Sunday, October 28, 2007

Proof that I am Sexorz

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My CBC job fell through. They decided to need me on the one day of the entire week that my evening is not completely free. I am royally disappointed. But I DO look like George Harrison, so it's not all bad, I guess.

Here's my friend Cassie.

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- Silent G

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

An Open Letter to Hotmail Live

Behold, the Non-Threatening, Trendy Face of Evil.



Dear Hotmail,

For the last half a year or so, maybe even a year, you've been offering to glam yourself up by upgrading to "Hotmail Live." Every time I've logged on, you've asked me, "would you like to upgrade to Hotmail Live?" You were polite and gave me options, and I always gracefully declined. "No, Hotmail, you're beautiful the way you are," I would often think to myself as I proceeded with my usual sign on. And it's true, you were beautiful.

But the other day, I come home and see you all whored up anyway? Let me ask you; if you were just going to do it anyway, why bother asking?

It'd be one thing if you looked good as Hotmail Live. But the fact is, you suck ass. Only able to spellcheck the first 4000 characters? Fuck you! I write lengthy, existentialist rants back to my fundamentalist American ePenpal Scott Zimmerman, and 4000 characters isn't good enough. You used to be able to correct all of them. How exactly is this an upgrade?

You're also slow as fuck on a glacier. You're as slow as this Blogger site, and just as annoying to edit. The fuck is wrong with you?

Just cuz you've got a new best friend Vista doesn't mean you should change who you are to impress it. You were perfect just the way you were.




No go clean yourself the fuck up, it's sickening to look at you.

-Silent G

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Everything's Coming Up AWESOME



My last year of University was a bit of a hell; noisy neighbors, not very many friends, the stress of FYP, having to leech off my parents for comic book money, bizarre home life, no cats. But while those last two are still a reality, my second year is far more awesome. My neighbors are quiet and polite, lots of people enjoy my company and my napkin art, most of my classes are simple beyond reason, and over the summer I had a great job that's kept my comic book habit well in check. I'm even the Vice President of the anime society here at King's, and I got the highest mark on my first test of the year. How can things possibly get any better?

A new girlfriend?

No, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Won the lottery?

No, you have to actually play first.

A job with the CBC?

A-YUP!

It's true, yours truly is now a member of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation! HOT DAYUM! It's a part time student gig that my Radio professor Doug Kirkaldy (who has had many past experiences working with the CBC, and as a result a number of hilarious stories about it) was asked to find an interested student for. Four interested parties and one hat draw later, here I am!

What I'll be doing is writing up traffic reports to be read on air a couple days a week. I'll basically just come in, call the police, Metro Transit, and I guess a few more important people in the world of traffic, ask them what's happening on the roads, and write up that information in a very conversational way. Ipso Facto, I'm done.

I can't imagine it will pay me incredibly well, with four hours a week or so of work. But I'm not excited so much over the fact that I'll be getting paid (I mean, that rocks. It'll keep me in Ultimate Spider-Man and Tonkatsu), but rather that I will have the CBC as my first journalistic employer. And that HAS to look good on the resume of a budding journalist, doesn't it? And I'm also told people who get this job have often gone on to do more permanent things with the company, which is even better.

I haven't been this excited in ages. I work with the Goddamn CBC! Hee hee, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning, jumping with glee over the new Playstation Santa's elves had made me, and marveling at the soot footprints leading to the fireplace.

If I could only get that girlfriend, then life would be pretty much perfect right now.

Speaking of...

Hey ladies. I'm single, and I work for the CBC. Can you imagine anything more erotic? Me neither. Call me.

- Silent G

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Do a Line...



Uh, hi.

Yeah...so...

So, I was Congaed today.

I know that is not a real word. But for a phenomenon this random, I feel coining a new term, however grammatically incorrect it may be, is highly appropriate.

Earlier today, two of my friends and I decided to trek down to the local comic book depository for some much-deserved revelry. On the way there, this middle aged woman essentially jumped out of the bushes with a number of other people and shouted, "Now HERE are some energetic people!" Dumbfounded, I strike a sort of pose in an awkward sort of way, as is my general response to any sort of oddity. Cassie and Denise were far more stunned. Then, the strange woman said something that'd set the mood for the rest of the afternoon;

"LET'S CONGA!"


DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

Yes, this woman wanted me to conga with her. Before I could even ask the obvious question ("What the fuck are you on?"), she runs up behind me and GRABS MY WAIST. I am picky about who I want touching me, and a strange 40-something woman leaping from the shrubs is not among the privileged few. Not knowing what to do, I just stood there for a moment, shocked that this was happening. Her creepy bush friends were all laughing and going on, goading me. I felt rather dirty, to be honest.

Then Miss Crazybush here dragged my two friends into this. A strange woman forcing one of my female friends to touch me around my waist from behind is just WAY too much for me, and I just began walking away. This was some crazy bullshit, and I wasn't putting up with it. Fuck them, I just wanted some manga.

But of course, it doesn't end there. No, while no one physically or emotionally accosted us since that woman, we didn't walk 20 feet before a group of younger girls asked us if we'd mind joining them in a Conga line. WHAT THE FUCK? Did we land in Bizarro Halifax or something? We promptly told them no way in hell, and left the general vicinity as fast as the traffic lights would allow us.

The rest of the way to the comic book store was clear, thankfully, and we spent the time discussing what the fuck kind of medication they were overdosing on. On the way back, in the same place as when we first met our attackers, an older couple asked if we could stand between them and pretend tha-- and we cut them off right there. We knew what was coming and we basically told them to fuck off. We hurried home.

Something MUST have been going on today, I simply refuse to believe that the Public Gardens were suddenly causing people to lose their minds. Yet, none of these creepy people thought to explain why they were assaulting people with Latin rhythm. If they were, I don't know, Conga-Lining for Colon Cancer in Kids, then sure, I'll conga. It's for a good cause. But for all I know, these could have been just a group of wandering perverts. Or perhaps an example of the chilling scenario played above.

One thing I know for sure is I am going to SCOUR the fucking paper tomorrow. Maybe they'll have something to say; Random localized conga parties in the middle of the city at noon has GOT to be newsworthy, hasn't it?

That's it for me. Excuse me while I go wash the filth away.

- Silent G

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Five-Star and iPod: A Marriage Made in Hell



I am very much looking forward to my return to school this year. I'll be going into my second year, I'll know the score, and I'll be back in my same single room from last year, a perfect little grotto, save for one flaw; the neighbors. They were the loudest assholes on the planet, forever blasting their crappy rap music. Thank goodness they were evicted eventually. But I know the chances of the same deal is rare, and that since I'll be the only non-first year on the floor, I may even have some clout, the older students have told me.

And then Mead Five-Star had to go and fuck it all up for me.

I was watching TV tonight and I saw a commercial for a new breed of Five-Star binders with speakers installed in them, which you connect to your MP3 player of choice. "Listen to music the way it was meant to be; out loud!" the ad boasts. I can assure you, that is not the way music ought to be listened to, from a binder. You take your binder outside, in public, into classrooms. It's obnoxious enough having people playing their music loudly in their rooms, or singing their crappy songs in public. Now you'll have scores of fucking status-seeking lemmings all listening to the same tonal disasters that have somehow come to be called songs, like a hundred people having a conversation without a point.

I'll tell you right now, Mead, music should be listened to via headphones, unless you're having a party or are at a concert. Otherwise, that's why you have iPods; it's a little box of music in your pocket that you plug earphones into, and then ONLY YOU CAN HEAR THAT MUSIC. That is the inherent genius of it. It's music that doesn't bug the hell out of the rest of us. Steve Jobs ought to have a Nobel Peace Prize for that one.

Luckily, though, I don't see this thing catching on. It's useless and impractical. Headphones are personal, small, lightweight, and quiet to all but you. This product is like a boom box with schoolwork inside it. And there's nothing cooler than the Prepie's Ghettoblaster, is there?

This product will be dead in a week, and Mead will go out of business promoting the damned things.

All I know for sure is if I'm walking through the campus quad this fall, and I hear "My Humps" blasting from some denim-bound ring binder, I am chucking that sucker into the nearest lake... and then I'll break his binder.

