Something About Future Posts and Cookies? I Guess?

I never liked titling things.

Anyway! Keeping up with my New Year’s resolution of at least post per week. It’s been a big week for topics, with the State of the Union address and the iPad announced and a whole mess of other personal happenings…and, unfortunately, you’re not going to hear about them. Leastwise not from me.

I’m amending the New Year’s resolution, effective immediately: I will write at least post per week, and I will write posts as they come to me.

See, the problem goes like this: I read a piece/see a video/have an experience that generates a strong reaction. Could be humorous, could be angry, could be happy; it’s just strong enough to move me to start writing. In my head. And nine times out of ten I’m not actually able to hit the ol’ WordPress to get these ideas down on the proverbial paper. Not at a computer, in a class lab, whatever. So I say “Oh yeah, hold on to that one. Write about it when you get home.” And invariably I will return home, find a way to distract myself, and never write the idea down. Only when the original kernel of thought has been adequately obscured do I go back to the keyboard. Now armed with a corrupted data, I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t commit to words these half-baked thoughts. Hands thrown up in defeat. Time for more Mass Effect 2.

I mean, time for more rigorous studying. Because that’s what I do. All the time.

(In case my girlfriend is reading, ya know?)

You have no idea how hard it was to write all that. I really, really wanted to eat these cookies I just bought. In fact I did eat a few! I wanted more. But I refrained. For you, dear reader, for you.

Also because I’m trying to lose weight, and eating an entire package of cookies (a very small package, though!) is not conducive to that end. But man did I need a calorie boost. Still trying to figure out exactly where that sweet spot is between my stomach filibustering the organ Senate and draping myself over the desk clutching my belly groaning “nonooooo, gods noooooo” from fullness.

I’m gonna cut this off before it delves any more deeply into diary land. Now off to do programming homework!

No seriously, I will. You don’t know. Shut up.

“It’s Not Your Concern” – A Review of “The Book of Eli”Reli

Written By: Gary Whitta

Directed By: Albert and Allen Hughes

Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Jennifer Beals, Ray Stevenson

I saw The Book of Eli, the first movie directed by the Hughes brothers in nine years (their last was the adaptation of Alan Moore’s From Hell)  about a week ago, and I’ve sat on the review since. Mainly because it didn’t really leave me a lot to say.

I suppose the most frank review I can give is this: if you really have to see it, wait for the DVD.

See, I like my movies – at least the movies I have to review – to be in extremes. I want them to be very good or, failing that, very bad. I want them to give me something to write home about, even if they suck. For a review movie the worst sin that can be committed is to be blase; to be meh. And that’s exactly what The Book of Eli was.

So it’s thirty years into the end of the world. The future is grey, dusty and everyone owns welding goggles. Cannibals stalk the blasted highways and the leavings of Burlington Coat Factory are in abundant supply. Out of the east comes the titular Eli (Denzel Washington), the badass-with-a-heart-of-gold, carrying the last Bible on Earth to the west as per God’s command. Apparently it takes a lot longer to walk from the Atlantic to the Pacific after the Last War. Anyway, needing to recharge his off-brand MP3 player, Eli stops in a rundown little burg ruled over by Carnagie (Gary Oldman), a would-be dictator who’s looking for a Bible so he can reboot Christianity and leverage it as a weapon of facist civilization. He wants Eli’s Bible. Eli won’t give it to him. Conflict ensues.

The film had some interesting ideas and decent reveals at the end, but for the most part it was a mess. Our main characte is a guy I stopped caring about roughly twenty minutes in when he’s eviscerated a group of roadside cannibals pitilessly and then refuses to intervene when an innocent woman is being raped to death by Carnagie’s thugs on the way into town. Here is a supposed holy man who offers no absolution to the fallen and no charity to the weak. Way to walk the righteous path, man.

