Who Watches The Watchmen? Well, It Looks Like I Might Have To.

So today’s training was just as fraught with images of Carla Gugino’s backside as yesterday’s (more on the lovely, talented, and inordinately spankable Ms. Gugino in a bit), but it didn’t really matter, as there wasn’t a lot I had to pay attention to.
Most of the day was spent simply practicing using a switch management tool that, apparently, we’ll hardly ever actually use in our jobs.
So that was fun, and not at all pointless.
Towards the end of the day, as per usual, we shadowed some existing employees. The guy I was sitting with had really long fingernails. Like, Asian super-villain long, all manicured and filed to a point. I have to say that it creeped me right the fuck out, especially when he would point at something on the screen and his nails would be pressing right up against it.
And that was the extent of the day’s excitement.
When I got home, I watched a crappy vampire movie that I’d downloaded based on the fact that Carla Gugino was in it – and, more to the point, has a lesbian scene in it.
Said scene was with Lucy Liu, who would not be my first – or twentieth – choice for someone to pair up with Ms. Gugino for a Sapphic romp, but even so, it was worth checking out.
(Lucy Liu just doesn’t do it for me. Who would be my first choice? Hard to say; there are so many to choose from. Hell, I’d probably give honorable mention to me in drag.)
Of course, as she always is when she’s in a supporting role, Ms. Gugino was criminally underutilized (and over-dressed, despite the few shots of her in a bustier and one in her bra, the cup size of which I don’t know), and the hot girl-girl action was not so much in the way of hot or, honestly, action.
There was about 10 seconds worth of footage stretched out over 20 half-second flashbacks, done in the standard – and annoying – quick cut style.
Plus there was a lot of blood, which really isn’t my thing.
As for the rest of the movie…meh. Given the title – Rise: Blood Hunter – I would have guessed that it was based on a video game, but I don’t see anything about that in the IMDb entry.
It was a pretty standard story – think Blade with Lucy Liu filling in for Wesley Snipes – and the constant quick cuts just made it generic and uninteresting.
The movie avoided most of the usual vampire conventions – they didn’t even have fangs – but kept the one part of the mythos that’s always bothered me: not casting a reflection.
No reflection as shorthand for soullessness has always rung false for me: if you’re physically there, you’re going to have a reflection. Supernatural or not, not having a reflection just doesn’t make sense.
Of course, it is a convenient mechanism for convincing someone that you are a vampire, so as a method of advancing the plot I can see why they used it.
Then again, if you’re going to do a big establishing shot in which a character stands in front of a full-length mirror in which she’s not reflected, you might want to avoid following that up by having her walk past a bunch of reflective surfaces in which her reflection can be clearly seen. Just a thought.
My other complaint about the movie was all of the pointless nudity.
I don’t mean gratuitous, I mean pointless. Why have a woman walk around shirtless for five minutes if you’re going to shoot the scene from a crane 100 feet away or keep the camera at head level? What’s the point? Given that you can’t see anything, it doesn’t even qualify as gratuitous.
It also makes no sense given that there were other scenes in which you could catch a clear glimpse of her naked body, which indicate a willingness on the parts of the actress and the filmmakers to provide actual nudity, though most of them could have easily been a body double, given the low light conditions and the general lack of shots in which face and breasts are seen in the same frame.
But whatever. The only real plus to the movie? Seeing Nick Lachey’s throat get slit.
(Not really. I mean, yeah, you do get to see that, but honestly, who cares?)
Anyway, in looking at her IMDb entry, I saw that Ms. Gugino has been cast in the role of Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre I in the upcoming Watchmen movie, which makes me feel even more conflicted about the movie than I already did.
On the one hand, there’s a big part of me that really would love to see a well-done Watchmen movie. On the other hand, no movie, no matter how well-done, could ever do justice to the source material.
And on the third hand, Carla Gugino.
She really is perfect for the role, as she has the right look to play the young, sexy, buxom version of Sally, and could easily be made up to look the part of the older – but still kind of sexy – Sally. And I would love to see her wearing the Silk Spectre costume.
So I don’t know. I think that, based on 300, director Zack Snyder will be respectful of the source material, but there’s just too much there – and all of it essential to a real telling of the story – for it to be translated well.
(Even more conflict: on the fourth hand Matt Frewer has been cast as Moloch. Dammit!)