tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80192725386683473252024-03-13T19:28:34.341-07:00SwedileOfficially Defined as a Word Lacking an Official DefinitionSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-44257489372402273402010-12-27T15:44:00.000-08:002010-12-27T16:47:58.275-08:00Swedile's Flips and Flops of 2010 - Top 5 Best MoviesGreetings, faithful Japanese spambot readers (and whoever else may have tuned in)! Well, it's that time of year again - the end of it. And as we have the tendancy to tally up our successes and failures of the past 365.25 days - some of us for the basis of a New Year's Resolution a.k.a. "Setting Yourself Up For A Fall" - I thought it would be a fun idea to put together a record of my success and failures in seeing movies. To say that less convolutedly, this is Swedile's best and worst films (as I saw them) of 2010!<br /><br />While I won't be reviewing the following films proper, I will employ the "<span style="color:#ffff00;">Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale</span>" for reference, just to give y'all their final scores.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">THE 5 BEST FILMS OF 2010<br /><br />5. How To Train Your Dragon/Tangled (tie)<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pyOyBVXDJ9Q?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pyOyBVXDJ9Q?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qHUhygdAZIw?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qHUhygdAZIw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /></span><br /></strong><br />I really could not choose between these two. They're both quality, top-notch animated movies, they're both gorgeous and excellent examples of CGI cartooning done RIGHT, and they were both surprise hits for me (we saw HtTyD entirely because the main dragon bore an uncanny resemblance in both appearence and behavior to my friend's cat). When trying to pick between them, I was torn. On the one hand, <em>Dragon</em> was a Dreamworks movie with a lot of heart instead of a lot of pop culture references, and was a complete surprise. With <em>Tangled</em>, on the other hand, the quality was more expected of a Disney flick, especially since they're trying to recapture the good ol' days of my youth lately. But considering that where <em>Princess and the Frog</em> was less than thrilling in that department, this one succeeded. It's no <em>Aladdin</em> or <em>Lion King</em>, but it's still very likable. If I <em>haaaadddd</em> to pick, I'm leaning towards <em>Dragon</em>, but they're soooooo close I wanted to honour them both.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;"><em>Dragon: 0/4</em><br /><em>Tangled: 0/4</em><br /><em></em><br />4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_EC2tmFVNNE?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_EC2tmFVNNE?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /></span></strong><br />I never really cared all that much about Harry Potter until I learned how dark it gets as the series progresses. Once I heard about the plot of the last novel, I decided it was time to read the novels (back to back, even - finished in a month). Deathly Hallows soon became my favorite of the books. When I heard that they were cutting the book into two movies, I was <em>extremely </em>skeptical. To me it sounded just like a way to stretch this multimillion-dollar film franchise as far as it could. But having seen the first part, I can say cutting it up was the <em>best </em>thing the filmmakers could do. This chapter was so unlike the rest, and so much happens, it really helps the pacing. Furthermore, it's divided in such a way that it feels like it's breaking at a logical point to end as a movie. I was just really impressed overall. The acting and the atmosphere are tortured and sublime. Check it out.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;"><em>0/4</em><br /><br />3. Kick-Ass<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xeoj9r1hUKY?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xeoj9r1hUKY?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /></span></strong><br />I was really excited for this one. I am a huge fan of the comic on which it was based, and nature of the production had me genuinely atwitter. Essentially the first independant Superhero movie, I figured the rather controvertial subject matter of the comic would not be dulled my hesitant production companies. And to a certain end, that was how it turned out. It's violent, it's frenetic, it's controvertial. My one real problem with the film, as far as an adaptation goes, is that small superficial changes nullified the source material's ideology (namely, that being a superhero would be shit - I wrote a paper on it). It glorifies the daydream, instead of condemning it. It's realist panache is soon discarded in favor of flying in on a jetpack, guns ablaze. That said, this is a really fun movie. It really does try to capture the original as best it can, and if you recognize this ideological difference, it can be appreciated for what it is. This is a movie for people who want to play Superhero (and judging by the general response to the comic's ending versus the film's, there are a lot of people like that out there).<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;"><em>0/4</em><br /><br />2. Toy Story 3<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_FfHA5whXc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_FfHA5whXc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /></span></strong><br />Toy Story was a masterpiece, and cemented Pixar in pop cinema forever. Toy Story 2 further explored the theme of loss I think epitomizes the entire Toy Story series, but it's ending left us hanging - someday, Andy will grow up, and the toys will have to deal. Ever since first seeing that movie 13 years ago, I have wanted to see that idea explored, and thankfully, after a lot of careful thought, Pixar delivers. And boy, do they deliver. This movie legitimizes Toy Story 2, in my eyes, and truly completes the Toy Story Trilogy. It's funny as ever, but also touches you more than the first two put together. If the ending does not induce a swell of emotion in you, and you've seen the other two movies, then you are simply not human (or incapable of experiencing empathy, which happens). HIGHLY recommended, for rental or purchase.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong><em>0/4</em><br /><em></em></strong><br /></span><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">1. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SbEsSsiozNU?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SbEsSsiozNU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /></span></strong>Holy crap, was this movie awesome on every concievable level. It was well-cast to perfection. The visual effects were stunning. The editing was sublime. The music was extremely catchy and memorably. The writing was pithy and sharp. Even on the level of adaptation it was a stellar success, which is no small feat since they condensed six volumes into a 2 hour movie that captures the heart of the series but trims and splices when necessary. Edgar Wright is a true filmmaker, and he's clearly a man who sits at a computer and is intimately familiar with Final Cut, and as an aspiring editor, I really gravitate towards that. I am literally shocked at how lackluster this film performed at the box office. This is one of those movies that is going to be immensely appreciated as it ages. You are really doing a disservice to yourself if you've not seen this one. Easily best movie of the year, and recipient of my Vesty Award for Best Picture. I'd grade it higher if I could.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong><em>0/4</em> </strong></span><br /><br />Check in for Par 2, my Top 5 WORST Movies of 2010 shortly.<br /><br />- <span style="color:#ff6600;">TheSilentG<br /></span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-49283584182790741382010-08-08T13:54:00.001-07:002010-08-08T14:49:17.272-07:00Ad Nauseum: Huggies JeansAfter more than two years, I finally return to my award-winning* series, Ad Nauseum, where I tear apart the absolute worst of the worst in televised advertising. I had almost forgotten about Ad Nauseum, until I saw something a while ago that absolutely shattered my belief that the world at least tries to be a sane and rational place. What horrid advert could render me so bleak?<br /><br /><strong>Huggies Jeans</strong>, that's what:<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sQ0M9CBEkw0&hl=en_US&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sQ0M9CBEkw0&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>Not <em>nearly</em> limited enough, Huggies.</strong><br /><br />........I don't even know where to begin.<br /><br />This is, easily, the single most warped and disturbing example of fetishizing I have ever seen in my life, and it's done in an attempt to sell you diapers. I feel like a scat-loving pedophile wrote this. Here's this baby, in a white shirt and blue-tampoed diapers strolling down the streets of Madrid or someplace. Everywhere he goes, he's turning heads. This infant, who may or may not have developed object permanence yet, is clearly the sexiest thing to ever grace God's green Earth, at least to these people. That. Is. FUCKED. UP.<br /><br />Now, ok, before anyone starts saying I'm reading too much into this and assuming from that what I'm bringing to this ad when I watch it, don't worry. I know where they're going with this. The commercial is saying Jeans look good on people, babies now have Jean Diapers, so they too can look good. I get it. But the issue I take is the reaction ADULTS are having to this kid. Like, in most commercials where they attribute adult mannerisms to infants, they populate the commercial ONLY with infants. If they were doing an ad where a kid's getting diaper rash while sitting at his cubicle filing the finger paints Mr. Georgie wants on his desk by nap time, he's not going to be working in an office with adults. His cubicle neighbors will also be infants, probably holding their hands to their mouths in abject horror at that kid's rash in the cute way babies pretend to be shocked. Had they gone that route here, I'd find the commercial far, FAR less warped. Sure, he's sexy, but to the girl babies. It's appropriate. But adding adults to the equation oddly makes it go from cute to OH MY GOD THAT KID'S STRUTTING DOWN DIDDLER ALLEY! RUN KID!<br /><br />I'm not done. The other serious problem with this ad is just...the glorifying attitude it takes towards defecation. I'm a prudish, fragile North American. I'm used to innuendo as the language of commercials that deal with topics that are not dinner-conversation-safe. Like, I'd rather hear "When I'm not feeling fresh" than "When I have a smelly yeast infection," or why those Charmin bears really put me off when they show me their toilet paper cling-ons. And of all the topics that are gross to talk about, human feces is probably my least favorite. The reason that blue liquid was invented was so commercials could AVOID using poop and urine in commericals, or even evoking it. Nothing is cleaner, more sterile, and more <em>wholesome</em> than blue liquid.<br /><br />This commerical, if you will, cuts right to the crap. The whole commercial, this baby is inner-monologuing about how fucking rad he is when he drops a log:<br /><br /><em>-"My diaper is full...full of chic!"</em> (Is that what we're calling it now?)<br /><em>-"When I go #2, I look like #1!"<br />-"I poo in blue!"</em><br /><br />Like, wow. No foreplay at all, just right for the obvious. This kid, and by extension YOUR kids, will be shitting in these diapers. Thank you. Thank you for taking that imagery and force-feeding it into my brain. I really needed to picture the contents of a blue diaper randomly and without warning when watching TV.<br /><br />But the worst is saved for last. Huggies has managed to concoct the single most baffling tagline ever used in an attempt to sell a product, ever. The ad proudly proclaims at the end of this madness that wearing Huggies Jeans will be "The Coolest You'll Look Pooping Your Pants."<br /><br />Let's allow that to sink in for just a minute.<br /><br />.....<br /><br />We good? Good.<br /><br />HOLY SHIT!<br /><br />That's just....deranged. The coolest you'll look pooping your pants? Allow me to attest, and I think we can all agree, as a society, a species, and as inhabitants of this realm of existence, that no one, anywhere, EVER, has or will look cool pooping their pants. As an act, it is like a cool solvent; it kills the cool instantly. Imagine a big bowl of liquid cool, and much like the water/pepper/oil experiment from 1st Grade science, drop a pi....actually, on second thought, DON'T imagine that. I have a better example:<br /><br />You're at a party. It's pretty fun. You're mingling. Someone compliments you on your dress or jacket or whatever you're wearing to look presentable. It's all going well. But then you come across that guy. You know, That Guy. The cool guy who's buds with all the guys and the object of lust of all the girls (and some of the guys). His hair has JUST enough product in it. His shirt is plain white with collars but somehow he makes it look like he's wearing sex. He's got jeans on. He's telling a bunch of girls how volunteering for the Big Brother program is soooo rewarding, all the while causing the girls to swoon and/or ovulate with desire. He's just that fucking cool.<br /><br />And then he shits his pants.<br /><br />Is he cool now? No, he's not. This commercial is fucking stupid.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;">- TheSilentG</span><br /><span style="COLOR: #ff6600;color:#ffff00;" ></span><br /><span style="COLOR: #000000;color:#ffff00;" ><em>*Awards may have been self-awarded.</em></span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-20334100609812292382010-07-12T12:35:00.000-07:002010-07-12T15:15:52.886-07:00Swedile at the Movies: The Last Airbender<a href="http://mymoviecinema.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/airbender-poster.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 600px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://mymoviecinema.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/airbender-poster.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ok</span>, where to start...<br /><br />How about, "I hate this fucking movie?"<br /><br />Sorry for the spoiler <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">vis</span> a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">vis</span> my score (more or less), but man, I really hate this movie. It just...<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">UUUGH</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ok</span>, I'll get into it down below instead of blowing my load here. Just, jeez.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Batman and Robin</span></strong> scale, same as always. Here we go.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Story/Adaptation:</span></strong><br /><br />In a fictional world of martial arts and mysticism, there are four nations, each one built around an element; Air, Water, Earth and Fire. Some people in these nations are capable of "bending" their national element, and by that I mean that they can physically manipulate these elements by performing martial arts their culture has developed. However, there exists one person in the world called The Avatar who is the physical embodiment of nature, and has the capacity to bend all four elements. This person is as mortal as anyone, but they reincarnate once they die, into the next culture in the cycle. The most recent Avatar, an Air Nomad named <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Aang</span>, runs away after learning he is the Avatar, because he feels he is not ready for the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">responsibility</span> to the world that comes with the title. While fleeing on his flying Sky Bison <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Appa</span>, he gets trapped in a violent storm and falls into the arctic waters below. Shortly thereafter, the militaristic Fire Nation undergoes it's invasion of the other nations to gain control over the globe. They begin by exterminating the Air Nomads, knowing that the new Avatar will have been born into that culture.<br /><br />100 years pass, and two teenagers from the Southern Water Tribe (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Katara</span> and her older brother <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Sokka</span>) discover <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Aang</span>, frozen in a sphere of ice and living in suspended animation using his Avatar powers. They awaken him, and he learns what his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">cowardice</span> has wrought. Together with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Katara</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Sokka</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Aang</span> quests to the Northern Water Temple to learn <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Waterbending</span>, the first of the three remaining elements he must master before unlocking his full potential, which he will use to stop the Fire Nation. But on the way, he is hunted by the Fire Nation, in particular the scarred and banished Prince <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Zuko</span>, who must capture the Avatar if he wishes to return home.<br /><br />The story is excellent. BUT, I say that with a caveat. That being, I love the story because it is the same story as the animated series on which this movie was based, that show being Avatar: The Last <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Airbender</span>. This show is awesome to the max. It's probably the best North American-made animated series since Batman: The Animated Series, and in some ways, even better. The story is epic, original, and spans three seasons, with a COMPLETE story in mind from the start. The story is written so tightly, I'm still picking up on things I missed the first time around. And what's more, the show has so much heart. The acting is top notch, and every performance makes you feel the emotions the characters are supposed to be feeling. It's just outstanding. I absolutely recommend you see the show.<br /><br />That said...<br /><br />Technically, the movie sticks very close to the plot of the first season of Avatar (with the movie planned to be the first in a trilogy, each adapting the full second and third seasons, respectively). But this is actually to the movie's detriment. There are two polar directions an adaptation movie can be taken; either it wildly deviates from the source material and is [Insert Series Title] in name only, or it can be <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">meticulously</span> accurate to the events depicted in the source material and come off entirely rigid or forced. The best adaptations are literally that; an adaptation of material from one medium to another, so as to make it work for the new medium while still maintaining the overall spirit of the original. It's a balance. Now, we see a lot of the kind of adaptations that deviate too much, but we very rarely see the opposite. Well, if you've seen this movie, you've seen just that. The Last <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Airbender</span> focuses almost entirely on just making sure the major plot points are addressed, with little regard for the flow or the heart of the story. It is Avatar-By-Bullet-Point. Sure, all the things happen, most of the characters are in it, references to things we won't even see until future installments are made, the whole nine yards. But at LEAST a third of this is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">expounded</span>. Like, in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">show's</span> opening, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Katara</span> narrates the basic premise of the show, and to the movie's credit, this is more or less how the movie starts (only with a lame text scroll instead of the footage from the show). However, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Shyamalan</span> took this idea and RAN THE FUCK WITH IT. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Katara</span> narrates throughout the whole <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">friggin</span>' movie. And boy, they couldn't have trusted a worse person with most of the story (but I'll get to that shortly). And the writing. GOD, THE DIALOGUE. It is some of the most wooden shit I've ever heard. And it's mismanaged, even! There was a baffling scene where <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Katara</span> narrates an event 3 minutes before we're shown the event she's narrating! Like, CONTINUITY <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">PLZ</span>.<br /><br />In an <a href="http://www.superherohype.com/features/articles/103182-exclusive-m-night-shyamalan-on-the-last-airbender-">interview</a>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Shyamalan</span> said he doesn't feel comfortable writing films that are longer than 90 minutes, that's his comfort level. As such, this movie is about that long. THAT is precisely why there is so much exposition! He's given the task, hell, LOBBIES for the task of taking 20 episodes of a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">narrative</span>-rich epic adventure, and condensing it down to 3 30-minute acts? That's bullshit. This kind of movie needs to be at least 2 hours, if not longer. Then, the story can breathe. You can linger in the moments a bit, instead of dashing to the final battle like the story's being chased by a rabid dog. The story felt like a chore for the writer, instead of a joy:<br /><br />"I got to the origin? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Ok</span>, good. Explained why <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Aang</span> was in the ice? Well, it's narrated, but it's good enough. Done. Oh yeah, gotta do the Blue Spirit, even though I don't have time to relate the character's motivations in any way. Is it quitting time yet?"