A little after the halfway point the movie becomes a tangle of under-explored themes and poorly explained motivations. The ideas about religion and it’s place in the human narrative were intriguing but ultimately never dwelled upon. The Bible is essentially a MacGuffin. I was hoping for something like A Canticle for Liebowitz with warrior-monks and instead I got Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with some Religous Studies 101. Which I guess was my own fault, but I still think the ideas the film presented were not addressed nearly enough. I suppose when the Hughes brothers kept answering questions about the movie’s themes with variations of “Wow, that’s a great question, what do you think?” I should have been tipped off.

There was one diamond in the grey colorless rough of the film, though. Gary Oldman’s performance as Mussolini-wannabe Carnagie was great. He brought sympathy to a despicable man who believes in his heart that he’s doing the right thing and carved out a fascinating figure in a movie full of non-characters. The scene where he utters the line “Pray for me. Really, I mean it,” was a brief glimpse of a movie that would have been far superior to what was delivered. A shame it didn’t get made.

Local Comedy in Knoxville! Also, “Book of Eli” Review Coming as Soon as I Rob a Ba-…I Mean, Get Paid

Keeping true to my word, unlike every other New Year’s resolution I ever made. Still haven’t finished that lightsaber…

Anyway. I’m broke! For a little while at least. By Wednesday at the latest I should have my financial aid money from the illustrious Univeristy of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Bourbon Whiskey, which will pad my bank account with a few thousand in extra scratch. Which means I’ll  be able to get back to the movie theater for reviews. More importantly, I  can start paying entree fees to the Side Splitters open-mic again! Woo hoo!

My next show at Side Splitters should be on Feb. 3rd. Detailed info will be on the “Upcoming Performances” page.

Prior to that is an imrpov workshop called “On The Spot at SID’s”, which may or may not be open to the public. I’m not sure at this point. I’ll let you folks know. If any of you care. Probably not.

But still!

You’ll notice a new link on the right for “Old City Comedy”, a new comedy event Patrick Sullivan’s Saloon in downtown Knoxville. I’ll be there Feb. 4th, you should too!

And…that’s about it. Unless you want to hear about my formal logic class homework. It’s really fascinating, see, there is an artificial symbolic language which is used to describe complex philosophical-

Oh, you’re leaving now. Well, that’s cool. You got places to be. I do too! So, yeah, maybe we can hang out ag-

And now you’re gone.

“What’s there to cure?” – A Review of “Daybreakers”

Written & Directed By: Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman

The night before seeing Daybreakers I watched another film, called Blue Gold: World Water Wars. It was a documentary about the use of water resources in the industrial and post-industrial age – recent history – and the increasing privatization of water. Near the end of the film the case of the 2000 Bolivian water riots came up, with interviewed experts and commentators mentioning that the transnational corporation which incited the riots had not only privatized the ground water in Bolivia but also percipitation. The people of Bolivia were banned from collecting rain water as an alternative, forcing them to pay whatever price the company chose to leverage. This was interspersed with images of the Bolivian army and riot police attacking protesters. Attacking and killing their countrypeople to defend the ability of an outside party to subjugate them.

This is going to get to vampires soon, I promise.

The premise of Daybreakers is pretty simple. It’s 2019, ten years of an outbreak of vampirism has turned all mammalians into bloodsuckers. I’m guessing it’s all mammals because the opening says the disease started with a bat and there’s a picture of a vampire chimp, which to my reckoning is worth the price of admission. Anyway, most of humanity has been turned, living in sun-protected buildings, driving sun-protected cars, taking the Subwalk to work and becoming primarily nocturnal. Oh, and they farm whatever remaining humans they can find for blood to drink in big Matrix-y looking towers.

There are some folks though, like our protagonist Ed (Ethan Hawke), who aren’t as keen on the undead thing as the rest of the populace, drinking pig’s blood and generally being mopey about living forever on the blood of the innocent. He’s employed by the company which provides most of America’s blood, tasked with developing a synthetic subsitute. Turns out there’s only a month’s worth of blood left, human or otherwise, and when vampires run out of blood they don’t just die…again. No, turns out they transform into insane bat/human monsters that attack anything with blood in sight. So it’s the end of the world unless Ed can find a substitute for blood…or a cure for vampirism.

