Jade's Trick

"Are you some sort of crazy person?"

2006-03-17T23:08:00.000-08:00

So yeah, I’m briefly coming out of blogger retirement only because this movie rocks so hard and I got to see the first mainstream showing of it. So don’t expect me to return to once-weekly.

Remember, remember,
that small, waiting ember
that flared up the moment V fought.
I see a reason
for V’s so-called treason
to ever and always be taught.

Oh yes, I’m talking about V for Vendetta, “that thing with the guy with the creepy mask, and Big Ben blows up, and isn’t Natalie Portman in that too?” That one. The dystopia SF subgenre isn’t exactly lacking in masterpieces, but V goes once more to the breach anyway, and succeeds. Ok, so yes it’s kinda a soapbox in parts, and yes it’s obviously got its finger pointed at certain specific current events, but it would be a mistake to deprive yourself of this shining gem just because it chose to focus on something conveniently contemporary.

Quick plot summary: England has become a tightly fascist state ever since a terrible biological attack killed over 100,000 people some years ago. Now, a certain man who gives us only his Christian name, V, happens to hold the opinion that fascism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, so he sets into action events which he hopes will bring about the downfall of the system (but you’ll have to watch the movie to see if he succeeds. No spoilers here!). Oh, and Natalie Portman’s in there too.

Now to the good stuff. V was adapted from the Alan Moore book surprisingly titled V for Vendetta. Now, I’ve conscientiously avoided reading this book precisely because I wanted to be able to evaluate the film objectively, but the rabid fangirls I saw the movie with approved of the changes made, so all you V fans have nothing to fear (except for the onset of fascism, of course). And as you can probably tell, I thought the movie by itself was rather fetching, so all you fellow comic book virgins out there presumably won’t have a hollow experience either.

V has this nearly supernatural ability to tell a very start-and-stop story while still maintaining violin-string suspense from the first time you hear Natalie Portman’s sorry attempt at an English accent to the fading-away of the climactic fireworks. Better still, this plot schema leaves you with next-to-no idea of where things are moving next, just the assurance that they are moving, and dropping just enough hints to keep things lucid. Leave your contacts at home, my friends, and expect to spend two hours and twelve minutes without blinking.

With only a very few exceptions, this movie does drama right. That continuous suspense I mentioned owes itself in large part to the way the film makes every little moment so compelling. Each interaction, every moment between, really, anyone and anyone just exudes this magnetic aura that latches onto you and belligerently refuses to let go. The moments that lack that intensity, and they are few and far between, are strategically placed to give the audience that split second above water to gasp in a mouthful of air.

Acting. Hugo Weaving. Need I say more? Well, no, not really, but I’m not paid to throw sentence fragments at you (shut up). Hugo Weaving plays V, and consequently spends the whole movie behind a Guy Fawkes mask, which you might think would tend to stifle his ability to convey emotion and act, an obstacle exacerbated by the mostly consistent tenor of voice that V uses throughout most of the movie, but you would be wrong. It’s frightening to think of how monstrously well Hugo Weaving fills out V through really little more than the tiniest movements of his head and the most subtle tweaks of his voice. V wants to transcend his humanity and become an idea, but through even this, Weaving manages to pull off making him a veritably vibrant human, giving and receiving compassion with flaws and perfections all his own. V is real. The other actors all do exemplary jobs as well, and I can think of no real sour spots amongst the cast. Natalie Portman pulled a stellar turn as Evey, although I can’t say that she was superlative; no major problems, but a few scenes were a little iffy, and her English accent… well, they should have just done without it (although a shrewd decision was made in making hers the first voice we hear, as putting her shoddy accent out front and on its own allows us to come to terms with and thereafter ignore it).

Oh and by the way, this is also a brutally funny movie, mixing clever repartee with a little dark comedy, slapstick, absurdity, and a little more dark comedy. The explosions, though somewhat scarce considering the subject material, are hilarious; V holds my second favorite explosion of all time (the first being the explosion from Eulogy). V cooking breakfast or fencing with a dummy or admitting to assassination… these, capsules of true joy filched from the Merry Pranksters themselves!

Allright, I think that’s quite enough. Go watch the movie and see for yourself!

Action: 4/5 shimmering knives (All things considered, this movie is a little light on action for it’s genre, but what’s here is really very well done, just not awe-inspiring).
Acting: 5/5 Guy Fawkes masks (I think I already rambled enough about Hugo Weaving, so I’ll spare you a rerun. Needless to say, I was very impressed by virtually everyone).
Drama: 5/5 toilet-paper gospels (If nothing else, this movie really knows how to hit ya good and hard. It runs the audience through the gamut of emotion, all the while never feeling as if it’s forcing itself upon you. I’m getting chills just thinking about it).
Story: 5/5 cases of St. Mary’s (Despite its many moments of "downtime," and despite the already well-worn trail it takes, V manages to spin a truly enrapturing, unpredicatable yarn. This is an example of what some truly creative, motivated, and well-bankrolled people can really do).
Sound: 5/5 loudspeakers (The music here is really superb, although I guess it helps that V’s taste in music includes some of the best scores ever penned. Like all really good music, it nicely supported the action without overwhelming it or, worse yet, shoving the emotion we “should be feeling” down our throughts. Likewise with the sound effects. All in all, exemplary).
Visuals: 5/5 violet carsons (Waiter? yes, I’d like to order a round of Wowness for the theater, thank you. Words are insufficient. Just go see).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.75/5 gunpower plots (Definatelly nicely nestled among my tippy-tops. Master your excuses and see this movie).

"What's a 'vag'?" -- Eulogy

2005-07-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

Hey, what do you know, a decent review! Go dance.

The Eulogy: a speech attempting to find the good things about a person after death, no matter how few or far between they may be, and to gloss over the bad, no matter how heinous or wretched. Well, I don't know where that was going, so I'll just say that Eulogy is a pretty good movie and you should go watch it.

Eulogy starts just after the death of Edmund Collins, the grandfather of Katie Collins, our protagonist. Along with Barbara Collins, his wife, Edmund managed to raise four extremely screwed up children: Daniel (Katie's father) starred in a peanut butter commercial when he was 8, choked during an audition for a toothpaste commercial a short while thereafter, and spend the rest of his life regretting it while working in obscure porn films; Alice is extremely angry, critical, and loud, to name a few, and has verbally beaten her husband and three children into continual silence; Skip fakes being a lawyer for a living and his extreme crassness has rubbed off onto his twin ~12 year old boys; and finally, Lucy, who's only problems seem to be complete ambivalence for her father's death, a trait she shares with her siblings, and extreme resentment to adn anger at Alice (for justifiable reasons that quickly become obvious). Forced back to the family home for the funeral, hilarity ensues as this terribly dysfunctional family somehow manages to resolve a few of its ongoing problems in time to "bury" their father. Fortunately, Katie, the one seemingly normal person here, tells us the story from her point of view.

This movie purports to be a dark comedy, and although it is undoubtedly very very funny in a dark sort of way, I feel it actually works best as a drama and character study. The humor tends to arrive in spurts, hitting with good regularity but hardly saturating the picture, whereas the drama unfolds for the full 90 minutes, even (perhaps especially) during the laughs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This flick certainly stimulates the funny glands, catalyzing laughter throughout. It's fun just to watch these disturbed individuals walk around and interact with each other, but combine that with their twisted reactions to these extraordinary situations and you can reliably get enough laughter to cure some mild anthrax, or at least a case of the snuffles. Sometimes, dark comedy can provoke a polarized reaction wherein half the audience is appalled and the other half is floored, but my patented Funny Analyzer here tells me that the dark comedy in Eulogy has just enough of the absurd in it to minimize the percentage of viewers who'll storm out in disgust and maximize the number who giggle into incoherence.

But it is as a drama that Eulogy truly glistens. The family's situation is an extremely odd one, and perhaps the most fun to be found here is internally plotting how its oddities caused each individual unit of dysfunction. In fact, I've found that the second viewing is even better than the first because despite losing the twist you now know exactly what to look for along the way, and it all fits just perfectly. Skip's crudity, Alice's bitchiness (especially Alice's bitchiness), everyone's ambivalence, and even Daniel's self-centeredness to some degree: all is explained without anyone really explaining it. The resolution also fortunatelly works well; at no point would any but the most cynical of filmgoers call the sequence of events unlikely or improbable.

The acting is good, for the most part. I wouldn't call it stellar, but there aren't really any sour points either. I don't think that this is due to any deficit on the part of the actors; it's just that the movie didn't call for many really hard tests of an actor's skill and thus they didn't have many chances to shine. Debra Winger's Alice is particularly well done throughout, however, and Kelly Preston also had an above-average turn as Lucy. Anyway, all the characters were believable, and that's all that really matters when all is spoken and finished.

Action: 3/5 flying grandmas (Surprisingly, there was some action in this movie, and it was mostly pretty well done, although I thought the scene where grandma flew was a bit fake).
Acting: 3.25/5 lobster bibs (Mostly pedestrian, the acting had a few crests and almost no troughs).
Comedy: 4/5 falling next-door neighbors (This picture evokes its fair share of laughs).
Story: 4/5 joints (Engrossing and interesting, the plot did everything a good plot should and then some).
Visuals: 3/5 minivans (They weren't anything special).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.25/5 video tapes (I really like this movie, and it ranks high on my list of recommendations. I especially recommend watching it again, to help hunt for the clues along the way. If I have one major grievance it's with the movie's length; I feel that Eulogy would have been better if lengthened to 105 or 120 minutes. Other than that, two-point-one-two-five thumbs up).

"Don't understand what's going on?" -- Everything2.com

2005-07-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

This week's review is totally different (and therefore much shorter) than anything I've even done before. Innovative, no?

Everything2.com is interesting, informative, easy to use, addictive, and (like most websites) free. Part encyclopedia, part message board, Everything2 is similar to the Wikipedia except that it's more informal (which is part of why I prefer it for surfing).

I find that it's best to venture into this realm sporting a tab-based web browser, a large amount of RAM, and a fair-sized block of time. The website itself doesn't have anything that's particularly taxing, but because each "node" (as the pages of information are called) has a system of cross-referenced links to other nodes at the bottom, it's fairly easy to find several that looking worth following up, and then several more in each of those, and so on. And thus is the joy of Everything2: come in looking for information on a jazz band and leave having downed a tidbit cocktail with ingredient's as far ranged as mongooses and string theory.

Here's an example of a possible node web:

As you can see, it can get quite complicated very quickly. There's a certain euphoria in moving from The Matrix to duct-tape bras in just five steps.

In short, I highly recommend this website.

Entertainment Value: 4/5 user picks (Veeeeeery fun to just drift).
Quality of Information: 2.5/5 FAQs (The nodes are created by whoever wants to create one, so there's no guarantee that the information is at all accurate. It's a good site if you're looking for a general idea about something, but you can't exactly cite it in your term paper on Shakespeare's hygiene).
Ease of Use: 3/5 searches (The search does a pretty good job of compiling lists of likely intended searches with you misspell things, and the crosslinks at the bottom are very easy to use. However, the "Back" browser function isn't supported, which can be rather annoying).

Overall (Not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 passwords (This website is a great way to kill time and learn a few things about truly bizarre, out-of-the-way topics).

