Are you watching closely?

The Prestige... is a movie Directed by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins and Memento) and stars Hugh Jackman (X-men, the Fountain) and Christian Bale (Batman Begins, American Psycho). As story begins the two men are partners as well as rival up starts working for another magician. You quickly see that they approach the craft differently and cause friction in how to execute the tricks properly. Each trick has three parts the pledge, the turn and the most important, the Prestige.

Alfred Borden (Bale) is a young prodigy and is a natural magician but lacks the flare of showmanship, what his rival, Angier (Jackman) excels in greatly. Each man has a different approach and philosophy about magic but both share the obsession of being the best. Jackman knows he’s a better showman but Borden supposedly has a brilliant show stopping trick that has never been done that he’s not yet ready to revel.

The two men first meet while both working for a magician’s assistant, played by Michael Cain. Cain’s character “Cutter” knows the talent of these two men and tried to coach them on the finer aspects of being a magician. After a horrific accident on stage the two men became more than just rivals but mortal enemies. Angier blamed Borden for the disaster and the two men go back and forth trying to not only “one up” the other but to sabotage the other mans life and career.

Nolan weaves a sophisticated story that keeps you on on the edge of your proverbial seat and like a magic trick; He gets you with “slide of hand” and leaves you wondering how you missed it. The entire movie is like a magic trick, you begin with the pledge and then the turn and in the finally… the Prestige!

One of the smartest things in the entire movie is the practical approach to showing how the tricks are performed and the idea that the trick is almost always much more simple than one would think. The real trick is to be totally commented to the craft and to never give up the trick, the method is everything.

Nolan does again, a remarkable job with humanizing the characters evolved and shows how much they are willing to risk for there obsessions. These two men grapple with love gained, lost and thrown away in many ways in this film. The subject of true sacrifice is shown in these two bitter rivals as each man looks to push his own ethics and morality to it’s limits. It’s never about money, women or even fame for these two; it’s not even discussed as a goal. Each man is obsessed with knowing he is better than the other, and will stop at nothing till he has the superior trick that leaves not only the audience scratching their heads but his rival as well. Even if it means he will lose everything to get the satisfaction.

In my opinion, one of the best movies of 2006 and even thou nominated for two Oscars, was over looked by most movie goes and critics. The acting in the Prestige is brilliant without being too bold. The two main characters are supported by some great performances by Scarlet Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Piper Perabo, Andy Sirkis and David Bowie as the scientist Tesla.

The mark of any great movie is how many times it takes you to watch it and catch something new and at the same time be entertained. This movie has these traits in spades. This movie solidifies for me the genius that is Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who wrote the screenplay). First was Following, Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, and now the Prestige, Mr. Nolan is batting a 1.000 in my book. A master storyteller and knows exactly how much to show and when to show it. Maybe if Christopher Nolan was born in the late 1800’s he would have been a magician.

This movie is the newest addition to my top 100 movies and my favorite movie of 2006

Comic book movies...what's the big deal?

I have seen countless of blogs, message board threads and web reviews on the endless stream of comic to big screen adaptation over the years. It's no surprise that Ghost Rider will get the comic geek's up in arms once more. First off let me preface this by saying i have seen the movie and although the FX were very cool, the movie...well, sucked for the most part. I'm not a big Ghost Rider fan Either.

Ghost Rider was not a great movie and was very much in the same vein as the Fantastic Four and Daredevil in the cheese ball factor. I'm a big comic book fan and an even bigger movie fan so when a bad comic movie hits the screen I get burned twice as hard. How stupid are the comic companies allowing this crap to hit the theaters. I'm 32 and will never like that crap...wait! maybe that's the point!

Ghost Rider and other comic book adaptations like it from marvel seem to be marketed with a younger audience in mind. Marvel in the past year has put out two or three straight to DVD animated movies featuring some of their characters they will one day feature in a major motion picture ( I.E. Iron man). I personally think this is smart marking and where the comic book industry has failed in the past...get new blood! Maybe they have learned from their mistakes. Hook 'em while they are young! Any hard core comic geek that reading this now that's a big Marvel or DC guy is that way because that's what he liked as a kid and never out grew it.