This movie surprised me with the power of its metaphor. It is subtle, well played, but strong. You see, the vampire’s world is much like ours, or at least the upper echelons of ours. Oppulent, decadent, but bleak in its way. And like every aspect of our society,  built upon and fed by the misery of our fellow humans, hanging by a tenuous thread. We coerce, swindle and maraud to get our food, water and energy. We harm not only our neighbors but ourselves by undermining the natural systems that sustain us. With every drop and scrap we drive the coffin-nails deeper. And we make it harder to go back once the lifeblood, in whatever form, runs dry.

The vampires in Daybreakers are not simply destroying their ecosystem. They are destroying themselves.

There are two scenes which illustrate the metaphor in brutal clarity, but for the sake of spoilers I won’t discuss the later. It’s near the end and involves a large group of soldiers, you won’t miss it. The first one goes like this: in the undead future coffee is still America’s favorite morning (or evening) drink, spiked with a little blood. When the local Subwalk coffee stand drops the blood content from 2o% to 5%, the customers get uppity. A square-jawed All-American man in a dapper business suit growls “Give me the fucking blood,” to the scared woman behind the counter, before wrestling a bag of the precious out of her hands, which promptly explodes. All hell breaks loose; cops, employees and patrons alike start howling and scrambling over each other to lap up even a few drops of blood from any surface. It’s no coincidence that every vampire in the film is attired as if in an idealized noir version of the American 1950s. This is what the predator culture has reduced them to; reduced us to. When the lifeblood runs dry, so does our humanity.

This review didn’t really mention a lot about the performances in the movie, mostly because…well, not that they were bad, but they weren’t astonishing either. Everyone brings their professionalism and deliver solid, believable characters. I don’t really know what more to say.

The cinematography was gorgeous. All the vampire world scenes are done in a gloomy silver nitrate finish that makes the place cold and hostile and gives the few splashes of color real pop. A beautiful film if nothing else.

Daybreakers doesn’t do anything to reinvent the vampire subgenre but the original premise, engaging undertones and break from the current cuddly-sparkley fad all make it a solid entry. In a season that’s usually a studio dumping ground this is a welcome work of quality. You won’t regret spending the ticket price.

P.S. I do have one quibble. Early in the film a vampire is shot with a wooden crossbow bolt, and it seems no worse for wear. Later on every time one of them seems to even get nicked by a piece of wood they explode violently. I still haven’t parsed that one out…

The Year is Twenty-Ten. Mankind Has But One Hope. And That Hope Is…

Blogging. (DUN DUN DUNNN!)

It’s a new year, a new decade, and I have emerged from the chrysalis-stage hibernation to restart my hovel in the shantytown of the interwebs, standing upon the corrugated steel roof swinging a crudely butchered chicken carcass in the air while ululating about movies and what I had for lunch.

…I’m sorry, I kind of drifted off there.

It’s been half a year! And a lot has happend. Girlfriend moved back to Vancouver for grad school (I miss you honey!), I got an apartment in the University district of Knoxville while I work on my undegrad (it smells funny by the radiator!) and I’ve submitted a short story to some magazines (I don’t know if I’m allowed to say which ones!)

Great beasts were slain, tyrants were deposed. We rocked mad styles, we hopped turn-styles. All this, and more! It happened. And now I will begin again to catalog the new adventures.

New Year’s Resolution: post at least once a week. Doesn’t matter about what. Hopefully stuff that’s interesting and topical. Maybe stuff about my D&D campaign. But regardless, there will be at least one post on this blog every week until…there isn’t. Because I’m doing something else. Hopefully that I’m paid for.

This week’s minimum post is going to be one of those boring ones, I think. Or, it already is. Moving on!

I’ve just gotten back to Knoxville today after visiting  my so-close-a-friend-he’s-a-brother and his fiance, my mother and grandmother, and having my girlfriend visit here during the month of December. It was…well, having my girlfriend here was fun. Seeing my folks, specifically my mother, is always sort of like pulling a length of yarn through my nose and out of my mouth (don’t worry, she doesn’t read this.) And Ed, my best friend/brother and Shannon his fiance were both hit by a car just before Thanksgiving. They were both still recovering when I was visiting them outside of Boston. But in the comfort of their own apartment! So that’s something.

