Yeah, I watched the Oscars, though I seldom find them entertaining any more. My wife and I were able to attend about 20 years ago (the year Clint Eastwood won for Unforgiven) and go to the Governor’s Ball afterward so we have a certain nostalgia for the event. Only one image really sticks with me, and it was before the show. It was an image of George Clooney high-fiving his fans, but doing it separated by a chain link fence. Even the President still greets the public in person from time to time. To me, it was a brutal caricature of a Hollywood actor trying to pretend he is engaging with the common man but utterly failing to do so.
This is a pretty cool video showing green screen use in TV and movies.
I will say I don’t really draw any philosophical conclusions about the meaning of life and reality from it, other than to say, “how cool is it that we can do this?”
I thought this was pretty good. I was so focused on the Dances with Wolves parallels that I missed this one. Via the South Bend Seven, who has other review notes on Avatar.
A producer of Creation, the film about Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, starring Paul Bettany and his real-life wife Jennifer Connelly, is griping that the film has no distributor in the US, apparently because so many Americans are evolution-hating mouth-breathers that no one wants the touch the thing; it’s just too darn controversial.
Well, it may be that. Alternately, and leaving aside any discussion of the actual quality of the film, it may be that a quiet story about the difficult relationship between an increasingly agnostic 19th Century British scientist and his increasingly devout wife, thrown into sharp relief by the death of their beloved 10-year-old daughter, performed by mid-list stars, is not exactly the sort of film that’s going to draw in a huge winter holiday crowd, regardless of whether that scientist happens to be Darwin or not, and that these facts are rather more pertinent, from a potential distributor’s point of view. . . . Maybe if Charles Darwin were played by Will Smith, was a gun-toting robot sent back from the future to learn how to love, and to kill the crap out of the alien baby eaters cleverly disguised as Galapagos tortoises, and then some way were contrived for Jennifer Connelly to expose her breasts to RoboDarwin two-thirds of the way through the film, and there were explosions and lasers and stunt men flying 150 feet into the air, then we might be talking wide-release from a modern major studio. Otherwise, you know, not so much. The “oh, it’s too controversial for Americans†comment is, I suspect, a bit of face-saving rationalization from a producer
If you think Scalzi is exaggerating, sit and actually write down a synopsis of the plot for “Transformers” and see if you get anything that makes any more sense – just substitute “Jennifer Connelly’s bare breasts” with “Megan Fox’s bare midriff.”
Jeannie, fresh as a daisy/Just love how she obeys me/She does things that amaze me so…
The Star Trek lyrics are awful, but you have to do a search to find them all. The Leave it to Beaver lyrics are just … bizarre. Some pre-1960s hallucinogens or something.
You would think I had learned my lesson 35 years ago when I saw the absolutely awful movie “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” probably the worst movie I have ever seen, at least as compared to the profile of its cast. One needs to be very suspicious of the “lets-make-a-show-from-stringing-together-a-bunch-of-songs-from-one-band” genre, though I guess I was lulled intlo complacency by my enjoying Mamma Mia (the show, not the movie) despite not really being an ABBA fan.
This show was really pretty awful. The plot and most of the humor was downright embarassing to watch. Only a fun and rowdy last 20 minutes plus a pretty decent female lead saved the experience — like Mamma Mia, the best part is the encore, but even more so here. A bad plot is accented by perhaps the least likeable male protagonist since Thomas Covenant. This will play quite well in Branson some day.
As a full disclosure, the show has been running for some time and the audience on a Wednesday night was nearly full so I may be in the minority on this one. But my advice is to skip it and try another show.
The original was a sort of surprise — one expected a movie based on a toy franchise to suck, but it was actually OK. It had a bit of wit, probably Spielberg’s influence. The new movie is not nearly as good. I give it about 2.5 stars, with that being an average of 1.5 stars when Megan Fox is off the screen and 5 stars when she is on the screen. The director avoids doing anything to advance the plot when she is on the screen, which is good because it is hard to concentrate during those moments.
The one highlight for me was that most of the college scenes were filmed at my old alma mater Princeton. With all due appologies to my friends, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to seeing 40 or 50 consistently smoking hot college girls wandering around the Princeton campus. We had a name for women like that when I was there — we called them “visitors.”
One bit of credit — unlike a lot action movie sequels, the plot was mostly coherant. The humor was strained, more sophomoric and less witty than the original. Thedogs having sex in the beginning was gratuitous, for example.
Anyway, my kids enjoyed it, and it was a decent way to spend a summer afternoon when it was 107 outside. Air conditioning always adds at least 1 star to every movie during a Phoenix summer.