"Things involving plastic toys and soft cheese?" -- Johnny English

2005-07-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to say except that I'd better find a movie to rip on sometime soon.

Johnny English is one of the better examples of James Bond parody. Although the protagonist is a screw-up, he's not so much of a screw-up that it's inconceivable that he could get the job he has. This movie knows, for the most part, when to stop, and is, above all, really rather quite funny, wouldn't you say dear boy?

Johnny is an employee in the British Secret Service; although he would like to think of himself as a low-level agent, his duties more closely resemble those of a file clerk than anything else. That is, until Agent One ("the greatest secret agent England ever had") dies during a mission, apparently from an acute case of drowning, and all the other agents are killed when a bomb planted inside Agent One's coffin explodes. With no one else to turn to, at least for the moment, and important events happening, Johnny shoots up the ranks to full agent status and starts taking on missions.

Johnny English's strength lies not so much in it's absurdity as in it it's more mundane aspects. Yes, it is very absurd, and yes, that absurdity is the catalyst for most of the laughter, but the thing that sets this movie apart from other Spy Spoofs is that it rarely, if ever, passes out of reality. Although the story and the characters are admittedly odd, they are, for the most part, plausible. Rowan Atkinson, famous for his role as Mr. Bean, portrays a character with a fair degree of skill who's just clumsy and hair-brained enough to prevent him from moving higher up heretofor. Although he incessantly bumps into things with his head and can barely pass mustard as a charmer, he knows a thing or two about spy equipment and it's use and can drive his Aston Martin with great proficiency. Although the plot relies on a few iffy events (would the queen really step down just because someone threatened her dog?), they are nevertheless not as utterly impossible as, say, a time-traveling VW Beetle.

Comedically speaking, Johnny English lies somewhere between "pretty darn funny" and "very funny." Although it doesn't reach the summit, it still lands far above base camp. The movie is very fun to watch, with a laugh-out-loud every ten or so minutes and a few really really good ones over the course of the film, but some of the jokes fall flat and it's not as consistent with the funny as it could be.

Johnny himself is a rather interesting character. Although he plays the role of an underdog, he's got some negative points as well to complicate him up. Yes he's our hero and yes we want him to save the day and yes he's a very loyal servant of his country, but he's inappreciative of his extremely helpful and loyal assistant Bough, rather arrogant, and quite stupid from time to time ("The Bedouin Monks of the Al Maghreb mountains developed a system of sonic chanting. The sound of their chanting would bounce back off any obstacles, and using their highly tuned ears they could paint a mental picture of the path ahead." Which, of course, means that anyone can do it, right?). Unfortunately, few other characters are anywhere near as interesting as our hero. Lorna Campbell, the requisite spy babe, is predictable. Bough, the aforementioned assistant, is a rather good agent but takes Johnny's BS and abuse so good-naturedly and without even so much as a sigh or a roll of the eye to indicate that he realizes his boss' shortcomings that I got somewhat sick of him and by the end wanted to scream at him to, just once, talk back to Johnny. However, Pascal Sauvage, our villain (played by John Malkovich, surprisingly), evokes some interest despite being the perfect stereotype of both a Frenchman and an evil capitalist bad guy.

I particularly dislike the scene wherein Lorna basically throws herself at Johnny (who, of course, mucks it up) right before they infiltrate Sauvage's evil lair. This scene is exTREMEly poorly written, and since it's virtually all dialogue, there's little the actors can do to save it. Unrealistically awkward, Lorna says things that almost no one would ever even consider saying and made not only Johnny but even me very uncomfortable. Little of her speech is coherent, which only adds to the feeling of dread. Fortunately, it's a rather quick scene with nothing in the way of plot in it, so skipping over (a plan of attack that I highly suggest) it is not crippling.

And that's pretty much it. I'll mop up on comments during the ratings.

Action: 3.5/5 dead traffic cameras (Although it will win no awards for the action scenes, this flick actually does a decent job with its car chases, explosions, special effects, and whatnot).
Acting: 4/5 doses of paralytic compound (Rowan's portrayal of Johnny English is really what makes the movie work. It's really just a modification of his Mr. Bean act, but is nevertheless quite fun and funny).
Comedy: 3.75/5 ultimate acquired tastes (I went into greater detail above. Basically this movie's a funny one, but not as funny as it could be).
Story: 3.8/5 unlabeled DVD's (Mostly plausible and highly entertaining, the plot is pretty good all around. Docked slightly for those few elements which are just a tad too absurd).
Visuals: 3/5 triggerless barrettes (A big "meh" here from me).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 Aston Martin's (If you're a fan of Spy Spoofs or Rowan Atkinson, you should definitely see this movie. If you're a fan of comedy in general and you're tired of rewatching Stripes, go ahead and rent this for a few laughs. If you're anyone else, this probably shouldn't be at the top of your list, but it's not a bad way to spend an hour-and-a-half).

"Everyone's a critic!" -- Dragonheart

2005-07-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, screw it. Someday, I may get around to revising this blog. But that day is not today.

Dragonheart is a great example of slightly-above-average fantasy. It blends good acting, good characterization, good story, good special effects, good cinematography, good setting, good combat, good humor, and good drama together to make something entierly good, but manages against all odds to avoid creating a masterpiece.

Basic story: Einon is the son of a tyrant king. Bowen is a knight who teaches him the Old Code of Camelot and basic combat skills. Einon sustains a stabbing to the heart immediatelly after relieving his dying father of his crown, so his mother takes him to a dragon with a Scottish accent (voiced by Sean Connery) and begs for his help. He helps by cracking open his scales, pulling out half of his ectoplasmic heart, and shoving it into Einon, not only saving the young king's life but also bonding the two such that each feels the hurts of the other. Oh, and Einon can't die unless someone kills Draco. Einon, of course, follows in his father's footsteps, and Bowen, thinking that Einon's evil is the result of the dragon's mischief, swears to hunt down and kill every dragon in the world until he kills the one that saved Einon.

In fantasy, plot tends to play a large role, and this film is no different. Fortunatelly, the story is rather compelling. Although there's never so much as a stray thought that it might end differently than it does, the precise twists and turns tend to be more unexpected than obvious, but they never take turns that one would think illogical or unlikely. This is still stock fantasy, mind you, and other than the concept that dragons are actually good, it doesn't really stray far from the beaten path.

Dragonheart's characters, however, are what make the movie. Bowen makes a number of U-turns throughout the movie, changing from an idealistic young knight into a cynical antihero and then back into an idealistic knight. Like the plot, his development is relatively predictable and stock, but still good. Einon plays the unadultured villain, which is one of the flaws of the movie in my opinion; I personally like some complication to my baddies, but the movie offers every reason to hate Einon and no reasons to not. Draco is an excellent character: clever, funny, deep, suitably emo, and yet he maintains his edge. Brother Gilbert has the interesting distinction of being kinda the bumbling sidekick but also kinda not; his poetry is highly suspect, but he offers some very funny moments and serves as a quasi narrator from time to time, plus he's an archery savant. Kara is the stock idealistic plucky female empowerment symbol (which is cliche that doesn't think it's cliche). Overall, the characters were quite good.

The visuals in Dragonheart were very good when the film first came out nearly ten years ago and they've held up quite well. The CG is particularly good, particularly in the case of Draco; he moves like a dragon should move, with a combination of serpentine and cat-like grace without forgetting his huge size, and is overall very convincing. Costumes, makeup, and props are accurate enough for the time period. And finally, the Landscapes are breathtaking (which is admittedly personal preference, as I have a strong affinity for bright settings).

And that's pretty much it.

Action: 3.5/5 bladed tails (The fight scenes with Draco are very well done, very realistically done. The battles against Einon and earlier his father, less so, primarily because the number of troops involved seems much lower that one would think it would be).
Acting: 3/5 shining stars (The acting is good, but mostly unremarkable).
Comedy: 3.75/5 cleaving axes (This flick can be quite funny when it tries to be).
Story: 3.5/5 stationary spear-chuckers (The story's good, but almost entierly average).
Visuals: 4/5 dragon hearts, har har (Perhaps one of the more expectional aspects of the movie, all the visuals are really quite beautiful).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 dragon-tooth-lined shields (If you're a fan of the genre, you should definatelly see this movie. If you're looking to sample it, this movie fits your bill. But if fantasy isn't really your thing, look elsewhere).

"I don't get out of bed for less than half a million dollars." -- Mr and Mrs Smith

2005-06-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

Two things: this week's review will be shortish, because there's not really all that much to say about the movie, and the proposed edits of all reviews has been postponed until next week, so that it can be done at the conclusion of the first half of the year. I like symmetry.

Mr and Mrs Smith is one of the movies that's part of the inauguration of the Summertime, when the weather is warm, the sun is shining, that there book-learnin' is forgotten, and the movies are light and fun. There, review over. Have a nice week.

Just kidding.

No, I'm not simply trying to fill space. Shut up. *cough*

Ok, time to get seriously serious. Mr and Mrs Smith starts out rather mundane and pedestrian; our protagonist couple has been married "five or six" years now and their marriage has become a little boring. So, we see a marriage counseling session, a flashback to when they first met and fell in love, and a few scenes at their cold steel-and-glass house. In other words, these two appear entirely unspectacular (although that's not to say the audience is here bored). Then, the bomb drops, and we find out that they're really assassins who have been keeping their nightlives from each other all this time. They discover each other's secret and a consistent, low-level current of humor and copious action/violence ensues. Rinse, repeat, and you've got the rest of the movie. Yes, it's very predictable, but since the point of the movie is to have a little care-free fun, this doesn't really detract.

Ok, obvious stuff first: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. If you didn't know it before, well, gird your loins: these two are fabulous actors. During the intro, they are suitably cold to each other; it is very very easy to believe that they are in a slowly failing marriage. Then, the other overpriced foot-protection device manufactured by under-paid children in third world countries is affected by the force of gravity and impacts with the floor: their respective occupations become known to each other, the excitement with and understanding of each other kicks in, and a flow of many electrons discharges between the two. In short, they very effectively display perfectly realistic chemistry.

Action. At it's heart, this movie is a mindless action flick with a mind. There's a lot of action to be found here, and although it isn't as mind-blowing as The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it consistently entertains and titilates with big explosions, dramatic gunfights, and complex chases. After all, these two are high-class assassins; flashy, unrealistic killing and bullet-dodging is part and parcel of the job. However you put it, the action scenes go a long way towards making the movie the fun summer popcorn flick it was meant to be.

You know that mind part I mentioned? Although the arguably allegorical plot and terrific acting are aspects of this mind-of-the-mindless, the humor is really what makes the movie a slash above the average action flick. Only rarely laugh-out-loud funny, the film maintains a very consistent level of low-key humor meant to do nothing but keep a very wide grin on your face for the two hours of mayhem and slaughter of faceless enemies. The dialogue is always witty, but never too witty, always interesting, but never too deep. Another fun thing that the movie does is to make the occasional self-conscious crack; for example, take careful note of the captive's T-shirt whilst the two Smiths interrogate him.

