest comic in all the land? For a period of almost 20 years, from the early 1980s until almost the end of the millenium, X-men was the comic that all other comics wanted to be. The main title had a spectacular (if not overly verbose) writer in Chris Claremont for over a decade and a host of world-class artists including Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, John Romita Jr., Joe Maduiera, and the Kubert brothers, just to name a few. The book sold in ridiculous amounts every month, and created a new spin-off series seemingly every six months. X-crossover events were not to be missed, even if they were superfluous or just plain silly (yes you, Operation Zero-Tolerance). So what happened? I think the blame here has to go to Chris Claremont leaving the title. With Claremont at the helm, the book had a focus and a unified idea of who each character was and how they fit. While the book continued to have great sales numbers after Claremont left, it clearly lost something without his voice. Even with great writers coming in after Claremont like Scott Lobdell, Joe Kelly, Steven T. Seagle, and Jeph Loeb (greatness currently under review), the book quickly lost it’s narrative thread. By the end of the millennium, the X was not the astounding franchise that it once was. I should note that Grant Morrison did come to the rescue of the X-franchise in 2000 and made X-MEN a must-read again, but his work was quickly undone (dirty, dirty Chuck Austen) and thusly, I can’t include his run as part of the uber-successful X-run of the previous millennium.

Remember when Image comics sucked? These days, Image comics is a great place to find some spectacular indy-style books. WALKING DEAD, CHEW, CASANOVA, THE FRESHMEN, all currently reside at Image. However, not to long ago, Image comics were what you would pick up if you needed to line your bird cage and didn’t want to sully a fine newspaper. From the mid 1990s until the early to mid 2000s, Image was in a bad place. I’m not even talking about the books that Image produced when they started (because I have promised myself a month of not bashing Rob Liefeld), but rather when the company began to deal with the comics bubble bursting. Now, I’m not going to name names, but someone who I promised not to bash this month started the Image downfall by causing their Image co-founders to leave. With Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri gone, the Image output suffered. While SPAWN and SAVAGE DRAGON continued to be big sellers for Image, you couldn’t find a decent Image book past those two. So what happened? Jim Valentino opened up the company to indy creators to publish their work, and while early results where mixed, creators like Robert Kirkman and Brian Michael Bendis were given a place to showcase how great indy work could be.

That’s it for today folks, thanks for stopping by, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, head on over to www.entertheletters.com and play some games. You will like it, I promise. Oh, and if you have any of your own “remember when” moments, please share them in the comments section! Have a great weekend folks!

Last week I gave a brief look at how Quantum Theory helped Michael Crichton come up with his time-travel adventure Timeline. This week I want to fall a little deeper into the rabbit hole, and return to an author I’ve blogged about previously: Neal Stephenson.

Image from http://www.longnow.org/

In the mid 1990s, engineer and inventor Danny Hills came up with the idea of building a 10,000 year clock as an icon to long term thinking. The clock came from an observation he had:

“When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.” (The added zero in front of 2000 is used to resolve the deca-millennium bug, to keep digital clocks from resetting to zero in a little less than 8,000 years)

Hills and Stephenson chatted about the clock at a conference, and Stephenson came up with the idea of a series of rotating cylinders (“or cooler yet, spheres…”) with an opening in each. Each cylinder/sphere would nest just within the next cylinder/sphere, and rotate at different speeds, such that the openings would line up to reveal whatever is at the center once every 10,000 years.
From this idea, Stephenson started thinking about his own millennial clock, and the seeds for his 2008 novel Anathem were planted.

The word “anathem” is a kind of mash-up of “anthem” and “anathema”, creating a word that means both words at the same time. The novel Anathem takes place on a world similar to earth in many ways. Readers will find many parallels with our own world, though it may take awhile to figure it out (such as realizing a “jeejah” is essentially a cell phone). The real heart of the novel takes place in the math.
But again, math has several different meanings in Anathem, and the heart of the novel takes place in each meaning of math. Arbre, the world Stephenson created, comes with several thousand years of history, and in that course of time, civilization fell and rebuilt itself three different times. One of the only constants to last through all three Great Sacks is a community of philosophical nuns and monks who live in a type of conceptual convent called (mashing up the two words and combining their meanings) a concent. The fraas and suurs (think friars and sisters) of the concent stay separated from the rest of the world, and just as a convent is designed to maintain the purity of belief, a concent is designed to maintain the purity of Knowledge. It’s quite an amazing and delicate system Stephenson writes, but for the purposes of this post I don’t want to delve in deeper into the workings of the concent. For a more complete list of Earth-Arbre correlations, go here.

The Quantum theories that Anathem delve into are fascinating. One recurring theme in the novel deals with time, and influenced heavily by Julian Barbour’s novel The End of Time (pub. 1999), which makes the argument that time is an illusion from a physicists standpoint, shaped only by how we perceive our memories of the past and our hopes for the future.
The multiverse gets dealt with in Anathem as well, with special influence from David Deutsch’s book The Fabric of Reality (pub. 1997), who argues that the four main strands of science (quantum physics, evolution, computation, and knowledge) are not as unrelated as they appear.

One idea I found incredibly intriguing stems from Sir Roger Prenrose’s novel The Emperor’s New Mind (pub. 1989), where he makes the argument that the human brain is essentially a quantum computer. What it does is present a logical reason for some of the fantastical things that happen in the novel, putting a lot of science into science-fiction.
While I’m sure a lot of readers think that science is boring and more science in science-fiction takes the fun out of it, I could argue that it simply isn’t the case, but then we run into the problem of what is true for me isn’t true for everybody. I suppose that the best argument I can make is that just as epic high fantasy can be a more rewarding for some readers, but probably not all, epic high sci-fi will be a rich experience for some readers, but not all.
(And let me add that if you think that Twilight represents the pinnacle of vampire literature, you will probably find Anathem pretty boring.)