That's it for me, I'm out and I'm tired.

- Silent G

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Swedile at the Movies: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix



This is it, the last entry of my Swedile at the Movies series for the summer (most likely; I hardly think I will waste money to watch a Simpsons movie), and what a movie; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! With excitement over the final novel in the series reaching Sci-Fi Convention proportions, the hype over this film was massive. Was it worth the hype? Can anyone other than the most obnoxious Potter fanatic enjoy it? Is the reverse true, can only the true fan hate it? Do wizards endorse slavery? All that I know for sure is this; after we're done, I'm going to have to start thinking of something of consequence to say, besides the "Oh, that scene was so trite, [Enter Character] would NEVER do [Enter Action]!" bullshit I've been spewing lately.

Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale. Got it? Learn it. Good.

Story:

Well, the shit has hit the fan since the last movie; the Dark Lord himself, the badass Tom "I am Lord Voldemort" Riddle is back, and the wizarding world is losing it's shit over it. You've got the Right Wing Conservative Wizards (yes, I just wrote those words) going so far as to deny the Dark Lord's return. So the Department of Magic sends this pink sow of a witch, Dolores Umbridge, to Hogwart's to use psychological warfare to keep Harry Potter from squealing.

Then, in the middle of that, is a lot of stuff about the adults in Harry's life (an organized group known as the Order of the Phoenix, because yes, being in Harry's life is a unionized position) debating over things like the Ministry and the Death Eaters and other magic doings, Voldemort's minions organizing and going to search for some prophecy, and Harry starting up his own class where he teaches kids how to kill people because the school won't anymore. It gets a little muddled at times, and that prophecy thing came right out of left field in the quarter of the 9th, but overall it stayed pretty on focus.

The only real issue story-wise is the fact that the whole movie seems like exposition between book four and book six. It's like a 2-hour/800-page epilogue for The Goblet of Fire. The whole movie is like, "Nah nah nah nah NA! He Who Must Not Be Mentioned isn't back! I am not LIST-EN-ING!" until the end, when the bigwig wizard in the British government sees him, and then everyone's on the same page. I'm sure the movie has several key scenes that are super important to the end of the series that is given about a second of screen time, but all the other movies did this and also were stories in their own right. But this is hardly the fault of the filmmakers, which brings me to my next section...

Adaptation:

Honestly, I have no idea. My grandmother got me Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (fuck you, dumbed-down American terminology) when it came out years ago, and I try reading it, and after 15 chapters about owls delivering letters, I being young and lacking in attention span, said "nuts to this" and went and watched Spider-Man for the millionth time. And that so far has been my entire experience with the Harry Potter books. The fans really love them, and every movie after the first one has suggested there's actually something cool about these books, so the series has value, but I have never been inclined to read them.

That said, from what I've heard about all the Potter freaks out there that are just another facet of society I have excluded myself from, this movie is the least faithful to the book. Not so much due to change. Besides the way Sirius Black is killed (fuck you, I don't give you spoiler warnings in THIS review series!), complaints have been exclusive to how much they left out. Ron playing Quiddich, Doby saying something, you name it. It's left out so much! ...Oh no?

See, being a comic fan who's not a fanatic of Harry Potter as well, I see how the casual observer sees the stuff I love. I'll sit in a movie about Ant Man and groan internally, "Pym Particles don't work that way! Martin Scorsese (because he'd so totally direct Ant Man) is such a hack who doesn't care about the fans!" but anyone else who doesn't spend at least $20 a month on pulp fiction will go, "Wee, he's shrinking!" This is how I feel about Harry Potter. I'll hear a fan go "Where's Doby the house elf? His brief cameo appearance either is or may be integral to the series!" and I'll go, "so what?" I get the gist of it. The Order of the Phoenix is a 257,045-word, 870-page monster of an in between story. We have two and a half hours tops in the theatre. Let's shave some of it down. All of you are clearly more blessed by reading the books and being privy to more info than I, the lowly muggle, am.

Character Development:

I have little to nothing to say about Harry and his cohorts. They almost never change. Harry is more moody because he watched a classmate die, Nevil Longbottom finally has some interesting back story, and Snape was one the subject of magic bullying. Fine, whatever. No worse or better than any other installment.

We did not see as much as Voldemort as I had expected or would have liked. Most of what we see is in the trailers. However, we see a great deal of his invisible hand sweeping over the magical world. Voldemort comes back and suddenly shit starts happening. If only Canadian politics could be so motivated. We also get to see how he loves fucking with Harry's head, which is also cool. Voldemort, in a word, is awesome. End of discussion.

Dolores Umbridge is fucking awesome. This fuzzy nightmare is easily the best aspect of this whole film, including the Dark Lord himself. She seems innocent enough at first glance, wearing selections from Jackie O's wardrobe and decorating her office with china plates with (moving) cat pictures on them. But this witch is fucking sadistic. She's like Big Brother if Big Brother were your bitchy fourth-grade substitute teacher. She uses cruel, Draconian measures as punishment for speaking out in class, employs truth serum and torture curses to extract information from students, and all sorts of other fun stuff. She's a villain you love to hate. There wasn't any development of character per se, but she's too awesome not to mention. Go to the movie to see her. Seriously.

Music:

You've got hints of the original theme. The rest isn't memorable enough to mention.

Action/Graphics:

Like most Potter films, not a whole lot of outright boom bam kablam movie magic, but the end scene is spectacular. Though short. But realistically, a fight between experienced minions of the Dark Lord vs. Whiny 15-year-old British kids wouldn't last too long. But a lot of the spells and monsters and stuff look better, save Hagrid's trainable brother. Even the lighting and stuff made everything look more sinister. Pretty cool stuff. But of course these movies aren't CGI Juggernauts like the superhero movies are, so I wasn't expecting too much. It's the suspense and the mystery you go for. That said, The Goblet of Fire was still far more exciting.

The Use of Slavery:

This isn't a commentary on the films so much as the world in which they're set, but Wizards employ a sub race of elves as slaves. The fuck? Exactly what the hell is with that? Wizards are super intuitive, have this whole advanced society where one can use a boot to transport to Scotland or turn pimples into Lovecraftian gods of chaos, but they've yet to move into the twenty-first century in regards to labor laws? I don't know, maybe it's a commentary on something. Maybe it's a literary device to show how even the good guys have darkness in them. Maybe slavery is legal in England and I just don't know any better. But all I do know is when I see Sirius outright demean and humiliate his House Elf for grumbling under his breath and then go on to talk about it to Harry like, "Oh, slaves, they're always like that. Teehee!", my brain shuts down for a minute or two.

Direction:

Eh, nothing really horrible or noteworthy to say, save for one. The moving newspapers are used in this film as a sort of odd, bizarre cinematic device as a transition, like the spinning newspaper but with surround sound. I thought it was pretty cheesy, and it was likely my least favorite aspect of the film. Which, when you think of it, ain't bad at all. My least favorite aspect of the last movie I reviewed was leud, inappropriate, constant and lastly UNFUNNY humor. This thing came up a few times, and was silly. We're not doing too bad.

This David Yates guy did a damn good job motivating his actors to acting their parts, especially the villains, and he was able to purvey an almost constant sense of dread. I LOVE an almost constant sense of dread! I bet I'd even get a geekgasm if I were a Harry Potter geek.

It's a shame that the book fanatics will eat him alive though.

FINAL SCORE:

0/4

Yep, a perfect score. It's a critical 0/4, pushing the boundaries of the definition of "near-perfect." But it's probably not the film's fault.

These movies are almost verbatim recreations of books. How good a film like this is depends a fair deal on how good the author made it in the book. The story itself, I will say right now, was ho-hum. Besides Umbridge and the growth of Voldemort's army, this story was way too long for what it was. There's nothing inherently bad with the story, but there's nothing setting it apart from the others. If this were "Swedile at the Bookstore," I would probably give this a lower rating, probably a 1/4.