Mr and Mrs Smith expertly twirls with your character alignments, batting them around like a cat playing with a catnip-laced ball of yarn. Once the two Smiths find out that the other is a spy, obviously so do their respective agencies, which promptly sic each one on the other. However, the movie does not play favorites, and it sets up the situations such that you never really root for one character over the other, making especially scenes in which the two are hunting each other particularly delicious.

Like I said, rather short. Look, it's over already!

Action: 3.5/5 bulletproof windshields (The action is big, loud, over-the-top, and entirely not groundbreaking. I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing, as it's still quite fun to watch, but in all truthfulness, the action isn't anything new).
Acting: 4.5/5 streaked tears (I've already praised Lara Croft and Tyler Durden en mass, but I've got to say something about Vince Vaugn: great one-liners this man has and deliver them well he does. Every scene with him is a joy and rapture).
Comedy: 4/5 steak knives (The mostly-black humor adds just the right touch to what would otherwise be a mere morass of explosions).
Story: 2.5/5 ski masks (Predictable and with a few plot holes gumming up the works, the plot is definitely not one of the movie's better selling points. I don't think this holds the movie back as a whole, but others may disagree).
Visuals: 3/5 weather channels (The action was well shot, the camera angles suitably nonstandard, and the explosions very big, but the cinemetography of this movie isn't really anything special).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.75/5 riding crops (I definitely recommend this if you're in the mood for some very fun, very fluffy action, but this flick is no Casablanca).

"I'm leaving, and I'm taking the monkey with me." -- The Majestic

2005-06-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

Now, I've got a metric ton of free time this week, so I thought instead of a review, I'll give all my other reviews a nice polish for next weekend. I might end up doing a review as well, but if I don't, I'll toss up another post reminding you why. In other news, I'm going to stop forcing myself to use passive voice for the first sentence of the actual review.

I know I'm in the minority, but I really like The Majestic. It's not The Godfather or Star Wars: The Empire Striked Back, but it is nevertheless one of my favorite movies, sporting great acting, great drama, great cinematography, good humor; basically, it's the whole package. In my oh-so-humble opinion, the movie did as poorly as it did because of the expectations the public had of Jim Carrey. Audiences thought they were in for a standard Pet Detective-like mindless poop joke romp and instead got a mostly serious acting-heavy drama.

The story sounds a little cheesy, and it kinda is, but for the most part, the movie pulls it off pretty convincingly. Peter Appleton (played magnificently by Jim Carrey) writes movie scripts for Hollywood in the early 50's and is on his way to catching a Big Break when someone fingers his for a Commie, causing the movie studio to suspend all business with him (at least, until after he gets by the charges), his actress girlfriend to dump him, and a local bartender named Jerry to glean a small fortune from profits made by selling the very depressed Peter quite a bit of alcoholic beverages. After filling his stomach with said alcoholic beverages, Peter decides that a nice long coastal drive would really hit the spot. He drives for a while, crashes his car on a bridge, falls into the water, and thwacks his head against the concrete foundation of a leg of the bridge, causing (gasp!) amnesia! (This is the Limburger of which I spoke; don't worry, it only looks bad from the outside) . And it goes from there.

The movie's strongest strength is it's acting. Jim Carrey pulls off Peter Appleton, Wide-Eyed Amnesia Victim, and Luke Trimble Wannabe with perfection and poise, never for a moment wavering. Jim Carrey is well known for his facial expressions (most his his characters have been built from the ground up on them), and they here serve him well, blasting out with an interior view for anyone looking. For example, although the camera is tightly on him -- and only him -- during the opening scene and he only has one or two lines, we get an extremely good idea about what his character is about (he's clearly aggravated that the movie executives are eviscerating his script, and yet he goes with the flow without blinking). Laurie Holden plays Luke Trimble's former fiance Adele Stanton who took the California State Bar Exam just prior to her appearance early on in the movie, and she also does a stellar job, particularly during the romantic scenes between her and Jim Carrey. She has this great ability to portray and communicate the awkwardness of the situations (as most of them, at least at first, are awkward; she and Luke were engaged just before Luke went overseas, and then he died) without making the audience awkward (I absolutely *loath* when movies make the audience feel awkward. I can get myself into awkward situations without paying, thankyouverymuch). The rest of the cast was good-to-very-good, but not particularly worth spending more time on.

This movie's cinematograhy sings. I mentioned the opening scene: it starts by playing the voices of people arguing over something, a movie. The darkness gives way to a closeup of Jim Carrey's upper torso and head, listening to more voices batting back and forth increasingly corny ideas about how to draw more tears from the eyes of the audiences. The shot says very specifically that although we need to know what they are saying for context, the speakers just aren't important. A bookend shot also plays near the end of the movie that functions much the same way, and I personally liked the symmetry. One more example: the pan shots of The Majestic's neon sign. Done beautifully well, these precisely capture the feelings of, well, majesty that the theater is said to possess.

Now we come to the part of the movie that is difficult to review: the preaching. Unfortunately, the movie has quite a bit of preaching against the censoring McCarthyism and the HUAC did in the 50s. The good news is that this is decoy preaching; after all, history has come to the conclusion that McCarthyism and the HUAC were wrong, so preaching against them would be a horrible waste of everyone's time. The movie is really railing against the passive, those who want to avoid moral difficulties, and thus decide to take the easy road that robs them of dignity (see the description of the opening scene to see one way this plays out with Peter). It's still preachy, but at least it's not terribly irrelevant preaching. Just remember that every single mention by anyone of Commies builds towards Peter's eventual decision to grow a backbone and doesn't really have anything to do with Commies, and the movie seems a little less eye-roll inducing.

One last thing to mention before I get to the ratings: this movie has a number of decidedly funny parts. Although not a comedy, it's got a few balloons here and there to help lift the serious, and sometimes overcast, mood. Peter's drunken blatherings, Adele's hiccups (and their "cure"), Peter's discovery of his piano talent, Peter's answers to the HUAC's questions; these are funny moments all.

Action: 3.5/5 bothersome possums (Almost completely devoid of action, there was but one scene requiring it, and in that one scene, the action was extremely well done and extremely plausible).
Acting: 4.75/5 lighthouses (Excellent performances from Jim Carrey and Laurie Holden, and at good performances from everyone else. Denied a perfect 5 because I'm a miserly bastard when it comes to Acting).
Comedy: 3.5/5 grinning monkeys (The comedy here brought a huge smile to my face, but rarely made me audibly laugh and never split my sides).
Story: 3/5 convertible Mercedes' (Although it's got some decidedly corny parts to it, I feel the story overall works rather well).
Visuals: 4.5/5 neon lights (No computer effects from what I can tell and minimum effects otherwise, this movie gets most of it's style points from camera placement, and it does that very well. The setting also gets mad props for looking like the 50s should look, feel like the 50s should feel, and overall just being nifty).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 Purple Hearts (Consider this oft-passed-by movie strongly recommended!).

"This episode was badly written!" -- Galaxy Quest

2005-06-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

... but this movie wasn't.

Galaxy Quest was the first movie I saw on DVD. I vividly remember watching it about a dozen times in a row, marveling about how it has a menu and how you don't have to rewind it (not to mention the Special Features). Perhaps that was why I've left it until now; I remembered it so well it faded into the background. Well, no more. It popped back into the foreground for me when I wrote my Star Wars Episode III review a few weeks ago, and I now give you a more in-depth recommendation.

Galaxy Quest at its roots is parody/satire at its best. The story follows Tim Allen's Jason Nesmith as he goes about his life as a washed-up actor who made his mark as the Commander of the N.E.S.A. Protector of Galaxy Quest, the movie's Star Trek analogue from the early '80s. 18 years later, he and his fellow actors have been reduced to doing various Galaxy Quest-related gigs, including autograph-signing at the annual Galaxy Quest convention, for money, unable to get any other acting work. Awoken by a group of people calling themselves Thermians after a depressing night of hard drinking, Jason finds himself transported through space and commanding a real working version of the Protector fighting a cruel, bipedal, bladed turtle named Sarris. Apparently, the Thermians have mistaken the accidental transmissions of the show into space as so-called "historical documents" sent out purposefully for whoever is interested, and have accordingly modeled their society after the show. After enlisting the help of his fellow actors from the show, Jason goes back to the ship, fights Sarris, and eventually prevails. And hilarity ensues.

Thus movie is a popcorn fare. Although not a particularly Great Work, it manages to be a boatload of fun and funny fancy. It works best if viewed as a very soft SF parody of Star Trek, matching that show extremely well on virtually every count. The "command crew" behind the scenes is how we might envision it really was; the captain, arogant, convinced of his own greatness; the thespian, sorely dissatisfied that he cannot find other acting work and must continue to say the same line over and over to pay the bills; the blonde sexpot, who knowlingly plays a character with no purpose other than to serve as something for the fanboys to droll over. The show itself (we are treated to a few minutes of it) is campy and rather trite, the SF elements questionable at best. All in all, the film makes it easy to believe that this really could have been the way it happened. Similarly, the film also works well as a gently satire. Fun is poked at the campiness, at the Red Shirt expendable glorified extras, and even at the fans (but as I said, it's gentle; no one is really being skewered or anything).

The characters in the movie are multidimensional, vibrant, and still funny; although they are in many ways caricatures, they maintain their humanity and thus remain wholly believable. Character development also thrives here; for example, Jason Nesmith's egotism is a compelling character flaw that he works through.

In keeping with the believability of the characters, there is not a line out of place or a single fake reaction to be found. Superb the acting is, and although little of it is particularly impressive, there are no spots which threaten to remind us that this is, in fact, just a movie. The only "bad" acting is that of the Thermians, and that is very obviously purposeful.

The sound is suitablly camptastic and highly reminiscent of something you very well might hear during one Star Trek episode or another. Orchestral and vocal riffs reign supreme, as do explosions and impacts. Best of all, the sounds support the humor well, bringing many moments to bear right on the funnybone.

Saving the best for last: the humor. This movie is very, very funny. It's really indescribable, but I'll try: it hits all the right notes. First of all, you can't go wrong with actors like Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Tony Shalhoub, all of whom have proved their worth here and elsewhere. Second, the lines and the plot lend themselves to excellent humor. Rare is the joke for which the movie had to reach. And third, all the little things, such as the Trekkie-ish extras, the music (already mentioned), and the absurd props. As I said, very, very funny.

And that's pretty much it.

Action: 3.5/5 rocks (Although the action is pretty good, it's not the focus of the movie and thus not a whole lot of time is spent on it).
Acting: 4/5 Berrilium spheres (Very good acting all around. The comic timing is especially good. However, there weren't really any particularly notable acting jobs here).
Comedy: 4.5/5 latex scalps (Very Funny. Kinda like TBS, but better).
Story: 4/5 communication voxes (The story itself is rather interesting, and the parody elements are particularly juicy).
Visuals: 3.5/5 Omega 13s (Good special effects, good sets, good makeup. Goodness all around).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 magnetic mines (Although it's not the best movie of all time, it is very fun and very enjoyable. It's a great way to spend 100 or so minutes).

"If you tickle us do we not laugh?" -- William Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice

2005-06-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to see this movie since it was first released on the, uh, lead screen some months ago, but certain circumstances prevented that outing from occurring. Too bad, too, as this is an extraordinary film.

