Bourne Watch: The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

As Jason Bourne is headed soon for theaters, I'm catching up with the three Matt Damon starring Bourne films, and may watch the one with Jeremy Renner (thereby becoming the one person who has seen the one starring Jeremy Renner).

I didn't actually remember much about the plot to The Bourne Supremacy (2004), only moments from the film.  It's the one where he fights a dude with a rolled up magazine, his girlfriend takes a headshot, a massive car chase in Moscow...  stuff like that.  And, of course, Joan Allen.

But it turns out that the story picks up very, very well from the first movie, both the threads from Treadstone and Jason Bourne's evolution as a character, culminating in a heartbreaking scene in the final minutes of the movie that tell you how much this programmed assassin has managed to restore of his humanity.

Signal Watch Reads: Firebreak - a Parker Novel (by Richard Stark)

While I'm glad that Stark came back to try Parker again in the 90's, and then, with this novel released around 2001 (and a few more afterward), there's no question that the tone had changed.  The first two books back were nearly comedies.  Firebreak (2001), has moments of delving back into the Parker of The Green Eagle Score, and, especially, The Sour Lemon Score, but Stark was no longer able to tap into near nihilism that drove the first third of the series again until Slayground and Butcher's Moon.

Here, you can feel Stark doing some hand waving as he deals with the fact that the world of heists has changed since Parker was pulling armored car heists and knocking over rare coin shows.  By 2000, security systems were everywhere, surveillance was commonplace, and the internet was still called "The Information Superhighway" by dopey newscasters.

Stark wants to deal with these modern touches, but when he does, it's half-satisfying.  Every once in a while he states how something works, and you want to say "well, no...  Not even in 2001.".  And he's saddled the heisters with a character he's concocted to bridge the books into this new age of technology (which was already well underway when this book was released).

Bourne Watch: The Bourne Identity (2002)

I was deeply skeptical when the Bourne movies were released.  I don't know exactly why, but I used to find non-Bond espionage stuff a bit boring and I was a bit suspicious of Hollywood forcing Matt Damon on us all.  But when the third one came out and everyone liked the first two, I borrowed some DVD's from a trusted source.

Fortunately, the Bourne movies wound up making a believer of me.  Not only am I big fan of these films, but I finally came to accept that Matt Damon is one of my favorite actors working today (you guys saw The Martian, right?).

I really don't think I need to sell a huge blockbuster that spawned four sequels (one, inexplicably, starring Jeremy Renner, and, no, I didn't see it, either).  Likely you've all seen the movie, so I don't feel a particular need to say much about it.

It seems to me that the movie brought a few things to the big screen.

In Memoriam Watch: Justice League - The New Frontier (2008)

With the passing of Darwyn Cooke, I had my quick appreciation write-up, and on Sunday, as I was eating my oatmeal and pondering the fact I had to work all afternoon, Jamie pitched watching the animated version of Cooke's comics classic, Justice League: The New Frontier (2008).

For a while there, I was purchasing every single new DVD WB Animation pushed out as DC got into the feature-length animated film business.  These days I limit my actual purchases (my last purchase being Flashpoint, which seemed as good a place to jump off DC Entertainment in many-a-ways), but I have a pretty good run of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Justice League videos.  And, as I type this, why the hell didn't they ever make a Flash movie?  It seems like an obvious fit.

But I don't think I'd actually watched this disk in something like 6 years.

Bat Watch: Batman Begins (2005)

I hadn't watched this movie in a few years, but I've got a shelf full of Batman films, cartoons and TV, and on Friday night - in the wake of finishing The Caped Crusade: Batman and The Rise of Nerd Culture, it felt like time to review some Batman again.

Not sure what to watch, I just gave Jamie some options, and she selected Batman Begins.