However, Mr. Yates made good with what he had to work with. Besides the newspaper thing, none of my complaints are about the actual film itself and it's representation of the story. It was a dark, foreboding tale that will probably be a precursor to the rest of the series. And if the last two are great because of it, then I will be cool with the Order of the Phoenix. One thing this movie has definitely done, coupled with the hype of the final novel, is get me interested in trying to read the series again. Maybe I can finally get to chapter 16 of The Philosopher's Stone, and maybe that's the chapter where things pick up. Who knows, I may even become a Harry Potter geek. But I say if a movie gets me interested in reading for all the right reasons, then it's a winner in my book.

- Silent G (Abracadabra!)

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Swedile at the Movies: Transformers



Comic book geeks across the globe have been a-buzz about Michael Bay's interpretation of the classic 80's cartoon The Transformers for a good year now, but it's finally out and now we can look past all the hype and merchandising and judge the actual movie. Was it awesome? Did Bay finally find a movie he can direct? Is it a faithful adaptation of the childhood of a million 20-something fanboys out there? This review will decide whether there is more than meets the eye to this new summer blockbuster.

My methods haven't changed, I'll still be judging this movie by the Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale. One wonders when I'll have to stop reminding you all.

Story:

I know every Transformers geek out there will want to rip me a new asshole for saying this, but the Transformers never had an exceptionally epic or complicated story to them. Every episode of the original series that I can remember features Decepticons trying to make Energon cubes, and the Autobots fight them until the Decepticons retreat. Megatron vows vengence, Optimus Prime says something inspirational, and Bumblebee makes a funny quip that everyone laughs at. Wow, how cerebral.

That said, the Transformers have a rather classic appeal to them, and this movie actually doesn't do too bad in recreating that appeal; The Autobots and the Decepticons use Earth as a battlefield over, ironically, a cube, this one being the Allspark, which is essentially their God. Transfans will probably recognize its purpose as something similar to the Creation Matrix. Anyway, war on their home planet of Cybertron breaks out over control of this box, it's jettisoned into space, big badguy Megatron follows it and winds up frozen for thousands of years on Earth. The story starts as Sam Witwickey, the human protagonist in the movie, falls in the middle of this mechanical grudgematch when the Decepticons reach Earth and figure out that Sam has an old family heirloom that will lead them to the Allspark. Autobots arrive, Optimus declares Earth and its people must be protected at all costs, and the robot smashin' begins.

But with this classic story, Bay and his cinematic cronies feel the need to throw in other stories. Which wouldn't be bad if he kept it in moderation. But there are so many friggin' non-canon characters in this film it may as well be titled "Stupid-Ass Humans, featuring The Transformers." The giant robots take a back seat to these stupid characters in a lot of scenes in the film. I understand the need for a human element, Michael Bay, I really do. If we weren't in the middle of a giant interstellar civil war, then it'd have less of an emotional impact when they start fighting in our streets. But Anthony Anderson? Anthony Anderson? Anderson plays some supergenius code cracker who lives with his Grandma playing DDR all day long. And he does all of two things other than act like an ass; Finds Cybertronian glyphs in an audio file (the fuck?), and turns a computer on. That's it. Otherwise he's there to make with the funny. Well, supposedly, but he wasn't funny and I will get to that later.

The story was good enough to explain why giant killer robots were transforming into our cars and shooting heat rays at each other. We don't need the fucking stupid human characters who do nothing. Sam, his immediate friends and family, the government and the military. That's enough.

Character Development:

Anyone who has ever seen a Michael Bay film knows the man has no soul. How else could he take real people and direct them into having no personality, instead turning them into some campy caricature of pop culture? I hope the man never does a biography piece.

Yet, some of the character development surprised me in this movie. I mean, yes, 90% of the people seen on screen were exactly the type of person I just mentioned above. But there were some diamonds in the rough. Shia LaBeouf, who played Sam Witwickey, is a damn good actor. He managed to come off as human, despite Bay's best efforts to turn him into a Pop Homunculus like everyone else. This kid's going to make something of himself, and this film is going to help him along. I mean, if he can come off as human in a Michael Bay film, he's gotta be a genius.

The Transformers, again, never had much depth of character to them. Many of them were social stereotypes, and a number of the Autobots were no exception. I hated Jazz, the Pontiac Solstice. Everything he said was 'Gangsta.' EVERYTHING. He maybe said one thing to Optimus about Bumblebee that was serious. Maybe. He was the "Token Black" Autobot. He said nothing of worth. I really did not care an ounce when he was killed by Megatron at the end (oh, big spoiler. It was obvious from the start that he was the expendable one). The other Autobots were better, but they were no thespians. Ironhide, (a GMC Topkick truck) was the tough gritty guy, Ratchet (an H2 Hummer modified as an ambulance) was the cold, scientific guy who spoke in esoteric medical jargon all the time, and Bumblebee (a Camaro) was the underdog with a heart of gold. All the Decepticons were mostly just nasty evil aliens (a change I rather liked actually). The only one who had any real depth to character was Optimus Prime. I very much liked him in this movie. And having Peter Cullen, the original Optimus from the cartoon, reprise the role was a really nice nod to the fans. I don't think anyone could play Optimus like he could. Anyone can play the other Transformers. But even then, he had some very corny lines here and there.

Everyone else can suck balls. I hated Sam's shallow girlfriend, she was a bitch. I hated everyone in the government. I hated all the codebreakers. About the only other people I halfway liked were the two main soldiers in the film. They were important to the film and weren't corny. The secretary of Defense, the codebreakers, and Anthony Anderson had a battle with a robotic midget. No thank you.

Special Effects:

Wow. These were spectacular. When I heard that all the Transformers would be CGI, at first I cringed because a lot of CGI isn't up to par in my eyes. I was also relieved when I heard that a practical model of Bumblebee was made and would be used in a few scenes. But man, I changed my mind after this. The practical model looked more fake than the CGI. It was that good. The lighting on all the metal bits and pieces was very good, the detail in each robot was crazy (almost 10,000 moving pieces per robot, actually). They made giant machines and put emotion in their eyes (well, some of them). This is something everyone can agree on; these special effects kick ass.

However, I did have one complaint. Bay seemed INTENT on filming every sequence in the final battle as if it were being filmed on a handicam by someone running from the destruction. A little of this is fine, and I think in the beginning of the film when the Transformers are still a bit of a mystery, it's even appropriate. But most of the final battle, Michael Bay? This is when you're supposed to pull out all the stops. This is when you show off the one real talent as a director that you have and let the eye-popping special effects do their stuff. But this is all a blur. Seriously, dick move, Bay.

Still, not bad at all for the comparably small budget of $145 million you were given.

Music:

It was certainly decent, and the Autobot and Decepticon themes were pretty badass for a no-name composer who works with Michael Bay. But it seemed like they used these two themes over and over and over. We get it, enough. Come up with some new themes, or do distinct variations on the two mentioned. Also, I am severely pissed that there was no orchestrated version of the classic Transformers theme. Producer Tom DeSanto promised us one. He got my hopes up, only to dash them to the rocks with some lame-ass cover band called Mute Math. The closest we'll get is the music from this promo from over a year ago:




I'm not entirely sure if this was a legit trailer to begin with, and someone edited the words at the beginning, or if it's entirely fan based, but the music is still loads better than the following:




And even then, this doesn't appear at all in the film, just the soundtrack. Lame, Bay. Lame.

Humor:

Practically nonexistent. Yet everything was a joke. Almost paradoxical, when you think about it. Michael Bay and his writers try so hard to be funny and come off annoying or creepy. It's almost like a five-year-old trying to be funny in front of his parents and their dinner guests, only instead of telling knock-knock jokes, he draws a picture of a giant robot peeing on a government agent. It was stupid bullshit, pandering to the lowest common denominator of rap/movie references and masturbation jokes. Visual gags. Not stuff I find particularily hilarious. I think I may have chuckled once, but with all the stupid humor, I can't remember what it was I laughed at. But the audience was in stitches. Well, I guess that gives me a hint at the cultural intelligence of Yarmouth...