William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is a screen adaptation of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Of all his plays, this one is one of the touchiest, being the subject of much criticism for the perceived anti-semitic bias. Now, such a claim insults both the play and Shakespeare, for it simplifies a script which clearly intends to be complex (and, indeed, is). There is anti-semitism, and the "villain" is a man of Jewish descent and religion, but the play overall can easily be used to display how wrong prejudice is (it can also be used to push anti-semitism, but given the sparcity of stage directions in Shakespeare's plays, any of them can potentially be misconstrued however you like).

As always, I will alert you to my personal shortcomings and strengths which may tint my analysis: I have not read The Merchant of Venice, and I find Shakespeare rather easy to read. However, I don't think either of these will affect the review as I'm reviewing the movie just like any other movie, and the actors are so good that the play is made wholly accessible. Onward, march!

Let's start with the acting. In a word, superb. Rather than exhaust my personal supply of superlatives, I shall merely state that there was not so much as an extra with inferior acting ability. Shylock and Portia both deserve special mention, as they both pull of exceedingly difficult roles with perfect ease; Pachino plays Shylock as both menacing and sympathetic; Portia runs the gamut of emotions, and Collins perfectly slams them all. Perhaps the best acting comes, surprisingly, when a character is not speaking; the lines are delivered well, which is to be expected, but these actors pay attention to everyone's lines and react accordingly.

Another major boon, the visuals. I know it's trite, but only "visually stunning" properly describes this movie. Renaissance Venice is the stage upon which this play is enacted, and it could not feel more real without a Smell-O-Rama machine installed into the DVD case. Never for a moment does the audience question anything they see, which is one of the highest compliments anyone can give to the cinematography. Certain shots just really stick with you, such as the vista view of Portia's estate-island and the ending image of servants catching fish with bows at the rising of the sun.

The music drenches the film in a slightly sad splendor. Very renaissance-sounding instruments strum out of very renaissance-sounding score, creating a highly complex atmosphere for a highly complex movie. Thus, it complements, and does not distract from, the story, characters, and lines.

Let's chat about that complexity I've been telling you so much about. It is impossible to completely hate or to completely love any character in this movie. Like real people, they all have their virtues and their vices, their admirable qualities and their detestabilities. Antonio is very generous and has a good degree of humility, but is also an emo and a bigot. Bassanio is handsome, eloquent, and loyal, but also a mooch and not the best at keeping his oaths. Portia is intelligent, beautiful, also eloquent, and tricksy, but also seems to have a bit of a sadistic, scheming streak. And finally, the most complex of them all, Shylock has been the target of extreme racial and religious persecution, has lost his daughter, and gets some of the very best lines in the movie (his "if you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech inflicts goosebumps), but he also says some very unsympathetic things about his daughter, and there's the whole pound of flesh thing. It's great fun being always up in the air, although it does require some investment of thought from the audience.

And then, of course, there's the screenplay. It's basically Shakespeare with some cuts (as almost all Shakespeare is shown), so the words spoken are obviously excellent, but the pacing is also very very well done (it drags just a little bit in the beginning, but overall moves quite swiftly). And as I mentioned above, this is a very accessible version of the play, so don't expect to have to go in with a dictionary.

One of the few things I did not like about this movie was the nudity; essentially, you see the exposed breasts of whores in passing several times. It just seemed rather gratuitous to me, and it feels so stupid for a collective thirty seconds of stuff in the background to bump an otherwise entirely PG movie up to R. Don't get me wrong: there should be prostitutes here (as not only does it make the setting feel more real but also poses an interesting question: why can there be Christian whores but not Christian moneylenders?), but it's just such a small thing to give the movie the rating it has.

Action: n/a.
Acting: 4.75/5 silver caskets (The performances showcased here are all truly Great Acting).
Comedy: 2.5/5 false moustaches (Hey, this is a Comedy, right? Well, sorta. It's really only a Comedy by construction, as it isn't really very funny, and what funny parts there are are few and far between).
Story: 4.5/5 red hats (One or two little things could have been a tiny bit clearer, but otherwise the story was very interesting).
Screenplay: 5/5 ducats (It's Shakespeare jury-rigged to film well. What more could you want?).
Visuals: 4.5/5 sunrise-glinting lakes (Merchant films very prettily).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.25/5 portraits of Portia (This is one darned good Shakespeare film. There are a few I like more than it, but it has earned its place among the pantheon).

"I have the high ground." -- Star Wars Episode III

2005-05-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

If you don't know where that line's from, consider yourself fortunate. That's right, this is a negative review.

Star Wars Episode III sadly sucked. I know I'm in the minority of critics, but my theory is that there's a groupthink going on wherein everyone has reached the conclusion that the third one must be good since it doesn't suck quite as much as the other two prequels. Well, wrong that groupthink is, and because of it, I went in expecting something at the very least "ok." I was sorely disappointed.

Perhaps I should elaborate. You see, I didn't originally want to see this movie until it came out on DVD. My plan was to wait for a friend to rent or buy it and then mooch; I'd been burned badly by the first two prequels and didn't want it to happen again. However, after it came out, all the critics gave it a pretty good rating, and my friends recommended it. Therefore, I went in thinking I was in for a treat. So the movie started, and my phantom mustache started drooping. I said to myself, "Well, Blaine, I'm sure it gets better later on. No one's talked much about the beginning anyway, so its probably not the good part." So I waited, and waited, and kept waiting until the credits rolled. It never really got good, with one or two enclosed exceptions.

I'm not going to bother with a plot summary. If you don't already know what basically happens, you need to get that plate in your head replaced with something not made out of lead, because it's leaking into your cranium.

Let's start with the things I liked, although many of these bleed over into the (many) things I didn't. I liked the opening shot of the space battle. It was amusing and surprising in a way similar to how the beginning of episode IV must have been way back in the '70s. I liked Yoda's lightsaber fights. They seemed to have lost a lot of the absurdity they had in Episode II (in large part because Episode II had helped to desensitize people to Yoda with a lightsaber). I LOVED virtually everything having to do with Obi Wan. At one point, he infiltrates the enemy's army and flips out and kills everyone. So totally cool. The special effects were well done, as always. And finally, I thought there was a certain pleasure to be gained from watching the movies finally connect.

Now on to the lengthier list: here are some of the things I disliked.

First, let's go back to the connection value of this movie. Although I admit it has a certain appeal, I feel that the very existence of this movie absolutely destroys the stupendous way the original three were in medias res. Now, it's a natural progression instead of a beautiful confusion. Blech.

Second, I will speak of the single most egregious flaw of the movie: Anakin's vision that "Padme will die in childbirth." This basically leads him down the dark path, turning him into Vadar. And, it's completly, totally, and utterly BULLSHIT (pardon my Hungarian). At the tech level Star Wars has, this simply cannot happen. Even today, death of the mother during childbirth in the US is virtually unknown. For example, this site gives the % as 0.00003 (on the high end). In a galaxy with light speed, fully articulate droids, and the ability to give a person with third degree burns and only stumps for limbs a brand new body of basically normal human dexterity (Vader), there is no plausible way for a very rich and healthy young woman with easy access to sophisticated medical systems could die due to childbirth. If this was a smaller thing, it might be forgivable, but since the entire movie basically hinges on it, its terrible quality strongly negatively impacts the whole film. Corollary to this, Padme dies at the end because she "lost the will to live." They specifically state that she has no medical problems whatsoever; she dies only because Anakin turned evil and she couldn't take it. Another big BULLSHIT stamp right across that; if you could die just by wanting too, the suicide rate would be much much higher than it is. Both of these problems are the result of extremely lazy and unimaginative writing.

Third, red shirt jedi. "Red shirt" alludes to the original Star Trek series; whenever the command crew went on an Away mission, they would take some unnamed crewman with them, and these crewmen would always wear red shirts. They were there to die so that the audience would know when the situation had gotten serious (for a detailed description of what playing a red shirt will do to an actor, go watch Galaxy Quest. In fact, see that movie instead of this, as it's a lot better). So, a red shirt is someone who has no purpose but to die. Like all jedi in this movie (excluding Obi Wan and Yoda, of course). Let's start with the jedi that accompany Mace Windu to arrest Palpatine. All I will say is this: I, one who is not a Star Wars fanboy, one who almost never resorts to violence, one who would probably sooner slice myself with a lightsaber than my enemy, could have survived longer than those jedi. One gets the impression that they were in fact bums off the street to whom Mace had picked yup as an impromptu entourage. As I said, I know very little about swordfighting, but I do know that ou do not raise your sword over your head just as your enemy thrusts, thus giving him a completelly clear shot to your torso. Next, let's talk about the jedi the clones killed . Now, many of these we have seen on the Jedi Master's Council, so they are all at least as awesome as Obi Wan, if not awesomer. They die ... wait for it ... from regular blaster blasts while they have all their uber jedi senses active and their lightsabers out and at the ready. I repeat my mantra from earlier: BULLSHIT. The whole point of being a jedi is that stuff like that can't happen to you. Jedi don't get shot by blasters, period. There weren't even that many blasts, for goodness sake!

Third, during the opening scene, Anakin and Obi Wan pretty much destroy a big 'ol ship in orbit over what appears to be Corruscant, causing it to immediately crash into the planet. Let me repeat that so it's perfectly clear: a ship in outer-space orbit lost its engines and promptly fell into the planet. Mantra time: BULLSHIT. At the very least, they would have a couple hours before it crashed in, and in all likelyhood they would have much more time than that.

Fourth, the acting was almost universally terrible and wooden (Obi Wan was pretty good though). Hayden Christensen was a bit better in this movie than in the last one, but not by much. Even Christopher Lee in his short role as Count Dooku had pretty poor acting, which surprised the heck outta me since he had a darned good turn as Sauruman.

Fifth, the dialogue in some parts was unbearably bad, specifically the scenes between Padme and Anakin. Now, I'm told by a friend that he has a credible source that claims that Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen despise each other in real life, which would explain (but by no means excuse) why the acting during those parts was so particularly terrible, but no pair of actors in the world could have pulled off those lines convincingly. I found Yoda's dialogue to sound like a broken record; yes, Yoda's supposed to have semilatinate grammar, but that doesn't preclude at least some variation, not does it mean he has to speak everything with the verb at the end.

Sixth, the lightsaber battles. They were ... boring. I mean, they didn't totally suck or anything, and despite what some say I don't think they went on for too long, but by and large, these battles offered nothing at all new, nothing at all interesting, and nothing at all worth paying $10 for. The duels in the original series were all either heavily intersperced with conversation or short; here, they were obviously trying to make the lightsaber fights selling points for those in search of a good action movie, but in comparison to the fights from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Hero, they were superrepetetive pointless drivel.

Seventh, run time. This movie ddddrrrrraaaaaggggggsssssss. At 2 hours and 16 minutes, it's not much longer than Episode IV, but it should have been much shorter. The last twenty minutes, for example, were completely and utterly unnecessary. The audience learns almost nothing new, and what was learned was either unimportant, stupid, or patantly obvious. For example, they waste our time by showing us Senator Organa taking baby Leia home to his wife. We've already been told this will happen; if you watch Episode IV, you know for certain. Showing us this accomplishes nothing whatsover, and I find it rather insulting. I don't need my hand held every single step of the way. This film also has a sordid love affair with long monotonous shots of ships landing, people getting out of the ships, people walking across the landing pad, people walking back to their ships, people closing the canopy, people checking their harneses, people checking the gauges, people powering up the engines, people slowly taking off, people slowly flying out into space, people slowing jumping to light speed..... I think you get the picture.

