You may be happily surprised by this film adaptation of a young adult novel co-authored by the infamous James Frey, who Oprah broke into "a million little pieces" on national television after learning Frey's memoir on addiction was more fiction than truth. Remarkably, Frey is still getting published. I AM NUMBER FOUR debuted for six weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list in fall 2010. Luckily for Frey and co-author, Jobie Hughes--who continue to write more books in The Lorien Legacies series together under the single pen name, Pittacus Lore--this visual version of urban fantasy has grossed more than $57-million since its release ten days ago.

The film is directed by DJ Caruso, whose work you know from films like Disturbia and Eagle Eye and television shows like Dark Angel and Smallville....and speaking of Smallville, there's a little Superman in Caruso's most recent movie-mix.
The basic premise couldn't be more like the ubermensch himself if Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster rose from their graves and wrote the script...but as that wasn't possible, the dynamic duo of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, also of Smallville fame, wrote the I AM NUMBER FOUR screenplay with Buffy-alum, Marti Noxon:

An alien boy s sent to Earth upon the destruction of his home world; he is now the hope of not just Earth, but the Universe itself. Though an alien, he appears human and has special powers. He's smarter, stronger and faster than other boys his age. He even has a special box, a la Superman's "Fortress of Solitude," sent with him from his own planet--I half expected him to open it and hear Marlon Brando's voice saying, "Kal-El...." And yes, there are magical crystals from his home world, too.

Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg produced, which explained the explosive appeal of the film. Alex Pettyfer, a British actor who you may recognize from his work with Burberry, plays the title role of John Smith (aka "Superman"), and also stars in the Beauty and the Beast film adaptation, Beastly, with Vanessa Hudgens, debuting March 4, 2011. You'll recognize Dianna Aragon from Glee as well as Aussie actors Teresa Palmer and Callan McAuliffe. McAuliffe made his American debut in Rob Reiner's Flipped and Palmer has been in movies with Hollywood greats like Nicholas Cage and former-SNL funnyman, Adam Sandler. Look for Palmer as Talia al Ghul in the upcoming adaptation of Justice League of America.
 
Though the original novel series is a clear adaptation of Seigel and Schuster's original Superman, with cookie-cutter Campbellian trials...even magical flight, Caruso, Millar, Gough, Noxon, and cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro--whose work in the Hellboy franchise earned him props from this reviewer, along with an Oscar nod for his work in Pan's Labryinth--make what could have been an unimaginative remix of Superman for the 21st century into an entertaining film for a broad demographic.

I AM NUMBER FOUR gets a strong 7/10 on the Housel-scale. 

Bring on the decade of the superhero! 




 

Swedish author John Aljvide Lindqvist's debut novel, Lat den ratte komma in, or Let the Right One In, is the basis for Matt Reeves' 2010 film Let Me In, starring Chloe Grace Moritz, Kodi Smit-McPhee and HBO's Six Feet Under Richard Jenkins. You may know Reeves from past projects like the 2008 film Cloverfield and TV's Felicity. Reeves wrote the screenplay for Let Me In, an adaptation of not just the original novel, but a 2008 Swedish film, also based on the novel by Lindqvist.

There was a lot to like with this latest spin on the traditional vampire, including Chloe Grace Moritz. Moritz plays Abby, a 12-year old girl who has been 12 for "a very long time." Moritz first blew this reviewer away in Kick-Ass, and her ability to perform tough, complex characters with underlying vulnerability is equally impressive in Let Me In.

Kodi Smit-McPhee, a rising Australian star, plays the role of Owen with equal talent to Moritz's Abby. Owen is also 12 and must deal with the "real life" issues of a typical 12-year old boy like bullying in school and neglectful, divorcing parents.

The story is set in 1983, a time when 12-year olds were still 12, the dawning of a new post-70's era when women wore little rabbit-fur jackets over tight-fitting jeans and walked small dogs--predecessors of 21st century styles now used by celebutants like Paris Hilton, etc. The cinematography and music adds to the early 80's sensibilities, well-done by Greig Fraser and Michael Giacchino, respectively.