Like I said earlier, sent out a short story to a few horror lit magazines, hopefully will hear positive news back from them ’round March. Wouldn’t that be an awesome birthday present? Now I’m working on two more, much shorter than this first, in the sci-fi genre. Going to try and keep these two below 6500 words, which seems to be the average cap on submissions for these kinds of publications. Exciting!

And the comedy career continues to…flounder. But at least it exists! My friend Nick Edgman has started hosting a revue called “Wino Theater” at local watering hole The Speakeasy, an invite-only thing seperate from the pay-to-play open mic at Side Splitters. Both are a lot of fun, but the truth is this will never go anywhere if I don’t start playing at least outside of the city, and preferably outside of the region. Babysteps though.

Two things to help on that front: a car (thanks girlfriend’s mom!) and a chance at a full year of studying in the Seattle. Partly to build the writing/comedy/acting career, mostly as a ploy to be closer to my beloved, I’m gonna try and finaggle my way into the University of Washington through the National Student Exchange. More on that as it develops!

So! Now we’re all caught up.

…How’ve you been?

“Did you and Ginny do it?” – a review of “Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince”

Written by: Steve Kloves (Screenplay), J.K. Rowling (Novel)

Directed by: David Yates

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Tom Felton

I just…aahh. You can’t see right now, but I just ran my hand through my hair and grimaced as if asked a very uncomfortable and complex question. See, I feel like there’s something wrong. Something wrong with me. That I have some imperceptable but still symptomatic mental condition, which rears it’s head periodically every few years. Because I seem to be the only person I know who does not like the Harry Potter movies.

Now don’t let that throw you off. I believe most of them are good movies. I even ffind myself enjoying moments and set pieces, up to and including the latest, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But I cannot bring myself to say that I like it. And this makes me feel like I am either crazy or the last sane fan in the theater.

It’s a matter, most likely, of being just too damn picky. A classic case of the movie on the screen never being as good as the movie in my head. You’re reading a blog written by one of the most dedicated and loving HP fans you’ll ever have the chance to meet. I grew up with these books, started reading them in 4th grade before the first was even published in the States. I’ve always had high expectations of the filmic translations, lofty and grand ambitions that capture the true potency of the source material, expectations that are invariably deflated upon meeting with the reality of a major studio production. And, like an alzheimer’s patient, I return every two years having forgotten everything from before, all sins forgiven. This time, surely this time, they’ll get it right.

And oh how I hoped this time. All the evidence was there! They had given the movie a length of 2 hours 33 minutes,a good chunk of time to tell the story. There was a trailer filled with misty, menace-filled scenery and bombastic music. The wizarding world goes to war! It seemed like here, near the last leg of the race, our stalwart filmmakers had finally gotten their shit together.

But as the movie began to roll hope faded from me, replaced by the dull reality that once again I was going to sit through a pleasant enough string of jokes and character acting that missed the tones and beats of the larger story like a tone-deaf, two-left-footed dancer.

Okay, let me pull over for a second and talk about what I actually liked in this film. The performances were top-notch. Our regular cast of Radcliffe, Grint and Watson and their classmates have all grown up in these roles and wear them now like comfortable tailored suits. The scenes involving the Ron/Hermione romance subplot were all pitch-perfect and charming, their Moonlighting-esque love blossoming at last. And the addition of more establishing material for Harry and Ginny’s relationship was welcome and executed well, adding some needed heft to Harry’s realization that he actually loves Ginny Weasely. This was one of the only changes to the plot that actually sat well with me…No! No, bad Sean. You promised to be positive.

Umm, positive, positive. Well, continuing with the perfomances, character actor Jim Broadbent is glistening as Prof. Horace Slughorn, the new Potions Master at Hogwarts. He portrays Slughorn’s jovial, smoking-jacketed “Eh wot?” personality with perfect comedic pitch, and makes the man touching and sympathetic in the heavy scenes revolving ’round his involvement with Voldemort.  Whenever the Broadbent appears on the screen he simply owns it, and all others must fall in place behind him.  Likewise Alan Rickman once again dominates as the tortured double-agent Severus Snape, bringing an air of hurt and all-but-concealed remorse to the character that is not present in the books but is a welcome twist in the movies.

The cinematography is great too. Of course Warner Bros. spares (nearly) no expense on these pictures, tentpole pieces every time they’re released, spit-polishing them until they sparkle in their own unique way. In Prince we see a world suffused in silvery gloom, as if the fog of war is all around us and nowhere is safe from the threat of Voldemort’s forces.

But this leads me directly to why I didn’t like this movie, despite the individual merits. The sum of those parts is not greater than the whole. Yes, the hue and lighting and shots all suggest, gesture vaguely at the looming threat of wizarding war going on in this world. There’s even a brief mention that Hogwarts isn’t safe anymore, Death Eaters are trying to get in, people are disappearing maybe, ooooh. And that’s about it. We’re never really shown what is going on or why it’s so bad. There’s no scanning the paper looking to see if family members are among the dead or missing. No news of new attacks by Voldemort’s goons upon wizard and Muggle alike. Nobody in Hogwarts seems to be very aware that there’s anything like a war going on outside their walls, that is until it sneaks in and kills their leader. This was supposed to be the volume where things really ramped up and the reality of of living in wartime, even when you’re not on the front, was omnipresent in the book. The film felt more safe and subdued than the previous.

That, to me, is the true failure of Prince. It looks good, sounds good, even is good in many portions but misses the bloody point in the final analysis. It’s all summed up in the final climactic scene, Dumbeldore’s death. Harry and Dumbledore arrive back at the school just in time to get jumped by Draco and the Death Eater’s he’s smuggled in.

Now, in the books, Harry is paralyzed by Draco and has to watch in horror while his father-figure is murdered by the apparent traitor Snape, helpless to do anything. In the movie, Harry is ordered to hide under the stairs while Dumbledore faces certain death. In the book, nobody knows that Harry is lying in hiding under his invisibility cloak. Movie-wise, Snape and Harry share a weird conspiratorial moment before he goes up to do the final deed. Seriously, Snape has Harry dead-to-rights, could put him away easily if he wanted. At least could have knocked the kid out. But all he does his share a pause with Harry, as if to say “Chill kid, I’ve got this.” And Harry still thinks that Snape isn’t on their side? That this wasn’t planned? That makes him look pretty fucking dumb and petulant, rather than wounded and avenging. An important point throughout the rest of the series is Snape’s ambiguity. Now that’s all shot to hell. When Harry confronts him on the grounds off-notes continue to be hit. Instead of seeing a Snape torn by rage and grief when Harry calls him a coward for his great sacrifice, he’s just kinda…non-plussed. A beautiful moment for Alan Rickman to show us Snape underneath the guise is lost. They don’t even take the time explain a crucial plot-point after it’s dropped here. “Oh, yeah, I’m totally the Half-Blood Prince. Whatever that means. Later!”

The whole series has been rife with moments and turns like this. And with director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves, who’ve been with us since #5 and 4 respectively, continuing into the two parts of Deathly Hallows, it doesn’t seem like the missteps will let up. But gods damn my fandom to hell, I’ll be there at 12:01  November 11th, 2010 regardless of all that.

Because they’ve gotta get it right next time. I can feel it.

“I am directly below enemy scrotum.” – A review “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

Directed by: Michael Bay

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Josh Duhamel, Tyrse Gibbson

About half-way through this movie (thought I can’t be entirely sure, more on that later) there’s an exchange between our hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and an aging Decepticon-cum-Autobot named Jetfire, which pretty much sums up the whole experience. They’ve just been teleported from the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum to, literally, bumfuck Egypt and the humans are very confused:

JETFIRE: I told you, taking the Space Bridge is the quickest way to get to Egypt.

SAM: What? Space Bridge? You didn’t tell us anything!