Eight, travel time, namely lack thereof. If someone wants to be somewhere, they jump on a ship and whhhuuup! they are there without even a moment lost. Laughably quick travel time is a Star Wars staple (light speed, even if it were possible, would not be able to get you from an outer rim planet to a more center planet in anything less than many decades), but at least the original three had some transit time; the trip from Tatooine to Alderan gave R2 and Chewy enough time play a board game and Luke enough time to learn the basics of blaster fire blocking. Here, none of that. BULLSHIT, says I!

Ninth, the whole shades thing. You know how Obi Wan and Yoda come back as shades after their deaths? This movie decided to "explain" this. Apparently, Qui Gon Jin discovered a way in his afterlife for Jedi to become shades, and apparently Yoda and Obi Wan spend the next 25 years mastering this technique. Ignoring how stupid and unnecessary it is (who questioned it in the original three?), it flat out doesn't make sense because at the end of Episode VI, Anakin can do it too! Yes, he's teh uber, but so is Yoda and he still had to study. It's an inconsistency, and when cut up into letters and rearranged, it spells out BULLSHIT.

Tenth, all the little things. At the beginning when those bugbots cover his ship, why wouldn't Obi Wan just use his jedi telekinesis to get rid of them? R2-D2 of course makes his appearance, but he feels very very gimicky. Everyone seems to have this remarkable ability to pull names from the ether (ie Padme randomly barks "Luke" and "Leia," Darth Sidious just happens to have "Darth Vader" lying about his mind, etc etc). General Grevious spent a lot of the movie walking around hunched over and coughing, which was extremely stupid and contrived; althought it was kindasorta explained later on, it could have easily been omitted with nothing lost. And finally, jedi repeatedly reference Anakin's great power and Obi Wan even remarks that he can never match Anakin's prowess, but it is not once shown; yes, he does better than Obi Wan vs. Count Dooku, but Palpatine didn't need or want Obi Wan to live, so he just had Dooku go a little easier on Anakin and a little harder on Obi Wan.

Ok, that's it. Here are the final ratings.

Action: 2.6/5 scrapped ships (Decent, but boring. Rating bumped higher because of Obi Wan).
Acting: 1/5 brown robes (If not for Ewan McGregor, this would have been a 0/5).
Story: 2.5/5 space fighters (Star Wars is usually quite good with at least the story, but certain problems, namely "Padme dying in childbirth," dragged it down a lot).
Sound: 3/5 droids (I didn't notice it once).
Dialogue: -1/5 buckets of lava (Most of the movie just has mediocre dialogue, but it has far more dialogue which causes physical pain in anyone who hears it).
Visuals: 3.5/5 exposed shield generators (Good, as always. Just seemed kinda pointless, as nothing that hasn't been done before is done).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 2/5 lightsabers (Not as bad as Episodes I or II, but objectively speaking a very crappy movie).

"So I did." -- Running With Scissors

2005-05-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna try something a little different this week.

Running With Scissors is Weirld Al Yankovich's 1999 album. If you don't already know, Weird Al's songs are pretty much all either parodies of songs, movies, and whatever, or random randomness, and they are usually pretty funny. Just grouping the songs all together couldn't possibly do them justice, so I'll go through the disk ditty by ditty.

The first song, "The Saga Begins," is a pretty good parody of Don Lean's "American Pie" which basically re-works the lyrics to be about Star Wars Episode 1. Although the Laugh factor is lowish, the song is clever and can be fun to listen to after watching the movie.
Humor: 2.5/5 midichlorians.

Next comes "My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder," which is not, to my knowledge, a parody of another song so much as about Eddie Vedder. This one is funnier than the first, but it perhaps would have been a better idea to parody someone more famous.
Humor: 3.2/5 sweaters.

"Pretty Fly For A Rabbi" comes in at slot #3. I'll give you three guesses which song it's parodying. Continuing the trend (up until now) of increasing funny, this has a number of laugh-out-loud moments. The rabbi in question is more than a little stereotypical, which would have been a stronger negative if it wasn't obviously not making a statement.
Humor: 3.6/5 shticks.

For a short time, Weird Al had a television show, and of course he wrote the theme song for it. "The Weird Al Show Theme" is that theme song, and it's one of those utterly nonsensical riffs that Weird Al's so good at. A mere 1:14 long, this song moves very fast and it will take a quick ear to catch it all the first time through.
Humor: 4/5 bear traps.

One of the funniest songs in the album, "Jerry Springer" parodies both Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" and (*gasp*) The Jerry Springer Show. The lines really pop out at you, utterly random and perfectly poignant at the same time. Although he's taking the show's premise to an absurd level, somehow it always seems just close enough to possibility to keep it from getting, well, absurd beyond recognition. Particularly funny is a short dialogue between two "guests" of the Jerry Springer show shouting back and forth at each other inserted in the middle. This song is damned funny.
Humor: 5/5 strippers (with the implants).

Following a high point is a low point: "Germs." I strongly dislike this song. First, its not funny. Second, you get the distinct impression that Weird All is standing uncomfortably close to you as he's singing it. And third, who wants to hear about germs covering everything?
Humor: 1/5 germs (duh).

He throws one of these in every album, but I still don't get them. "Polka Power" takes short refrains, verses, and snippets from various pop/etc. songs and plays them more quickly and in a higher octave than they were meant to be played, as well as with Weird Al's voice and to Polka. EXTREMELY bizarre, and rather funny, in its own way. It's hard to know exactly why its funny, though. Just ... yeah. Weirdness.
Humor: 3.5/5 pretty ones.

Also ranking near the top, "Your Horoscope For Today" is breathtakingly hilarious. Just everything from the lyrics to the tone, to the music, to the voice effects: everything comes together to create a beautiful amalgamation of funny and comedy. Most of the song is in an up-beat, happy voice, while singing terrible prophesies, but the single funniest moment is when it switches to a very low, menacing voice (while keeping the doom prophesies, of course).
Humor: 5/5 naked posters of Ernest Borgnine.

Another great song, "It's All About The Pentiums" is chock-full of computer geek lingo, computer geek injokes, and overall funny. A good song for anyone who's owned a computer, but those of you who churn through computer upgrades like a duck through warm saline solution will find it particularly interesting. (See that thing about a duck through saline solution? That's the sign that I need to go to bed. A sign that a intent wholeheartedly to ignore).
Humor: 4/5 nice, heavy, paper weights.

"Truck Drivin' Song" weirds even me out, and that's not easy to do. I'm sorry, but truckers just should *not* be allowed to use the words "crotchless panties," especially when they are talking about how they "ride up." *Shudders* Whatever you do, do *not* sing this song outloud near other people while listening to the album with headphones.
Humor: 2/5 rhinestone pumps (it's not that its unfunny, its just that it weirds me out too much to make me laugh).

"Grapefruit Diet," the calm before the storm, disappoints. Although the execution of the idea is pretty well done, it still ends up being flat-out not funny. The beat's pretty good, though.
Humor: 1/5 aerial-view pictures.

The last pays for all. "Albuquerque" is exactly eleven minutes and twenty five seconds of sheer hilarity (as opposed to opaque hilarity, the poser of the hilarity universe). Similar to "The Weird Al Show Theme," "Albuquerque" isn't parodying anything or anyone; its just random and arbitrary. Really, every moment of this song/story has parts that make sense and parts that really don't, and it all works just well. A delightful song definitely worth the price of the album all by itself.
Humor: 5/5 molecules on Leonard Nemoy's butt.

Well ... that's pretty much it ... might as well wrap up, though ...

Overall Humor (not necessarily directly determined by the above ratings): 5/5 boxes of starving crazed weasels (If you don't want to laugh, avoid this album like a rare Albanian cheese plague).
Melody: 4/5 Kings of Confrontation (Although there are undoubtedly better scores elsewhere, the music itself is still pretty good).
Sing-a-long-a-bility: 4.5/5 high heels (Most of the songs are great fun to sing along with, but it's very difficult to do this with a few, namely "Albuquerque").
CD Visuals: 3.5/5 TicketMasters (Although the pictures used for the CD case were good, they were rather predictable considering the title).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 Columbia Record Clubs (Funny funny funny! That's funny^3, which, for those of you without calculators capable of computing that, is a whole lot of funny!).

"Gurgle." -- Water (yes, water. Do shut up).

2005-05-16T02:16:00.000-07:00

Laugh, darn you!

Water. It's everywhere. It's in the air, the plumbing, and even in you. It's the most overrated substance of all time, and it's time to take it down a notch or seventy.

The plot is pretty simple: two happy-go-lucky hydrogen atoms are walking along when BAM! They're knocked on the head by a very depressed oxygen atom which promptly duct-tapes itself to our captured heroes. Then, this water molecule goes around and does weird, pointless things that don't make any sense in context; for example, there's this one scene in which it moves around a computer and cools it, but in the very next scene it's frozen (so it's even colder now) and surrounding a person with a bunch of its buddies and the person is heated up. The continuity editor clearly didn't do his job well at all, as this isn't even the only plot hole (it gets smaller when it goes from gas to liquid but gets larger when it goes from liquid to gas).

The CG for water is terrible. Stick a pencil in it and you know what happens? THE PENCIL BREAKS!!!! But of course when you take it out, it's just like nothing ever happened again. What the fuzzy? And what the heck is up with the sound? It's either "gurgle," "shhhhhhh," or "glorp." Why can't we have just a little variation from time to time? Just once I'd like to hear a water fountain bust out with some Led Zepplin or a little Mozart.

Don't even get my started about water as a beverage. It's the only drink I know of that actually tastes better when you put ground-up rocks (taken right off the ground, no less) into it. What's worse, you have to actually pay people to throw those rocks into your water for you! Water is two things: Oxygen and hydrogen, but since water's so sneaky it doesn't want you to know that. Instead, it tries to con you out of your hard-earned cabbage leafs with claims such as "2% dirt" and "24% quartz shavings." Don't get sucked into the scam!

Water thinks its got such a great sense of humor, but it's really just a one trick pony that plays around with variations of "Get person X wet." When will Hollywood learn that getting people wet just isn't funny? It's clownish at best, but since clowns wouldn't know humor if it came up and offered them $1,293,513.57 to dance to the beat of A Different Drummer, it's best is pret-ty forlorn.

Bah! My blood is boiling just thinking about this stupid molecule, so I'm going to move on to the scoring.

Action: 3.5/5 spewing geysers (I have to admit that water does a pretty good job of causing mayhem when at high pressures. It's a real sight to see a pillar of water 45 feet high).
Acting: 0/5 reflective surfaces (It's just so cold, flat, and emotionless. It just sits there and does nothing! However, the Academy likes this sort of actor, so it'll probably win at least Best Supporting).
Story: 1/5 falling droplets (It's a dull tired story with no surprises: evaporation, condensation, precipitation. However, I've seen worse).
Sound: 1.5/5 icicles (Although there's a certain charm to the EXACT SAME NOTE FOR TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY, if you're into that sort of thing, most of the time it's just irritating. It bores into the back of your skull and sticks there, like a post-it with accidental superglue).
Visuals: 2/5 vapor bursts (Although it's a little cool that it can play the mirror, most of the time the water's just lazy, making errors like the pencil thing left and right).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 1/5 invisible bacterium (There's no good reason to go see this, as it offers nothing new or interesting in the least. Really, it's one of the biggest flops to come out of the industry since sliced motherboards. I weep when I think of that amount of thought that must have gone into water to make it as low quality as it is).