What is unsettlingly remarkable about the film won't settle on the audience until the very end; amidst the budding friendship and romance of two 12-year olds lies a sinister snake-like undertone that softly hisses of the sadness and desperation of both life and perpetual death.

On the Housel-scale, Let Me In is a 9/10--very well done visual adaptation with the kind of fresh wonderment brought to screens since 1993 by Reeves, who, one easily imagines, was himself a boy like Owen.

Pushed. Two years ago next month. And I've been falling ever since.

I didn't realize I'd left solid ground--the fall has been slow, gradual, unwitting even--and yet, I can now clearly recognize terra-firma speeding ever-closer into view. Face-first, you see. 

We don't choose our direction in a fall. Sure, I know those of you out there so skilled at falling, you volunteer to do it from great heights--like 13,000-feet. But you forget, you're not alone when you jump: you have parachutes. It's easy to land on your feet with a parachute...or at least, easier.

What happens to a free-faller without a parachute, untrained, inexperienced, heading head-long into...well, death, I suppose. Ah. That's what happens. No wonder I feel my stomach twisting into so many tight, tiny knots. No wonder my hair is turning white. No wonder....

But I do wonder if this is how the Romans felt. I bet it felt eerily similar. Like anyone 1,000-years from now could have predicted this whole thing, but in the midst of it all--I was blind. Like the Romans. Like me.

Maybe some have stouter constitutions for this sort of activity--unfortunately, I've been pushed before. My body is in tangles--a heaving heap of scars, tissue, and fractured bone--save for the titanium-mesh soldered to my skull. I look as though I've been the play-thing of billowy-eyed bullies...for decades. And I have.

So when does it stop? I suppose that's a question easily answered by our rather acute (and convenient) mortality. Death is the end. But I somehow find myself immortal.

Such a fate...to be an immortal, immutable, immovable woman.

Stop saving the whales. Start saving our daughters.
 

So unlike your very own Pop Culture Professor to totally disappear...except for that time in August. But August was announced all over the place, part of an ongoing experiment to disconnect from the virtual and reconnect with the "real."  Baudrillard would have been so proud. Meanwhile, where have I been???

Can't really say. But the silence doesn't make it less true.

My office, the now infamous red-room, is like an accursed space I neither wish nor want to enter. My drive to write has dried up like a barren well. Not my ideas...no, those still haunt me on a nightly (and daily) basis. So what changed? Why write/right now?

Honestly, I wouldn't even be putting finger-to-key if it weren't for you, dearest readers. You see, in a mere three days, more than 1,000 of you came looking...for more, for me, for some port in this wickedly perfect storm. I wish I had better news for all of you, wish there were words of comfort to offer your willing and eager ears.

Sadly, my words are limited.

But you are not. You are the silver lining in my looming sky. Though that's not quite fair to the sky--is it? It's not actually "looming"--humanity is. The monsters that are we. I weep for us. It's not true that we know not what we do. Our monstrosity is as witting as a Wednesday. We know. Oh yes, we know....

On to the second part of my title-question! Where am I going? I have seven wishes for 2011. Seven. Can you imagine the nerve, the utter gall, to have not just one...but seven whole and complete wishes???  I suppose on some level, I'm as self-entitled as any good GenMe-individual worth her salt. Odd expression--"worth her salt." Salt used to be very expensive. Depression-era phraseology picked up from grandmothers...lucky me...luckily.
 
THIS is what I've been waiting for--THIS: the fire in my swollen belly; the sheen on my tired skin; the shine in my droopy-eye. It's funny, but those of us who look like monsters are all mushy and gushy on our insides. It's all backwards. Outside in, inside out--hard to know who we are, were supposed to be, or will become. All I now know is: when I look at the family picture on the wall, I'm not her anymore...and that clandestine meaning holds my future course in her secretive little hands. 

Just days after my brother said he envisioned me a many-armed goddess sitting in the center of the world, connecting everyone, a Hindu goddess told me I was on a journey.

Brothers...is there anyone better?