If you can get over the cognitive dissonance of seeing Spock feel up Uhura, this is a very solid movie. Much like Casino Royale did for the Bond franchise, it tore the franchise down and rebuilt it very well, creating something that is both familiar and true to the original yet less campy and more up-to-date. My son, who has never seen any of the original series (yeah, I know, major parenting failure) really enjoyed it as well. Interestingly, there were almost more references back to The Wrath of Khan as there were to the original series.
I’m delighted Kate Winslet finally got a Best Actress Oscar, because she deserves it for being so good for so long but also because now that means, pace Halle Berry and Charlize Theron, that she will now immediately make a God-awful action film in which she wears very tight black latex, and I’m all for that.
Update: This is also an interesting study in the Heisenberg principle (which, generalized from its quantum mechanics roots, posits that you can’t study a process without altering it). The very act of posting the results is changing future Google searches, so the original results will be invalid.
Update #2: There needs to be one of those web sites that do textual analysis of web content called the geek-o-meter. I would suppose that by dropping a Heisenberg and a Star Trek reference in the same post, I have shot up there on any presumptive scale. All I need is a D&D reference, which I actually came frighteningly close to in the last post when I wanted to say “it’s like Obama dropped all his character creation points into charisma and didn’t have any left over for wisdom.”
Apparently Patrick McGoohan has passed away. I suspect his death will further reinvigorate interest in the Prisoner series, a 17-episone show following a spy trying to come in from the cold, but who finds himself in an surreal small town structured for maximum surveillance and to try to extract as many secrets from him as possible. A nice statement on the individual vs. the state, 1960s style. I have not seen every epiosode, but I enjoyed most of it, right up to the ending, which I confess I didn’t totally get but seemed to undermine the individual vs. the state theme and convert it to some Freudian surrealism. If you become intrigued, you don’t necesarily need to shell out to Amazon because AMC is streaming all the original episodes online in preparation for a remake they are producing this year.
Now, I also happen to think Quantum of Solace wasn’t a very good movie. The pace was so frenetic — chase, fight, chase, fight, chase, fight — that there was hardly any story that seemed worth following, and what story there was just wasn’t very interesting. (Cornering the water supply of Bolivia? Seriously? And you thought the later Roger Moore movies were ridiculous?)
I feel I need to clarify one thing. I am a huge fan of the old Bond movies. Goldfinger, Thunderball, Diamonds are Forever, Goldeneye — all great. Despite my comments above, I even like most of the Roger Moore films, though you have to take a different approach to them. But the formula was tired. The Survivor formula was hugely popular at first, but in season 9 or 10 or whatever, it’s just done. You either are repeating the same tired cliches, because you feel locked into a formula by your fans who will get pissed (as they did with Casino Royale) when you violate any minute detail the Formula, or you fall into the trap of trying to top yourself with goofier and goofier plots. I actually thought the series was dead around about View to a Kill, but Pierce Brosnan really brought new life to the series for a while.
Oh, and I wanted to really make fun of the plot in the new movie, because it really is a great WTF moment, but I didn’t want to include a spoiler, since there is some mis-direction in the movie. However, the spoilers have already come out in the comments, so if you are interested, I reveal the incredible world-shaking evil plot around comment #6 here.
I saw a trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie, which could essentially be called “young Spock and Kirk.” It could be good. Talk about a franchise, though, that has been milked to death. A new take would be refreshing. We’ll see. Never forget Battlestar Galactica – from the ultimate in goofiness came one of the better science fiction series to hit television.
The note above reminds me of an idea I have for a movie that I think would be a no-brainer. The Star Wars clone wars stuff has pretty much lost me (actually the dialog in episodes 1-3 pretty much lost me). But I always thought a young Han and Chewie movie – how they met, various pirate adventures, young Lando, etc. would be almost a layup to make succesful. I am increasingly convinced that that the Star Wars movies were good almost in direct proportion to how much Han Solo was on the screen (well, maybe pre-dryfreeze Han Solo — after he was unfrozen, he was a little goody-two-shoes for my taste.)
First, I want to preface that I absolutely loved Casino Royale. I had expected not to like it, being skeptical of Daniel Craig and the apparently trendy substitution of Texas Hold'em for Baccarat. But the movie was fabulous, easily the best Bond ever, and a long-overdue retooling of the franchise. In comparison, the campy Roger Moore 70's Bond movies are almost embarassing.
All that said, I was disapointed in Quantum of Solace. The movie was entertaining and worth the price of admission, but two aspects really hurt the movie for me:
The directors have adopted the currently popular edgy filming style of action sequences which involve lightning quick cuts and jerky camera pans (used in the Bourne movies, for example). The style really increases the confusion of the moment, and has its place in creating tension and giving a first person feel to the action, but it gets tiring and confusing after a time. Compare the opening chase sequences in this movie to the absolutely fabulous chase scene through the construction site near the beginning of Casino Royale. I thought the Casino Royale sequence was much a better, but I must admit I am a big fan of long tracking shots over quick cuts, so I guess your mileage may very. There was one shot I thought really cool in the new movie. Bond and mystery villain #3 or 4 fall through a glass ceiling, and you fall with them POV-style.
The movie seems to be a return to the WTF-style plot of a lot of modern action movies, especially sequels, that put one-upping the action sequences of the previous movie over having a coherant plot. I don't mind twists and turns, but in the end, all the motivations have to make sense. I mean, how many mystery guys can Bond chase, kill, and then say, well, I guess we'll never figure out who that guy was. The early parts were like the Seinfeld version of action movies — they are not about anything, they are just chase scenes. And, I still don't understand why the bad guys in QoS are doing what they are doing. Its another one of those "spend a billion dollars in a vast conspiracy to make $100 million" Bond villain plans. In contrast, Casino Royale was anchored to what I think was the best Ian Fleming book, and it stuck close to the book. Even when it deviated, for example with the shift from bacarrat to Texas Hold'em, it actually improved the plot, as it shifted to a game that at least involves some skill.
Update: I feel I need to clarify one thing. I am a huge fan of the old Bond movies. Goldfinger, Thunderball, Diamonds are Forever, Goldeneye — all great. Despite my comments above, I even like most of the Roger Moore films, though you have to take a different approach to them. But the formula was tired. The Survivor formula was hugely popular at first, but in season 9 or 10 or whatever, it's just done. You either are repeating the same tired cliches, because you feel locked into a formula by your fans who will get pissed (as they did with Casino Royale) when you violate the formula, or you fall into the trap of trying to top yourself with goofier and goofier plots. I actually thought the series was dead around about View to a Kill, but Pierce Brosnan really brought new life to the series for a while.
Channel surfing last night, I ran into the Running Man, an unfortunate movie "adaption" of a pretty good Steven King (as Richard Bachman) book. For those who have seen one and not the other, they have little in common with each other.
What I hadn't realized before was just how bizarre the casting for this movie was — Richard Dawson, the cheesy game show host as a … cheesy game show host. Jim Brown, Dweezil Zappa and Mick Fleetwood? The latter, by the way, as himself but in the future. Whatever.
But the best part is that the movie has two United States governors in substantial roles — Arnold Schwarzenegger (California) in the title role and Jesse Ventura (Minnesota) as one of the "stalkers" trying to kill Arnold. Is this a great country or what?
Do ya'll know any others? I know Sonny Bono did a Love Boat guest appearance, so there must have been two Congressmen in one TV episode (with Fred Grandy of Iowa). There may be a Fred Thompson +1 out there I can't think of. And of course there were probably some Ronald Reagan matchups, but that is before my time.
Update: Rob reminds me that the Ventura-Schwarzenegger team can also be found in Predator.
I went to see Santana with my son last Saturday night, and I can tell you that 67-year-old Carlos Santana is still the man on the guitar. 2-3/4 hours of straight guitar and percussion goodness.
But my new guitar fav’s are probably Rodrigo y Gabriela, Mexican guitarists who went from street musicians to stars in Ireland. Here is Diablo Rojo
And while we are on guitarists, I can’t help but give a shout out to fellow Princetonian Stanley Jordan, still the most amazing thing, technically, I have ever seen on guitar. If it looks like he is playing piano rather than the guitar, that’s because his original training was on the piano. When playing piano, all one is doing is causing strings to get hit. He wondered why he couldn’t just do it directly. Skip to about a minute in if you are impatient:
Or watch him playing two guitars at the same time in Stairway to Heaven around the 4:00 mark (Jimmy Page had his two-neck guitar but never played them at the same time!)
What is easily, to my mind, the best and most innovative music service on the Internet may be closing soon, as Pandora can no longer pay the royalty rates demanded by record labels. This is really too bad. I am a paying customer of Pandora (it is a free service on the Internet, but I pay $30 or $40 a year to listen to it on my Squeezebox streaming system at home).
I can say with total confidence that Pandora has caused me to buy more music than any other outside force has caused me to buy since my ill-fated flirtation with Columbia House when I was a teenager. I have gotten streams going that were so great that I had Amazon open in a second window, and was banging out CD orders almost as fast as Pandora could serve up tunes. I have thought for years that this would be a natural fit for Amazon or iTunes. Too bad the record labels can’t understand this.
I went to see the movie Wanted today, mainly because I am home alone and tried to pick the movie I was least likely to take my wife or kids to.
If you like non-stop action movies with computer game physics and lots of CGI close-ups of bullets drilling through people’s skulls that were fired by a smoking-hot assassin babe played by Angelina Jolie who actually had to add tats rather than hide them for this role (and, really, who doesn’t?), then you will probably enjoy the movie. The lost opportunity in the film was the very beginning, which sortof tried to be Office Space without being nearly as good. But there is certainly a big hint that Office Space was on the director’s mind - don’t miss the red stapler, though it didn’t look like a classic Swingline.
As an additional note, I see from the previews that someone has done a remake of Death Race 2000, though it seems to bear about the same resemblance to the original as the Running Man did to the original Steven King / Richard Bachman book. The whole fight-against-the-dystopic-state thing seems to have been lost. By the way, can’t they find any actor other than Jason Statham to portray someone who drives cars fast?
As a final shout-out to SF geeks out there, trolling around on IMDB led me, via Morgan Freeman of all people, to this page which seems to imply a Rendezvous with Rama movie is in the works.
Postscript: I will never be mistaken for a social conservative, but I did find it odd today that in a preview that was supposedly "approved for all audiences" there were numerous F-bombs dropped. Update: OK, I can’t be sure that this particular preview was "all audiences." All the ones that followed were, but it may be they have grittier versions of previews they show before R-rated features.
Clarification: Sorry if it was not clear, but I actually did enjoy the movie. Sort of a guilty pleasure. Fixed Jason Statham’s name, thanks to commenter.
I saw the new Indiana Jones movie with my kids this morning. It was OK. The chase / fight scenes were great, and the effects were terrific. But the plot was so-so (George Lucas has a writing credit, so I could just refer you back to the Padme** dialog in the last 2 Star Wars movie). There is sometimes a fine line between good fantasy and silliness, and the movie crosses back and forth several times. Also, you just can’t beat Nazis for over-the-top bad guys. The Boris-and-Natasha style Soviets just don’t serve as well. Overall, worth seeing if you liked the others, and certainly better than Temple of Doom. But I wouldn’t stand in line to see it.
** Interesting fact that maybe I am the last person in the world to know: Do you know who the actress was that played the fake Queen / Padme double in Star Wars Episode 1? I always thought it was Natalie Portman, but that is actually not correct. It was an uncredited role, and the actress was always in elaborate makeup. Who was it? It was Keira Knightly, of Pirates and Beckham fame.
I am a big proponent of front projection for serious home theater. I currently have a 108" wide (not diagonal) projection set up and I paid less for it than many people do for their 50" flat screens. Unfortunately, it is 720p rather than 1080p, but there is a great new crop of affordable 1080p front projectors that I am lusting after. This site has very good, complete reviews of front projectors and has just posted its roundup of the best 1080p machines.
Apparently, the 7th Harry Potter book will be split into two movies. Great. The second part will be killer, but the first will doom us to watching Harry run all over England camping.
Fans of Toshiba’s HD DVD format have been kicked while they’re down, this time by Wal-Mart’s decision to ditch the format,
and sell Blu-ray players and media exclusively. Effective June, the
move is the result of customer feedback, and an attempt to "simplify"
patron’s decisions. This news closely follows Best Buy’s decision to
also give the format the boot. Speculation has already surfaced that
suggests Toshiba will abandon their own format "in the coming weeks"…
So file all that HD-DVD software next to your Betamax tapes. I actually preferred the HD-DVD format, but thought from the beginning that Blu-Ray’s position in home gaming machines, which immediately gave them a huge installed based before any of us started buying High Def. movie players for our home theaters, might give it a lead that could not be overcome.
Most consumers have just wanted the format wars to be over so they could pick the right player and software (I partially avoided this problem by buying a combo player). This is an interesting consumer-friendly role for Wal-Mart that I have never seen discussed, that of standards-setter.
So here is a message to Blu-Ray: Now that you are on the verge of victory, you need to clean up your own house. The creeping standards problem you have had, which has caused early players to be unable to play newer disks, has got to end. In particular, it is irritating not to be able to play a newer disk because the fancy multimedia menu won’t work. When when you learn that we aren’t interested in all that crap and just want the movie to start? Just because the technology says you can do that stuff does not mean that you should.
I really like the HBO series "the Wire" about the Baltimore police force and the pursuit of various drug gangs, which I have been catching up on via DVD. While season 2 and 3 were not quite as good as 1, they still are quite good.
In many respects, this is a very libertarian series in outlook. A central part of the show is that government officials nearly universally do wrong and wasteful things. However, only a few of them are overtly corrupt. The vast majority are regular folks responding rationally to the types of incentives government employees are given and which result in really bad outcomes.
In fact, I may just be screwed up from too many years in a past life working on corporate performance metrics, but at some level the show is all about incentives. Even within the drug gangs, there is an interesting interplay between Avon and Stringer due mainly to the fact that though they face roughly the same circumstances and inputs, one has a goal of making money while the other has a goal of reputation and street cred. I can see now why the Freakonomics blog discusses the show so often.
Oh, and the season 3 experiment with effective drug legalization is also interesting.