"I think this is where you and I shake hands." -- Unbreakable

2005-05-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

See? I said I'd get back to reviewing and indeed I did. Enjoy!

Unbreakable was the first movie M. Night Shyamalan did after The Sixth Sense, and it flopped. Unfairly so, however, because it was incorrectly marketed as a thriller. As a speculative fiction / drama piece, however, it awes.

Basic plot summary: Bruce Willis survives a horrible train wreck, meets Samuel L. Jackson as a man with extremely brittle bones, and finds out he's a superhero. See, here's where the movie was mistagged: it poses a "What if" question and then shows us a character on a self-discovery mission rather than spending the 107 minutes trying to get out blood pumping. Additionally, unlike in The Sixth Sense, the ending doesn't make the movie. Yes, it's a damned bizarre, interesting, clever, and enlightening ending, but the movie won't be ruined for you if someone tells you going in "Oh, and by the way: Bruce Willis is a ghost."

Let's talk about the drama. The acting makes or breaks drama, and the acting here is magnificent. I couldn't even really tell that these were actors. The lines they deliver so well are so realistic that, again, it becomes impossible to tell that they are, in fact, lines and not merely spontaneously generated speech. Due in large part to the drama and the way the drama takes place, this superhero movie doesn't feel at all like a superhero movie. And yes, that's a good thing, at least here.

This realism juxtaposes, and greatly strengthens, the somewhat shakey speculative elements of the film. Bruce Willis has four basic superpowers: 1) super strength (although he has to exert himself, he can seemingly lift as much as he has to), 2) super toughness (he survived a car crash in high school and a train crash more recently, for example), 3) super immune system (he has never been sick, with one exception due to his weakness, water), and 4) limited telepathy (he gets mental pictures of when someone's "done something wrong"). These are never really explained; there's no father who worked at a nuclear plant, and he wasn't struck by lightning while skinny dipping or something similar. He just has these powers and always had. However, in a fit of circular logic, we can accept this irrational premise because the rest of the movie works so realistically, assuming the premise is correct. It's a really delicious dilemma that works quite well.

I won't bore you with my musings on every single part of the movie, but I simply must touch on the cinematics before I bid you adieu. Say what you will about Mr. Shyamalan, but it can't be denied that the man knows where to plop his cameras. He has this uncanny knock of finding the spot which will make the film most interesting. Even leaving out that pretty much every scene starts in medias res, the placement of our point of view forces us to spend just a few seconds quickly searching the screen in an attempt to ascertain where we are and what's happening. It keeps the audience on its toes and forces us to watch the movie more actively, something rarely seen in most American cinema. Add to this that he doesn't pull any punches with dialogue and you get a situation in which the audience really has to pay attention and use their craniums. It's refreshing, it's interesting, and it's beauty incarnate.

Action: 3.5/5 scrapped cars (The fight scene between Bruce and the janitor is not the best in cinema history, but it's still pretty good).
Acting: 5/5 green ponchos (Are these even actors? Are they instead real people in a documentary? These questions would be difficult to answer if not for secondary evidence, such as Bruce Willis' other acting gigs).
Story: 4/5 comic books (Many might not appreciate the story, which is admittedly flawed, but it's delivered which such a matter-of-fact style that questioning it is not the usually response. It resolves its "What If" questions pretty well, which is far more than many SF movies can say).
Sound: 3/5 pools (The music is pretty decent in this movie. I didn't find it particularly notable, for good or for ill).
Visuals: 5/5 glass canes (The camera angles wowed me).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 paint canes (A deeply interesting, enthralling, and beautiful film, it's a shame more people haven't seen Unbreakable).

Insert badly over-used "Flying Circus" reference here.

2005-05-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

This week was movie-light for me, mostly because I've been playing Guild Wars a lot. (It is as good, if not better than, the beta made it seem). I saw Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb today, but spotlighting it would be stupidly pointless. If you haven't seen it, go out and see it. It's a classic for a reason. The "Behind the scenes" featurette was also pretty good.

Because Dr. Strangelove was the only movie I saw this week (and because I don't feel like half-assing a review of something I saw months ago), I will instead post a shortish semi-stream-of-consciousness piece I wrote a while ago. I'll probably have another review next week (perhaps of a certain new movie), so don't worry about this becoming a recurring theme. Anyway:

------------------------------------------

As I was running along the brick wall (full of cracks and absolutely perfectly straight lines of grought sticking out) at full speed (precariously close to the wall, might I add), I came to a startling revelation.

And I will not tell you what it is.

This is the sort of revelation that means nothing to anyone, not even me, but still affects my life profoundly. Indebtedly.

That revelation was chiefly why I was running along the brick wall (filled with cracks and perfectly geometric lines of grought poking out) at full speed (dangeresquely close to the wall, I might arithmatate). For, you see, my revelation was of the sort that it is, to be frank, personal and personal only. But of course, revelations, even of the persona variety, are meant to be shared. No sense in being selfish, after all. So few revelations to go around, after all.

So I shared it with the one person whom I thought would appreciate the profundity of it all. She did not, as my flight clearly suggests. Her volume button was depressed and I fear the neighbors telephoned the watch. So I ran and run and am running along that brick wall with such handsome and punctual lines.

My name is Jonathan Evergreen, Jack to many, Jackass to many more. My life is lived in shards. Like this one, for example. Shard 27B-6. Terrifying, isn’t it? Yes.

In the previous shard, 27B-5, I was walking my dog. Yes, more movement. Not along an angular brick wall, as I am now. No! my dog was on a stroll and I was accompanying him through a blue part of town. The homes were dressed in lightest robins egg, the streets were the color of exulted violet, and the city towers that stretched high into the sky to puncture the clouds themselves, those were the hue of blue that one only sees in a blood-stained carpet bombarded with the light of a sparrow’s wing in the sunrise.

Oh, it was so very very blue.

And I walked my blissfully color-blind dog walking down Blue Lane until he reached the intersection of Blue Lane and Blue Drive at which point we made a sharp right turn by way of the left hand side of the street, Blue Drive, sending us out an alley and into a tiny bookstore that happily allowed pets.

The bookstore was titled, appropriately enough, Blue Drive Hats. They sold mass-production paperbacks that had the built-in feature of being hat-like. I entered the clanging door, not really knowing what to expect, for although I had seen many paperback books before and many hats before, I had never yet seen a paperback book hat store in a blue street, which it indeed was.

Clangity bomp. Noisey sound the bells on the door make when opened. A small steel diode fell from a lofty place on the ceiling when I opened the door, landed on a small lever, and fired, via air cannon, a sliver-thin book-hat into my forehead where it buried itself, momentarily, until I thought about pain and it fell out of its own accord. Catching it, I read its phrase in one swift stroke – I seem to have lost it since thus – and that was enough to trigger what you might call an epiphany, but I call it revelation.

Nothing earth-shattering about the intensely personal revelation. It’s just something everyone should know, which is why I cannot tell you anything about it, except that its very simple while, at the same time, staring you right in the face.

My dog got away from me, exulted at the smell of bookish hat, a hat you can read. I would have chased him through the store, only to find him sniffing the tail end of an exhaust pipe somewhere in the Periodicals section except that a sign dropped from the roof displaying the only rule of the comely shop: “Never eat instant soup in a bar with monkeys.” Seemed reasonable enough, so I thought I’d try following it. It could be hard, however, as I intend fully to go to quite a few bars in my life, just as soon as I begin going to bars, and I think it highly likely that those bars will serve instant soup, particularly with monkeys.

It’s nice to see a store concerned about my morality. Finite.

"Do you wish to have your victims bound to an altar, or would you prefer them free-range?" -- The Road to El Dorado

2005-04-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

We've had this movie basically since it came out on DVD, but it was only recently that my sister excavated her room and found it in a bag in a box at the bottom of a pile of clothes. How it got there, I don't know. Lucky for you, though, since now I can review it.

The Road to El Dorado is Disney done right. Good animation, relatively stock characters and plot, much funny, and good music coalesce into the cliche of "a movie everyone in the family will like." Trite but true.

Requisite plot summary: a pair of con men, accidentally stow away on Cortez's ship bound for the new world, are discovered and jailed, escape, reach South/Central America, follow a map they conned someone out of to El Dorado (the City of Gold), are mistaken as gods, and use this error to try to con the city out of a boatload of gold (in a very literal sense, as they need that boat to get back home to Spain). And there's a sociopathic bloodthirsty evil High Priest thrown in, just to mix things up. The plot is fairly stock Disney, but that's part of the charm.

Let's talk more about the protagonists: Miguel and Tulio. We meet these two con artists at the end of a game of dice against some sailors (they are using loaded dice, of course). Always wheeling and dealing, our duo of swashbuckling glib-tongued rapscallions manage to carry the film for pretty much every moment they are on screen together. Their banter really makes the movie. Miguel (voiced by Kenneth Branagh [which surprised the heck out of me], who does a darned good job of it) is the more soulful of the two. He's a dreamer, a risk-taker, a musician, a ladies man, and a basically nice guy. Tulio (voiced by Kevin Kline, who also turns a superb performance) is more analytical, happiest when following a plan that will lead to lots of gold. He's a little more selfish, but he's also more level-headed and realistic. Both characters carry the same amount of appeal, however, which is generally how buddy pictures work best.

I mentioned their banter. Funny as hell, their interplay is. Every line is golden (ironic, considering the movie), funny, interesting, clever, and perfectly delightful. Although this is the source of the funniest funnies, other types of funnies also reside here. Slapstick, of course, can be found in abundance. There's some deadpan, some pure absurdity, some situational humor, and even a little black comedy here and there (see the title of the post for an example), among others kinds. There really is something for everyone here.

You couldn't possibly review this movie adequately without at least mentioning the sweet original music. As a Disney Wannabe, this movie must have a good song sequence every twenty-or-so minutes or it gets its card revoked. A lot of the time in Disney movies, the songs drag on and add little, if anything, to the picture. They are boring diversions, nothing more. However, Elton John, Time Rice, and Hans Zimmer (the same dudes who did the totally righteous music for Teh L10n K1ng, yo) supplied the tunes for El Dorado, and the quality shows. Although undoubtedly not the best Disney-esque music ever, it's still quite good; rather catchy, interesting lyrics, beautiful melodies, and great poignancy make it all work well. Most importantly, these songs don't drag, and they sometimes even help move the plot along (for example, the journey of Miguel and Tulio through the jungle). Interestingly enough, Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline actually sang their parts of the duet (separately, I assume). Just goes to show how much range they have.