Product Placement:

Not as outright awful as Rise of the Silver Surfer, but still pretty bad. Numero Uno, every Autobot besides Optimus Prime (a Peterbuilt truck) has a vehicle mode of a GM car. Bumblebee, Chevy Camaro. Ironhide, GMC Topkick. Ratchet, H2 Hummer. Jazz, Pontiac Solstice. And even if they just left it there, it wouldn't be so bad. But firstly, every car in the movie was clearly a GM car. You see the logos everywhere. The government drives GMC. Every lameass in LA drives one. It was beyond believability. And the cross promotion is the worst. Here's an example:




Shit. And there's another one (God help me, I tried to find a youtube link of it) that boasts "When you travel 30 trillion miles, you won't pick just any car." Um, pardon my logic Chevy, but yes you would. If you were an alien, looking to disguise yourself, you would pick just any old car. It's like saying of humans traveling to an alien planet (assuming we had similar capabilities), "When you travel 30 trillion miles, you're not going to pick just any yttjtu-ool!" Like we know or care what a Yttjtu-ool even is. Get your head out of your ass, GM.

Aside from that, it is clear what other companies sponsor this movie; eBay (though important to plot, not so bad), XBox, Mountain Dew/Pepsi, Burger King, Nokia. All of which (besides eBay and Nokia) have their own cross-promotions. It's not too bad, having someone eating at BK and dropping the Nokia name. Not until they're exposed to the Allspark, anyway. Read my lips: Transforming Mountain Dew Vending Machine. I am serious. LAME, Michael Bay.

Still, at least when the Autobots take on cars, it's sort of logical, unlike the Dodge Fantasticar fiasco. And the rest of it, while noticable, isn't entirely self-fellating. But that's just one more reason I liked the Decepticons; aside from a Ford police cruiser, all the Decepticons were either military vehicles or, like Megatron, their own Cybertronian vehicles. The Decepticons aren't shills.

Direction/"Bayisms":

I will hand it to him, Bay has finally made a movie I can enjoy. Unlike every other film he's ever made, I was not bored through this movie. Some scenes were actually awesome. He even gave me a geekgasm or two. His depiction of the Decepticons as brutal alien monsters who for the most part don't bother to learn english because they're going to exterminate us anyway was a rather smart move. And deciding to make the Transformers look more alien? BRAVO, Michael Bay (there's a sentence I never thought I'd say). One thing that always bugged me was how human the Transformers always looked. The designs of these guys were exceptional. And while many Transfans have complained about this, I think the lack of dialogue and interaction with the humans, and the lack of explanations behind what the Autobots and Decepticons say to each other is rather interesting. In a real situation, the Decepticons wouldn't bother to explain their hatred for the Autobots, humans, or justice in general. And what we do hear between the robots, especially between Optimus and Megatron or Megatron and Starscream will sound very appropriate to any fan. It's like we're hearing snippets of thousand-year rivalries and histories. I rather liked that, and I will give Michael Bay his kudos for that.

However, as inherently awesome as this movie is, and despite the good choices he made, he made some huge mistakes. Putting too many characters in the film with no point, and especially when you can't develop a character to save your life, bad move. The crude, pop humor was really unwanted and uncalled for. It just wasn't appropriate for a Transformers film. Kids will watch this, and having a 5-minute discussion of masturbation was just wrong. OH, that's another thing. He dragged lame scenes far too long and cut awesome scenes far too short. We've got 15 minutes of Autobots hiding in Sam's backyard with supposedly hilarious results, and 12 minutes devoted to the bit players trying to defeat a decepticon CD player, and numerous others like it that could have been trimmed, the time better used to explain things a little better, or show more giant robots. He even was so brazen as to reference an earlier film of his in this picture...with a POSITIVE CONOTATION. When the Autobots landed, one lard-ass kid with a camera was seen running around screaming "This is like a hundred times better than Armageddon, I'm serious!" Like it's something to be proud of, Michael Bay. Indeed, it was many times more awesome than Armageddon. But the same can be said for a pile of dogshit. It's not a fair comparison. Get your own flacid dick out of your mouth, Michael Bay, and learn to direct movies properly.

This film, while certainly worth watching, is still very clearly a Michael Bay film. All his Bayisms show up; little to no character development, dragging out bad scenes, stupid humor that appeals to trailer trash, insistence on putting in lame popular music, weird transitions, scrambling to piece a story together coherently, making positive reference to his own work like it's actually good or something. It's all there. But underneath all that is an awesome movie. Which is better than I'd ever thought I'd give a Bay film. The best way I can describe it is it's like the Autobots wandered onto the set of a Michael Bay film.

FINAL SCORE:

1/4

After some thought, I realized that Michael Bay's Transformers is a textbook 1/4; An inherently awesome film, ruined slightly by stupid little things. And the stupid little things in this picture are called Bayisms. But, to be honest, if Bay was going to direct any sort of geeky franchise that I actually cared about, I'm glad it was Transformers.

It's a shame it's the case, because I think the franchise could be, but Transformers isn't terribly cerebral. It's pretty basic stuff. Good vs. Evil. Alien Robots with lasers. The premise carries on its own weight without too much trouble, once you throw in some background mythology. So putting Bay in charge of this isn't going to lower the standard by leaps and bounds. If they came out with "Spider-Man: A Michael Bay film," I'd be through the roof. There's subtlety and nuance to Spider-Man, and Batman, and all sorts of other big name characters. But there isn't so much with Transformers. And he was smart enough to hire Transfans as the writers, so alot of that needed mythology stayed intact. So really, as much as I was hoping that maybe this could be a 0/4, deep in my heart I knew it never could with Michael Bay. But as much as I left the theatre half disappointed, I also left half impressed. Bay actually made a watchable film.

So many of the reviewers before me said one needs to leave their brain at the door to really enjoy this film. I can't really do that, I'm always looking for the deeper story and the epic quality in a film. But even with one's brain, this film is certainly watchable and even enjoyable. I would personally suggest seeing it, if you're into this sort of thing anyway. If you're not into giant alien robots transforming and blasting each other with laser beams, then there's not much else here for you.

Well, that's it for me today. I'll be reviewing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix soon enough, and I've got an open letter to write and a book review of Al Gore's The Assault on Reason forthcoming. Until next time, movie goers, transform and roll out!

- Silent G

Friday, June 29, 2007

Swedile at the Movies: Ratatouille



After last year's disappointing Pixar feature Cars [2/4], the buzz about Ratatouille has all been about one question; did Pixar get its groove back? I just came back from a screening of the film, and hopefully my review shall answer that question to your satisfaction.

I should hope that the Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale needn't be explained again anymore, but if you truly need a refresher, just check my earlier Flimsy Film Reviews.

Story:

The film stars two unlikely heroes; Remy, a rat who dreams of becoming a critically-acclaimed cook, and Linguini, an awkward French man who finds himself credited for Remy's cooking. Working together, Remy and Linguini become the most famous cook (notice the singular there) in all of Paris. But the pair face challenges from Skinner, the unpleasant head-chef, Anton Ego, an overly-critical food critic, and Remy's uncouth clan of fellow rats.

While certainly not an epic story in any sense of the word, the plot is perfect for an animated film, and is perfectly in taste (food puns; there will be many) with what one comes to expect from a Pixar picture. However, this film differs slightly in that it's longer than most (around the same length as The Incredibles [0/4]), and as such there are a great deal of twists and turns. Is this bad? Good graceous, no. It's one of the many charms of this film.

Character Development:

Whereas Cars was very bad in this department, using outdated stereotypes as opposed to real emotional personalities, Ratatouille has succeeded. The characters of Linguini and Colette, the aforementioned hero and his girl, are the best-explored characters in the whole movie. It may not seem it, but I'm a romantic at heart. But by romance I mean something believable, something with emotional pull to it, not just the obvious pairings of so many shippers in the online community. You really cheer for these two in the film, even me with my cold, immobile heart.

Remy's less explored than I had imagined the title character would be, mostly by virtue of him being quiet for a lot of the film. However, 90% of the stuff we do get is pure gold. Patton Oswalt is a very enthusiastic performer, and he brings his geekiness from his real-life obsession with comics to his character's obsession with food. His feelings of ostracization is also well-performed.

The villain Skinner was excellent. Ian Holm plays the perfect snooty, pompus French chef. One of the many nuggets this film offers.

Some of the background characters, like the rest of the kitchen crew and the rat pack leave something to be desired, but they're very much background characters. Not knowing everything about Remy's dad isn't the end of the world.