<br /><br />That's what this movie feels like. If something like this is too much for him, which he basically admitted is true, he should have let someone else write the movie. He acts like an auteur, when his steady decline has evidenced that he is so not (and this is coming from someone who has defended most of his movies).<br /><br />So the story, which he adapted from someone <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">else's</span> work, is great! But the writing is rushed, lazy, hackneyed AND stilted, the dialogue is atrocious and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">expositional</span> to the point of DEATH BED-LEVEL NARRATION, and overall felt more like a task than a labour of love for the writer. I hope that clarifies my position.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Casting/Acting:</span></strong><br /><br />Um, WOW. This movie is RIDDLED with horrible acting, like how a rotting corpse is riddled with maggots. As I hinted before, Nicola <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Peltz</span> was just awful as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Katara</span>. She's just reading her lines, which are horribly written, so double whammy. She doesn't even pronounce words properly (not just the in-series names that were frequently butchered, real words!). Her motivations are completely unknown to me or the audience-at-large. She's just bad.<br /><br />Jackson "I'm-In-Twilight-So-Strike-One" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Rathborne</span> plays her brother <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Sokka</span>, who in the show is so well acted who brings a lot of levity to the series, as well as being a strong leader to other characters. Guess what? OVERACTING CITY, POPULATION: THIS PUTZ. He takes everything SO SERIOUSLY, while never once coming off as serious. It's just weird.<br /><br />Noah Ringer as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Aang</span> was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">ooooookayyyyy</span>, and I put heavy emphasis on that. In the realm of child actors, he's average, and child actors aren't usually awesome. He's not as bad as Jake Lloyd as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Anakin</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Skywalker</span>, but not but enough. Though I also give this kid credit; much like Justin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Chatwin</span> as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Goku</span> in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Dragonball</span> Evolution, I don't put all the blame on him. See, he wasn't asked to play <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Aang</span> as such. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Aang</span> is a kid, he's fun-loving. Sure, they exposit in the script that he is fun-loving, but he's not asked to actually perform as such. There are hints he could be fun, but he's just not asked to be. So I don't hate this kid.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Asif</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">Mandvi</span> as General <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Zhao</span>. Huh. This one's kind of tough. On one hand, he was not that good. But on the other hand, he was much better than I was expecting. I mean, he's on THE DAILY SHOW. He was in Spider-Man 2 FIRST, and in retrospect, I can't divorce his Daily Show persona from Mr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Aziz</span> and his 29 Minute <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Guarantee</span>. Here, I was doing an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">ok</span> job of playing a character. Sure, he was over-the-top cartoon villain character. Heck, he's more <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">cartoony</span> than the cartoon character he's portraying. But at least he's trying, dammit. Still, he's unintentionally hilarious and removes all the pathos from the original character<span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"> single-handedly</span>, so take that as you will.<br /><br />The only two performances I liked were Dev Patel as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Zuko</span> and, much <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">moreso</span>, Shaun <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">Taub</span> as his uncle <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">Iroh</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Iroh</span> was always an emotional anchor in the show, for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Zuko</span> especially, so I'm really glad they got an actor with real acting chops. He blasts through even the shittiest dialogue like a pro. He EMOTES. Holy heck. As for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">Zuko</span>, he has cheesy moments, but he had good moments too, and he really shone when bouncing off of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">Taub</span>. These two legitimately felt like they were an honest adaptation of the characters they were playing. Kudos.<br /><br />Everyone else was HORRIBLE. Dregs of the earth. And the girl they got to cameo as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">Azula</span> at the end was creepy. She didn't behave or speak like a human being, trying REALLY hard to imitate the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65">show's</span> character, but it was just so beyond her scope as a human being to even sound human. But I also will say right now, at least half of the bad performances I lobby a lot of blame on the script being so wooden and lifeless, even good actors struggle.<br /><br />Oh, and the whole racist thing? I don't, and never, gave a shit about that beyond thinking that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66">Katara</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_67">Sokka</span> REALLY should have been Inuit or something. I really don't think the casting was racist, just lazy. But even if it was, it's the LEAST of this movie's problems.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Special Effects & Art Direction:</span></strong><br /><br />This is one of the few areas where the movie is a success. Story, good acting and amazing writing is a major part of what made the show work so well, but another part is the visual landscape of the world they live in (and the animation, which is fantastic). The iconography of the world is very strong and unique, and the physics of the bending looks very realistic in the cartoon. This was adapted very well to the screen. Small cosmetic changes were made to make certain things seem more realistic or detailed (the prime example being <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_68">Aang's</span> tattoos, which went from solid blue to a series of intricate designs, but still in the arrow shape of the show), but it maintained the spirit of the source material. And <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_69">ILM</span> brings their usual awesomeness to the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_70">project</span>. The bending effects, for the most part, look quite realistic and to be working in the realm of physics. Water looks like water. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_71">Earthbenders</span> lift walls from the ground, with sort of loose bricks composing them and shuffling under the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_72">dueling</span> forces of the Bending powers and gravity. It all works. Some of the final fight looks <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_73">cartoony</span>, but I am totally forgiving of it. Point is, this movie LOOKS like the perfect screen adaptation of Avatar. It's just a shame the only way this movie succeeds is entirely cosmetically.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Music:</strong><br /></span><br />This is the only other part of the experience I enjoyed. James Newton Howard didn't adapt the musical motifs of the show, but his score sounds just as epic, and epic in that "I'm watching an epic Hollywood fantasy and there's totally some whimsy involved" way that pervaded the 90s. I hate the movie, but I'm probably going to download the soundtrack.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Editing:</strong><br /></span><br />Since starting Journalism school, I've learned I have an love and maybe even an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_74">affinity</span> for video editing. Since I've started down that path, I've become hyper-aware of editing in movies as I watch them. I really appreciate when it's done well, and it's very <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_75">noticeable</span> when it's done poorly. And man, THIS MOVIE PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE FOR 90 MINUTES WITH IT'S SHITTY EDITING. Stuff was cut. And I say this not just because the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_76">Kyoshi</span> Warriors were totally exorcised from the film, but it's just painfully obvious there is a lot of shit missing. In fact, I'm sure at least some of the narration was hastily added to cover for plot points that were cut at the last minute. It's the same way I noticed that stuff was cut at the eleventh hour from Spider-Man 3 and the theatrical cut of Watchmen, only far, far worse. It's akin to a record skipping or a streaming video buffering, only it's skipping at the transition points constantly, so technically you're not being cut off mid-sentence, but really, you might as well be. Truly vile editing. Conrad Buff aka the editor of this monstrosity, if you are reading this, you suck.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">M. Night <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_77">Shyamalan</span>:</span></strong><br /><br />Yeah, I went there. I'd talk about direction, but this movie was not directed. There was no director. There's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_78">Shyamalan</span>, and he's credited as the director. But there was no direction in this movie. Hunker down folks, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_79">cuz</span> I have a bit to say about this, and I may ramble.<br /><br />So, the reason <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_80">Shyamalan</span> said he took this job is because one <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_81">Halloween</span>, his daughter said she wanted to dress up as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_82">Katara</span>. M. Night didn't know who this was, so his daughter showed him the show. Soon, watching Avatar became a family event at the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_83">Shyamalan</span> house, watching the series conclude together. It was a touching story. But now, having seen the movie, I think it's bullshit. He couldn't have watched Avatar and produced this. Or more accurately, he couldn't have been paying it much attention or caring about it too much. Sure, he knows the basic story, but he didn't understand the characters at all. He didn't get it, basically. He just didn't get it. He probably was more interested in spending time with his kids, which as a human being, is to his credit. My dad used to watch cartoons with me, but he didn't care about them. He was just spending time with me. Honourable, but not a good reason to direct a movie, as it turns out.<br /><br />Actually, this is the second movie he's done because of his kids, the other being Lady in the Water (a FAR better movie, which says something),which is loosely based off a bedtime story he wrote for his kids. Isn't that a little odd when you think about it? Like, this is where he's drawing inspiration from. Not that hippie "my kids inspire me every day" way a lot of people who work in creative fields say, but like, he gets ideas for his next movie from them directly. I bring this up because here, today, in this review, is where I finally and irrevocably renounce my status as an M. Night <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_84">Shyamalan</span> Apologist. See, I've defended MOST of his movies to date, even up until Lady in the Water. But slowly and surely, he's snowballed. The Happening was at best hilarious, and at worst amazingly boring, but even then I was like, "even the best director has a bad movie." Not that I ever thought he was one of the best directors, but I at least appreciated his attempt to be creative and play with genre conventions. But this movie, there's no excuse. Absolutely none. When he is GIVEN the story and rapes it so <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_85">thoroughly</span>, that's your hoarse swan song as a director, or at least as an auteur, which he clearly thinks he is. If there is a second movie, and it's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_86">helmed</span> once more by M. Night, I won't see it. That's how bad this movie is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_87">creatively</span>. It's just all-around lazy on his end. And the final nail in the coffin for me as a fan of his is that I recently found out the movie that started it all for him, The Sixth Sense, wasn't even an original idea of his. He ripped the twist from an episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark", a show I loved as a kid and still think was way ahead of its time. So basically he wrote a movie he basically yanked from a kid's show, it was a huge success (and to his credit, it was well-directed). Since then, he's been riding the coat tails of that success. It's why he's the "twist ending" guy! And in trying to chase that dragon, he's squandered what creativity he had, letting it stagnate in the familiar. Every movie he's ever made, besides this one, has been The Sixth Sense, just in a different genre. I think Unbreakable is the most creative thing he's ever done, which is sad because it's overlooked, but since then, it went from amazing, to mediocre, to dull, to dull and egotistical, to so bad it's good, and now finally, so bad it's caused the last human being on earth who gave him credit to renounce him as a director worthy of attention. I hope this is "The Last <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_88">Shyamalan</span>," because he's not only hurting himself, but his kids. I can't imagine how much they hate him right now.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>FINAL SCORE:<br /><br />3.5/4 -</strong> A horrible movie with some strong points, but they have almost nothing to do with the story and doesn't save it in any way.</span><br /><br />I so rarely use decimal points in my scores, but this one is SO CLOSE to a 4/4 it really calls for it. A 3/4 suggests the redeeming qualities make it somewhat worth watching, but this isn't the case here. Not unless you could watch it with all but the music muted. Or maybe with audio from the cartoon dubbed in. Or something like that. This movie is unwatchable. The dialogue is as wooden as a tree, most of the actors can't come off as believably human, the story is treated like a task to be finished as soon as possible, the editing made my eyes bleed, and the directing is a non-factor because the director can't direct. And this is just the surface, people. There's a ton of shit that bothered me that I didn't even get to. The use of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_89">Appa</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_90">Momo</span>. Shooting in Philly for most of the location shots. Mispronouncing the names and terms from the show constantly (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_91">lol</span> Agni <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_92">KEE</span>). The PLOT HOLES JEEZ. There's just...so much. It has topped so many movies I thought couldn't be out-shitted by anything, and this includes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_93">Dragonball</span> Evolution. YES. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_94">DRAGONBALL</span> EVOLUTION bothered me less. How something as awesome as Avatar could be turned into something so astronomically shitty is a feat I can't believe was achieved.<br /><br />So, yeah. I hate this fucking movie.<br /><br />Until next time,<br />- <strong><span style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_95">TheSilentG</span></span></strong>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-79773143348864781312010-06-13T15:27:00.000-07:002010-06-13T20:15:38.358-07:00Swedile at the Movies: The A-Team<a href="http://cdn.bloginity.com/wp-content/uploads/poster-xlarge7.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 406px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 600px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://cdn.bloginity.com/wp-content/uploads/poster-xlarge7.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Well, it sure has been a while since I've done one of these. And by "one of these," I mean both a review and a post on my own blog. Holy Crap! Well, I've been in a mood to review, and I sure haven't got anything better to do lately, so I thought I'd step back into the fray with a movie I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did, <strong>The A-Team.</strong><br /><br />As usual, my <strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale</span></strong> will be used to judge this movie in the most asinine way possible. Here's a refresher:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>0/4</strong></span> - Perfect or near perfect movie<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>1/4</strong></span> - An otherwise good movie that has negative aspects too big to overlook<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>2/4</strong></span> - Mediocre; not bad, but nothing special<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>3/4</strong></span> - An otherwise bad movie with a few good aspects<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>4/4</strong></span> - Bad movie, with almost nothing to keep your attention<br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>5/4</strong></span> - A special score for movies so bad they dissolve livers<br /><br /><br />So yeah, The A-Team:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Story</strong><br /></span><br />The year is...well, it's not 1972, but it's, like, 2002 or something, and a crack team of covert commandos have a bodacious adventure together, and form The A-Team; inexplicably America's most valuable military asset. What about them makes them so valuable? They're out of their minds and have issues with authority, that's why!<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">OK</span>, so, cut to present day, and the A-Team are slumming it in Iraq. Internal Affairs or something ask the A-Team not to get involved in some sting to recover stolen US Mint printing plates that are being smuggled out of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Baghdad</span>, but naturally, Hannibal (their chain-smoking, plan-loving leader for those who haven't ever heard of The A-Team, played by Liam <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Neeson</span>) goes to his superior and, while OFFICIALLY he's still ordered not to, the team's given his tacit approval, and they pull off a daring plan to get them back. The mission is a success, but it turns out to be a trap; their superior dies in a car explosion, and in the confusion, the plates are stolen by Black Forest mercenaries (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">der</span> I wonder if these guys are supposed to be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Blackwater</span>?). Framed for a crime they didn't commit, they're sent to federal prison - from which they promptly escape.<br /><br />So <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">OK</span>, I forgot to mention, but there's this CIA guy named Lynch (Patrick Wilson)who tipped the A-Team off to the whole issue with the stolen plates back in Iraq. He comes to see Hannibal in prison and arranges his escape. Hannibal then helps bust the rest of the team out, which include Face (Bradley Cooper), B.A. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Baracus</span> (Quentin Jackson) and Mad Dog Murdock (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Sharlto</span> Copley). Their goal is to get the plates back and restore their good names by proving they were set up.<br /><br />Now, let me say right now - the story itself, the way it's set up, and the cliches used, are exactly, 100% the same as any other "covert team that doesn't play by the rules must get behind enemy lines to save the President's daughter" action movie ever made. The general who died? He's secretly alive and was in on the whole thing. The most helpful character at the beginning of the movie? You'd better believe he's the bad guy. The hot IA agent (Jessica <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Biel</span>)? She had a relationship with Face at some undisclosed time, but they broke up and hate each other at the beginning of the movie, but are making out by the end. I could TIME it when certain plot elements popped up. It's entirely predictable what would happen. However, I am totally forgiving of it in the case of this movie, because of one simple element...<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Characters/Acting</strong><br /></span><br />...and that element is the A-Team themselves. These people were AWESOME.<br /><br />Hannibal was played to perfection by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Neeson</span>. Sure, he was chewing the scenery pretty bad, but as well he should be - it's Hannibal! His first scene in the movie was probably my second-favorite. He was like a chain-smoking Batman! And you could tell <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Neeson</span> was loving every minute of it. He really got a chance to stretch and have fun with this one.<br /><br />Cooper's Face was also pretty entertaining. He was your typical <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">smarmy</span> lady-killer, but within that capacity he did quite well. The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">film maker's</span> were also smart enough to make him a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">competent</span> member of the team, too. If he'd just been this playboy making <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">kissy</span>-faces with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Biel</span> the whole movie, I don't think I'd have liked him as much. Heck, I can <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">guarantee</span> that much.<br /><br />Quentin "Rampage" Jackson was the lame duck of the team, considering he's a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">UFC</span> fighter and not an actor. If I was given the chance to coach Jackson on his performance, and he would be FORCED to adhere to my recommendation, but the stipulation was I had to limit my critique to a single word, it's no contest what word I would choose - ENUNCIATE! Half of his lines were mumbled so badly I had no idea what he was saying. But besides that, he held up as B.A. - he looked the part, he could brandish "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Foo's</span>" with the best of them, and he had some well-delivered comedic moments. He FELT like B.A., and ultimately, that's what's most important to me.<br /><br />But by far the winner of the team is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Sharlto's</span> Murdock. After seeing the poster pictured above while waiting in line with a friend to see Iron Man 2 (which will hopefully be reviewed soon), I found Copley's gaze hilariously "come hither"-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">esque</span>, and have been jokingly swooning over it for the last month. Well, let me tell you, he legitimately earned every last swoon, because he was awesome. I love Copley as an actor ever since I saw him in District 9. It's nice to see him get such a high-profile role so quickly, and totally winning that performance to boot. He's hilarious. He's every bit as crazy in the role as he's supposed to be. And yet, like with Face's character, he never seemed like he was just there to be goofy. He had a part on the team as deserved as anyone else.<br /><br />That's the big success of this movie, in fact. They got some actors (and a glorified wrestler) to play characters who were not only on a team, but also friends, and you <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">ABSOLUTELY</span> BELIEVED IT. They had this instant chemistry most actors would kill for. They absolutely made this movie.<br /><br />The other actors were okay. Patrick Wilson's Lynch was delightfully quirky, but then, we've seen so many quirky action villains already, so he didn't really deliver anything new.<br /><br />Jessica <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Biel</span> was, frankly, superfluous to the story. She didn't have to be there AT ALL. She was there to be Face's love interest. Otherwise, she was just following the aftermath of the A-Team the whole movie, and they could have had anyone do that. If she was a character in the original series, forgive me, because being born nearly two months after the series concluded, I have not seen any episodes. But if she was a character, she was woefully miscast or poorly scripted (or both). I didn't like her.<br /><br />The leader of the Black Forest Cheese Cake Brigade was <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">OK</span> - he didn't totally fall into the "asshole competing military <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">badass</span>" stereotype, but he wasn't overly memorable. The rest of the cast is not worth mentioning because they didn't really do much.<br /><br />The A-Team is the reason you would go see this movie. Without them, this the same movie you've seen dozens of times already.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Action</strong><br /></span><br />Speaking of how the A-Team makes this movie unique is the action. I am going to say it right now - the A-Team attempts to fly a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">free falling</span> tank...AND SUCCEED. The A-Team allow for stuff that otherwise would seem entirely silly and implausible to the point where I would dislike it, because the A-Team is so silly and implausible as it is. It makes it really fun and, again, THEY FLY A TANK. HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE THAT? It's over the top as hell, but you want it to be.<br /><br />That said, there were really 4 major action set pieces, and you could REALLY tell when they used practical stunts and when they could use <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">CGI</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">green screens</span>. Two of the scenes - capturing the plates in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Baghdad</span> and kidnapping the supposed-to-be-dead general - were RIDDLED with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">shaky</span> cam syndrome. It was incomprehensible and it gave me a headache. However, the other two major action scenes - the tank scene and the final, uh, battle I guess - used a significant amount of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">CGI</span>, and the cinematography was way more steady and manageable. It was still insane but at least I could figure out what was happening. The difference is obvious and frankly, it makes me wish they had used some CG for each scene.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Comedy</strong> </span><br /><br />So rarely do I find movies funny, especially when they're trying to be. I so rarely go to see comedies in the theatres because more often than not, I will be wasting my money. So when a movie actually IS funny, and not one joke seems strained or forced or unbelievably stupid, I am overjoyed. I was most certainly overjoyed the whole way through this movie. The A-Team is almost effortlessly funny. It's scary. You will laugh your ass off.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Music</strong> </span><br /><br />If I had to make a guess as to what one thing made The A-Team such a pop culture staple , I would have to guess it was the theme. Sure, the characters are great and it was surely memorable for other reasons, but that theme song is so damn catchy, it kept its memory alive for 20+ years after being cancelled. So when the movie was announced, I was like, "they NEED to use that theme song." Which they did. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Buuuuttttt</span>....I dunno. It was used kind of, to grossly misuse the word, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">schizophrenically</span>. The general motif was used all the time, which was fine. But then there were times where it felt shoehorned into the score. Like, they'd use the motif, and then the following music sounded so jarring and out of place, it felt really forced. There were a couple of times the music was really well-used, but it felt like the filmmakers had a dozen ideas of where to put the theme song in the movie, and they used them all. It's the opposite of the problem with the Transformers movies and how they <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">implement</span> the classic theme. And lastly, the one place it really NEEDED to be (that being a full version of the song played during the first part of the credits), they totally dropped the ball. Overall, I liked that the theme was in the movie, but I wish it had been more focused in how it was used.<br /><br />The rest of the score was 100%, completely forgettable.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Direction/Editing</strong><br /></span><br />I found this to be moderate at best. Clearly Joe <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Carnahan</span> can hold his own directing an action blockbuster, especially considering the scope of this one. It's just nuts (again, I must reiterate the whole "flying tank" aspect). But as I said earlier, the scenes where practical effects were used, it was obvious <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">shaky</span> cam was used to, I don't know, I guess to make things a little more obscure or something. I apologize, but I am very suspicious of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">shaky</span> cam. It seems like a way to hide an ineptitude in shooting practical action scenes. Sometimes it's used for a certain effect, such as the first scene in Batman Begins where Bruce goes out and fights crime as Batman. But most of the time, it just seems lazy (like the rest of the action scenes in Batman Begins). And boy, when this movie uses s<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">haky</span> cam, it's some of the worst I have EVER seen. It is so disorienting.<br /><br />I also had issue with some of the editing. For the most part it was fine, but during the final scene, there's a lot of going back and forth with flashbacks. It's clear it's to set up the trap at the end, but I really didn't care for it. For one, I didn't need the recap because I figured out what they were planning before they explained the plan. Secondly, it just seems, I don't know...insulting. Like it doesn't have faith that we would remember. It flashed back to the same conversation TWICE during the scene. I don't know, it just seemed lazy to me.<br /><br />But I gotta give the guy props - he knew this movie was about the characters WAY more than the plot, and it showed. This movie truly was an A-Team movie because the team was the main point of the whole movie. If it hadn't been for them being so awesome, I would have been very, very bored.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>FINAL SCORE</strong><br /><br /><strong>1/4 - Pretty good, but with some minor problems</strong></span><br /><br />This movie is absolutely worth a watch. I've heard a lot of people say they want to see it again right away, and I actually disagree with that - I have no need to see it again. But as far as a typical action movie goes, this toppled my expectations. <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">OK</span>, so they were low, but still! This movie is by all accounts typical as hell, but four bad-ass soldiers for hire hijacked it and made it kick ass. And if nothing else, it has made me anticipate a sequel. It sure as hell sets up for one. And in my book, that's a success.<br /><br />So that's my review. Remember, if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if it's playing in a theatre near you, maybe you should watch....<strong>The A-Team</strong>.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">- The Silent G</span></strong>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-31992542647855363312009-06-13T07:18:00.000-07:002009-06-15T06:45:26.905-07:00Swedile Delights and Dreads Pt 1: The Top 5 Least Anticipated Films of 2009Howdy, y'all!<br /><br />New friend and co-worker Joel Doucet has recently completed a list of his top five most anticipated and top five least anticipated movies for the rest of the year. I've been challenged to do the same. THUSLY:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Top 5 Least Anticipated Movies: </strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>5. G.I. Joe</strong><br /></span>Rumors of it being the worst movie ever made by Paramount aside, this movie looks like it's going to be a lame duck at best. This movie was only made now becase Hasbro enjoyed such a success with Transformers. I'll probably see it, but much in the same vein I saw Dragoball Evolution - to make fun of it.<br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/abQM31QCufI&hl=" fs="1&" width="560" height="340" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">4. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs</span></strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Why can't the Ice Age movie series just go exticnt already? The first one as mediocre and best. Scrat became redundant years ago.<br /><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W4gvxUlGNAs&hl=" fs="1&" width="425" height="344" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">3. G-Force</span></strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Secret agent rodents, all with stereotyped personalities dropping tired cultural references. That is all.<br /><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B-11TBMUtfY&hl=" fs="1&" width="560" height="340" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">2. The Proposal</span></strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Another lame romantic comedy where two people who dislike each other find themselves being stuck together through "hilarious" circumstances. Spoiler alert! They start falling in love, will have a fight, make up, and get married, thus propagating the nuclear family for another generation. Yay.<br /><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kPgZcW8MCaA&hl=" fs="1&" width="560" height="340" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">1. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel</span></strong><br />This....is just a sin against man. NO.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/62YKCAlw0qc&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/62YKCAlw0qc&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />Check in for <strong>Part 2: MOST</strong> <strong>Anticipated movies</strong> later this afternoon. Peace out!<br />-<span style="color:#ff9900;">Silent G</span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-12863601388286659392009-04-20T07:37:00.001-07:002009-04-20T07:48:40.798-07:00Swedile at the Movies: Dragonball Evolution<a href="http://img10.myimg.de/DragonballEvolution200942f95.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 329px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 468px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://img10.myimg.de/DragonballEvolution200942f95.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><br />In 2000, <em>X-Men</em> hit the silver screen, starting the Golden Age of Comic Book Movies. But now, with popular superheroes starting to run out, and with <em>Ant-Man</em> dreadfully looming on the horizon, Hollywood seems to be trying to branch out into other adaptation films. With the release of last year's <strong>Speed Racer</strong>, the race began to start the Anime Movie genre. Not to give away the ending of my much-belated Speed Racer review, but I felt that as a movie trying to be an adaptation of an anime, it succeeded where it needed to, and it probably helped that the anime in question was steeped with Western concepts and tropes. I enjoyed the movie and felt it was a step in the right direction. Then Fox got Dragonball. I saw the <strong>Dragonball Evolution</strong> movie the other day, and is it the breakout film in the anime genre?<br /><br />....huh, well. Let's get cracking. As always, my Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale shall be used as my meterstick.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Story/Adaptation:</span></strong><br /><br />2000 years ago, the alien Piccolo and his minion Oozaru decended upon the Earth to reap its benefits and raze its populations. However, mystics banded together to seal Piccolo away. It's present day, and highschooler (*ack!*) Goku just turned 18, and recieves an ancient relic known as a Dragonball from his grandfather. However, Piccolo escapes from his prison (somehow...), and now seeks all seven Dragonballs so that he can summon the dragon Shenlong to grant him one wish; the power to enslave mankind. Goku, along with the hermit Master Roshi, bandit Yamcha, and PhD in...tactical weaponry Bulma, travel across the globe to prevent Piccolo from ressurecting Oozaru.<br /><br />Umm....yeah. Wow. Before I go on, I want to stress that I am not a huge Dragonball fanboy. I watched it as a kid, and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it was not among my all-time favorite things. As such, know that this review does not come from the perspective of one who's childhood had been raped (unlike the people I went to the film with). This is a review from the perspective of just going to watch an adaptation with no real expectations. That said, this story was shit. It was entirely derivative and largely pointless. The producers of this movie took something pretty original, and turned it into your average hollywood action buster with some vague threat to meet at the end of the movie, and hollow character relationships that struggle to make you care.<br /><br />To talk specifically about their success at adapting the source material, I'll say that the result was.....conflicted. At times, they did things that sort've surprised me. Little fan nods that only the fans would care about, like referring to Goku as "Son Goku" (his Japanese name) at one point, or showing that Roshi kept a collection of ladies underwear catalogues. This sort of stuff was thrown in to appease longtime fans, I'm sure. Then you've got your basic elements; the Dragonballs, Namekians, Capsule Corp., all the basic stuff that really need to be in a Dragonball adaptation.<br /><br />However, these little nods often butt horns with the other interests of the movie makers, namely appealing to demographics. Instead of being a socially oblivious little boy, Goku's an awkward teenager with angst and girl troubles. He goes to parties lifted right out of The OC. Yamcha sounds like a surfer. In a better film, the director, writers, and other crew members working together cohesively might have been able to merge the geek and the contemporary and have it flow and make sense and feel, if not right, then at least believable. But in DBE, the two fight for screentime to the detriment of the movie. Never once does the movie feel like it's in agreement with itself, which is ironic, considering how much Goku rambles on about being at one with the two halves of himself (BIG SPOILER GOKU IS OOZARU WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING DERP).<br /><br />Speaking of Goku being, Oozaru, they don't explain anything in this movie. Piccolo's just....out and about at the beginning of the movie. This is fine, they'll just explain later, I thought. It might have been an interesting plot twi---oh right, the movie needs a plot to have plot twists. As it turns out, it's never explained how he gets out. Nor is it explained how Piccolo's servant Mai can shapeshift...or even who the hell she is. Where the hell did she come from? Was she trapped with him, or did he recruit her? Did she break him out? Nothing at all is explained. Goku's history and the Oozaru thing is equally vague. Was the original Oozaru Goku? Was it an ancestor? Is Oozaru some spirit that overtakes Saiyans (they did say Goku fell from the stars in a meteor)? It's all just very muddled. They often don't attempt to explain anything, and what they did attempt to explain was so befuddling it would have been better left to my fertile imagination.<br /><br />The one bit of adaptation I actually liked was what they did with Roshi's house. In the anime/manga, he has a little house on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. In the movie, he lived in an old tennament building on a tiny island, where all around has been dug out an excavated, and surrounding that is a giant city. That was pretty evocative of the old house without being a direct translation, and I liked it. The only thing that would have been better is if someone graffito-tagged "Kame House" on the front. That would have been excellent. But other than that, huge flop in both story and adaptation departments. The characters were lifeless, dull, and often entirely unlike their inspirations, and the story was confusing in the way that elements felt missing and other elements were thrown in at the last second. Epic fail.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Casting:<br /></span></strong><br />Wow. Just, so bad. There were three halfway decent people in this movie; Chow Yun-Fat as Master Roshi, James Marsters as Piccolo, and believe it or not, Justin Chatwin as Goku. Allow me to explain further.<br /><br />Chow Yun-Fat, for his part, seemed like the only fully-realized character in the movie at all. As much as he didn't look like him, he sort of acted like Master Roshi; a skilled master as well as a perverted old man with quirks. He had moments, however brief, of gravitas. It wasn't an Oscar-worthy performance, but it was at least a performance.<br /><br />Marster's Piccolo had no overt faults on his part; he was the traditional chilling, heartless villain. His major flaw was that he was barely in the movie at all. He needed more lines, more screentime. I feel he could have done better. He was still a little hammier than I would have liked, but it was not cringe-worthy overall.<br /><br />As for Goku, my problem with Goku was in how he was written. He was the generic, blank hero from every lame Hollywood action movie. There were moments, however brief, of the Goku we know and love, and I got from Chatwin that had the movie been written with that personality in mind, he could have performed. However, he was asked to be a lame dork with angst and cold feet around girls and just being the average movie teenager, and to that degree, he delivered. I just feel that, were he asked to play, you know, Goku, he could have delivered there too.<br /><br />And that's all I have to say. The rest of the cast read like they were reading lines translated by Babel Fish.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Special Effects:<br /></span></strong><br />Decent. Nothing really exciting, nothing disappointing. Slight Shakey-Cam Syndrome, but not enough to annoy me. The one effect I actually liked were the Dragonballs themselves. I liked how the stars in the center floated around a foggy interior. It was a neat effect. That is all.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Music:</strong></span><br /><br />N/A (that is to say, not worth my time)<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Product Placement:<br /></span></strong><br />Actually, none that I noticed. Surprising, being a Fox movie. Ironically, they did stuff in the movie like they were doing product placement, but with non-existant products (ie Capsule Corp, and some...retro Robot or something). This was kind of interesting, and yet at the same time, it makes me feel sick, because even non-products get product placement in a Fox movie.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Humor:</strong></span><br /><br />I don't know, the movie was pretty funny. On, you know, a schadenfreude level. Their actual attempts at humor failed. Except Roshi sneaking a grab of Bulma's ass. I think I laughed then. Maybe. And only then because it was a reference.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Direction:</span></strong><br /><br />James Wong failed on pretty much every level. I couldn't follow the plot, what I could follow was boring, I didn't care about the characters, and the film felt decidedly nothing like a Dragonball movie. It was Dragonball on a cosmetic level only. This has got to be the shortest "Director" section of any of my movie reviews, because there's nothing good enough or bad enough to go in-depth about. It was merely average; lazy and hackneyed as always. Thanks, Fox, for setting the bar so low.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:<br /></span></strong><br /><span style="color:#ffcc00;"><strong>3/4</strong></span> - <strong>An overall bad, useless movie, with a few saving graces.<br /></strong><br /><br />Yeah, not a 4/4. There were some things I liked. Like I said, Chow Yun-Fat's performance was ok, there were some fanwanks that I appreciated, Kame House and the Dragonballs were adapted to the screen well, and it wasn't like it was boring or sickening. But it's largely a pointless movie. The producers clearly had no love for the property. They just saw something that was popular and thought it would make a popular movie, while at the same time gutting almost everything that made it popular in the first place. When will they learn to stop doing that? Instead of being a decent adaptation, with changes being made only for the sake of storytelling in that medium, they just add as much as they can so it can be minimally appealing to everyone while not being overly appealing to anyone.<br /><br />So, is this the start of a wave of Anime movies? Well, with the news that Keanu Reeves will be playing Spike in an upcoming Cowboy Bebop movie, as well as the Evangelion movie being in development hell, it seems that it'll be the thing that tinsel town tries to make the next big thing, while not really appreciating the material at all. Well, we'll see anyway. I personally hold out hope that at least a few good movies can be made (Evangelion looks like it's struggling to the surface with the constant efforts of people who truly seem to love the source material). But if this is the "evolution" of the anime movie genre, I'll stick to reading backwards, thank you.<br /><br />As for me, I'm off to find 7 mystic orbs to wish for...Spider Powers. Yeah, I wouldn't even wish this movie better.<br /><br />- <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span></strong>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-62268128306281528742009-04-01T05:40:00.001-07:002009-04-01T07:25:09.894-07:00Swedile at the Movies: Watchmen<span style="font-family:courier new;"></span><a href="http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/minutemen.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 332px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 293px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/minutemen.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Silent G's journal, April 1st, 2009:<br /><br />This city's afraid of my reviews. I've seen it's true face. Saw Watchmen twice to make sure. Zack Snyder possible communist? Must remember investigate later.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;">Batman & Robin Gradation Scale</span> as always.</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Story:</strong></span><br /><br />In an alternate history where superheroes exist and have been subsequently outlawed, Edward "The Comedian" Blake is murdered in cold blood. Fellow masked vigilante Rorschach, who's become completely psychotic over the years, investigates his murder and is positive that a "Mask Killer" is going around. He warns his fellow superheroes Nite-Owl/Dan Dreiberg, Silk Spectre/Laurie Juspeczyk, Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt and Dr.Manhattan/Jon Osterman, but they're all too concerned with mounting political pressures boiling over in the Cold War. As the plot develops, we find out what sort of people would really become superheroes, how their presence would affect world events, and ultimately discover a plot far more disturbing than a simple mask killer.<br /><br />I'll get into more of this when I hash out the "Adaptation" section, but that's basically the story.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Casting:</span></strong><br /><br />Not bad, overall. Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach was pretty damn inspired. He looks like the guy, he sounds like we all imagine he sounded, and he plays the part mostly well. My only gripe here is he didn't seem as detached as he does in the book, but it's a minor disappointment. He makes up for it whenever Rorschach freaks out. Creepy.<br /><br />I also really liked Patrick Wilson as Dan. Other people were less impressed by him, but I felt he captured perfectly that 80's nice guy I'd always imagined and then some. He was the heart of the film, and he did the character proud.<br /><br />Malin Akerman as Laurie was easily the weakest link in this group. I wouldn't say she was bad at it per se, but she had the challenge of playing Laurie, who came off as very three-dimensional in the book. In the movie, she was just...there. How she got top billing is beyond me.<br /><br />Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian was excellent. He brought the character to life for me. He's such a depraved asshole who you really feel bad for by the end of the film. Easily one of the best performances of the movie.<br /><br />Billy Crudup as Jon was...slightly mixed. I think he did a good job of portraying this person who really has no connection with people, maybe even too good. But it felt hollow at times. I don't think the film explained as well the little things about Jon that make him matter. But also, often times he was downright chilling how inhumanly he reacted. Not a bad performance, it just faultered in places that may not have been his fault.<br /><br />Oh, Adrian. Adrian, Adrian, Adrian. Played by Matthew Goode, he was the least interesting of the main cast, which is a shame. Ozymandias has this gravity to him that I wish had been translated over better. I think Goode deciding to give him a German accent was far too cliche for most of us. I will give the guy props, however, during the ending; he kicked ass. The movie really pulled off the way the comics showed how flippin' fast his is well with the use of the Snyder Slo Mo. He also had some good speaking moments in this last act, but a lot of it was still cliche. Really the only part I think was ill-cast. Jude Law would have been great here.<br /><br />Everyone else was mediocre to bad. Carla Gugino's Sally Jupiter was depressingly bad. Her character is one of the many emotional anchors to the book, and her final scene was touching. Here, she was just a lush, and even the final scene was hammed up. Stephen McHattie's Hollis Mason was decent, though. Can't wait to see more of him in July. I also liked Matt Frewer as Moloch. Slightly goofy, but that's probably how he was ment to be in the book, I could never tell reading it. And just everyone else was mostly meh.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Music (Both Score and Soundtrack):<br /></strong></span><br />Score first. It was bloody perfect. Tyler Bates really channeled the scores from 80's movies like Blade Runner, Taxi Driver, and other similar films. It made me feel like I was watching a movie made in the 80's at times, which is just perfect. Absolutely awesome (though admittedly, some pieces were a bit dull).<br /><br />As for the soundtrack, which consists of period-accurate songs, a lot of people have given it hate (with the exception of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are-A Changin'" used during the opening sequence, that was universally loved, myself being no exception). The complaint is that a lot of them felt out of place for the scenes. I didn't feel this. I barely noticed. The ones I did notice seemed appropriate to me. About the one I had issue with was Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" used during the sex scene, and that's mostly because they had the perfect chance to use "You're my Thrill" and they didn't. The soundtrack was good, and I rarely say that.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Special Effects:</strong></span><br /><br />Pretty good. Jon was really the main factor here, being made by having Crudup wear a suit that recorded his movements, and put those movements and a digital scan of his face onto a digital skeleton. This had it's really really good moments, and it's bad moments. Sometimes he looked like an actual person, and others he looked like he belonged in Shrek. Still, the times they succeeded were incredible. It seems to me a case of just needing more time to touch up on post production. It succeeded in mostly not seeming like CGI, so I say kudos over all.<br /><br />The other stuff was ok. Rorschach's mask was cool. Archie the Owlship looked appropriate. Bubastis looked kind've CGish all the way through, but she was in the film so briefly it really didn't matter. Mars looked cool, but there's not much more for special effects to be said, really. If you're the type who goes to movies for their effects, I doubt you'll be disappointed.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Adaptation:<br /></strong></span><br />This is the big one. Was it adapted the way all the comic book fans wanted it to be adapted? Or was the general public pandered to once again? Well, you know what? On the whole, I'd say they were pretty damn faithful. All of us fans who sat hoping for a panel-by-panel direct translation were, I now realize, being unrealistic. I mean, I never truly expected it, but I had hoped. But looking at it now, some changes they made were okay for the medium of film, and did not detract from the feel of Watchmen. And there were certainly examples of shots taken perfectly from the book (I giggled when they perfectly reproduced the first page of the book). Some things were omitted, and some things were explained more in-depth or made fact where the book only hinted. And I'm cool with that. While I would have loved to see Max Shea or Rorschach's landlady or the "Crime Busters" or the Squid, I think that for the most part, the film still captured that true Watchmen essence.<br /><br />That is, until Adrian said he did it 35 minutes ago.<br /><br />I had real problems with the ending. And not the problem I thought I'd have, with the engineered "alien" monster being replaced with a machine that mimics Manhattan's powers. The way they explained why that would bring countries together sort've kind've made sense. Not as much as the squid made sense to me, but enough that I could move on. My problems were with the little cosmetic changes that made the ending feel very Hollywood, where the whole movie sturggled to be so un-Hollywood. Someone had to see Rorschach die and go "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Someone had to hit Adrian and give him a stern talking to and a glare as they walked away. Manhattan had to kiss the girl on his way out (THAT was random).<br /><br />Just in general, the whole moral defeat of the book is just gone in this version. Snyder promised the same "Moral Checkmate" of the original ending applied, but it did so only on face value. You don't feel like the characters feel like they're morally oblidged. They're just oblidged for some reason. And taking away Jon's final line of "Nothing ever ends" from him and giving it to Laurie was downright criminal. That line was so chilling, and it's what gave Veidt second thoughts. In the film, it's just Dan yelling at him that does that. The whole thing is reworked in such a way that basically all the same things happen, the same things are said, but it's made palpable to the Hollywood execs that believe making people think will affect their bottom line. And that to me is just sad.<br /><br />But I will say this; it could have been a total write-off. They could have made this movie 5 years ago, and if they used the script they had for that stage of production, I wouldn't have even gone to see this movie at all. So props must go out to the men and women who took a risk on something so different, and keeping it true for the most part. It's just a shame they fumbled in the final quarter.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Direction:<br /></strong></span><br />And the person at least a great deal responsible for the ballsy-ness of this film is Zack Snyder. He says he's a fan, and it certainly shows. There was much love put into this movie, this adaptation, and I know a lot of his changes were made from two vantage points: one of a filmmaker trying to make sure that the property works as a film while still staying as true as possible to the original source, and the other of a filmmaker who has to appease his producers, who are putting the money in for this, and who want to make sure that the film will appeal to many people. Considering that he had to deal with all of that and made a film I am happy to call a "Watchmen" adaptation? I'd say he succeeded on a pretty profound level.<br /><br />My one complaint with him is he seemed to want to amp everything up, where the book might have been more subtle. In some places this was cool. Adding some screen time to a prison fight is nothing to complain about. But at other times it felt strained or out of place. The sex scene on Archie was uncomfortably long. The fight with the Knot Tops consisted of things like punching a guy's bone through is arm and stabbing another in the jugular. Stuff like this that was overdone just a tad too much made me feel like Snyder was a kid playing with this awesome toy, and just going wild with it. But again, these complaints were pretty small, inna final analysis.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:<br /></span></strong><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;">1/4</span> - <strong><em>A damn good movie with one or more flaws too glaring to make it perfect.</em></strong><br /><br />Yeah, as much as it pains me to do so, I really have to give it a 1/4 for now. There's my problem with the ending, which I explained in depth above. But there's also the human element that was missing. The whole movie was about superheros and their lives, and we barely see the people on the street. In the book, we see their lives, their trials and tribulations unfold, and it makes it all the more sad when they're all killed in the blink of an eye. It just made the movie feel kind've hollow. I never once expected the movie to rival or exceed the book; the book is a work of art. But I had hoped the movie would do it's best to portray the human element so present in the original work. In this cut, the movie sort've fell flat. That, combined with the ending, has produced this score.<br /><br />However, all is not lost.<br /><br />This cut is merely the theatrical cut of the film, the one shaved down so it would hit the more palatable 2h30m mark. The actual cut is actually close to 3 hours, and this cut will be released on DVD. I am very excited for this version to be released. Most of what was cut was Bernie and Bernard, as well as Hollis's murder, and all the other human scenes I missed. There's also even a super duper cut in the works that will incorporate the animated Black Freighter film recently released. So, dear reader, expect an update review in the coming months, because I WILL be reviewing these other cuts separately from this one. I'm hoping that it will stack up better than this one, because Watchmen, on a moral level at least, truly deserves a <strong>0/4</strong>.<br /><br />This one's for you, Alan!<br />- <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span></strong>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-69555487875498601182009-01-04T14:18:00.000-08:002009-01-06T05:10:24.840-08:00Swedile at the Movies: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)<a href="http://www.shockya.com/news/wp-content/uploads/the_day_the_earth_stood_still_remake_poster2.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 302px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 513px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.shockya.com/news/wp-content/uploads/the_day_the_earth_stood_still_remake_poster2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>These days it seems I’ve been watching nothing but remakes, reboots or adaptations. And say what you will about Hollywood losing all creativity, and I may even be inclined to agree; it would be nice to see something completely original that turned out to be awesome. However, on the other end of that spectrum, I love the idea of remakes; there’s a certain sense of expectation coupled with new technology, new filmmaking techniques and schools of thought, and classic tropes that add sort of an epic quality to certain scenes. When King Kong took to the Empire State Building in the 2005 remake (a very good, if a very long, movie), we all got collective chills. This sort of experience redeems the concept of the remake as far as I’m concerned.<br /><br />Does that mean that I like all remakes? It certainly does not. Most remakes are done for the sake of remakes, and either fall short of the original motion picture, or change too much, or miss the point, or just plain suck. Is this the case with the recent remake of the Sci-Fi classic, <strong>The Day the Earth Stood Still</strong>? Follow along as I dissect where this movie wins, fails, or just plain changes for no real reason.<br /><br />As always, my <strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Batman & Robin Gradation Scale</span></strong> applies.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Story</strong> </span><br /><br />We suck, apparently. Klaatu, an alien representative of a group of mighty space civilizations, comes to Earth to give us our final warning about our self-destructive, wasteful ways. Seeing as we treat the powerful alien and his giant robot companion G.O.R.T. with fear and Air-to-Land Missiles, he decides we’re not worth his time and initiates a doomsday process to kill us off before we kill the environment. It’s left up to astrobiologist Helen Benson and her unimaginably cynical stepson Jacob to convince Klaatu we’re not so bad.<br /><br />Any Science Fiction buffs reading this will undoubtedly pick up on the difference between this film and the classic 1951 version. The original film had a very anti-war message, with Klaatu visiting us not to keep us from killing the Earth with our gasoline and our Red Bulls, but rather to keep us from pointing our brand-spanking new nukes up into the stars. Much like the original film was a response to Cold War tensions at their height, this film is a response to the ever-increasing threat of Global Warming. I really don’t mind this. It’s better and more believable than making it focus on something like the “war” on “terror,” which has been too prevalent in our media of late. The war message made sense back in the 50s, especially with the advent of nuclear weapons. It would be hard to make that message contemporary today. I feel for the people who complain that this takes on a more “green” message than it’s predecessor, but if you like the war stuff, watch the original. As far as making this movie feel contemporary with us facing a legitimate threat, this film basically succeeds.<br /><br />I also like the ending moreso than the original <em>*ducks as a glass bottle is hurled at him*</em>. The original is classic, and it truly said something about the mentality of the time and what the filmmakers felt needed to be done to prevent us from blowing up the world, but from a purely cinematic and narrative standpoint, it’s somewhat anticlimactic. Klaatu takes the whole movie to tell us if we don’t behave, robots will kill us. In this new film, Klaatu gives us no such warning. He is planning to exterminate us. And even though the day is saved (of course it was, it’s Hollywood), he leaves the world in such a way that it would have massive implications on our society. This film actually makes humanity suffer some consequence for its actions. I think this works better as the ending to an alien invasion/extermination story. Though I must admit that this, too, was executed somewhat anticlimactically. Still, I’d say the story is fairly solid; it retains enough of the original while also being somewhat new, fresh, and believable to a certain degree.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Acting<br /></span></strong><br />I must say, Keanu Reeves was an inspired choice to play Klaatu. While his deadpan style of (or, as some would say, lack of) acting in most movie roles make him seem wooden and untalented, it works to his favor when he’s playing an alien sent to examine Earth on a logical and utilitarian level. He’s perfect, and the movie wouldn’t have been anywhere near as decent had he not been in it. He brings the character to life. Also, Keanu Reeves speaking Chinese in this same dreary voice was hilarious.<br /><br />Kathy Bates plays one Regina Jackson, the Secretary of Defence of the United States. When I saw this character in all the previews, I thought to myself, “oh great, here’s the token bitch that’s just going to be evil for the whole movie for no real reason.” But I must admit, I was largely surprised with how subtle the character was. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she was a great big bitch. But she also clearly had a human side to her. She cared about the world and saving it, and even trusted the female lead to talk Klaatu out of killing us instead of just bombing him (that was, apparently, the unseen President’s job). She was largely unlikable as a human being and is an example of the destructive people Klaatu believes us to be, but much like he discovers in the entire human race, she has another side to her, to the point that I couldn’t consider her an antagonist. She’s a delightful surprise, guys.<br /><br />John Cleese was in it, and he was great…for the five minutes of screen time he got. The hell?<br /><br />Everyone else was mediocre to bad. GOD, I hated that little kid. When someone like me says, “Man, that kid’s really cynical,” they’re TOO cynical. Also, I disliked the subplot that he and Jennifer Connelly don’t get along. It was boring and entirely forgettable. Damn you Hollywood, and your useless subplots!<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Special Effects<br /></span></strong><br />There wasn’t much in this field, what with the primary character being a humanoid in a suit. But what they did have was pretty damn good. I liked that the aliens used something non-mechanical to travel in. It’s a nice change of pace, and sort of works with their whole environmental message; their spaceships are clouds and their spacesuits are placentas. How much more carbon neutral can you get?<br /><br />But the cream of the crop was Gort. I loved this guy. He’s a giant walking granite slab of kill your ass. When he first appears from out of the sphere and starts immediately ruining our shit was probably my favorite part of the movie. This thing meant business. It retained the essence of the original character (prop?) while at the same time removing all the campiness and replacing it with awesomeness. Also, this has nothing to do with the SFX, but I’m certain Klaatu uttered a gargled, alien “Klaatu Barada Nikto” to Gort in that first scene with him. Classic.<br /><br />But besides this, it’s not an effects powerhouse, simply by the nature of the film. It’s got an alien swarm destroying Giants Stadium (oh no! However will society go on without Giants Stadium?*), but that’s about it. Still, the stuff they do use looks realistic and awesome enough, so you won’t be disappointed with regards to quality.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Music</span></strong><br /><br />Not really that good. Not bad, per se, but unmemorable. The original film had a classic 50’s Sci-Fi score. How hard would it have been to go with that? It would have been epically awesome. Or maybe they did, but Tyler Bates messed it up so bad we didn’t notice. Which is just as bad. However, the music played over the first part of the credits was cool. I just wish I could find it.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Product Placement</span></strong><br /><br />Noticeable, but bearable. There were just a few pointless shots of World of Warcraft and Snickers, and the film clearly had its mouth wrapped around Windows Vista’s proverbial schlong. However, I had really bad “Mac & Me” shellshock when Klaatu requested he be taken to McDonalds (“Take me to your McLeader!”). Thankfully, though, he did not don a bear suit and dance the Charleston on the countertop.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Direction</span></strong><br /><br />This is another one of those movies that fails to adhere to the auteur theory. I couldn’t really get a sense of the style of the director, Scott Derrickson. However, in checking Wikipedia, I see he also directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and I can say at least this; this film is equally as foggy. There’s never really a clear day in the whole film – it’s either raining or foggy or drab or swarming with tiny alien locusts. It’s not until the end, when the Earth is saved in more ways than one, that we really see a clear, quiet day. So I’ll give you that, Derrickson; you’ve employed a certain amount of symbolism that conveys the green message all that much more (which will make sense to you, the readers who have not yet seen it, when you see the ending yourself – so sue me for trying to be relatively spoiler-free this time!). Kudos. Also, kudos to your earlier, forgettable exorcism movie for being the stepping-stone to this realization. It had to be good for something.<br /><br />Otherwise? He tells his story and it’s coherent, and while the rest of the world complains that there is no ending, I will defend you; there is an ending, it’s just terribly anticlimactic. But I get where he was coming from, so I’ll say this; his work on this was decent, and in very few moments, even chilling. Which is more than I can say for some of Fox’s recent body of work.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:</span> </strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">2/4</span></strong> <strong>– Mediocre, with no major flaws or successes</strong><br /><br /><br />This film, I think, is a worthy enough attempt at a remake of a classic. It doesn’t try too hard to amp up its source material or go crazy with the special effects; it mostly stays true to the overall feel of the original. It falters in a few places, but in my opinion, actually improves on some others. Overall, when I watch this, I think to myself “I’m watching a version of The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which is a basic success in my books. However, despite all this, the film is ultimately forgettable, with its cast of mostly sub-par secondary characters. It’s pretty bad when I consider the performance of Keanu Reeves one of the best in a film, even if it is because of some truly inspired casting. I still hate that kid.<br /><br />The true test of this movie will be if its message will stand the test of time. According to Wikipedia, the original film was only moderately successful at the time of its release. As with all classics, it took a lot of time for it to be revered as much as it is, mostly because it said something truly poignant about its time. Will the remake fare as well? Does it speak of something equally poignant about us today? Only time will tell. I, however, will tell you that strictly from a filmmaking perspective, it’s worth a trip to the multiplex if you’re into this sort of thing. And remember, KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES!<br /><br />(…oops, wrong movie)<br /><br />- <span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span><br /><br />*<em>this joke was co-written by the talented Alex Colgan over at Endoscopy: The Musical (get back to writing, Al!)</em></div>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-69999284944786100162008-12-08T20:05:00.001-08:002008-12-08T20:14:59.545-08:00Swedile in the Classroom #6 - Annotated Bibliography<strong>1. DeviantArt</strong><br />http://www.deviantart.com/<br /><br />I’m starting with DeviantArt (a.k.a. “dA”) because this is the most well known art community website, with over 8,000,000 users to its name. Users have all sorts of options open to them; they can post art, journal entries, polls, comments and so on, and they can watch other artists, and DeviantArt will alert you when those artists have updated with art, journals, or comments to you. Further, you can add other people’s artwork to your “favorites” gallery, so you can always browse your favorite art.<br /><br />The way the website is put together is rather simple to follow, given a little time to get used to it. One aspect that is very useful is that the menu bar up at the very top never changes or moves. From anywhere in the site, you can click to go back to the main page, or back to your individual gallery page, or browse for any given topic, and check your messages. Also, galleries are all formatted roughly the same way, so that one never has trouble finding someone’s gallery, favorites, journal, etc. Even comments are done in such a way that it’s clear who is talking to who (when you reply to a comment, your comment becomes indented over a little bit, and any comments made after that one are also indented, so keeping track of a conversation is simple). Overall, the navigation of the site is designed to be very natural and easy to use.<br /><br />Lastly, the site’s overall design is very monochromatic. The colors of the site range from white to a grayish beige color. The question has been raised in class as to why do so many art-themed sites seem to be designed with very little color. I think this is a case of smart design; when the website showcases art, the site itself can’t be too colorful, or else the reader will find it difficult to tell the difference between the art and the site. When sites like DeviantArt choose a color scheme that is very drab, it’s actually a rather smart way to draw the attention to the art itself, and to make the art, navigation, and the website design separate. In as much, DeviantArt succeeds where a lot of other sites fail.<br /><br /><strong>2. TegakiE<br /></strong>http://www.unowen.net/tegaki/index.php<br /><br />TegakiE’s content differs from the majority of art community websites; instead of uploading an already-completed picture onto the site, you draw directly onto TegakiE with a tablet. This sort of interface is commonly known as ‘oekaki,’ which is the Japanese word for ‘doodle.’<br /><br />In regards to website design, it suffers visually for being far too drab and simple. It’s merely a white background with Times New Roman font for the links, the only color besides the art itself are the ads. Also, the navigation is somewhat tricky in that while the menu never moves from the right hand side, the options often change depending on what kind of page you choose. This can make it very hard to navigate, especially when you’re new to the site. It gives the impression of being a very amateur website, which is a shame, because it’s really very innovative in other ways.<br />One major way is the way the community interacts. There’s almost no typing involved in the site; you pretty much literally draw everything. The most interesting example is the comment system. Under each finished drawing is a small canvas box that acts just like the area you draw your entries on (except smaller). People draw their comments instead of write them, and they can do pretty interesting things with this technology. Whereas on a site like DeviantArt, the art never expands or changes beyond the finished submitted piece, while here, other members can add on to the drawings, or bring a new dimension to it, or even start a narrative. Thus, TegakiE is an artist community in a much more interactive sense, where each artist can add something to any piece of art and help to create something new.<br /><br /><strong>3. iScribble<br /></strong>http://www.iscribble.net/<br /><br />iScribble is another oekaki-style website, where artists can join group drawings and all draw on the same canvas in real time. A user logs in and enters a chat room, usually with a theme like playing a certain game or drawing a certain subject, and you can chat while drawing with others at the same time. It’s a step further in the collaborative art interaction that I mentioned above. It’s like an electronic version of doodling on a fellow artist’s sketchbook.<br /><br />Sadly, as much as the content of iScribble is amazing, the website design is proportionally awful. The home page is a wall of text with little icons and ads and a list of users currently online. The link to enter the site is hidden in this text near the top of the page. This first click leads to a login page, where you log in and then click to go forward, and assuming the site does not have an error logging in, you’re brought to another page full of text. It is only when you click the text boxes on the right of the screen that you are finally in view of any actual art at all. This takes far too long, and will cause lots of first time browsers to lose interest in the site and move on, which is a shame considering what you can do there.<br /><br />Furthermore, apparently the site also allows for individual artists to upload pieces they did on their own. However, according to their FAQ page, new users can’t upload their own images. They require more veteran members to upload the images for you. You’re also not allowed to use options like “undo” until you’ve proven to the site administrators that you’re serious about the site. This is just an awful idea. It discourages a lot of people away from the site, and considering their revenue comes from advertisers (considering ads are snuck in so sneakily around the whole website), I have no idea why they would scare away people who would see the ads, raising the amount of money they can ask for. The whole website is designed poorly, and their actions seem counterintuitive to their own interests. It’s a shame that such a neat art program is buried in this mess.<br /><br /><strong>4. SheezyArt</strong><br />http://www.sheezyart.com/<br /><br />SheezyArt is just one of a great deal of art community websites that has chosen to adopt, more or less, the DeviantArt style, making it basically a carbon copy. Like dA, you can upload pictures, make comments, add favorites, and so on.<br /><br />However, in attempting to replicate DeviantArt’s success, the site comes off as amateurish. They move certain things, like the menu bar, into different areas as to not come off as looking too much like dA, but this takes away somewhat from the natural placement of the menu bar in the top left corner of the website as on dA, since people tend to start looking in that quadrant of a website. They also move the user icons in comments from one side to the other for no real reason (and they abandon the comment indentation concept in the process). The overall layout of DeviantArt gives it an impression of being very open and expansive, but somehow this site feels very closed off and lonely.<br /><br />However, it does have an interesting feature over dA in the form of personalized gallery homepages. While everyone’s gallery page in dA shares the same drab color scheme as the rest of the website, with some room for personalization to subscribers (they can alter the appearance of their journal), SheezyArt is capable of altering the appearance of the whole page; specialized backgrounds, textured textboxes, background music, etc. However, despite this slight innovation, SheezyArt comes off as a pale imitation of the much more successful DeviantArt, and is rather a waste of time.<br /><br /><strong>5. The Computer Graphics Society</strong><br />http://www.cgsociety.org/<br /><br />The Computer Graphics Society (or “CGSociety”) is a community intended for more professional/serious artists. Unlike DeviantArt or the others, where anyone can join at any time for free, CGSociety is devoted to artists in the field of digital imagery and such. The site offers industry news, and feature stories about successes in the field (such as a feature on the Pixar short “Presto”) that are very well put together. There’s even an option for artists to upload their own work to be seriously critiqued by their colleagues in the field. It is, however, in this department that the site begins to fail.<br /><br />The format this site chose was that of a message board. The kind of message board found all over the Internet. I feel this is a severe misuse of talent. This website looks very nice; clearly, a lot of time and money has been put into it. This is a website populated entirely by people working in the medium of computers. I find it hard to believe that the best method they could come up with to showcase art is a message board. It’s unbecoming of the community’s talent to use such a method. It’s a shame too, because a lot of the art is incredible. But to post it, an artist has to upload it through a third-party hosting site like Photobucket, and then copy the link into the post. People can comment, but no one can add it to favorites or do anything unique with it. It seems like a very impractical method for a professional art site to adopt. A community like that could do so much better.<br /><br /><strong>6. ConceptArt.org</strong><br />http://www.conceptart.org/<br /><br />ConceptArt.org is another site that focuses heavily on the serious/professional art community, where members are often studying art or working in that field, and post seeking serious feedback from serious artists.<br /><br />This site is more like the sort of professional community I’d imagine would look like; the site design is stunning, with interesting yet muted backgrounds, drab colors that aren’t too monotone, instead connoting a more earthy feel, and users artwork on the front page in small thumbnails, arranged in a mosaic style. It highlights the artwork while looking good in its own way. A very impressive format overall.<br /><br />Sadly, this site, too, uses a forum interface for most of the postings, but it comes out better than the CGSociety’s forum. The menu bar remains at the top perpetually, and this menu bar includes the mosaic artwork display, so the forum looks almost like a part of the site, instead of feeling like you were redirected to a forum. Also, instead of individual topics being opened for each and every piece of art, here they are divided into categories (like finished work vs. sketches), and an individual starts each topic, and he or she puts all their art from that category into that topic, updating it with new work as they go. So for an art website that uses a basic forum interface, they’ve adapted it well to their audience.<br /><br />Besides this, there is still a more traditional “gallery” application, where each of the thumbnails in the mosaic link. So for those who prefer the forum, that exists for them, and seems to be in the most use. For those who prefer a gallery interface, that too exists for them. This site is an example of a true artist community; by artists, for artists, made by artists, and populated by artists.<br /><br /><strong>7. Elfwood</strong><br />http://www.elfwood.com/<br /><br />Elfwood is a little different from the rest of the sites in that it is based very heavily on a theme, or particular subject of art; in this case, fantasy and science fiction. It operates much like DeviantArt; you can upload pictures and writings, people comment, you can browse other art, etc, all the while not mimicking dA’s web design. The only difference is that that you’re only allowed to upload things that pertain to fantasy or sci-fi.<br /><br />The navigation is fairly good. The menu bar remains forever on the left side of the screen, and when you click on an option, it takes you to the page, but a submenu appears underneath the selected menu option. For example, if you selected “Rules,” extra options will appear underneath with specialized options within the “rules” category, such as “10 Commonly Sense Rules.” The overall layout and design likewise remains the same throughout. The only real issue I have with the site is it is yet another forum-based art community, but I’ve already spoken at length about the subject, and seeing as this website seems to be more low-budget than CGSociety or ConceptArt.org, it is more passable as an issue.<br /><br />Where the site really shines is in its visual language. Everything about the colors and textures on this site combine and connote the feeling of a fantasy realm where knights fight dragons and there are damsels to be saved. The background is a stone texture; the menu options to the right are written on what look like wooden planks; thumbnails of stories appear on papyrus scrolls; even the title font is a calligraphy style reminiscent of the middle ages. Anyone visiting the site for the first time would suffer from no confusion as to what the site is about. This is the sort of imaginative web design I spoke of earlier with the previous entries; the designers of this site really knew how to speak to their users.<br /><br /><strong>8. 4Chan</strong><br />http://www.4chan.org/<br /><br />This is an entirely different sort of “art community” than I’ve discussed before. It’s not so much an “art” community than it is a community of random silliness and the place where Internet memes (running jokes, basically) are born. However, it does post images, and users do have a sort of community, so here it goes.<br /><br />The overall design of the website is actually very simple. The front page is divided into sections like “What is 4Chan,” “Boards,” and “Recent Posts,” and each one is color coded with a tinted white background. This color-coding makes an otherwise daunting wall of text easier to read. Also, the glut of images that make it onto 4chan daily are divided by categories (video games, anime, nature, photography, and much more), which also makes navigation somewhat easier. However, this is where the positives of the site end.<br /><br />While some sites are denounced for their wall of text, this site is pretty much a wall of images. While it is true that they are divided into categories, the sheer magnitude of posts make it impossible to organize, and browsing consists of just going through post after post after post. The comment system is also unattractive to the eye, looking like they orbit the photo, jutting out in strange ways, to make following it coherently a small job, instead of being natural.<br /><br />The worst thing about the site is that anyone can come on and upload any image they choose. Any. A large majority of the posts made are not work of the posters, but rather taken or stolen from somewhere. I’ve seen dozens of art originating from DeviantArt end up on the site, likely not posted by the original artist. 4Chan isn’t a community in the sense of it being populated by like-minded people who come together and share their work. They just post whatever they want, taking other’s hard work and exploiting it. 4Chan is the epitome of bad art communities, and it’s not worth anyone’s time.<br /><br />- Chris MuiseSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-44652144950259177342008-12-08T20:03:00.000-08:002008-12-08T20:04:37.553-08:00Swedile in the Classroom #5 – Is Google the Second Language?In regards to Robert K. Logan’s essay “Making sense of the visual – is Google the seventh language,” I feel I must mention something I’m usually reticent to voice when I read other articles (in keeping with the idiom “remain silent and be thought a fool; open your mouth and remove all doubt”): This guy’s writing is pretty bad. I mean, it’s not incoherently bad, but it is clear that somewhere along the line it was not edited or peer reviewed. Slight grammatical errors abound and punctuation is missing. There are at least a few sentences like this one, where it seems he restarted mid-sentence: “There is another project at the University of Toronto there is a project exploring the economic feasibility of using a robotic page turning device to digitize books.” It boggles the mind (no, it “googles the mind” – man, how corny) that someone who is not only trained in English, but is actually writing about language, could not notice such glaring errors.<br /><br />But enough about Mr. Logan’s poor writing in this particular example; let’s get to the meat of the paper. He claims that Google has become the 7th language (the previous six being speech, writing, math, science, computing, and the Internet), in that search engines have their own set of syntax and semantics. I’m not entirely sure I agree with this, mainly on the grounds that he does not differentiate between the Internet and Google. The criteria he gives for being a new language is that it has the compendium of pretty much all human thought and knowledge is Google’s semantics, and its “search grammar” as its syntax. But the Internet itself has this same complete world knowledge, and Google is merely an extension of the Internet; it is part of it. Logan never really provides the syntax of the Internet, so can we assume that it is similar, if not identical, to that of the Search Engine? I think Logan may have jumped the gun here in calling Google the seventh language.<br /><br />However, he did bring up something interesting I would like to address. He mentions that before hominids became verbal (in the sense that they began to use a language of some sort), we relied on what he calls “mimetic communication,” which consists of facial expressions and grunts, screams, and other sounds that aren’t words. We still use this form of communication, but in conjunction with words, which enhance the two together. However, when writing, a lot of this mimetic language gets lost by virtue of the fact that we remove the direct human interaction from the equation. But in recent years, electronic media has allowed, almost spontaneously, for this to resurface in text. I am, of course, referring to the emoticon =D. By adding little representative glyphs to our text in things like instant messaging and emails, we add a whole new element of communication that was not there before. Take for example this passage:<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Ok, sure, do what you want.<br /></span></strong>That single line could be taken many different ways, given the context. But by adding just a few extra keystrokes…<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Ok, sure, do what you want >:(</span></strong><br />…it’s become painfully evident that I’m mad about something, and the whole meaning of the text changes. These emoticons allow us to regain in textual communication what we had lost before; body language can, at least rudimentarily, be recorded in text. Whether this evolves into the true “seventh language,” I don’t know. But we’ll certainly see.<br /><br />- Chris MuiseSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-51240776074305215792008-11-29T04:59:00.000-08:002008-11-29T05:08:16.084-08:00Swedile in the Classroom #4 - Colour as a Semiotic Mode<div><div>Gosh, I wish I had saved my Synesthesia discussion from my last Swedile in the Classroom for this blog posting.<br /><br />Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen bring up the concept of color ‘grammar’ in their essay “Colour as a semiotic mode: note for a grammar on colour”; the idea that colors, as a mode of imparting information, can be structured and have set rules. And I don’t know if I can buy that. Color is so arbitrary and so personalized; it’s nearly impossible to have a set meaning for any one of them. Even in the essay itself, the authors give contradictory emotive descriptions of just about all, if not every, color they mention. I myself was put off almost initially when they suggested that “red is for danger, green for hope.” While I can agree with the assessment of red, I’ve never once associated green with hope. I’ve associated it with everything from the placidness of nature, due to the environmental conditioning that green goes with nature, to the awesome, exciting action of giant robots, due to the mechas in the series Gurren Lagann being powered with the green effervescence known as “Spiral Power.” </div><br /><br /><br /><div></div><a href="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/art.gnome.org/backgrounds/NATURE-AnotherGrass_1600x1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 224px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 190px" alt="" src="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/art.gnome.org/backgrounds/NATURE-AnotherGrass_1600x1200.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong><em><span style="color:#33ff33;">VS.</span></em></strong><a href="http://randomc.animeblogger.net/image/Gurren%20Lagann/Gurren%20Lagann%20-%2027%20-%20Large%2026.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 263px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px" alt="" src="http://randomc.animeblogger.net/image/Gurren%20Lagann/Gurren%20Lagann%20-%2027%20-%20Large%2026.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>To assume any one thing about any one color being understood universally, even things that would seem pretty obvious, isn’t feasible, since everyone experiences the world differently. Plus, the social meanings of color changes with the zeitgeist. Take for example the story of Lucky Strike cigarettes.<br /></div><div><a href="http://okielegacy.org/image/Luckies1942.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 245px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 247px" alt="" src="http://okielegacy.org/image/Luckies1942.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In the years before World War II, the Lucky Strike cigarette company felt that women were not buying their product, and decided to hire Edward Bernays as a consultant. He told them that the reason women were not buying their cigarettes was because women did not like the color green. At the time, the green was their signature color, and they refused to change it. So instead, Bernays orchestrated an ingenious media campaign, buying up space in newspapers and having fake articles run saying “green is in.” And what happened is he changed the entire fashion world that year, and what’s more, he totally changed the perception of a color.<br /><br />Colors change meanings in society all the time. Right now, pink denotes “Breast cancer awareness.” For me, it always used to denote girls, specifically children. Growing up, pink was a girl’s color. Now it means something else. And there’s the anti-bullying movement now, too. It denotes that. I just think colors are too personal and arbitrary to be able to come up with any set rules for them.<br /><br />However, I do agree with the last point in the article, specifically the differences in organization between the ad and the brochure’s color palette (although I wish I could have seen the colors themselves). The colors themselves, I think, were not as important as the way they were contrasted with each other. If you take a sampling of colors and present them one way, people will perceive the message of the colors differently than if they’re organized in another way. I think this is really the only true form of color “grammar” we can hope to reach; not in the colors themselves, as they are too volatile to have a universally agreed-upon meaning, but in the organization of those colors, and how it can steer the reader to reading a text or understanding a message the way the designer wants it to be understood.<br /><br /><br />- Chris Muise<br /><br /><em>P.S. – Readers, you should look up Edward Bernays. This is the man responsible for advertising as it is today, and also for things like women smoking and a coup in Guatemala. It’s well worth your time.</em> </div></div>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-30319488208601125552008-11-17T10:58:00.000-08:002008-11-17T11:09:11.067-08:00Swedile at the Movies: Quantum of Solace<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Qos-teaser.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 225px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 333px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Qos-teaser.jpg" border="0" /></a> Hello, reader. This is your movie review of Quantum of Solace, should you choose to accept it.<br /><br />(Okay, I promise I won’t do that a lot)<br /><br />The buzz about this movie has been pretty polarized; people like Harry Knowles from Ain’t It Cool News loved the hell out of this movie, whereas people like Roger Ebert (EBERT!!!) thought it was dribble. There seems to be no middle ground on this one. Well, having seen it, I’ll see if I become a militant hater, an exuberant lover, or if I can discover mediocrity once again!<br /><br />As always, my Batman & Robin Gradation Scale is applied here.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Story</span></strong><br /><br />Quantum picks up shortly after the previous movie left off. We’re treated right away to a car chase, which is good I guess. Bond, M and MI6 learn from Mr. White of the existence of some shadow company that’s got their fingers in many sinister pies. Bond follows the trail, all the while hoping to find the ones responsible for Vesper’s death in the previous film. He kills some people, M gets mad, and together with Camille, a Bolivian secret agent, work to take down the evil Dominic Greene, the leader of Quantum.<br /><br />Well, it’s not exactly a bad story, but I’ll admit, it’s not quite as original as Casino Royale. The whole movie seems sort of like the second part of Casino Royale, actually; like the original movie was, like, 4 hours long, and they had to divide it. Which is fine, I guess. More to the point, though, this movie plays more like your more traditional 007 film. That’s not to say it’s campy, or that James Bond has unbelievable gadgets, or that he’s not any less of a badass than Daniel Craig has played him. But the structure tends to act more like a traditional James Bond plot; the plot revolves around Bond working up the ladder to fight Greene, the head of a large, evil corporation that has some sinister plan in the works, and Bond and Camille (his Bond Girl) reach his hidden lair and the film culminates in a final fight to the death. Still, even this they pull off in the new, awesome style of the Bond films. And I must say, the reference to Goldfinger with the dead, naked woman covered in oil on the bed? Excellent.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Acting</strong></span><br /><br />Nothing spectacular, to be honest. But then again, I didn’t find the acting terribly good in Casino Royale either. I mean, Daniel Craig plays an excellent Bond; he’s cold, analytical, somewhat brash, and above all, confident. He actually seems like the type of person who might actually kill people for a living. But there’s not a whole realm of emotional depth to anyone here. Bond seems angry and sullen, but that’s about it. Everyone seems angry and sullen. It’s an angry, sullen movie. The guy who plays the film’s villain is marginally better, as he seems to display more emotion (since he’s putting on a front for the public), but generally, no one in this movie is acting in such a way that it stands out. I’d say it’s satisfactory, but not much more than that.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Action/Special Effects</strong></span><br /><br />This is where I was disappointed the most. Casino Royale’s stunts and action sequences were bloody amazing. The shots were clear and stunning. Watching this film on the big screen made one feel they were actually on top of a big crane. Whoever coordinated those stunts deserves some kind of medal. However, the action scenes here (while no less larger in scale) suffered from the “Camcorder Syndrome;” All the shots were quick-edited sequences of close-up, shaky camera work, making the sequences both daunting and confusing. It’s much the same as other films like Batman Begins and Transformers, where the action was just so jumbled, it gave me a headache. However, this does luckily damper a bit as the film progresses. The final action scene in Greene’s lair is much clearer, and the aerial dogfight recreates some of that sense of being high up in the air. However, sadly, at least 50% of the fight scenes are in the first 30 minutes of the movie, so at least half of what we come to see is, really, ruined. Seriously, directors, stop that; I don’t care if you want to recreate the feeling of being beaten up by Batman, or being in the middle of a monster invasion, it’s bothersome.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Music</span><br /></strong><br />Dave Arnold returns to the drivers seat scoring this film, and his work is no less well done than it was in the previous film. We’re even treated to some more of his renditions of classic Bond motifs, which are very good indeed. If you like that sort of thing, I urge you to check the score out.<br /><br />I’d like to discuss the Bond Theme for a moment, which was “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White. Um, it sort of sucks. I mean, the actual musical score to the song isn’t bad, but with them singing it, it sounds sort of like hip-hop or rap or whatever the kids listen to these days. It had some elements of some more classic Bond music elements, but overall I was largely disappointed. Way to go, Alicia Keys and Jack White. The first duet in Bond Theme history and you go and blow it. Thanks.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Direction</span></strong><br /><br />Not bad, not anything astoundingly bad. But it’s clear that Casino’s director played his Bond with much more nuance. Casino Royale created something entirely new, and entirely awesome. I’ll be honest; I was never a fan of James Bond before Casino Royale. I thought he was silly and the plots were boring. About the only Bond-related thing I’d ever loved before two years ago was the Goldeneye video game for N64. Casino changed that. It impressed me so much that not only did it score a 0/4; I retroactively awarded it the Vesty for Best Film of 2006. I feel if you look at Quantum of Solace as the last hour-and-forty-seven of Casino Royale, it works. The characters have already been established, and the plot follows directly from the end of the previous film. If you look at it as a separate movie, it takes a step back towards the more corny James Bond films of the past. However, that’s not to suggest I’m too critical of this, because I do literally mean just one step; it only just touches on the campy stuff and the formulaic plot lines without actually crossing the line into it. Still, I found the pacing to be odd at the beginning of the film, the shots weren’t nearly as stunning, it suffered from that “Camcorder Syndrome,” and the ending was slightly unsatisfactory. The one change the director made that I think was actually really neat was the way in which they superimposed the names of the various locations into the film. If you’ve ever seen Heroes, and the way their episode titles fit in with the scenery, it’s something like that, with specialized font for each locale. That was neat. But besides that, I feel that the directorial changes made were not made overly well, but not horrendously bad.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">1/4<br /></span></strong><br />A good film, but not perfect. I think the reason that people are divided by this is because they expected something as amazing as Casino Royale. They were so geared for something as amazing as before (myself included), that something just slightly sub-par seems like crap by comparison. I think perhaps this may be the result of making a sequel that is so directly tied to its predecessor. If they had left Casino Royale as it was, ending and all, and left the rest to our imagination, and then gave us a whole new story for the sequel, it might have felt more self-contained. But for what it was, it wasn’t bad. The story was mostly clear, there were still lots of decent action, and Daniel Craig was still awesome. It just felt different than Casino Royale, or rather more aptly; it’s somewhat too similar to what we’ve seen before. But it certainly was entertaining, I was never bored, and it was worth the $10 to go see it.<br /><br />I’m just happy that this film ended conclusively, because I’m looking forward to something original for the next one. Here’s hoping.<br /><br />This review will self-destruct in 30 seconds (sorry),<br />- <span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-88383663896243636292008-11-09T15:46:00.000-08:002008-11-16T20:04:15.774-08:00Swedile in the Classroom #3 - The Rhetoric of TypographyEva Brumberger’s article on the connect or disconnect between visual and verbal thinking in an interesting read, but it pretty much says things that have been said before, and what’s more, are obvious in today’s generation; her belief is that typeface and design play a role in how we perceive any given text, and to some degree or another, this is true. For example, if I wrote a phrase somewhat equated with a ‘redneck’ manner of speech, such as “squeal like a pig,” in a calligraphy-style font, it would be so jarring that it would affect one’s perception of the phrase, and the writer. No one would take it seriously. However, her theory seemed to be more along the lines that even a less-drastic change in typeface could dramatically alter the perception of the material and it’s author, and I think the results of her study showed that this is not true to any noticeable degree.<br /><br />This article did bring up another issue, however, that I would like to discuss in length; the divide between the verbal and visual type of thought. I, like Brumberger and a number of her colleagues that she cites, feel that one is not separate from the other. Some might be more inclined to one than the other, but we all think both verbally and visually. I, for one, would like to draw upon my own experiences to make a point on this topic; I think in both verbal and visual terms at the same time, almost to the point that I cannot separate the two (at least in regards to writing). I have a condition known as Synesthesia, specifically Grapheme > Color Synesthesia. That means…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color:#999900;">T</span><span style="color:#ffff00;">h</span><span style="color:#cccccc;">i</span><span style="color:#009900;">s</span> <span style="color:#cccccc;">i</span><span style="color:#009900;">s</span> <span style="color:#ffff00;">h</span><span style="color:#330000;">o</span><span style="color:#ffcc00;">w</span> <span style="color:#cccccc;">I</span> <span style="color:#cc33cc;">p</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span><span style="color:#003300;">r</span><span style="color:#ff0000;">c</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span><span style="color:#cccccc;">i</span><span style="color:#6600cc;">v</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span> <span style="color:#999900;">t</span><span style="color:#ffff00;">h</span><span style="color:#cccccc;">i</span><span style="color:#009900;">s</span> <span style="color:#ff0000;"><span style="color:#009900;">s</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span><span style="color:#ff6600;">n</span><span style="color:#999900;">t</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span><span style="color:#ff6600;">n</span>c</span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;">e</span>.</span><br /><br />Every single letter and number has a specific color to me. It never changes (i.e. <span style="color:#000099;">B</span> is always blue, <span style="color:#ff0000;">C</span> is always red, etc), and is entirely automatic. And when I hear words being said, it is also largely automatic that I imagine the words for a moment, with said colors in mind. Yet at the same time, whenever I read words, I hear them in my head. Because of the color associations hard-wired into my brain, when I hear I see, and when I see I hear. It is a constant back-and-forth discourse between the verbal and the visual worlds. And I am far from alone in this regard. Recent studies have shown that accounts of Synesthesia are far more frequent than previously believed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17076063), and it is believed that 1 in 23 people have it. The numbers may be even higher, as to people with the condition, they often times have no idea the way they think differs from anyone else’s.<br /><br />Of course, I don’t believe one has to have a form of Synesthesia to think both verbally and visually. I merely used it as an interesting example. I believe almost everyone thinks in both terms as opposed to just one or another. Both senses interact to give the viewer/listener a much more in-depth view of the world around them than just one or the other could do alone.<br /><br />- Chris MuiseSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-75174946237423248592008-11-09T15:43:00.000-08:002008-11-09T15:46:08.235-08:00Swedile in the Classroom #2 - The challenges of hybrid forms of electronic writingHaving read Dene Grigar’s essay on hybrid forms of electronic writing, I was reminded of some thoughts I’ve had on the direction in which we read and write as a society. First of all, I’d like to point out that this essay, probably the first scholarly essay I’ve seen written like this (i.e. one not on a blog), uses Hypertext. I find that very interesting. However, what I find most interesting is not that Hypertext was used, but that it was used without changing the format of the annotated essay we’ve all seen and written.<br /><br />The Hypertext was simply inserted into the essay, as many scholars would insert a reference to another scholarly work or an example from which they draw thoughts on or allude to. The writer did not have to alter the usual writing style to any degree to insert these links. Why is it the format of the essay already established - many decades before the advent of the personal computer and the Internet – lend itself so well to Hyperlinking? I think that speaks to the nature of the human mind and how we read, or perhaps more appropriately, how we’ve always wanted to read.