Finally, it is important to go into the movie with your level 15 Suspenders of Disbelief on. You're gonna need it for everything from the typical Disney elements (ie semianthropomorphic animals) to the language (ie "it's convenient how everyone speaks perfect English with almost no accent appropriate to their geographic area at all, isn't it?") to the amazing luck these guys have (ie right when they are called upon to produce a miracle, a volcano nearby erupts for a moment) to the moments of pure fantasy (ie bizarre animals). I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is something you need to watch out for if you are to enjoy this movie at all.

Action: 3/5 flying horses (Pretty good, but not the focus of the movie).
Acting: 4.5/5 loaded dice (I am speaking of course of the voice acting, which is exquisite).
Humor: 4.5/5 blazed trails (Hilarious. Even side-splittingly hilarious, from time to time).
Story: 3.5/5 gold chalices (Although it's pretty much Disney norm, El Dorado has made some improvements that score it an extra half-point).
Sound: 4/5 improvised guitars (With the team assembled, what do you expect? Very good music. That's exactly what you get).
Visuals: 3/5 rubber balls (Although the animation was certainly well done, it's not really anything special).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 row boats (If you like Disney, you'll probably like this more than at least most of the new Disney movies. If you don't like Disney movies, you just might like this movie because it does many things Disney does, but much much better and without those trademark Disney flaws).

Tuesday Special: "See you in the funny papers." -- John Q

2005-04-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

This is in recompense for missing last week due to a retreat I was on. Yes, it's a little short. Pipe down. There's not a whole lot to say. Don't forget to read the one just before this if you only check ones a week!

John Q is a movie about how much HMOs suck. How shocking. Who knew? All joking aside, John Q's a pretty good drama talking about pretty important issues in a pretty adult way.

The basic premise is thus: John Q Archibald, played by Denzel Washington, is a blue-collar factory worker who's been cut to part-time employment. His son collapses at a Little League game and it is discovered that he needs a heart transplant. Price tag: $250,000. John and his wife go through the run-a-round of paperwork and fundraising and eventually the hospital decides to send his son back home to die. With no other options that involve the continued existence on this Earth of his son, John takes the emergency ward of the hospital hostage and demands they give his son a new heart. Eventually, that happens and he's taken off to jail. But plot summary is boring and boring is bad. No more badness.

Overall, I liked this movie. Admittedly it gets a little preachy* from time to time**, but at least it doesn't try to hide it. The acting is pretty good, and therefore so is the drama. The script doesn't usually try to be overly clever but instead goes more for realism; most of the lines I can see someone actually speaking.

Denzel Washington really makes this movie work. Although it has a lot of recognizable faces (and voices. James Woods, who here plays Dr. Raymond Turner, was the voice of Hades in Hercules), he dominates the movie. I particularly admired his ability to start crying without breaking down into sobs, to waver his voice just a little bit before picking it up again. He doesn't portray his character as a saint but merely as a good guy backed into a corner, which is nice to see.

This movie also has merit as a good example of Stockholms Syndrome, or at least the general perception of it. Although he's holding a gun to them and threatened to kill them off one by one if the police don't bend to his demands by a certain time, they become increasingly aligned to him and his cause, one of them even going so far as to impersonate John and allow himself to be arrested in his place so he can watch the doctors operate on his son.

Action: 3/5 grinders (What little action there was was decent).
Acting: 4.5/5 Berreta 9-mm's (Denzel Washington was the shining star, but pretty much everyone did a darned good job).
Story: 3/5 killer 18-wheelers (It did its job adequately).
Sound: 3.5/5 hospital stretchers (The music was most non non non heinous. I rather liked it).
Visuals: 3.5/5 color TVs (The camera angles, lens choice, lighting, etc. were all rather good. I rather liked them as well).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 bogus forms (A rather nice movie and a rather good way to spend a pair or so of hours).

* And by "gets a little preachy" I of course mean "bashes you over the head with its agenda."
** And by "from time to time" I of course mean "from the time the movie starts to the time the credits roll."

"Those who will remember, will speak fondly of the warm morning breeze." -- Guild Wars

2005-04-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

Now, today I review not so much a product as an event that foreshadows a product. Oh, and I'll have a movie review tomorrow (to make up for the one I missed last week), so be sure to look for that. EDIT: Something's come up. I'll have to postpone the Special for Tuesday.

The Guild Wars beta test that took place from Friday April 15th to Sunday April 17th was very, very fun. As you all probably know, the beta test is a stage that most games go through in which it is released to a limited portion of the populace for stress testing. Basically, they fill the cup that is the game with water and see where it leaks. Guild Wars chose its beta testers by giving out passwords for it with the preorders. My brother was good enough to preorder it a few weeks ago, and since it comes with a Guest/Friend pass, I was able to play in it.

Let's start with some basics about the game (the next several paragraphs are merely explanatory. If you already know about how the game works, skip ahead until I bold for you to stop): Guild Wars is a new type of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game ("MMORPG," or just "MMO" for short) which is set up in such a way as to not only eliminate many of the grievances gamers have had with traditional MMO's (such as camping at spawn points, kill-stealing, spending hundreds of hours leveling, et al) but also offer the game with no monthly charges. If NCSoft is able to turn a decent profit, Guild Wars will set a new industry standard which pay services (such as World of Warcraft) may find difficult to top.

According to the game's website FAQ, it might be more correct to call this a "Competetive Online Role Playing Game" rather than an MMO, and not just because it has fixed many problems and doesn't charge a monthly fee. All, or at least mostly all, of the fighting done in Guild Wars takes place in what I am told are called "Instances," special private versions of sections of the game generated for you when you step through certain gates. You and other players can form a party in one of the cities and then set off on an adventure together, helping each other to face challenges that would otherwise be difficult, or perhaps even impossible, alone.

The game has two character types: RP or PvP. RP characters start from scratch and spend most of their time going on quests to grow in power and advance the story (which, thanks to Instancing, now has personal continuity: you won't see someone else kill a unique monster that you already killed, for example), although they can compete in head-to-head matches in certain places. PvP characters only have one option available to them: fight other players in tournament-style encounters. In the beta, the player had access to all abilities and items and started at the maximum level (20) for PvP characters, but rumor has it that in the real game, you will only be able to use the abilities and items that you discovered in the RP half of the game, and you cannot exceed the level of your RP characters.

Yes, the maximum level in the game is 20. Yes, this is rather low (although it becomes more and more difficult to level, as always, it still takes relatively little time to get there, at least according to my estimates). Yes, this is good. This means that victory is a function of skill, not simply hours invested. Anyway, every level you gain health and ability points (which you spend improving your profession's or secondary profession's areas of expertise, called, surprisingly, Abilities). You do not gain energy/mana (not automatically, at least. You can gain energy/mana by putting points into Energy Storage, which only primary Elementalists have access to, or equipping special items). This kinda sucks for certain character types, such as the Monk who exclusively heals, but overall works out well: none of the abilities cost more than a starting character can afford (as far as I know, anyway), and they improve as you spend more ability points.

Speaking of which, Spells are here called "Skills" (because they are not always magic, and everyone, even the warrior, has them). These do various things, mostly centered around gaining health or removing health in various ways. The casting/use time for each is different, some taking 10 seconds or longer to use and others taking no time at all. Most also have a recharge time, and some even charge something beyond energy (specifically, some of the warrior's skills cost something called adrenaline, which you gain by hitting things). This system is very slick and works fairly intuitively.

The game has no mining, crafting, smelting or other such skills. Instead, you can salvage materials from items you pick up off dead creatures with a Salvage kit and give them, along with some money, to Crafter NPCs to make stuff.

Finally, even as a beta this game offers much variation in personal look. Although everyone of a profession must start with the same body type (Warriors are beefy, Mesmers are lithe, etc), you have a number of choices between different hair styles and colors, faces, skin colors, and size (as well as Sex, of course). Everyone starts with the same clothes, but you can find other clothing throughout the game, and you can also use Ink to change the color of your clothes. This all boils down to a very diverse-looking bunch of people.

Ok: summary over. The part of the review that's actually a review starts here.

This game owns. It succeeded my wildest expectations and then some. I was hoping for something at least halfway decent and got something extremely enjoyable for every single minute I played.

Let's start with the most superficial of levels, and yet increasingly the most important: graphics. Everything from the character models to the insignificant backgrounds to the sky to the grass to the monsters was stunningly beautiful. My computer is coming up on it's fifth birthday, which forced me to bring every single video setting to the minimum (and I still experienced some lag time here and there), but even then, the graphics were very very pretty. Once I switched to my brother's computer (a 1.7 GHz P4, 756 MB RAM, 256 MB Video Card), which can easily handle every setting to the max, the game really jumped out at me.

The music was also very nice, very listenable. I can easily see spending a hundred hours playing with it in the background.

Ok, ok, no more stalling. Let's talk about the meat and marrow of the game: the gameplay. Wow. Simple and intuitive with plenty of variation, the gameplay in this game is stellar. Combat works basically like this: click the enemy, you two trade blows. You each continue to trade blows with your equipped weapon until one (or even both) of you decide to either run away (which doesn't usually work well, in my experience) or use a skill. Using a skill is simple: either click its little icon at the bottom of the screen or press its corresponding number on your keyboard (I find the latter to be far more effective). Your character then goes through all the necessary motions and the skill is used. The AI does this intelligently, too; you won't accidentally heal an enemy or harm a friend, for example, and if an ability can only logically effect one character nearby, you won't usually have to select that character.

I really like the leveling system, to a degree. It is simple and intuitive (that could probably be the game's motto), and leaves you some room to correct screw-ups. Once you hit 20, you can level no more, but I'm pretty sure that you can continue to gain ability points if you get enough XP. That's really my only concern: abilities start costing more and more points, but it appears as if you never gain more than 5 ability points per level, which means you might not get anything from a level except more hit points.

The game does have an issue with information (namely that it doesn't give you enough of it). Often, I would get into a situation and not know what the monkeys was going on (thankfully, the goal was usually pretty obvious). Many of the features of the game were left for you to find (for example, it was not readily obvious that you gain ability points when you level. You had to stumble upon that all by yourself). And often, the precise function of a skill would not be totally obvious from the little blurb given. Hopefully, this is an issue that will be fixed by release.

Instead of classes, Guild Wars uses Professions. I played for at least a few levels of each profession, and they seemed by-and-large fairly well balanced with each other. The Ranger and Warrior had a harder time soloing and the Monk seemed like it might be a little bit overpowered, but the power level mostly seemed fine. I started out as an Elementalist (hoping for simplicity as I learned the game system), then I did the Monk shtick for a while (which was more fun than I thought it would be), then Warrior (more complicated than you might think. His adrenaline skills were very cool), then Mesmer (which required more combo sequences than the others, but was fun despite, or because, of this), then Necromancer (which has some very cool and potent skills) and finally Ranger (which I had been putting off because my brother played one a great deal and I thought I might be pressed for time. I didn't like this one quite as much as the others, as it seemed like his initial skills weren't enough). All the classes were fun, and each offered its own tactical challenges. I eschewed duel-classing due to time, but I would want to know more about it before using it anyway (I do not currently know of a single downside to duel-classing).