JETFIRE: Harrumph…You were given due warning.

No we weren’t! What’s a Space Bridge? Why hasn’t it been mentioned before? Why doesn’t it ever come up again? What just happened? It doesn’t matter because cool, exciting things continue to occur and the characters are left very little time to reflect on the nonsense. Such is the audience’s relationship with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The movie succeeds in it’s stated objective, which is to show off giant robots fighting and looking awesome with the latest in digital F/X technology. There are no nits to be picked in this regard. Like the first movie, this is a visual triumph that probably spent the gross national products of a few central Asian states to bring us a full-scale Autobot vs. Decepticon war on Earth.  And it even manages to have a few genuinely good moments of humor and character for it’s cast, digital and meaty alike. Michael Bay’s signature frat-boy manchild humor comes into play more often than I like (the astronomy class scene? John Tarturro’s jockstrap? Leg humping not once, but twice? Yeah, I could have done without), but it still managed to make me laugh. The Twins though…eeegh. Racist caricatures will lose you big points every time, Mikey. Gotta put that shit away. They probably would have been a lot more enjoyable without the weird high-pitched “urban” accents and gold buckteeth.

Usually I would avoid spoilers in the main body of a review, like revealing that fan-favorite Transformer Jetfire shows up and does stuff, but RotF really doesn’t need the protection. The plot isn’t just ancillary, it’s incomprehensible. The movie goes on for about 150 minutes and by the third leg of it I had completely lost all sense of place and time. Events were just happening seemingly at random, in completely different locales, with different tones of character. There were about five McGuffins throughout the movie, none of them explained much beyond “we need to go there/get them because it’s/they’re awesome!” It kind of felt like I had watched about two or three different movies by the time we reach the non-climax of the film, none of which made a lot of sense.

It’s a non-climax because while being an enormous action scene where the titular Fallen, Megatron (really, you thought he was gonna stay dead? C’mon) and their Decepticon horde tear through the US Military, Autobots and the Great Pyramid of Giza to get at a Transformer superweapon that will turn the sun into Energon which they can use to revive their homeworld or build new Transformers or something, and…How do you feel after reading that sentence? Now extrapolate that into the visual exhaustion and apathy you’d get from watching it play out on a giant screen. It’s the climax only by virtue of being the last battle in what has been a disjointed string of battles.

And yet, for all that, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. The sheer spectacle of the thing combined with characters that were pretty funny and engaging when they had a few moments where everything in the world was not exploding kept me from checking out. I don’t know why exactly we need to find Energon, or why the Fallen was never mentioned before now, or why exactly there’s a Decepticon disguised as a human (traditionally a big no-no in the mythos), and what’s the Matrix of Leadership exactly? We’re going to Giza! No wait, Petra! Now Giza again! Holy crap, look at them tear up that pyramid*! This is awesome! It’s kinda like a rickety old zipper ride at the carnival: if you get tense and resist, you’ll be jostled around and get bruised up and probably vomit. But just relax, be loose, and go along with the motions, and you’re treated to a pretty but confusing display of sounds and colors at all sorts of crazy angles. You’ll probably still vomit though if you eat before hand.

Of course, there were somthings that just can’t be ignored. Can we please, please end the trend of heroes with awesome lives trying to be “normal”?  Sam has a bottomless government account, friendship with giant talking robots who think he’s awesome, and a girlfriend who is absolutely stunning in leather pants. Why does he want to leave? Writer Robert Orci says it’s because “[m]ost of us go off to school, don’t we, and leave home[...]Didn’t that happen to you? Why’d you do that?” Because my life sucked when I was 18. Maybe if I had the robots and the bank account I would have stuck the hell around. And if I can go the rest of my life without hearing another song by Linkin Park I will be a better man for it.

Some people are just not gonna loosen up enough to watch this movie. Even some of my most diehard geeky friends can’t bring themselves to enjoy it. There’s too much…stuff. I mean, really, that’s all it is. It’s stuff. Sound and fury signifying…well, that depends on who you ask. Ask them, it’s signifying nothing. Ask me? It’s signifying oh my god he just ripped that robot-tiger-thing’s spine out! Fuck yeah! And sometimes, when it’s done well, that’s all it needs to be.