Comedy:

This film isn't exactly what you'd call "hilarious" or "a gut-buster," but it is indeed a very funny film. Most of the humor is witty humor, which if you're a clever person is certainly not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. It has a very adult sense of humor, while still appealing to the kids in the audience. The filmmakers don't presume to insult your intelligence like so many other CGI animated blockbusters by stuffing it with groin kicks and asinine pop culture references (though Chef Boyardee is mentioned). It's not stuff you'd be holding your sides for, but rather would promote a delightful (and appropriately quiet) little chuckle to oneself, with a few laugh-out-loud moments.

Music:

The music perfectly gives off the atmosphere of a pleasant little Parisian bistro in the evening, almost throughout the entire film. It was sublime.

Graphics:

Pixar only ever gets better in this regard. The people over there are artists, pure geniuses. Everything looks real, even when it looks cartoony. Skin looks like it's actually flesh, and not just a skin-colored layer on a polygon. Every hair on every rat is accounted for. Food looks like food. Paris looked like it had been filmed in person, and merely digitally enhanced to make it look almost dream-like. I often find it hard to believe that such magnificent art can come from a computer program. If you're into visual stimuli, go see this now.

Crazy Old Lady with a Shotgun factor:

Oh yeah, it's got that.

Life Lessons:

I very much liked the moral of this story. It teaches all the viewers, young and old, that art, true art and creativity and uniqueness, can come from anyone. It teaches you that if you have the passion, that you can do almost anything, and that one should not judge by appearences or preconcieved stereotypes. When I have a child, I am sitting them down in front of this film and hope they pick up something from it.

Direction/Did Pixar Get Its Groove Back?:

Brad Bird is an animation God, especially to the fraternity of geeks that I belong to. He knows how to tell a story. So is this a true Pixar film? Does it have that classic Pixar feel to it like the classics? Short answer, yes. Long answer, it has and yet it's also breaking new ground. It doesn't feel exactly like the classics such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc., or Finding Nemo. Those films were somewhat different in that they were more tender than Ratatouille. Each one had a very emotion plot that tugged at the deepest, thickest heartstrings burried deep within our sternum. Dealing with issues of abandonment, unconditional love, and just putting every ounce of being into reuniting with the absolute center of your world, these classics are an emotional roller coaster ride that pit the character's deepest hopes and dreams against absolutely impossible odds. In Ratatouille, there isn't that same sense of emotional urgency; Remy desparately wants to find his place in the world, but his is not a struggle of absolute life or death. The challenges are tough and many, to be sure, but they do not seem absolutely insurmountable.

However, where this film fails to recapture these basic elements, it replaces them with some new elements that are just as good. This is a very uplifting film, I will not mince words. I felt literally better when I left the theatre than I did when I entered it. Just the power of the human spirit shown in this film really makes you feel at ease with yourself. You get to watch as the lives of many, of both mice and men, are forever changed by these two unlikely heroes, and it just makes you feel happy to be part of it. My compliments to the chef!

FINAL SCORE:

0/4

Wow, my first Perfect/Near-Perfect score of the year. I was hoping I'd see one. Now there's finally a nominee for the 2007 Vesty Award for Best Picture, to be decided sometime after December 31st, 2007.

This movie has everything an animated film, especially one from Pixar should have; 2lbs chopped excellent characters, a compelling story wrought with hurdles and served with a light Hollendaise sauce, a peppering of intelligent humor, 1 cup creme de romance, calorie-friendly life lessons, a pinch of warmth, and the delightful aftertaste of a happy ending. Ratatouille is a 7-course meal for the senses that has great selections from both the adult and children's menus. If you trust my taste in films, then please, trust me when I say this is a film you'll be wanting seconds of.

Bon appetit!

- Silent G

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Holy Rollers!



Yesterday, while shirking work as usual, I was watching CNN Newsroom. Among stories like the 9 firefighters perishing in a blaze and some no-name actress getting knocked up was something rather interesting. The Vatican has released a list of Ten Commandments...for Driving. Suffice it to say, the implications of this announcement are both disturbing and hilarious.

CNN lead into the story, in the same campy, unprofessional nature that has encapsulated their quality as of late, by playing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." This is one of those moments where one says to oneself, "Ugh, here we go," and this was no exception to me. The second CNN tries to be funny by playing classic oldies that have some slight connection to the story, you know it's going to be some corny-ass fluffy human interest story that no one really cares about or has any affect on anyone's life.

But they had valid reasons for playing the song, Don Lemon assures us:

LEMON: The reason we played that music, "Highway to Hell," the Pope wants you to avoid road rage.

Does he now? See, I always figured that the Pope wanted people across the globe to drive like goddamn lunatics, firing guns at those who cut us off and picking off small children as they walk to school. "Pedestrians have the right of way," my ass!

Oh, but it gets better:

LEMON: It's kind of funny but its[sic] serious. Cars are such a big part of modern life, the Vatican, get this, has issued a ten commandments of driving. It calls for motorists to exercise a heavenly host of Christian values. Bear with me. It's quite a long list, but lets hope we get through it.

First of all, I love being able to correct the grammar of an official CNN Newsroom transcript. It makes me feel like I'm smarter than CNN. But that's not a huge feat these days. "Its" is possessive, CNN stenographers! "It's" is a contraction of "it is!" Seriously, why do these people have a 24-hour news network?

Anyway, back on topic. The Vatican has all of a sudden issued a list of Commandments for drivers, because the Vatican suddenly wants "motorists to exercise a heavenly host of Christian values" on the road. Unlike everywhere else, of course. Seriously, when your faith calls for you to "exercise a heavenly host of Christian values" everywhere on a daily basis, doesn't your car already apply? Why write a specific list of rules for this? Did the first 10 Commandments fail to cover all the bases? I shall get back to this later.

And, really, I love how Don Lemon finds this so asinine. "It's kind of funny?" "Get this?" "Bear with me?" Seriously, this guy thinks this is stupid as I do, and I'm sorry, I find that robustly hilarious.

But, without further ado, here it is, the unabridged Ten Commandments of Driving:

1. You shall not kill.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.


3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.


5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.


6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.


7. Support the families of accident victims.


8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.



9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.


10. Feel responsible toward others.


This is just too rich. Let's first study each commandment with scrutiny and cynicism, which will show why this list is essentially useless:

"1. You shall not kill." - Already one of the first Ten Commandments. It is also a law.

"2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm." - TRANSLATION: Don't kill. Same as Number 1. Useless.

"3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events. " - This reads less like a commandment and more like a fortune cookie. Lucky Numbers: 23 14 6 9 52 4.

"4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents." - This one is actually a good idea. But it doesn't need to be restated. Christians are urged to help their fellow man anyway, why do you need to tell them to do it on the road, too?

"5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin." - This one really amuses me for some reason. I can't really imagine someone using a car as "an expression of power and domination" without thinking of some crazed car-themed supervillain.

"I, Dr. Destructi-Truck, shall conquer you puny mortals in your weak hybrid cars! Bow before the might of my Hemi!"

And the addition of "and an occasion of sin" is also very funny. It is a tacit forbidding of, essentially, back-seat lovin', which is the spot where roughly 73% of all unwanted births are first conceived. Jesus, that Pope is just hellbent on keeping kids from fucking, isn't he?

"6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so. " - TRANSLATION: Don't let others drink and drive. Also illegal anyway. And why the need for distinguishing between "the young and not so young?" Just say "anyone." Age doesn't really apply as much to drunk driving as you might think, Pope.

"7. Support the families of accident victims." - Again, a good idea. Probably the only thing I don't have anything cuttingly witty to say about it.

"8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness." - Oh, here we go. Does the Vatican really think this will fly? We're a litigious people, not a forgiving one.

"Oh, hello. You must be the motorist who ran a red light because he was late meeting his friends at the bar, and who plowed right into the driver side of my car, which crushed my legs and broke my spine, which will necessitate years of expensive physiotherapy and astronomically costly prosthetics. You ruined my life and my livelihood, you've paralyzed me from the waist down, my wife left me because I can no longer please her, and I'm essentially the lifeless husk of a once-proud man, forever doomed to live the remainder of his life as a ward of the state. But, hey, let's let bygones be bygones. No harm done."