Anyway, give the book a read. I sincerely hope you’ll find it as entertaining and engrossing as I do.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

At ease, fresh fish!

First, let me say that I was appalled by last weekend’s weak show of solidarity and support for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World! You’re spending  your time and money on what, Vampire’s Suck ?! Really??! You’ve made some bad decisions, maggot…real bad. Get with the program, mount up, and sit your butts down in the theater!

Now, onto business. This past weekend, we were given a hearty dose of blood, gore, and frightful waters in Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D, a semi-reboot, semi-sequel to the popular Joe Dante Cult film Piranha, from 1978. The original story (scripted by indie-darling John Sayles) told of a school of piranha’s let loose on a small town lake, and was meant as a B-style parody of JAWS. Roger Corman produced it — as only Corman would — and that film involved dozens of practical effects, from rubber fish tied to fishing lines to a simple hotel waitress standing in as a “boob double” for actress Heather Menzies.

Aja’s remake is brutal in many ways — overuse of CGI, terrible 3D conversion, gratuitous and plentiful nudity, hundreds of gallons of fake blood. And it’s also glorious — Christopher Lloyd doing a moderately watered down Doc Brown reincarnation, Richard Dreyfus in a classic and referential cameo, and Ving Rhames going medieval on killer fish. But even the water ballet by two naked women is hilarious only for a few seconds, then it just becomes a tedious distraction from, you know, the gore.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the end of the day, after seeing Piranha 3D, I still could’ve walked right along the shores of the ocean and taken a dip, had I been off duty. The problem with this Piranha is that not enough is done to scare me. The script doesn’t have an underlying agenda, nor are any of the deaths filled with spine-tingling suspense. They’re all gruesome, the sort of way that the bloody kills of a Friday the 13th movie are gruesome — that is, without tension. With no tension comes no fear the minute you walk out of the theater.

There are a few “make-you-jump” moments — a bloody hand darting out of the water, a penis-less dude spurting his last bloody breath — but director Aja really needs to work out the meaning of “suspense” — odd, considering his breakout film was titled High Tension. Piranhas dash through dark waters and towards kicking feet at casual speeds. Most of the chomping that occurs in the first half of the film is of one person at a time. When the body count truly starts to climb, we’re left with mangled gore — body parts that become Spaghetti-o’s rather than recognizeable as humans. This effect was put to much better use in Peter Jackson’s early film Dead Alive. But Jackson had the foresight to frontload his movie’s setting in a bizarro-small town setting, and new how to play to the comedy. The actors in Piranha try to under or oversell their parts, and it’s sad that they weren’t given specific quirks that could’ve helped set the tone (something done to better effect in a movie like Scream).

Granted, we’re not talking high art here. We’re talking B-Movie schlock — get to the scares, character be damned! Then show me the schlock! Guts and gore and chomping CG fish will only take us to the edge of what your movie “wants to be”. You have to hand me the cheese on a silver platter. I don’t care about the teen kid’s high school crush, and I’m kind of sick of the whole sheriff’s department being full of tough folks who never made it out of the small town. Overkill is too narrow a concept to describe the level of gratuitous breasts in Piranha 3D — and this is coming from a man with more guts than Gianna Michaels’ breasts have surface area.

There’s been a lot of chatter that Piranha 3D is a movie that “knows what it is”, but it doesn’t. This isn’t a grindhouse flick, nor is it even an exploitation film, in the truest sense of the word. It’s a cheap imitation of B-grade horror, that fails to scare. However, I will admit that the amount of creative kills is quite remarkable in the scheme of things. As is the underwater lesbian ballet provided by Kelly Brooke and Riley Steele.

Perhaps the one missing element from JAWS…

The unbalanced ratio of scares to gratuitousness displayed in Piranha got me thinking of another great scare picture, told with incredible skill and depth, yet still able to scare the bejeezus out of the audience — JAWS (The original mama piranha, if you will).

Now, before you sound off about the differences in these two movies’ intentions, and the (attempted) exploitation aspect of Piranha vs. the serious artistic merits of Jaws, let me remind you that I’m not saying one film is better than the other. Piranha 3D obviously offers up a large dose of gore and blood, along with sex and c-grade jokes — all aspects of a movie to enjoy with a dozen loaded partygoers on a Friday night.

JAWS, on the other hand, will make you think twice about going in the water, and yet also tosses us a bone — literally — or two in the gore department.

Click here to view the embedded video.

My main point here is that you cannot compare apples to kumquats without at least acknowledging the context of where you pick the fruit. I’ve seen people get angry — angryyyyy — when talking about which Dawn of the Dead is better, Romero’s brilliant original or Zach Snyder’s career-making remake five years ago. One was labored and offered up strong social commentary as well as gruesome scares, while the other was fast-paced, unrelenting in jump-scares, and just as disgusting — but also included inside jokes and throwbacks to the original. Piranha 3D does the same, in its’ cameo offerings and the mocking of Girls Gone Wild’s Joe Francis via Jerry O’Connell.

I guess what it comes down to is that, however you play within the genre, know your part and play it to the fullest extreme. Piranha 3D is fun and brutally gruesome, but you’ve got to at least try the practical effects and utilize suspense. How hard is it to create suspense — real tension, I’m talking — when thousands of deadly piranha are swimming towards a whole lake full of drunk Spring Breakers?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now get your asses back in the field and go see SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD!!!

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle