I’ve never heard of the Summer Fridays phenomenon anywhere outside of NYC, but I’ve never worked a full-time post-collegiate job anywhere else. By Summer Fridays, I’m referring to the fact that offices, particularly those who are tied to anything arts and entertainment related, have decided that summer vacation doesn’t need to die when you’re an adult. . . it should just be scaled back to three months of three day weekends. Not everyone does it, but the current company I’m freelancing for subscribes to the theory that no one should spend a full 5-days in a row at the office during summer. That’s why at 3 PM on Friday, we all ditched work and headed way the hell downtown to see David Byrne’s Playing the Building installation at the South Street Seaport, and then caught a screening of The Incredible Hulk.
Art, yo.
The David Byrne bit was pretty cool. He threw a church organ into an abandoned early 20th Century ferry terminal, connecting each key to a simple machine that would cause a part of the building to make a sound: a piston striking a column, air blowing across a pipe, or overhead beam vibrating. Hence “Playing the Building.” Anyone can jump on the organ to play. The result is a soundscape made tens times more interesting by the fact that you’re standing in the middle of a piece of forgotten New York. Almost nothing has been done to update the building, except for a coat of white paint along the bottom floor of the walls to cover up graffiti. It felt like a set from I Am Legend.
Big Willie Style!
You can really take it all in in 10 minutes, though, which is what we did. Then we went to see the flick, which honestly, I’d probably have skipped if not for the gift of the Summer Friday. I don’t know why I was indifferent to checking it out. Clearly some people were hyped.
Spotted in Times Square Friday afternoon by Tracy.
I don’t have too much to say on The Incredible Hulk, which is a sequel and reboot in one. There’s not direct reference to the previous movie, but there’s a level of assumed familiarity with the characters and concepts. Which, of course, I have.
Hulk smash, Matt fondle.
The first half of the movie is pretty solid. We’re spared an origin story again outside the credits, and we get a decent thriller movie, with Gen. Thunderbolt tracking down Banner all over the globe. But halfway through, the momentum dies and we get a lot of averagely written scenes with nothing interesting going on, until finally the Abomination and Hulk smack each other around until the credits roll. I knew something was wrong with the structure walking out of the theater, and trying to reconstruct the movie in my mind now, I think the movie was missing an act or two.
The Hulk drops us in the midst of the narrative. Banner has already become the Hulk and become a monster hunted by the military. It feels a little less like a major event in the overall Hulk universe. . . it’s just another issue to fill up the monthly schedule. It’d be fine, except there wasn’t much saved for the second act. After the second major appearance by the Jade Giant, at Betty Ross’ university, the story just starts treading water, moving characters around and killing time until the Abomination shows up. By then, my interest had dropped off, and the final battle did little to draw me back in. Except for the part where Hulk split a police car in half and used it as a pair of giant boxing gloves. That was awesome.
I’m finding it hard to say much else on this, and how to effectively wrap this up. The Incredible Hulk was just middle of the road. It’s competently made and true to the source, but never does anything more exciting that showing you the Hulk fighting the Abomination in a movie. It’s the bare minimum of what’d you expect from a Hulk movie. Its not too boring, but there isn’t anything the evokes the sense of fun or joy I got from Iron Man. I won’t recommend you go out of your way to see it, but I’m not gonna dissuade you from checking it out, either. Especially if you’re as gung ho about it as this guy.
This dude is rad.
June 16, 2008 at 1:44 pm
The problem with this post is that it does not include any animated GIFs or Youtube videos of Rickson Gracie showing off his crazy abdominals.
I actually managed to see Incredible Hulk twice over the weekend, since after seeing it myself I took my dad to see it for Father’s Day. He hadn’t seen Iron Man yet so we went and saw that first, and he as well as I liked Hulk and Iron Man about equally. Iron Man is as you say, the more fun movie since the script is more comical, but Hulk’s definitely got the edge as far as action goes. I liked the final fight between Hulk and Abomination quite a bit, but if I had to pick the best action scene, it’d have to be Emil Blonsky vs Hulk. That scene to me felt like a teaser for how Captain America is going to move and fight once that movie comes out, and I’d love to see a movie of nothing but that.
I didn’t feel that Hulk was boring at any point the way I did during the Ang Lee Hulk nightmare, which I rewatched shortly before going to see this one to put me in the proper frame of mind. The part where you said nothing was happening was the part where I was losing my mind over Sterns’ amazing shirt, which while not necessarily being of the caliber of Spritle’s attire in Speed Racer was still dangerous. In fact, where I feel this movie succeeds and Ang Lee’s Hulk fails is that during all the Banner scenes I was NOT thinking “get on with it and turn back into the Hulk already.”
Still, when you consider the fact that they deleted SEVENTY MINUTES of scenes (and the movie as it is is nearly two hours), one could conceivably get the feeling that something was missing. They’re restoring all that for the Blu-Ray, but here’s hoping they give the option for viewing the theatrical cut as well as the extended one.
Liv Tyler’s lips were bigger than Hulk’s.
June 16, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I haven’t see the Ang Lee version in a long time, so I wasn’t inclined to compare the two, since I barely remember anything about the first film other than it just being wrong. Though I’m not nearly as down on it as some are. This was definitely an improvement. I did enjoy it as part of the gradually transplanting of the Marvel comic universe entirely to a movie universe. Banner’s arc from wanting a cure to wanting control was solid. Despite my problems with it, it’s a fine enough film.
In the unavoidable Iron Man vs. Hulk department, Hulk is far and away the better action movie. The three major action sequences (the chase into the bottling plant, the campus battle and the rumble in Harlem) were all fun to watch, the first two more than the last. Question: where did the Abomination’s penis go?
It’s hard to approach this franchise now without thinking its cursed. The first movie stumbled so badly its been ignored, and now this one had a rocky enough post-production that Ed Norton has seemingly disassociated himself completely from the project. 70 minutes cut? Definitely interested to see how it all would have cut in. Though if it’s a completely Hulk-free 70 minutes, I bet it’ll feel a lot more like the Ang Lee picture.
June 17, 2008 at 11:03 am
All the big networks down here in the DC Area do summer friday’s. They can eat my ass, cos none of the smaller production companies I know do them.