Pope Benedict, I will pay you a million dollars if your commandment ever warrants this exact response.

Also, this commandment implies that you're a third party, getting these two together to talk forgiveness. What business is it of yours, Christians? Let the courts handle it.

"9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party." - This one is sort of vague (like the entire Bible), but I presume that it refers to children. That's what booster seats are for. We already force kids up to age 9 to use them. How much more humiliation do you need to put them through?

"10. Feel responsible toward others." - And it is shit like this that has people like Scott Zimmerman taking on the self-imposed role of missionary to convert "heathens" like myself. I already get emails from the jackass, now he's supposed to yell the bible at me out his car window?

And those are all the commandments. And one has to wonder, with the Vatican bothering to make this list, what are the implications?

I wonder if the Vatican NEEDED to make these rules, that Christians were murderous felons on the road. Did Christians forget the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" when behind the wheel? Seriously, why Vatican, why? What is the need for this useless list?

Secondly, can one really call these commandments? I thought the first ten commandments were from the mouth of God himself. Unless... what if God spoke to the Pope? Maybe he went into some secret Pope cave or something and God said to him "My faithful servant, your Lord has a mission for you. You are to present the world with another ten commandments, each one more asinine than the one that preceded it. And they shall pertain to...oh, I don't know...how does driving thrill ya?"

You know what I think? I think this list is a knee-jerk reaction to the recent attempt on the Pope's most precious life:



That right, someone tried to jump the Popemobile (oh, "Popemobile," how outrageously funny you are). It's all so close together, this has to be the reason. That or the Pope is genuinely concerned about road safety. But since road rage has existed for decades before this, and since the original Ten Commandments and the general Christian values Chrisitans are supposed to adopt should apply to the road as much as anywhere, I have to think that at best this was the straw that broke the camel's back. "This is it, I could watch as millions of good people die on the road each year, but someone tried to get into MY Popemobile? THIS SHALL NOT STAND!"

It's really the only way I can see why he would think anyone would take driving advice from a man who is chauffeured around in the back of a bubble car his whole career.

- Silent G

TOMORROW: Part 2 of Holy Rollers! How has the new commandment affected the world? CNN, again, bothers to tell us!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Swedile at the Movies: Rise of the Silver Surfer



I've got to admit, I didn't quite know what to expect from this movie. On geek forums and comic book cinema news sites everywhere, people were giving wildly different opinions on the film. Some said it was brilliant. Some said it was dog-turdish. Some said it was a bit of both. It was hard to tell just from them what I would be seeing in the theatre on June 15th. Since mine is ultimately the opinion I care about, the only way to settle this hot debate was to see it myself. I'd know if it was good or bad.

And thus, my review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer begins. I will be using the same Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale as before. The varying degrees are chronicled here, but a quick rundown of the possible scores:

0/4 - Perfect or near-perfect
1/4 - Pretty good, but with serious flaws
2/4 - Mediocre
3/4 - Bad with some good aspects
4/4 - Bad
5/4 - Detrimental to your mental and physical well-being

For reference, the first Fantastic Four film was a 3/4 in my eyes. Now, onto the nuts and bolts.

Story:

It's the classic Galactus story; Galactus, devourer of worlds, is headed for earth and his slave, The Silver Surfer, has come to earth to prepare it for destruction. However, the FF help the Surfer to remember his humanity, who then works to help spare earth from his near-omnipotent cosmic master. Pretty classic stuff, and they surprisingly got most of it right. The Surfer, I will say right now, was awesome. Very easily the best aspect of the film. I loved watching him, listening to him. They even got his comic book back story perfect. It was a character comic book fans the world over could enjoy.

They also tried to throw in the later storyline of Dr. Doom stealing the Surfer's board, and to some degree they pulled it off, but it seemed sort of out of place. Dr. Doom seemed forced; he always did. Tim Story doesn't get Doom. He never did, and he still doesn't. However, I will say that Doom was marginally more entertaining and more Doom-like than he was in the first. He still had the lame one-liners, but he did at least look and act the part with some understanding of the great lord of Latveria. Luckily he's only in it for so long that it's not too annoying. All in all, I'll say Doom was okay. But Doom should never be just "okay." He should be fucking awesome.

The power swapping. Not as lame as I imagined it would be. But there was some lameness, which I shall address later.

Acting/Character Development:

Nothing noteworthy besides the Surfer. Chris Evans as Johnny Storm was still pretty good, and the rest of the four except Jessica Alba were believable in their roles. The extras were horrible, I hate them like I hate eggs. But I say, the Surfer is really the diamond in the rough in this department. You really feel for him after a while, despite his relatively short amount of time on screen.

Faithfulness to the Source Material:

Pretty damn close, actually. The Galactus Saga was pulled off very well, with a few exceptions. First, Galactus is a giant seemingly-sentient uber-storm cloud. Now, I am like many other fans who would have loved to see the giant purple armoured man, or at least something with more of a physical form than a cloud. But Galactus is more of an imminent threat than a character; you should only really seem him in the final quarter. And to this effect, they did Galactus rather well. And they even had hints of his classic form (keep a close eye when he passes by Saturn), enough to make me think they didn't totally rape the character. However, they killed him. Which, in a movie, is fine, we'll never see him again anyway. But the comic book geek inside me is screaming, "You can't kill Galactus! He's a necessary aspect of the universe! He's like a cosmic bacteria! Killing him will fuck up the universe!" But if you can live with that, then he came off okay.

And they got the Surfer's history dead-on; he was once Norrin Radd, he sold himself into slavery to spare his planet, everything. Seriously, the Surfer was so awesome.

Music:

Nothing outstanding, but it was John Ottman, so it was fairly decent. Just nothing memorable or worth noting any further.

Comedy:

Ugh. This film is full to the brim with all the corny, raunchy pop-culture jokes Fox is famous for. It was one of the worse aspects of the film. Watching Reed Richards dance with sluts at his bachelor party, using his stretching powers for comedic effect, was really not all that funny. Most of the humor in this film is groaner humor. But there were a few gems. I just can't remember them. Luckily this dies down once the action starts.

Product Placement:

This film would have received a higher rating if it weren't for all the shameless shilling this movie did. I could have easily written an article entitled "Ad Nauseum: Rise of the Silver Surfer," it was so bad. Almost throughout the movie, it was everywhere. And I mean, it's one thing to have Ben Grimm sipping a Slurrpie on camera. That's subtle. Or billboards in New York. Those are everywhere, it's fine. But when Johhny wears a Fantastic Four uniform with logos sewn into it (he does too, but not through the whole film) and Dodge built the Fantasticar, that's just absurd. Seriously, it's revolting. Johnny even says something like "What have you got against capitalism?" Yuck. Seriously, the very worst aspect of the film. Maybe even worse than I, Robot.

Special Effects:

A mixed bag. The Surfer and Galactus look pretty wicked. Especially the Surfer. They put a lot of much-needed attention into him. And Johnny looked like he was on fire. But at the end, when he uses everyone's powers at once, that is just way too cartoony. It looks really bad. But you will be mesmerized by the Surfer. He is so awesome.

Direction:

I'm actually rather impressed with Tim Story. This is by no means a perfect film, but the pacing was actually rather good. The film's only an hour and a half and yet it never seems like it's being rushed, unlike X-Men: The Last Stand. He got a lot of characters right, especially the Surfer, and I really rather enjoyed myself. He really raised the bar from the last one. But to be perfectly fair, that's like saying that a pimple is better than a tumor.

FINAL SCORE:

1.5/4

I rarely give out a .5 on a film; I'm usually very steadfast in what I like and don't like. But this one was hard to judge. There are moments where it's a two, like with the lame jokes, the lame Doom, and the shameless product placement, and then there are moments where it's a one, namely whenever the Silver Surfer is on screen. Seriously, this guy was fantastic. Doug Jones and the voice of Laurnece Fishburn really brought the character to life. I was blown away. I didn't know Tim Story could be that good. So on that note, I have deemed it a 1.5/4; If you're a comic book fan, especially if you like the Silver Surfer, you can't miss this movie. If you're not a big fan, then you probably can live without it, but still be entertained if you did go see it. It was a hard movie to score, but in the end, I stick by my indecisiveness.

But either way, this is a huge improvement from the first. I actually enjoyed myself. Fantastic.

- Silent G

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Ad Nauseum: Edy's Slow Churned Ice Cream



Ever since I got sick in 1997, with the combined might of renal failure and anabolic steroids, I seem to have lost my sweet tooth a bit; Whereas I once loved things like suckers, Chunks Ahoy and chocolate bars, today I can only eat them in small amounts (except Chunks Ahoy, where the only appropriate helping is none). I still like cakes, muffins and general pastries, but the one sweet where no love is lost for me is Ice Cream. I love it like heroine. However, even I know when to stop shoveling it into my mouth.

Edy's Slow Churned ice cream is a low-fat brand I've been seeing a lot of lately, at least on TV. Just watch this commercial and see if you notice the logical fallacy:



Edy's claims to use half the fat of regular ice cream. This may very well be true, and if it is, kudos to you Edy's. And since it's only half the fat, Edy's suggests that hey, why not have a bit more? Well guess what, Edy's. If you're eating two bowls of ice cream with half the fat of regular ice cream, you're just eating the same amount of fat as a single bowl of ice cream. Genius move, Edy's! What a smart, health-conscious ad campaign! Instead of having less fat, why not have the same amount with twice the ice cream?

See, unbeknownst to the fat stupid consumers that litter North America, fat isn't the only thing that makes us overweight. Ice Cream also has sugar, calories, milk solids, and numerous other sweeteners and chemicals. If you're looking to consume the same amount of fat for twice the bang for your buck, then sure, have "a little bit more." But know that you're also consuming twice the calories and twice the sugar. You might have diabetes and clogged arteries, but at least you're not fat.

Idiots.

This sort of sentiment is something that really pisses me off. It's the bloated western mentality of "Consume, then consume some more." We have it so fucking good here, whereas people in Ethiopia and other third world countries would kill for a morsel of food. But do we try and help them, when we have so much to spare? No, we strive to eat even more. This commercial speaks to the deepest-most recesses of the human psyche. This ad appeals to those who like to stuff their face. Well, now you can stuff just a little bit more into that festering gullet of yours thanks to Edy's, America! Is it sweet? I hope it's worth it.

I'm no member of Greenpeace, nor do I contribute to the Christian Children's Help Fund. But there is an arrogance in this commercial that even baffles me. Learn to eat a single bowl and be fucking happy you have that, gluttons.

As for some of the less politically-charged aspects of this ad, notice how the teenagers here get up to dance upon noticing their empty bowls. "Hurrah, our bowls are empty! We can fill them again! Let us dance to the Gods of High-Fructose Corn Syrup!" The people this commercial is trying to appeal to are the people who want to lose weight. The people who respond to commercials like this are the folks who want a quick, easy fix to weight gain; they'd like to lose weight, but not have to move to do so. These people then see "low fat" on a product and think therefore it must be the answer to their woes.

So, let's recap:
- The ice cream is for people who want to lose weight
- The people who will buy this ice cream will do so as a substitute for exercise
Therefore
- The people who buy this ice cream will not be likely to jump out of their seats and boogie with excitement. They will more than likely bitch and wheeze just walking over to the fridge to get another helping.

I know exactly why they do it, but it always seems so funny to me that young, slim, sexy people are used to push every sweetened glob of sugar on the market, especially the ones being sold as a healthy alternative. "If they're thin, and they're eating McKeener's Syrup Fudge Nuggets, then I can eat them and be thin too! Praise the High-Fructose lord!" Drumstick is notorious for this sort of thing. I remember last year they had a feel-good craphat of a spot where all sorts of half-naked teenagers were on the beach, eating some prepackaged ice cream cones, living every day to the fullest. It was lame, it was crap, and the whole time I was wondering "why aren't they fat from eating this shit?"

Drumstick shall receive my full attention, specifically in regards to their latest piece of shit advertising, at a later date.

Oh, and nice American Idol reference, Edy's. You really have a deep, fundamental connection to the youth demographic of people 18-34. Way to go!

Well, that's about it for this edition of Ad Nauseum. Do me a favor, dear readers; go home, enjoy a delicious bowl of ice cream, and then don't have seconds. There are children starving in China, you know.

- Silent G

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Gift of Life, Where it's Needed Most



No real story here, folks. I just think this is ironic as hell and hilarious to boot. Enjoy.

- Silent G

P.S. - New Ad Nauseum coming soon, plus maybe a rant on the job market in Nova Scotia.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Eat My Dust Jacket!: Nothing's Sacred


Alex Colgan writes excellent book reviews. He says I should write them too. Who am I to argue?

I am also stealing his format.

"Nothing's Sacred"
- Lewis Black

[Just to clarify, I will be judging this and all future books by the following criteria: what I learn from it, what emotions it brought out in me from reading it, how long it is, how long it took me to read it, how much it cost, writing style, creativity, and a slew of other random things that somehow affected my experience.]

When I first became aware that the great Lewis Black had written a book, I was overjoyed. Something he wrote must have been pure comedic genius. I even made a day of going out to Bayer's Lake just to get it. But sadly, writing books is not Mr. Black's area of expertise.

Much of the material, at least most of the funny stuff, was stuff he wrote for his stand-up comedy routines. He told the story of how he auditioned to be himself, how the end of the Universe is two Starbucks situated across from each other in Houston, his youth spent under wooden desks patiently awaiting Armageddon. It's all there. And it's funny stuff, to be certain. But it's funnier when Lewis Black is saying it. This book is ultimate proof that comedy is all about the delivery; even some of the funniest things he's said lose some oompf because you've heard them before, and now you're experiencing it without Lewis' outraged mannerisms.

The book, however, does explore some interesting, and sometimes funny, aspects of his childhood and young adulthood. His recounting of his days working for the Appalachian Regional Commission and fucking with the authority figures of the Yale School of Drama were witty and fantastic to read. He even has one of his plays copied in its entirety in the softcover edition, a play which has most certainly bled into obscurity. As an autobiography of Lewis Black, this is a good book. It's just not all that funny.

It is a shame, it really is, that I am sitting here and typing the words "not funny" in conjunction with Lewis Black. Black is an exceptionally funny person, probably the best of our times. He's like this generation's Richard Pryor or George Carlin. This is a man I will be raving about in my forties while my kids ask me who the hell he is. But alas, this book isn't really all that funny. He could have come up with some new jokes for his book, but he just recycled old ones. Which leads me to believe that he didn't take the book seriously. He even warns the reader never to write a book within its pages.

This is also not a book that one cannot put down. I found it rather simple to, in fact. I'd not touch the book for weeks when schoolwork came up. Nothing Sacred is a bathroom book; the only time you make for it is when you're taking a shit. Oh, that's the other thing; this book is hardly as hardcore and cuss-erific as when Lewis speaks. The word "fuck" appeared within the pages, but nowhere near how often he says it in person. I suspect the editor is responsible for this. When will publishers learn, when people buy a book from someone like Lewis Black, they are not going to be shocked by his expletives. This is so simply because no one who had not heard of him and heard his routines would buy his book. Simple economic psychology, people.

In the end, the book was probably not worth the $18 I paid for it, but if they had knocked off about a fin, it would have been worth it. Anyone who is interested in Lewis Black's history and progression to the finger-pointin', vein-poppin', authority-hatin' "Migranocrat" he is today, pick this book up. If you're interested in laughing until your side hurts, don't.

Final Score - 3/5

- Silent G

Friday, June 8, 2007

Ad Nauseum: The Globe and Mail



I like to think that I have a somewhat unique perspective on the Globe after my time spent in King's. Not on the paper itself, mind you, but rather it's status symbol...uh, status.

First let me say that The Globe and Mail is a fine publication. Very intellectual, covers interesting global and national stories, and has some excellent writers (they use the inverted pyramid and everything!). I have nothing against the Globe itself. However, the daily comes off as a very pretentious paper, if not because of it's writing, then for it's readership.

At King's, essentially 50% of the students were from Atlantic Canada and the other 50% from Ontario, with a few statistical oddities from the Bahamas or Boston. My Journalism class was no different. And since we had to subscribe to a daily newspaper for this class, it was easy to tell the two apart; the people from Ontario wouldn't shut up about how fan-fucking-tastic the Globe was. They treated it as if they had a daily subscription to the Bible.