I don't read any Marvel comics anymore but I did when i was a kid and a teen. For that reason alone I will see almost any comic book flick Marvel chucks at me. Comic companies and Hollywood might already know that no matter how hard they try they can never please most of the hard core adult comic fans of super heroes. You can't make a "R" rated X-men with Wolvie chopping countless people apart, how can you sell the toys? You have to make it more accessible to the kids. I have a nephew that's only four and his wants everything, i mean everything Spiderman. He will always have a soft spot for spidey when he gets older and hopefully keep buying and dumping money into Marvel. Until them his parents ( and me) will buy him everything Spider-man, toys, DVD's, bed sheets, underware, toothbrush, night light... all that shit!

Right now kids don't give a flying shit about comics. We need video games, cartoons, movies and toys to get this generation interested or the comic market will just keep dwindling into nothingness. My nephew who is four, now wants my old Spider-man comics when he comes over! It's ok to make a Marvel "hero" for the kids, that's who they were for anyway.. Please do that, make Iron man and Captain America for kids and give me the Allen Moore, Frank Miller and Warren Ellis properties.

There have been many comic movies made for "more" grown up people. Sin City, Blade, 300 ( hopefully) Ghost World, History of Violence, Batman Begins, Renegade, Road to Perdition V for Vendetta...those movies are made for more older audiance. If you want a carbon copy of your precious comic hero then read the fucking comics. It's a different medium and different audience, it's not made for you, it's made for everyone who doesn't read comics, if you doubt this, then explain why every movie is an origin story.

It's ok to make the movie a bit different than the comic too! It's hard to make something that has well, sometimes 40 years or more of continuity to keep track of. I love it when a good comic movie works on a lot of levels like Batman Begins but I really don't read the comics but I am very aware of the mythology of Batman, I think it was made for people like me. If it was for the hard cores they would have just took the Dark Knight Returns and made it into a movie but lets face it, mainstream America would hate it and the movie would never see a sequel and Hollywood would pull back on other type movies.

The movies that they really fucked up is the Punisher. They made it not for the kids but really didn't have the balls to go as far as the character needed to go to make it really for the adults so it never really found an audience. A movie like that where the character has no powers and just shot stuff is really not that hard to do right, they just dropped the ball. Ghost Rider on the other hand, when I watched it, got the feeling they were not trying to thrill me or scare me but maybe to a 10- 13 year old it would be. the dialog was awful and the action was less then exciting, those are things to be critical about not the fact that Johney Blaze's hair looked different than the comic book.

Sin City was great, and i did enjoy it but it was so like the comic I knew what was going to happen, hell i knew what they were gonna say 90% of the time it was so true to the comic. Great, but unexciting to me. it was just like reading the comic so I really got nothing new out of it. I like movies like Hellboy and V for Vendetta that have a bit of the comic story and a bit of new stuff for cinematic reasons but hey, that's just me.

I guess as long as each project finds it's audience then in the long run I'm happy. I know if they made 'em all to suit my tastes they would make no money. I'm not saying to not be critical of these movies, you should be. Just don't get all pissy because it didn't turn out the way you wanted with all the cool story elements that you like. Go into it with a clean slate and try to enjoy it as something a bit different than the book you pick up every month and if it sucks, then it sucked for movie reasons and not " Hey, Wolverine isn't 6'1"! WTF!" Did they capture the spirit of the comic and the character?

With all the movies, games and direct to DVD comic properties that are out there, know that everything is not gonna be to your taste as long as something is, be happy. More people can open their minds to the idea of reading comics again because of these things. That should be the point of all this right, get more people reading comics. The big picture to me is getting more people into the Marvel/ DC universe. All those comics are pretty bad too me anyway. As long as people go buy those comics they have a chance of wanting something a bit more or different and who knows, maybe they'll pick up one of my books.

It's a long shot I know : )