*Note: It’s not a gripe really, but as the fiance of an archaeologist and a lover of antiquity myself, I gotta say that movies where historical stuff gets destroyed are painful to watch sometimes. Literally the entire time that Devastator was demolishing the capstones of the Great Pyramid I was clutching my chest like it was my first goddamn heart attack. And the scene in the library at Unnamed University? Holy freakin’ god.

Traditional Media Flails Madly In Death Throes, Doesn’t Know How YouTube Works

So! Newspapers are dying. Have you heard? Yeah, it’s getting pretty scary out there for print media, in the wake of easy-to-access information streams from the internet and other computer networks. So the Associated Press, one of the 800-pound gorillas of the news world, is trying to model itself as the internet’s content sheriff, so that all the young digi-kids will get the hell off their lawn.

Might help if they knew how the internet fucking works:

“The other day I get an email from our Regional Radio Representative with the AP in Chicago saying the following…

I noticed you are posting our video content with out a license and have to ask you to remove the AP video content from the site ASAP. If you would like to know more about our web services please contact me.

Not exactly a cease and desist letter, but the point is the same.

I was stunned.”

Indeed. The AP apparently did not just simply misunderstand the terms of use for YouTube, but didn’t even know they had a YouTube channel. They actually thought they could get away with threatening somebody for using content that they were freely distributing. Fucking dinosaurs.

Because I’m immature and mean, I’m going to embed a shit-ton of AP videos regarding the latest incident of Somalian piracy, in which an American-owned freighter was hijacked. Somalian pirates! Remember them? Have fun squandering all that folk hero goodwill you guys built up! A more detailed post to follow.

To the AP: Come and get me, motherfuckers…

Oh, and here’s one more, from when the Somali Pirate Kings hijacked and stole a fucking super-tanker:

The Themes, They Are A-Changin’

Sorry, I’ve still got Watchmen on the brain.

Anywho, I’ve decided to play around a bit with the themes and set up of the page now that I’m back and still left with huge amounts of free unemployed time. Hopefully get a nice custom header image at some point, fix some font issues. Things’ll be a bit in flux for the next couple of days.

Coming soon: a review of Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder! Maybe! If I feel like it!

“Would It Make You Smile If I Told You I Was Wrong?’” – A Review of “Watchmen”

Written By: David Hayter and Alex Tse (Screenplay), Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Comic book)

Directed By: Zack Snyder

Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino

Watchmen needs little introduction at this point, especially if you’re reading a review of it here, but I’ll give it a go. The movie and graphic novel it’s based on are set in an alternate 1985 where superheroes are real and have drastically affected the course of history; being instrumental in the conquering of Vietnam and the election of Richard Nixon for multiple terms, as one example. It tells the story of a now-defunct supergroup as the last active member, a mentally unhinged crimefighter named Rorschach, rouses his old comrades to solve a mystery: who killed the Comedian, one of their own, and why?

The most positive press coming from most papers and trade publications describe the adaptation of writer Alan Moore’s seminal work as being okay but listless. A visually stunning film but, too caught up in homage to be relevant. The New Yorker went so far as to describe Watchmen as “embalmed.”

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the professional reviewers are talking about when it comes to Watchmen.

Though reverent, the movie is anything but stagnant. The opening, which is comprised of a fight between an unknown assassin and the Comedian in his apartment and a title sequence that catches us up on a new timeline rife with costumed heroes is a microcosm of the film’s triumphs. The duel which sets off the events of the story virtually recreates the graphic novel frame-for-frame, but the title sequence is an invention of director Zack Snyder that adds tremendously to the tale.

I think it’s mostly a failure of imagination on the part of the reviewers. To suggest that Cold War-era paranoia of nuclear attacks that could come at any moment without warning and the looming fear of a world that is being rent asunder by our actions are dated and not relatable for a modern audience is laughable. Where have these people been living for the last eight years? I’d love to buy an apartment there.

There are also varying opinions that the characters are dull and uncaring (for instance Patrick Wilson’s Night Owl) or disturbing and unsympathetic (leveraged mainly at Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach), suggesting that many people have missed the point. We aren’t supposed to feel unambiguous support for Rorschach because he is very clearly a broken individual with a sense of absolutism that is unsettling to our modern sensibilities. Likewise Night Owl is supposed to feel wishy-washy and impotent (literally) because he’s ceded what little power he had to affect his world, and even when he does seize the reigns again it may not be enough. Watchmen, both the source material and it’s adaptation, are meant to make the viewer uncomfortable throughout, and this doesn’t jibe with what people who aren’t used to comic books expect from the medium and it’s mythologies. Even the previously most somber superhero movie, The Dark Knight, reassures us very firmly that Batman, despite doubts about his methods or choices at the end of the day is just, noble and necessary. Watchmen on the other hand demands we ask if the idea of superheroics is worth it at all. Every time we see and hear a gruesomely accurate act of violence, every time we witness how much worse off the world seems for it’s bevy of heroes, and every time we glimpse the mind of the kind of person who would wear a costume and fight “evil”, we have to ask if this parallel 1985 would be better off without them.

As you can guess, I liked the movie and highly recommend it. There are few adaptations that can walk the fine line between faithfulness to source material and the need to be an independent work of art without falling, and Watchmen strides it confidently. There’s more than enough of the novel’s set pieces and overall spirit there to bear the title, but it takes liberties with interpretations of characters, intent and content that in many ways I find it a superior work. Alan Moore, especially he’s writing a superhero story, has a bad tendency towards condescension and pessimism about his characters. While everyone’s still flawed and all-too-human in the movie, you don’t feel that they’re laughable or pathetic; you take them seriously.

For people who aren’t familiar with the novel, I can still recommend it whole-heatedly. There is a complete story here that unfolds with few loose ends and missteps. There are a few things that don’t get enough fleshing out (for instance how Nixon was able to stay in office so damn long, or the Keene Act which out-lawed superheroes), but you pick up enough that the main body of the story makes sense and is fulfilling.

Now we come to the spoilertastic portion of the review where I talk about the ending and things that got changed/deleted. So if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read beyond this point.

Seriously, I’m warning you.

Go get a sandwich or something.

Still here? Alright.

First off, there’s little remnant of the many background characters that lent a lot of heart to the novel. Bernard and Bernie only make two appearances for instance, the biggest at the end. But oh, what an appearance it is. That little moment where Bernard embraces Bernie, in a desperate attempt to shield him from a blast of radiation? It’s a powerful moment of two normal people reacting to the overpowering and horrific that resonates deep, even though we don’t know them by name. They stand for for every one of the 18 million(!) dead by Ozymandias’ hand.

The ending is the thing that’s most going to annoy purists. No squid = no good, in a lot of fans’ eyes. I was pretty cheesed at the framing of Dr. Manhattan myself, until my girlfriend broke it down for me. Unlike the alien threat of Ozymandias’ original plan, everyone on Earth is absolutely certain that Dr. Manhattan exists, and they know he’s capable of repeating “his” actions. Unlike the alien invasion, there’s not a lot of reason to question it. Sure, there’s the somewhat uncomfortable extrapolation, that now we’ll have a society that has every reason to believe god is real and vengeful, and that will have weird effects, but so would a society that believes it’s hunting an alien menace across the stars. Ozymandias’ plan is never meant to be sane, just have a certain result.

That change also effects the whole tone of the movie. Now instead of focusing purely on the nuclear threat, we’re dealing with the overall destructive nature of man. This is why Dr. Manhattan doesn’t intervene and simply destroy all the nukes on Earth, why Ozymandias is trying to solve the problem of infinite renewable energy, and more broadly why the Comedian is right at the first meeting of the Watchmen: our problems and our flaws are larger, deeper than an arms race, and much harder to solve. Even if that threat was removed, something else would come up in it’s place. As evidenced by the world we are living in right here, right now.