I'm not entirely sure where this attitude started; if it was the readership who put it on such a pedestal, or if the Globe and Mail marketing department has brainwashed its subscribers to put it there. All I do know is that the Globe is certainly capitalizing on this attitude, as is evidenced by their recent ad campaign:



I've been to Toronto, once, 11 years ago, and I can tell you this; this ad screams urban upper-middle class Ontario. Every restaurant I remember going to in that city, including the produce market/deli in the basement of the Eaton Centre, had images very similar to that image of the wine being poured. There were watermarked letters on parchment-style yellow everywhere.

This whole ad is filled with hoighty-toighty imagery like that; The marquee, the "Globe Health" heart, the two Internet faces debating (because the Globe is such a community where your voice can be heard!), the two faces made of newspaper cuddling up to each other with the sound of Shenkar in the background to make it obvious that the Globe is multicultural, the whole spiel. It's as if the ad is trying to say, "Read our paper, it will make you a worthwhile person."

My favorite image in this ad, however, has nothing to do with how haughty the paper is, but is in fact a fascinating social commentary, and perhaps even a psychological one at that. When the bay doors open and you see "FREEDOM" written in big red letters on the screen, only to see each letter dropped successively onto the supposed chemical plant below like bombs, that's just so delicious. Almost Orwellian in nature. It very much reminds me of the slogan in 1984, "WAR IS PEACE." But it's such a compelling, and rather apt, analogy to this war in Iraq that America is waging. They're using the excuse of freedom (both for the Iraqi people and the Americans back home) as a sort of weapon of tyranny. "We'll be welcomed as liberators. Because, you know, Iraqis love it when people drop bombs on them." I'll be honest, if it weren't for my experience with the new generation of stuck-up Ontarian Globe yuppies and this one image, this commercial probably would not have grabbed my attention the way it has.

Last night, Alex and I were discussing the phenomenon of the annexation of one's personality from consumer products, in the process debating which was more sad; an individual looking to gain social status from buying the soundtrack to the upcoming Transformers movie, or Scott Zimmerman, a 30-year-old fundamentalist Christian from Pennsylvania who is trying to convert us and yet, ironically, doesn't know anything about the Bible. To be honest, we're still not sure which is worse (perhaps we shall have to hold an organized debate on the issue). But this Globe and Mail issue really flies under the same radar. Most of the people I know who read it from Journalism class acted like they were better, morally superior even, for reading the Globe. It was as if they thought only smart, politically-savvy people read the Globe, and those who didn't weren't. It was in fact not dissimilar to the story of the Emperor's New Clothes; "Only smart people can read the Globe, and we're certainly not stupid!" The worst for this kind of stuff was the Sexy Socialist, a denizen of the King's campus whom I shall address at a later date. But this guy, he was by far the most snobby and stuck up about the paper, as if he kept his copy wedged far up his own ass. But the funny thing is, he was about the only NON-Ontarian who I know who read it. It was almost as if he were hoping that maybe by reading it hard enough, he could be a stuck-up Ontarian by default.

The Globe and Mail is a good paper. Probably the best for a Canadian perspective on the events of the world. But it's not the fucking word of God. Stop acting like it is.

- Silent G

Saturday, June 2, 2007

The Pussification of Tenth Grade English


For an early birthday present from my dad this year, I received a ticket to see John Pinette on stage at the Rebecca Cohn theatre in Halifax. The evening was a blast; drank wine, listened to a fat man make fun of his fat for an hour and a half live on stage, and I even got to meet him. I asked him what it was like working with the illustrious ALF, to which he replied "It was weird, the actors were all snooty, like 'Dude, you're on ALF." The night was a rousing success, except this was also the night I learned that my Alma mater, Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High School, lost just another little piece of its mind.

My tenth grade English teacher, Mr. DeWolfe, was also in attendance and we caught up while waiting for our autograph. I was about the only student in that class who really liked the material (The Chrysalids. READ IT!), so I took an interest in what he was teaching that year. "Still teaching To Kill a Mockingbird," I asked, knowing full well it was about the one book most of my class agreed was excellent. His exact response: "Uh, nope."

Apparently they can no longer teach To Kill a Mockingbird in our high school anymore, because it's a "sensitive issue" that hurts the feelings of pussies who don't get why racial slurs are being used. Why do schools ban books? Why are some of the best examples of literature, such as To Kill a Mockingbird or, one of my personal favorites, Catcher in the Rye, kept outside of arm's reach from young minds?

In my 20 years of life, one thing I've learned about society, especially the spoiled-rotten North American society I live in, is that when something bad happens, we lose our goddamn minds. Some mentally-unbalanced dipshit does something stupid, and suddenly whatever inspired them is ruined for the rest of us.

Take Catcher in the Rye. For years, the worst one could say about this novella was that there were some sexually explicit themes and some bad language. Both good reasons not to let 6th graders read it. But come 1980, Mark David Chapman gave us one more reason; it's a sower of degenerates.

Chapman, according to the American Justice episode about him, used to believe in little people that lived in his walls that talked to him. This was a sick man from the get-go. However, the only thing they remember about him is that he killed John Lennon, and he was "inspired" to do so by The Catcher in the Rye. Almost immediately, the book was taboo. It was as if J.D. Salinger had not written an imaginative and symbolic story of one young man's struggle to hold on to his innocence, but rather an instruction manual for murdering celebrities. If I were Salinger, I'd be a recluse too; I would rather not deal with people that stupid.

Though to be perfectly fair, I can understand how this would be an immediate knee-jerk reaction. Much in the same vein as removing all evidence of the WTC from every movie ever made, shunning a book that inspired a man to kill a Beatle is just the natural progression from an event like that. However, there's an imbalance; I can watch an episode of Friends that showcase the Twin Towers with every transition, but there's still a stigma on the adventures of Holden Caulfield. In fact, when in 11th grade I told my mother I intended to read it, she turned to me with concern and told me not to use it as an excuse to kill anyone. Seriously, she said that. With no hint of irony. She was genuinely concerned that I may decide to undertake murder because I read this book. And what's more, one of my friends from King's tells me that whenever she's tried to read it, she had to keep it a secret from her mother. Because her mother would find it, and dispose of it. It was like this book was the goddamn boogieman.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by contrast, never was made synonymous with the death of anyone famous (to my knowledge anyway), but it uses the N word. And apparently that's enough. Even when we read it in class, Mr. DeWolfe had to warn us not to use the word as we read it aloud, instead replacing it with "N-word" or, my favorite, "Nnn." But y'know what? That word is there for a reason. This book is supposed to be an accurate recreation of the time in which it takes place, in order to teach us a lesson about racism. The people who used the word? The inbred hick-hillbilly Ewells and any other ignorant bumfuck in the book. And through Atticus' shining example, the book teaches those who read it not to judge a man by the color of his skin.

But because some militant PMSing mother's group out there has an issue with the N-word, or "Fuck You" scrawled across a wall, their kids suffer because they miss the lessons taught by these amazing tomes. Angry parents across the globe, here me: you are protecting your children by censoring these books, but you protect them only from intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth.

Alex Colgan has told me that Franz Kafka said that books need to hurt people, and I wholeheartedly agree. Books that are approved for reading at High School level, such as The Book of Eve and The Giver, have taught me one thing; nothing. If they taught me anything, it was to hate literature distributed through public school. The Book of Eve, that's a book to fucking ban. Not because of the rape scene or the images of an octogenarian fucking a middle aged dutch man who can barely speak English, but because it's just BAD. Horrid. GAH! *ahem* But I digress. The classics, the really good books that could actually teach something to these nitwits in high school today, are being kept away from them because it may hurt some one's feelings somewhere. Well, you know what I say? Let that pussy cry. Maybe the rest of society can get past the crib and actually progress intellectually.

So in closing, all those young minds who may chance upon Swedile, hear this; if your school won't let you read anything good, strive to do so on your own time. That's what I did. Here's a great, comprehensive list of some excellent books to get you started. Or if you're too lazy, you can wait for University. There ain't no pussies in post-secondary education.

- Silent G