<br /><br />I don’t believe human beings think as linearly as we sometimes like to think we do. Speaking from personal experience, I can say my thought process, when reading at least, is both linear and non-linear at the same time. If I read an essay that has sources cited, or reading about something in an encyclopedia that mentions only briefly another subject, I often think (if the source cited is interesting), “Huh, I should look around for that. It might be interesting and informative.” I don’t believe I’m alone on this, either, considering the outstanding success of Wikipedia, which satisfies our instant curiosity; if you’re reading about Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and you suddenly think, “Gee, I’d like to know what else Frank Miller has done,” a link within the article itself links to a page on Frank Miller, and often times even a specialized page just on the works of the artist/writer.<br /><br />The way I see it, human beings have, if not for eons, than at least for a number of centuries, have been prepared to read the way we read now. The only think preventing that was technology. Gutenberg could not burn links into the paper with his printing press, nor could it be transmitted with the speed at which we have now. The best people could do for years was to provide directions to the source, which they could check when they found the time and energy to do it. Now, the information is right there at our fingertips. However, I’m sure that, had the technology existed, people in Johannes’s time would be browsing Albert II and Hyperlinking to previous rulers of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and what have you. I think we’ve always been ready for this sort of reading experience; the problem was that technology just didn’t exist until recently. To have arguments about how it’s classified, and debates over the term “new media” versus “Electronic Literature” or “Electronic writing” seems like splitting hairs. It’s like Eagleton said, writing simply changes with the zeitgeist. And I’m sure it’s not done changing yet.<br /><br />- Chris MuiseSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-65466337014688266392008-10-17T17:20:00.000-07:002008-10-18T06:26:51.721-07:00Swedile at the Movies: Iron Man<a href="http://www.firstshowing.net/img/final-ironman-poster2-big.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.firstshowing.net/img/final-ironman-poster2-big.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />That's right, I'm only now getting to this. If you know me, you'll know that I had a shit summer with lots of BS going on around me, and it didn't put me in the mood to put up with Blogger's nonsense to write a 1000-word opus on any movies I was seeing. However, that's all changed, and I want to write these reviews, dammit! This summer was spectacular (more or less) for movies, and it seems a shame I put so much effort into 2007 where the only really decent movies were Ratatouille and Transformers. So I come to you now, in October, with my reviews on the summer blockbuster season of 2008, in as close to chronological order as I can remember.<br /><br />As ever, my near-flawless Batman & Robin movie gradation scale is going to be used. For those new to my blog, a quick rundown:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>0/4</strong></span> - Perfect or near perfect movie<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>1/4</strong></span> - An otherwise good movie that has negative aspects too big to overlook<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>2/4</strong></span> - Mediocre; not bad, but nothing special<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>3/4</strong></span> - An otherwise bad movie with a few good aspects<br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>4/4</strong></span> - Bad movie, with almost nothing to keep your attention<br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>5/4</strong></span> - A special score for movies so bad they cause cancer<br /><br />Okay, with that out of the way, Iron Man<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Story:</strong><br /></span>The basic plot is very true to the comics; weapons industrialist Tony Stark is captured and gravely injured by insurgents and ordered to build a megadeath weapon to crush America with. Instead, with some coaching from an old man, he builds a suit of armor for himself to keep his heart from stopping, and also to kill some motherfuckers with. Then when he gets home, he realizes that weapons are, in fact, bad. Thus he tools around the world in what is, let's face it, a weapon, and destroys other weapons. Tony's new-found attitude angers his business partner, Obediah Stane, who gets ahold of Stark's original armor plans and builds one of his own. The two duke it out, Obediah dies, and Tony reveals to the world that he's a superhero.<br /><br />Okay, looking back at this movie, there's really not much too it. I always wondered how they'd make Iron Man into a movie, because there's not a whole lot to him. He's a lush with a tank strapped to his ass, basically, and he fights a lot of other guys with tanks strapped to their asses. But you know what? For a movie, they succeeded for the most part on the story aspect. Not a whole lot really happened between his origin and the final battle, but it tells a story more or less without incident. The only complaints I had here were that there were not that many action sequences, and that the terrorists were not that believable. They were really trusting. They've asked him to build a missile, and they see him on their security cameras working on a knee joint? And they argue about whether or not it looks like the missile. No, terrorists, it doesn't. Any real terrorist worth his weight in bomb vests would shoot Stark the moment he sneezed in a suspicious manner. But then again, this is a superhero who builds a suit of armor to escape captivity, so you gotta take it with a grain of salt. What really drove this story was charisma, with story second, which brings me to...<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Acting:</strong></span><br />Meh. I'll admit, Robert Downey Jr. was an excellent Tony Stark. Who better to cast as a womanizing drunkard who throws money around like it was nothing than Downey Jr, a man who was a womanizing drunkard who threw money around like it was nothing. It's a welcome change from Commander Asshole in the comics nowadays, who's done everything in his power to ruin everyone's day. Robert's Stark is charming, witty, and someone who's completely unreliable and irresponsible, but only just enough so it's considered a charming quirk. Seriously, this movie did as well as it did greatly because every single woman in North America was in love with this guy. I'm excited to see him return.<br />As for everyone else, well, it's a mixed bag. Jeff Bridges as Obediah Stane/Iron Monger wasn't that bad. For 95% of the film, he's a cold, calculating tycoon who puts a hit on his business partner, and later rips out Tony's mega-pacemaker while Tony sits paralyzed in horror. And even in the Iron Monger suit, his voice sounds like a broken-glass-and-sandpaper sandwich, which was awesome. But then in his last 15 minutes, he suddenly had to ham it up. He was calling Stark a prick, going over the subtle nuances of his evil scheme, the works. Why? But still, he was also firing rockets and bitch slapping Iron Man with motorcycles, so at least they make up for it.<br />Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, was...unpleasant. Why are all the love interests whiny and needy and complain about everything? Can't there be any fun love interests, someone with a good personality that someone might, you know, actually love? And in the comics she's barely a love interest at all. I do, however, like the bit at the end where they play on this superhero movie staple; she rejects him flat out for being an unreliable asshole. Thank goodness they changed SOMETHING about that tired formula.<br />And lastly, there's Terrance Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes. Let's just say I'm ultimately glad they're replacing him with Don Cheadle in the next one, and that's saying something coming from someone who hates it when they change actors between movies (more on that in my Dark Knight review).<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Special Effects:</span></strong><br />Pretty damn good, actually. I'm really super glad they got Stan Winston to make the suits. I'd have been majorly disappointed if there weren't a practical Iron Man armor in this movie, and had been done completely in CGI. This movie was, in fact, Stan's final work before he passed away this summer, and he went out with a bang. Teaming with Adi Granov, the guy who designed the current comic version of the armor, they really brought the character to life. It looked like fucking Iron Man, but he's real! I was wowed. And even the CGI wasn't too noticeable. When he was walking around on the ground (to which I say, WHY?), you could tell. Yeah, it was simple. But it wasn't glaring or anything, it was just...there. However, when he's dogfighting jets or whizzing in the air or some shit, it's seamless. It looks really good.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Music:<br /></span></strong>Not bad, but for the most part nothing memorable like Spider-Man, Superman, or Batman. There are a few scenes where you've got something close to a theme, but generally it's kind of just rock-and-rollish and meh. Luckily, it doesn't deject from the film much at all, and you get stuff like ACDC to jam to.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Humor:</strong></span><br />Not bad, actually. I'm notorious for finding things funny that no one else does, and vice versa. It really makes me squirm when something mind-numbingly awful comes on the screen and while I wince, everyone laughs. However, here, yeah, I laughed with everyone else. Maybe not at EVERYTHING, but overall it was just lighthearted humor. Tony Stark really is charming. The first scene in the movie is him lightening the mood. Really. However, the funniest part of the movie for me wasn't even in the movie; it was some 13-year-old, in back of us, saying with the utmost seriousness regarding the movie's villain, "God, that guy's a dick. I hope he dies." Priceless.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Samuel L. Jackson Factor:<br /></strong></span>It's goddamn Sam Jackson as Nick-motherfuckin-Fury. <strong>YES INDEED!</strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Direction:</span></strong><br />To be honest, I didn't really notice anything in way of direction. Normally, I can catch the subtle differences between one director's work and the next. I know when I'm watching a Spieldberg movie, or a Burton film. Jon Favreau really didn't have any defining directorial features. Maybe it's because I've never seen another film by him. Maybe it's because he's mediocre. Or maybe it's because he's genius. Ernest Hemmingway once said that easy reading is "god damn hard writing," and maybe that's applying here; he's so good, we don't even notice him. However, I'm inclined to think it's a mix between the two. On the one hand, the story was told very fluently which, trust me, can be fucked up real quick. So you gotta give him credit for that. But on the other hand, it just felt kind of generic. Charming lead, fights with airplanes, evil businessmen. It's all business as usual. But I'd rather a director be unremarkable than be extraordinarily remarkable for how bad he is (here's looking at Uwe, Boll). Gotta give props to that.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:<br /></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">1/4</span></strong><br /><br />Yeah, it was pretty decent. Besides the few flubs I mentioned above, I really have no complaints. You might be asking, then, why it's not a 0/4, if my complaints were so minimal that it barely tainted my perception. Well, there's one complaint that I didn't address directly, but would hope it'd be more clear once the entire review was read; it seemed very ordinary. When I, a comic book geek to rival most, go to a comic book movie, I want to be wowed. Not just in cool action sequences, but just in the whole idea. I still get chills when Peter Parker swings from a thread for the first time. But I didn't feel that with this movie. I don't know if it's because I don't follow Iron Man as much as other heroes, but I really doubt it. I almost never read anything about Superman, but Superman Returns had some epic moments. And that's special, seeing as it had even less action than Iron Man did. I'm more inclined to believe that the film just wasn't as epic as it could have been, or at least had hoped it would be. But still, all in all, it had some good acting, some good sequences, a story that wasn't completely convoluted, and most of all, it had friggin' Iron Man flying around in the sky shooting repulsor blasts and unibeams. What more can a moviegoer ask for?<br /><br />Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to Ceasar's Palace to bet an island on a game of craps, and maybe save the world later if I feel like it.<br /><br />Next up: <strong>Speed Racer</strong><br /><br />- <span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-16069911246371004642008-10-12T12:22:00.000-07:002008-10-12T12:47:06.025-07:00Swedile in the Classroom #1I find myself quite ambivalent towards corporate websites. In the rare instances I find myself visiting one, it’s always needlessly complicated and slow and it just doesn’t make me want to bother. Promotional movie websites are notorious for being very showy with very little content. The study performed by Deborah E. Rosen and Elizabeth Purinton seems to more or less make it evident that people prefer simple web designs to large, showy ones that only deter people from wanting to interact with the site.<br /><br />While reading this study, I was immediately reminded of a post by rude, crude online personality Maddox. It was a post made about the same time (give or take a year) as when this study came out. In the article, Maddox demonstrates that, while major corporations pour millions into advertising and image, he gets more traffic than all of them without spending a dime on putting his name out there. As he puts it, “I've spent a grand total of $0.00 promoting my site. McDonald's corporation spent about $1.2 million on Internet promotions last year, so you'd think that of the "millions served daily," a few of them would log on every now and then and check their site just out of curiosity, if only to see nutritional (or lack of nutritional) information.” He even provides a graph, showing the amount spent on advertising and what have you (I think it’s safe to include money spent by companies on consultants who perform studies to determine their best possible image on and off the web) versus the Alexa traffic ranking from 08/15/2003 (Alexa.com), where a smaller number denotes a higher ranking (Yahoo being #1, MSN #2 and so on):<br /><br />http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=owned<br /><br />This is rather telling, since not only is his website uncomplicated, Maddox basically uses regular HTML and homemade graphics he makes on MSPaint.<br /><br />Not only does this example give credence to the study above, in that the simpler website received (in 2003 at least) far more traffic than any of the major fast food chains did, but it also points to the notion of content. What content does Pepsi give us? I went on their website (<a href="http://www.pepsi.ca/en/promo.htm">http://www.pepsi.ca/en/promo.htm</a>), and after being accosted with a false homepage, a pop-up of the real page, busy graphics, and insufferably bland music, I can honestly say this; I have no idea what they have on their site. I saw something about playing some game, some contest stuff, and something about designing a can. I had little – well, actually, no – interest in going further. What the article said about a site having ten seconds to catch our attention really is true, it seems. Pepsi had its chance to grab my attention, but it threw a bunch of nonsense at me instead.<br /> <br />I do somewhat disagree with one aspect of the study, though, and that is on the subject of mystery. The study seems to suggest that people want websites to be concise and not mysterious, so that we do not have to spend a great deal of time searching and exploring. While that is certainly true of the Pepsi site, there have been a few examples of late that seem to suggest mystery is welcome in the right circumstances. First of all, this may just be me who feels this way, but when I’m on one of my geek news sites (Superherohype.com, TFW2005.com, Ain’t It Cool News, etc), and their headline that one clicks to read the full article says something like “And Captain America is being played by…” and you have to go on to the full article to find out who, I think that’s enticing. It’s sort of like opening a present; you have that momentary thrill of uncertainty and mystery.<br /> <br />However, an even bigger example is the sudden onset of Viral Sites. It takes the concept of the “Captain America will be played by…” hook and amps it to the max. This past year, with the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight fast approaching, Warner Bros. opened a various number of tiny little websites under the heading of “Why So Serious?” The sites looked like newspaper clippings with scratched out or replaced words, as if it were a personal message from the Joker himself.<br /> <br />These sites were basically cryptograms, and when someone cracked the code or the password or whatever, exclusive content would be unearthed, like a new trailer or a sneak peek of Harvey Dent as Two-Face; Something or other to reward the involved participant for their efforts. It was hugely popular, and Warner Bros intends to repeat the process with similar movies, one such example being the upcoming Watchmen. These sites are anything but concise, but they saw a huge amount of traffic and scored the movie huge buzz. It’s little wonder the movie did so well.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-78057713367163070702008-09-22T06:38:00.000-07:002008-09-22T08:06:59.437-07:00Swedile at the Movies: Death Bed<a href="http://caffeine-headache.net/blog3/223905.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://caffeine-headache.net/blog3/223905.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Reader beware, you're in for a scare - and not the kind of scare you might want from a horror film.<br /><br />If this movie sounds familiar to you, comedian Patton Oswalt mentioned it at some length in his Werewolves & Lollipops album. If it doesn't seem familiar, that's likely because this film was made in the 1970s, and never ever released, until just recently on DVD. It's a lost movie, that has the dubious honor of being a lost film that should have remained lost. It wasn't released for a damn good reason, as I shall delve into thusly.<br /><br />My friend and I had heard about this film, from Patton, and decided it might be fun to watch and mock. We asked the local video store if they had it, and they said they did not, but would order it. It would be ready by September. Who knew September would become such an ominous and terrible month.<br /><br />Please, I beg of you, take this review not just as a review, or a comedic ripping apart of someone else's work; take it as a DIRE warning.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Story/Plot</span></strong><br />Some vague amount of time ago (one can assume at least a century), a demon tree decided to become a breeze, then finds a girl, becomes a person and makes a bed. They proceed to fornicate on the bed maybe, but the chick dies, the demon cries blood, and the blood gets on the bed. Now the bed falls under the ownership of random priests, artists and orgyists, and proceeds to eat them all by dissolving them with a disgusting yellow foam, and yet inexplicably chewing. In the present, random assholes find the bed and have sex on or undress near it, all the while killing them while some douche in a painting waits for the original demon to fall asleep so he can somehow kill the bed.<br /><br />If that sounds confusing, don't take it as a sign that my writing skills leave something to be desired. That's as best as I could describe the plot of this movie. Why was it so hard? Because this film is incredibly convoluted, characters pop in and out without any explanation whatsoever, and the series of events are told so lazily that we get exposition in it's most obvious form; a character reminiscing about past events. SERIOUSLY. The guy in the painting, throughout the WHOLE movie, engages in a one-sided conversation with this bed, asking it why it does things, then answers his own questions, all the while providing plot details during the lull in action. Which is pretty much the whole movie.<br /><br />To say this movie has a completely random, convoluted plot that seems to have been written haphazardly as the filming took place is to give this film far too much credit.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Acting</span></strong><br />NON-EXISTENT. The actors just wander about with dull gazes on their faces, narrating lines with such boredom that the bed seems much less threatening than a bed that slowly dissolves you already is. Never again will I harshly judge movies like House of Wax or the Saw series or what-have-you ever again, because as bad as their acting is, they at least ACT. Fucking ZOMBIES have more pathos than these emotionless shades. They don't even act terrified or in pain. One guy loses his goddamn hands to the bed, and pulls out nothing but the bones (still attached somehow), and he just looks mildly bemused. BEMUSED. If I lost my hands to an acidic bed, I'd be slightly more distressed than that. Did the casting director decide to hire mutes or something?<br /><br />The one scene of "acting" I saw in the movie that actually sort of impressed me was when the token black chick somehow escaped the bed after having her legs half-eaten. She finds herself crawling to the door without being able to use her legs, and she does a good job of not using her legs. But that's it. That's literally the only scene in the movie that I'd even consider to have any acting at all. The rest of the scenes feature random people basically reading their lines out loud. Sometimes. Most of it was voice-over anyway. So really, the film is just people wandering aimlessly around the woods.