Superman Returns – liked it but didn’t love it. ***

To movie seemed at times to drag and at other times to be too rushed.

I liked that he came back after being away for 5 years. I would have preferred to see more of him on the farm trying to figure out what to do next. (Mostly I would have liked to see more of Eva Marie Saint.) It was too sudden that he was back at the Daily Planet. I suspect some scenes got cut here. I think overall, there were just not enough scenes with Clark. What struck me the most about the film is how little Brandon Routh spoke in it, as Clark or Superman. It was like he was a visitor to his own story. Blah. Yes, BR looks a lot like Christopher Reeve. But I didn’t need him to bear a physical resemblance. If the suit can be different so can the actor. I need there to be an actor who shows me what is going on with Clark and with Superman. BR didn’t do that enough for me

I liked that Richard was not a Dick. But he was just a little too perfect. Still, I liked that he went back to save Superman, dived right into the water, and supported Lois throughout – even when he didn’t really understand what was going on with her.

Lois – Kate Bosworth is in her early 20s and is too young for the part. I guess that they cast the leads young because it’s a 3 picture deal and they don’t want them too old for the next 2 films, but she’s too young to have a 5 year old child. She did have some moments – the look on her face in the plane when she saw Superman zoom by. And I guess that was shock when Jason saved her on the boat. But overall, she seemed to be babysitting for the kid, not mothering him.

Lex – Whatever. Kevin Spacey was fine. The plan – to create a new continent out of the ugly crystals was just psycho and caused me to scratch my head, not fear for the characters.

Kitty – Parker Posey rocks.

Jason –I wanted to give him a haircut so bad. But leaving that aside, the actor was fine, in that Omen-stare kind of way. I would have liked Jason to be a bit more inquisitive and adventurous, but I guess they were not writing him that way and instead wanted him to come off as sickly. As to him being Superman’s kid, I was sort of hoping that the exposure to kryptonite would have the opposite effect on him -- causing him to gain his powers.

Which brings me to the biggest issue I had with the film. So, what now? Superman and Lois had a child together and at the end of the movie he knows it and they say nothing about it to one another? Really? NOTHING? I don’t think Superman will want to disturb the kid’s happy home, but that is a boy who is going to have some major issues. I assume that the loss of all of the crystals (if they are all lost) means that Superman is going to have to tutor the kid directly rather than give him the keys to the Fortress of Solitude.

(By the by, this film is supposed to more or less follow Superman II. In that film, Lois and Superman had sex. But didn’t he later wipe from her memory? I am assuming that he wiped her memory of him being Clark and not of their relationship.) ***

I also saw The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep was outstanding. It’s worth seeing for her alone.

DH and I realized after seeing Superman that it is almost impossible to hum a different famous John Williams theme than the one currently in your head. If you have just seen Superman, you will not be able to correctly hum either Star Wars or Indiana Jones without considerable mental effort. They're just too alike.

I've felt this way forever, and I like Williams best when he's at his least Williamsey (Ref: Empire of the Sun, Catch Me If You Can). What's always a little amusing is when you've got a snatch of Williams stuck in your head, and you spend fifteen minutes going "It's not Star Wars, it's not Superman, it's not Raiders.....," and then you realize it's the NBC nightly news theme.

ION, I just saw a trailer for Nic Cage and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. Obviously, any movie about 9/11 comes with all kinds of issues (although I think "It's too soon" is a moot point now, that line is back there a ways), but I think I want to see it now (of all the movies that were scheduled for this year, this one is the one I've been most dubious of).

It makes it both hard and inevitable that he'd be jealous--but when the woman you're in love with asks you to go back and save the man she loves, putting you and the kid you've been raising as your own in jeopardy, well, it's Superman. You have to do that.

To be fair, Superman had just saved his life, and hers, and that of the kid that he'd been raising as his own. Kinda tough for an all-American pilot-journalist to look himself in the mirror if he turns his back on that.

I thought I was being fair. I said he had to do what he had to do, and the bit about having been rescued needn't even come into the equation. Hell, being more than a decent guy isn't even required to make it balance.

Neil Gaiman on Stardust:

it exists half-way between The Princess Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean

He sure knows which of my buttons to push.

Great cast too.

I still occasionally get Williams theme for The Cowboys confused with Copland's Rodeo. I also love his music for The Rievers. Later stuff, NSM.

Superman Returns:

That was fun, though I don't know if I'd see it again. I thought Brandon Routh did a pretty good job; I felt like I knew who he was, as both Clark and Superman, and I could see the differences between them. The moment that Jessica mentioned, when his glasses fall off as he's helping Lois gather up the things from her purse, was nicely done and helped bridge the gap between Clark and Supes. Most of the time that Superman was on screen, he looked so airbrushed or CGI'd that it really added to his alienness; it was a little distracting, but I think it worked well for Superman. Routh's acting, similarly, was just off enough to have the same effect.

As for the rest of them, I liked both Kate Bosworth and James Marsden more than I expected to, but overall Jimmy Olsen might have been my favorite character.

One deeply geeky question: Is Zool a Superman thing? Because in the scene where Superman crashes into the field behind the Kent farm, there's a shot of a Scrabble board in the house and the word "Zool" is spelled out. I don't know if that was intentional or not (it was actually spelled ZOO L, with the space before the L, which formed the beginning of another word) .

As in "there is only Zool"? That's from Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters is "Zuul." Googling shows there's an Amiga game called "Zool," so if it's a ref it's tres obscure.

I thought it was just a random result of the tiles shifting.