Arrr Wars: After a groggy return home at 3:30 am last night followed by a scant two hours of sleep, which resulted in an accidental switch-off of the alarm clock that caused my girlfriend to sleep in and be late at work, I can now put finger to keyboard and share my caffeinated thoughts about the midnight screening of Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

A midnight screening is always a hoot since it gives you a snapshot into that film's fanbase. And the ladies are well represented in Piratesdom... particularly ones with a penchant for bodices and décollatage. It makes for a more aesthetically pleasing wait-in-line than folks in brown robes waving Hasbro lightsabers around.

But I digress. Back to the movie. Since brevity (or lack thereof) factored so much in my opinion of the film, let me give you the brief version.

- Good, but too long to be great.
- If you could watch this movie a half-hour at a time, with plenty of rest in between, it'd be downright entertaining.

To elaborate: There's no reason for this movie to be this long. This isn't "Based on the Theme Park Ride by Leo Tolstoy." This is not, "Adapted from Ayn Rand's 'Pirates of the Caribbean'." This isn't even "Based on a cocktail napkin scribbled upon by JRR Tolkein." No, it's supposed to be popcorn-fare, and no one has a seven course meal of popcorn.

As usual, I blame Peter Jackson. This movie has many similarities to Kong, easily my most infuriating movie experience of 05, but it's not that bad. Unlike Kong, Pirates 2 has too many long stretches of too much happening. Also, like Kong there's too many supporting bit-players that the filmmakers mistakenly think we're genuinely interested in.

But there's good in it. Here's what Pirates does right as a blockbuster franchise. It's managed to figure out the balance of self-aware cleverness and earnest storytelling that other trilogies have missed. It's a difficult quality to nail. The first two X-Men had it. The original Star Wars trilogy had it (though not the prequels). Matrix and LOTR didn't. It's the quality that simultaneously acknowledges with a winking eye the fantastic surroundings and storyline as pure fun entertainment -- keeping it light enough to attract people not pre-invested in the particular universe -- but pays enough respect to the story and the audience to keep from descending into silliness. It's fun, but not too fun. It's serious, but not too stuffy.

The problem is, the runtime completely cancels out this balance. By the time we're in the thick of the Davy Jones storyline, we think back... did we even have to waste all that time with the cannibal island? Even Jack Sparrow starts to outstay his welcome.

Now, it's not bad. I wouldn't give it a D, like Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum. (Any bets that if this movie came out in November, she'd love it? I swear, that woman hates summer). But for people with an ax to grind against loud summer movies, it's hard to defend the subtle details that make this a good one, and not a bad one.

Perhaps I can offer at least two corrective measures. Hollywood, please raise your collective right hand and repeat after me.

I, the purveyor of explosive summertime fare, do agree to the following:

With the knowledge that the majority of revenue is to be had in home video, and that the accepted trend is to increase a film's running time for DVD releases, I promise to keep my rollercoaster ride to two hours or less. Besides, this could allow for additional screenings, making theater-owners happy.

Also, with increases in digitally-assisted stuntwork and complicated action set pieces, I swear to, whenever possible, have characters extricate themselves from jeopardy through their own talents and skills, rather than by a fantastical array of coincidence, rube-goldberg-like causality, and sheer dumb luck again and again.

(Really, Pirates treads into Kong territory by having characters, again and again, survive through absolutely no skill of their own).

That should help.

Anyway the best thing about this movie (and admittedly, I'm biased here) is ILM's work in digital character animation. I tire of the uninformed claim that practical effects are always better than digital effects. It's not a truism - watch Fantastic Four's turd-like Thing and tell me with a straight face he's more believable because he's "real." It's hard to make absolute statements about one approach over the other, because bad CG looks bad, and bad practical work looks bad. It's all in the execution, not in the technique.

But Pirates blows serious holes into anyone's claim that digital will never look as real as a practical effect. Davy Jones is absolutely real, and the average film-goer will not realize the level of artistry, talent, and ingenuity that went in creating this entirely synthetic star. It's astounding.

UPDATE -- The effects will fool ya... Case in point... a couple of mentions of Davy Jones' amazing "prosthetic" makeup effects....

Though the movie falls a little too in love with its big effects budget, at least the effects are rather good. Davy Jones in particular is a masterfully realized featured creature. Half-squid, half man, he oozes and wheezes across the deck of his ship the Flying Dutchman with an air of inevitability. Jones hasn't the screen presence of Geoffrey Rush's iconic Captain Barbosa from the first film, but Bill Nighy does a remarkable job buried under thick, viscous layers of prosthetics and makeup.
http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-2-Dead-Man-s-Chest-1636.html

As Davy Jones, the wonderfully soft-spoken British character actor Bill Nighy is unrecognizable beneath a foam-rubber head mask that turns him into a human cephalopod-not so much an octopus as a multipus, with countless earthwormlike appendages wriggling independently (and disgustingly) around his sagging, noseless yellow face. His head is one of the few takeaway images in a movie jammed to bursting with gross-out gags and eye-popping makeup jobs.

http://www.slate.com/id/2145157

Transformers Buzz: For what it's worth, the Transformers teaser in front of Pirates got a huge reaction from the crowd.

For a Good Cause
On July 16, I will be walking to raise money to benefit the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Please click the link below, and make a donation if are able to. Any amount is greatly appreciated.

http://aidswalksanfrancisco2006.kintera.org/infinata

More Brian Daley Moments: As noted last week, I'm reading through a lot of the older EU, and for whatever reason, as I read Han Solo's Revenge, I can't help but hear Wallace Shawn as the voice of Spray, the Tynnan. Try it. It works awfully well.

Rookies: No Turning Back Annotations A short week, with only a scant trio of Rookies strips, but here are some of the details you may have missed.

Wednesday - Strip 6 - The holographic "booth" that Barezz is talking to Vader in is meant to be similar to the booth that Vader talks to his captains in Empire.

Barezz's "last" lead through "different channels" is what resulted in the off-screen death of six recruits which got the plot rolling in the first Rookies arc.

Thursday - Strip 7 - We're looking at a relay station here. There are two primary forms of faster-than-light communications in the galaxy. There's the HoloNet/hyperradios, which use the domain of hyperspace to provide near-instantaneous communication throughout the whole galaxy, and there's subspace radio, which does the same but only for a radius of a dozen light years or so. Since the HoloNet is closely monitored by the Empire, I figure subspace relay stations linked every few light years offer a slower, but workable, alternative in certain areas of space. The Bothans, with their vaunted spynet, would no doubt be all over such communications. That's a Bothan clan sigil on the side of the relay station.

Docked on the far side of the relay station, opposite the primary transmission mast, is Raal Yorta's starship.

Friday - Strip 8 - Everyone's back, and this time, I have the luxury of re-introducing them all at once, rather than starting them off on their own separate threads.

As you can see, the relay station is very small. That central pillar where Sammie is emerging from is the escape pod shaft, as he describes. The door behind Kestrel is the airlock connecting back to Raal's ship. Raal once again mentions the Bothans, confirming that they are in Bothan Space.

Kestrel notes that Tiree pointed them to this locale, so that's what the coordinates in the datapad must have contained.

And we get a taste of Smiley's skewed priorities.

That's it for this week... see you next Friday.