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Special Effects/Production Values</strong><br /></span>To call these effects "special" is only apt when one uses the word "special" in an ironic, insulting sense. When I heard about this movie, I envisioned a bed that literally morphed into a monster mouth and chewed people up in a bloodbath with bones flying and organs crunching under the weight of the massive teeth of this four-poster bed. That turned out to be expecting WAY too much from this movie. Foam forms around stuff on the bed, which are shot at angles so that you don't see (most of the time) the holes food and people are being pulled through. Then they cut to said foodstuff/peoplestuff floating in yellow water. That's it. That's how the bed eats you. It's so lame, even for the seventies. The seventies had Star Wars and Close Encounters, don't tell me that bed-monster technology doesn't exist. No, this was foam, holes, and a tank of piss.<br /><br />As for production values, they too sucked. The room the Death Bed resides in literally is cardboard walls painted to look like brick. The outside scenes were filmed out in the forest somewhere. Everything else was depicted with the green screen of the 70s, the black screen. It looked very much like the set of a cheap porno. Which is not that far from what the film was. Random nudity occurred a lot. A LOT. I think only one girl did not undress in this movie at inexplicable moments.<br /><br />This movie could be made better with $70. Better yet, it could be made better with the 1970s equivalent of $70. There's no excuse for this nightmare.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;"><strong>Music</strong> </span><br />There wasn't any. There was only noise.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Disturbing Factor</span></strong><br />VERY strong. If I gave positive points for proficiency in this category, it'd be a <strong>0/4</strong>. The bed masturbates. In the immortal words of thespian/schmucky the clown Lewis Black, <strong>I WILL REPEAT THAT</strong>; The <strong>BED </strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong><em>MASTURBATES</em></strong>!</span> Need I say anything more?<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Editing</span></strong><br />Really bad. The first scene had two people talking and the words they said did not match their mouth movement. This had me believing that this may be a foreign film. Of course, next time someone spoke it was in proper sync. That just means the very first shot with people in it was butchered so badly that it would make people think the film was foreign. I think they decided to narrate everything (literally, ALMOST EVERYTHING) else so as to avoid this dilemma.<br /><br />As for the rest of it, exposition was deposited in random places where the director basically thought, "Oh shit! We need this scene in there or the movie won't make sense! Stick it in there someplace!" (Clearly the director forgot a few of these, as the movie did not make any sense)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Direction</span></strong><br />This movie reads as if the director found a camera laying around in the woods, and decided to make a movie on the spot. He found a few random people, most of whom were willing to be naked for the chance to be in a movie, and used what he could find in an afternoon to make a horror film. Having found a hole in the ground, his grandma's bed, and a few bad paintings, he decided to make Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. And so he did.<br /><br />BAD, BAD directing.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">Happy Ending</span></strong><br />Everyone dies. EVERYONE. The bed. The dipshits who somehow survived the bed that were tricked into death by the painting man. The painting man. EVERYONE. That's what I call a happy-fucking-ending.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">FINAL SCORE:</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">5/4</span></strong><br /><br />Even this score is a generous score. I say <span style="color:#ff0000;">5/4</span> only because I am wary of redefining my entire movie Gradation Scale by creating a new score lower than this. I toyed with it. I contemplated giving it a <strong><span style="color:#000066;">6/4</span></strong>, which would be the rating given to things that technically are not movies. A porno would score a 6/4. Or a chair. Or non-matter. This film is on par with non-existence. Do you understand the implication that I am making? This movie is SO BAD, it borders on <em>not being a movie at all</em>. This is better described as a mishmash of videos and sounds sewn together in a remedial attempt at a narrative with boobs thrown in for good measure. Oh, and a demon bed that eats you. That was really more of an afterthought, or a catalyst for nudity. And at that point I say, why not just make a porno? Make a porno, not a horrible movie that would score higher on my scale had it never been made.<br /><br />I am truly sorry for unleashing this wretched thing upon the people of Halifax. I post this in the hopes that maybe I can reduce the destruction I have wrought upon Metro's cinematic landscape.<br /><br />Yours in horror,<br />- <span style="color:#ff6600;">Silent G</span>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-91797624303063027042008-06-24T09:02:00.000-07:002008-06-24T09:18:55.283-07:00Ad Nauseum: Symbicort<a href="http://www.mysymbicort.com/hcp/images/sympro_homebody1.gif"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.mysymbicort.com/hcp/images/sympro_homebody1.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The argument for and against partially or wholly socialized medicine in the United States is a hot one; There are lots of reasons for it, and only the Rebublican's fear of Commie Cossack as an argument against it. However, the ultimate reason to give way to socialized medicine is it will also abolish a place in society for prescription drug advertisements. These need to stop.<br /><br />As a Canadian, I never see prescription drug ads on stations like CBC or CTV or what have you. Why? Because Canada is a socialist paradise compared to our neighbors to the south. There's no need to push drugs on TV here, because we don't have to be suckered into buying them. In the states, however, it seems daytime television is watched only by the uneducated and the severely, monstrously ill. Every commercial break during The Price is Right is for some pill for erectile dysfunction or free scooters. I've always had a tenuous relationship with these ads before, but I saw something recently that just blew my mind.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_phHdJizct4&hl=en"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_phHdJizct4&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />This seems like a pretty standard asthma medication ad at first glance, but did you catch that odd bit? The part where one of the listed side-effects is a <strong>GREATER RISK OF ASTHMA-RELATED DEATH?</strong> To me, that's when I go back to the drawing board, if the medicine I'm making for a specific illness has the unfortunate side effect of increasing the risk of dying from from that malady.<br /><br />She says it in such a callous way, too. She sounds so chipper about the fact that this could kill you from what you're using it to alleviate. Obviously she's been paid well. Though that's not so uncommon, talking about side effects worse than the disease in such a calming tone. What do these people think? I know they have to list the side effects, but do they think people will ignore side effects like "greater risk of asthma-related death" if it's said in a pleasing tone? Or, here's a novel idea; don't put drugs on the market with that many side effects, especially ones that are worse than, or, in this case, can cause death from the disease?<br /><br />If this isn't a good reason to provide socialized health care, then I don't know what is.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-28264957776463278792008-01-14T14:42:00.000-08:002008-01-14T15:08:56.315-08:00An Open Letter to KTS<strong>Dear King's Theatrical Society,</strong><br /><br /><br />You have a warped sense of entitlement, and a far worse grasp on priority. Your theatre <em>shares</em> space with the tunnels that connect Alex Hall to the A&A building, where just about all of us eat every day. And yet you choose the worst possible times to occupy this space. Why?<br /><br />I am a resonable man, KTS. I can understand that when you are putting on a performance for an audience, that disturbances are unwelcome. Hell, I can even understand being asked to take the outdoor route when the weather is reasonable. But it is when you demand of us to take the to the streets during a snow warning or, even once, a blizzard, just for a rehersal. That is warped. What is your reasoning behind this?<br /><br />The way I figure it, it's all a display of power. I've met a lot of Directors in my day, and let me tell you, they get off on it. There's no other logical explanation for it. Let us assume for a moment that my presence does disrupt the flow, the feng shui of the rehersal. Okay, fine, BUT; The Pit takes about 4 seconds to cross, at a regular pace. It takes about the same amount of time for the director to say to me, "Excuse me, we're doing a rehersal, you need to go the other way." Either way, it disrupts the rehersal. I've often noticed how no one rehersing even notices me until the director points out my presence by addressing me. And I'm sorry KTS, but not everyone is going to see those asinine signs you put up, and a number more won't care. When you see someone, just let them pass when it's horrible out, God.<br /><br />The worst case of the above was during an actual low-level blizzard earlier in the year. I am AT THE DOOR. Like, not the door to enter the Pit, the EXIT. TO WHERE I AM GOING. I had successfully crossed the Pit before the director noticed me. When he saw me he got up and said, "You're going to have to go outside, this is a rehersal!" I look around. HE IS THE <strong>ONLY</strong> PERSON IN THE ROOM! Are you fucking kidding me?!? I told this guy off a little, telling him how moronic he was being, and that there was no way in hell I was going to turn around, back through the Pit, and go outside IN A BLIZZARD. I was a split second away from him even noticing me, and unless he was practicing for The Vagina Monologues, there wasn't even a rehersal to be had. Do you not see how insane that is, KTS?<br /><br />Another problem I have; You KNOW when dinner is served, and yet you ALWAYS hold your rehersals around that time. When you KNOW there will be a large amount of traffic wanting to go that way. STOP DOING THAT. If you don't want to be bothered, don't reserve the room during mealtime. I'm also sure your cast is so glad to be missing supper for your magificent opus.<br /><br />One of the things most kids learn early is to how to share. Well, KTS, you're hogging the ball on this one, and you need to let us play with it too.<br /><br />When it's a blizzard, put up with 4 seconds of your time disturbed by us avoiding the harsh elements. And we wonder why this school has mumps epidemics come spring.<br /><br />Sincerely yours in outrage,<br />- Chris Muise<br /><br /><strong>Post Script to Cindy Day:</strong><br /><br />"Winterlude?" REALLY? No wonder CBC took Peter Coade.Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-16770073323217522052007-10-28T06:54:00.001-07:002007-10-28T12:27:47.698-07:00Proof that I am Sexorz<table height="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td height="1"><embed src="http://www.myheritagefiles.com/video/I/28/xu7s26_8709856f394274dmj8he26" width="340" height="340" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></td></tr>%1</table><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Here's my friend Cassie.<br /><br /><table height="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td height="1"><embed src="http://www.myheritagefiles.com/videos/I/28/b8he45_292781052e42743kpmr045" width="340" height="340" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></td></tr>%1</table><br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-3614140271645950542007-10-24T10:39:00.000-07:002007-10-24T10:49:21.335-07:00An Open Letter to Hotmail Live<div align="center"><span style="color:#ffff00;"></span><a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/nickmayhew/WindowsLiveWriter/WindowsLiveHotmailwebmailishotagain_7C43/image_thumb%5B1%5D.png"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/nickmayhew/WindowsLiveWriter/WindowsLiveHotmailwebmailishotagain_7C43/image_thumb%5B1%5D.png" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong> Behold, the Non-Threatening, Trendy Face of Evil.</strong></span></div><p><br /><br />Dear Hotmail,<br /><br />For the last half a year or so, maybe even a year, you've been offering to glam yourself up by upgrading to "<span style="color:#ffff00;">Hotmail Live</span>." 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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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 <span style="color:#ffff00;">4000 characters</span>? Fuck you! I write lengthy, existentialist rants back to my fundamentalist American ePenpal <span style="color:#ffff00;"><span style="color:#ffff00;">Scott</span> Zimmerman</span>, and 4000 characters isn't good enough. You used to be able to correct all of them. How exactly is this an upgrade?<br /><br />You're also slow as fuck on a glacier. You're as slow as this <span style="color:#ffff00;">Blogger</span> site, and just as annoying to edit. The fuck is wrong with you?<br /><br />Just cuz you've got a new best friend <span style="color:#ffff00;">Vista</span> doesn't mean you should change who you are to impress it. You were perfect just the way you were.<br /><br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kA6cf9CYoHo"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kA6cf9CYoHo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />No go <span style="color:#ffff00;">clean yourself the fuck up,</span> it's sickening to look at you.</p><p>-Silent G</p>Silent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-44455860413006429892007-10-23T05:58:00.000-07:002007-10-23T06:23:00.663-07:00Everything's Coming Up AWESOME<a href="http://thestoryofgoodoldrockandroll.com/ESW/Images/cbc_hand.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://thestoryofgoodoldrockandroll.com/ESW/Images/cbc_hand.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />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?<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;">A new girlfriend?</span><br /><br />No, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;">Won the lottery?</span><br /><br />No, you have to actually play first.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffff00;">A job with the CBC?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;color:#ff0000;"><strong>A-YUP!</strong></span><br /><br />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 <span style="color:#ffff00;">Doug Kirkaldy</span> (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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="color:#ffff00;">Ultimate Spider-Man</span> and <span style="color:#ffff00;">Tonkatsu</span>), 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />If I could only get that girlfriend, then life would be pretty much perfect right now.<br /><br />Speaking of...<br /><br />Hey ladies. I'm single, and I work for the CBC. Can you imagine anything more erotic? Me neither. Call me.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-74507367851509668202007-10-13T19:33:00.001-07:002007-10-14T07:42:17.049-07:00Do a Line...<a href="http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/gif/9conga.gif"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/gif/9conga.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Uh, hi.<br /><br />Yeah...so...<br /><br />So, I was Congaed today.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">that'd</span> set the mood for the rest of the afternoon;<br /><br />"LET'S CONGA!"<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zI5mfE9dhFU"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zI5mfE9dhFU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffff00;">DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!</span></strong><br /><strong></strong><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">shrubs</span> is not among the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">privileged</span> 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.<br /><br />Then Miss <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Crazybush</span> 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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">manga</span>.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Bizarro</span> 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.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">tha</span>-- and we cut them off right there. We knew what was coming and we basically told them to fuck off. We hurried home.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Latin</span> 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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />That's it for me. Excuse me while I go wash the filth away.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-69319257302047094102007-08-12T18:10:00.000-07:002007-08-12T20:42:54.833-07:00Five-Star and iPod: A Marriage Made in Hell<a href="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/02/2-4-07-mead.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/02/2-4-07-mead.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />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.<br /><br />And then Mead Five-Star had to go and fuck it all up for me.<br /><br />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. <em>"Listen to music the way it was meant to be; <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">out loud</span>!"</em> 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.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">iPods</span>; 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.<br /><br />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 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">boom box</span> with schoolwork inside it. And there's nothing cooler than the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Prepie's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ghettoblaster</span>, is there?<br /><br />This product will be dead in a week, and Mead will go out of business promoting the damned things.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />That's it for me, I'm out and I'm tired.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8019272538668347325.post-71049367386619414572007-08-11T17:38:00.000-07:002007-08-11T17:49:54.436-07:00The Gift of Music<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#000000"><tbody><tr><td><embed pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://res0.esnips.com/escentral/images/widgets/flash/esnips_player.swf" width="328" height="94" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="theTheme=blue&autoPlay=no&theFile=http://www.esnips.com//nsdoc/4d5ea7ac-51e9-48c3-bf65-2488d3a98a7b&theName=Steve Jablonsky - Autobots Descend Theme - With FX & Speak Edit- 04m08s&thePlayerURL=http://res0.esnips.com/escentral/images/widgets/flash/mp3WidgetPlayer.swf" bgcolor="#000" quality="high"></embed></td></tr><tr><td><table style="PADDING-LEFT: 2px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #ffffff; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: none" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com/CreateWidgetAction.ns?type=0&objectid=4d5ea7ac-51e9-48c3-bf65-2488d3a98a7b">Get this widget </a></td><td style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 7px"></td><td><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com//selectedfile/emaildoc/4d5ea7ac-51e9-48c3-bf65-2488d3a98a7b" align="center">Share </a></td><td style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 7px"></td><td align="middle"><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com/doc/4d5ea7ac-51e9-48c3-bf65-2488d3a98a7b/Steve-Jablonsky---Autobots-Descend-Theme---With-FX--Speak-Edit--04m08s/?widget=flash_player_esnips_blue" align="center">Track details </a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#000000"><tbody><tr><td><embed pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://res0.esnips.com/escentral/images/widgets/flash/esnips_player.swf" width="328" height="94" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="theTheme=blue&autoPlay=no&theFile=http://www.esnips.com//nsdoc/a87ac34f-cb74-4dc9-a69b-52566259f1ed&theName=Methos Dew - TF Fan Mix (Inspired By The Autobots Theme) - 05m14s&thePlayerURL=http://res0.esnips.com/escentral/images/widgets/flash/mp3WidgetPlayer.swf" bgcolor="#000" quality="high"></embed></td></tr><tr><td><table style="PADDING-LEFT: 2px; 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FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #ffffff; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: none" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com/CreateWidgetAction.ns?type=0&objectid=3351abca-fcb1-49ac-a431-2116ed381613">Get this widget </a></td><td style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 7px"></td><td><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com//selectedfile/emaildoc/3351abca-fcb1-49ac-a431-2116ed381613" align="center">Share </a></td><td style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 7px"></td><td align="middle"><a style="COLOR: #ffffff; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.esnips.com/doc/3351abca-fcb1-49ac-a431-2116ed381613/Darth-Siles---Transformers-TM-2007-Intro-Theme---Steve-Jablonsky-Cover---01m13s/?widget=flash_player_esnips_blue" align="center">Track details </a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Just some musical selections. A real post to come later.<br /><br />- Silent GSilent Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01598456827608645573noreply@blogger.com0