The quests in the RP part of the game were always fun and interesting with a very low frequency of "Fetch" missions. You could always count on having a good time doing them. Teaming up with another person or two increased the fun, although it was a bit of a hassle using the Chat feature (you have to click the bar every single time you want to type a message)

And finally, the PvP part. If ever there was an good MMO for Player-versus-Player action, this would be that game. Because of the level cap, you didn't have to worry about going up against someone 40 or 50 levels higher than you. Because you fight as one party against another party, you can create specialized characters that still contribute quite well. I was very impressed with the PvP part of the game, although I never made it past the third round.

Combat: 4.5/5 broken flutes (Very well done, with the just right mixture of strategy and action).
Graphics: 4.5/5 waterfalls (Extremely well done, even at the minimum settings).
Balance: 4/5 fiery explosions (For the most part, the Professions and skills seemed balanced, although there were a few things that seemed a tad off).
Story: 3/5 flaming swords (It suffices).
Sound: 4/5 swooshes (Good, solid game music that's easy to listen to as you play).
Price/Value: 5/5 golden coins (Retail is about $50, which is the industry standard for big-ticket games. However, it's an MMO without the monthly fee, and that is a feat worthy of a great many accolades).
Humor: 3/5 exploding gnomes (Although there wasn't a whole lot of humor in the game itself, the way the beta ended deserves a mention. Essentially, gnomes appeared that exploded and killed everyone, then fireworks, then a rain of money and XP, and finally death by giant flaming worms).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 Monty Hauls (This game should be at the top of ever gamer's wish list).

"Maybe after I pull off /that/ miracle I'll punch out God." -- Sin City

2005-04-02T00:09:00.001-08:00

I've been told that naming posts after lines in the movies I review makes them more difficult to navigate, and although that was partially my intent (so you all have to read them ALL >:->), I suppose it's best if I index them or something by title. I'll get around to that one of these days . . . like, when I learn HTML. Which is never. Eh. EDIT: Screw that. Too complicated. I'll just add the titles of the movies to the titles of the posts, but not the most recent post. Just 'cuz.

Frank Miller's Sin City (here's another site) is a digitized love song to the noir flicks of the '40s. It's also damn good. No, scratch that. It's great. It's fudging great. It's the tour de force of cinema. If you don't hate film noir and you can stomach some very graphic violence, see this movie at all costs.

But first, a disclaimer: I have not so much as seen from the street in passing a Frank Miller graphic novel, much less read the Sin City series. The first I heard of this world was two weeks ago when I first saw the trailer on TV. Thus, this review is completely and utterly devoid of all fanboyism, which is good for those of you who are also Sin City virgins but bad you those of you who are devotees and want me to crucify the film for its slight errors (assuming, of course, it has any).

Additionally, this movie is an ultraviolent gorefest with some highly disturbing situations mixed in for good measure. It is the most solidly Rated-R movie I have seen in a long, long time, although it misses the illicit drugs and superfluous naughty language necessary to make it the R archetype. The movie does its violence pretty darn realistically, although the Black/White coloring obscures it just enough to keep it from overwhelming you. For particularly brutal sequences, the camera mercifully switches into pure black/white silhouettes. Clearly, these effects have more primary purposes, but they also tend to make the movie more easily watchable. So, in short: don't watch this if you have a problem with extreme violence.

Let's start with the story. Stories. Three stories of overlapping spheres in Basin City, the quintessential cesspool. Everyone and everything here exhibits corruption on a scale that puts D.C. to shame. The cops, the politicians, and the mafia are the obvious sources of corruption, but the clergy and the, er, women of ill repute (known in some circles as "prostitutes") also contribute (greatly, as it turns out) to the pooling cess. So, Marv (this big guy the size of a great ape) gets framed for killing this prostitute that was nice to him and decides to kill whoever killed her and whoever ordered the kill. Dwight follows his girldfriend's abusive ex-boyfriend into Old Town, the section of the city rules by the whores, and all hell almost breaks lose (fortunately, only the upper three circles get away, and that's not all that much trouble to fix). And finally, John Hartigan decides to sacrifice his life to save "little Nancy Callahan." These three stories have interlocking characters and are told nonlinear with respect to each other. All three are engrossing and use very likeable tough-guys as their protagonists, two of whom are antiheros and one of whom is a regular "Galahad." You can probably guess which goes to which. As a nice little bookend, Josh Hartnett plays the part of a character who shows up in the very first and very last scenes. Saying more would cause spoiling, and my lips are tightly sealed.

The most striking feature of the movie, however, is also probably the one many of you want to go see this: the cinematography. It's Black/White, which is different from Black-and-White in that Black-and-White is a misnomer whereas Black/White is apt. Black-and-White films never have black and they never have white; it's all just a bunch of grays. Sin City, however, toggles between extremes; Robert Rodriguez cracked open his computer and jury-rigged it so that he could turn the contrast up way beyond what the manufacturer intended, if you will. And as you should know from watching the trailer, spots of technicolor break through here and there; Goldie's hair, the cop sirens, a woman's dress, a hooker's eyes. All that makes for some damn beautiful frames, but add to this some innovative and interesting camera angles and movements and you get something that is well and truly art. Take any frame you want and frame it; you've got something that would sell in a gallery exhibition.

Now for the acting. Just about everyone delivered perfectly. There's not really much else to say. Some of it was corny, but then again: some of it was supposed to be. Alexis Bledel was, I feel, the one sore spot here, but she didn't do that badly.

The sound, like everything else, fit wonderfully. The music never took over, but it did its fair share of support. I really liked pretty much all of it. I felt kinda cheated, however, that the awesome song from the trailer wasn't in the movie (it mighta been in the credits, but that hardly counts). Oh well.

Strangely enough, Sin City made me laugh with abandon just about every ten-to-fifteen minutes. In a manner extremely reminiscent of Shakespeare, it hit you with the funny during the moments of greatest tragedy. I can't really give any examples without spoiling, but I can tell you that these little jokes helped lighten the mood. Don't get me wrong: this isn't a tragedy that needs jokes to keep the audience from committing suicide. The bad guys Get Theirs and when the good guys die, they die doing something noble. But the jokes still helped. I left with a smile on my face and a step in my spring.

And if it isn't blatantly obvious from the trailer, this movie is almost as quotable as The Godfather. Every scene has at least one highly memorable line.

Action: 4.5/5 broken tail lights (Very excellent, stylized fighting. By the way: the style was basically "The good guys don't die until they're supposed to," and it works great).
Acting: 4.5/5 silences pistols (So many actors did such a darn good job to make this movie work).
Humor: 4/5 blaring sirens (It affirmed that the movie is a drama and not a tragedy. Oh, and it's really freaking funny from now and then).
Story: 5/5 IVs (Despite the stock situations and expectations that noir brings with it, the movie managed to throw quite an interesting story our way).
Sound: 3.5/5 tar pits (The music was really good and supported the action very well. Docked for not including the song from the trailer).
Visuals: 5/5 katanas (Clearly one of the best parts of the movie, and oh what a part it is).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 electric-shaveresque Mercedes' (If this movie doesn't get at least three Oscars, Justice will demand the death of the Academy).

"Pepper needs new shorts." -- Dodgeball

2005-03-27T23:59:00.000-08:00

I can't for the life of me remember why I waited more than a minute to do a review on this movie. It's probably too famous to spotlight, but then again, I'm not getting paid for this.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story tells the tale of a group of misfits beaten on by their physical superiors who fight back and, against all odds, win.

Ok, so it won't win awards for originality, but there's a surprising amount of fun to be had in such a stock premise. Although all the major plot points are easily foreseen, exactly how the characters go about fulfilling them is inventive and interesting. It's nearly impossible to say more without spoiling some of it, so I won't.

We start the film with Peter La Fleur, a loser who is almost as lazy as I feel right now. He doesn't pay his bills, doesn't return his rented videos, and owns a car and Average Joe's Gym, both of which are falling apart. The enemy: White Goodman, a fat-man-turned-fitness-freak. He owns a chain of gyms which focus of making their customers hate their bodies enough to work out a lot. Peter's gym is going to close unless he gets $50k within a month, so he and his loyal customers decide to play in a Vegas dodgeball tournament to get its convenient $50k cash prize, a tournament which Goodman decides to enter as well.

First and foremost, this movie delivers laughs by the boatload. Seriously, it's one of the funnier movies of 2004 at least, and probably of 2005 (so far) as well. A plethora of types of funny can here be found, with everything from cheap physical comedy to witty/not-so-witty repartee to even cheap physical comedy. The cameos, of which there are quite a few, truly add a lot to the movie. I could barely stop laughing long enough to breathe.

The dodgeball sequences were surprisingly well done. I don't spend a lot of time watching professional dodgeball, but they seemed fairly realistic, and they were certainly exciting.

Virtually every single character was extremely well acted. Vince Vaughn played his La Fleur perfectly; his half-deadpan, half-constant amusement mood just made very witty thing out of his mouth that much funnier. Ben Stiller's Goodman was suitably over-the-top. Christine Taylor's Veatch had just the perfect blend of blondeness, intelligence, and poise that placed Goodman into the funny kind of relief (made all the funnier when you learn that she and Stiller are married, or at the very least were during shooting). The Average Joe-ers are all pathetic and noble in turns; they have their geeky, lame foibles, but they also have their steel.

A word of warning, however: do not (I repeat: do NOT) sit through the credits, because at the end of them you will be subjected to a sight too horrible to describe. If you truly must learn what is there, be sure to go in on an empty tummy.

Action: 3/5 killer ceiling fixtures (It served its purpose quite adequately).
Acting: 4.5/5 flying wrenches (The acting was extremely good).
Humor: 5/5 towels (Funny funny funny. It's the only real reason, and a great reason it is, to see the movie).
Story: 3.5/5 wheelchairs (Again, it sufficed. Despite being very cliche, it managed to throw a few curveballs).
Sound: 2/5 S&M costumes (I never really noticed the music much).
Visuals: 3/5 broken cardboard cutouts (Nothing special here).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 dodgeballs (See it to laugh uproariously, but there's not a whole lot other than that).

Midweek Special: "You got the punchline wrong." -- What the Bleep Do We Know!?

2005-03-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

I couldn't possibly review this like a normal movie and I don't feel like trying, so here's a simple recommendation from me to you. There will be a review this weekend as well, like normal.

What the Bleep Do We Know!?. No really, amongst all the talking and philosophizing and experimenting that we do in this world, how much of it is really knowledge? How much of it can we say without any doubt is true? This docu-entertainma-drama takes these questions and runs with them.

In short, this film puts forth and explores a number of problems that Philosophers have contemplated for thousands of years, offers solutions to quite a few problems, and encourages you, the audience, to take from it all what you will. Everything from reality itself to God to emotions to addiction is mused upon and talked about. As the title suggests, the filmmakers do not presume to hold the answers, only that they have some very interesting information that may be used to form some of the many possibilities.

But let's get down to basics: What the Bleep Do We Know!? splices interviews with scientists, physicians, philosophers, authors, and other such people into well-done special effects and a live-action story in an attempt to get people thinking and talking. It also does this all in such a way as to make it very accessible, as long as you are willing to use your brain. This isn't a popcorn flick, but you also don't need to take notes (notes might help, though ;-) ). If you go in not knowing anything about the concepts it discusses, it is all the more interesting. If you come out completely disagreeing with everything they said, it is all the more fun to talk about it afterwards. I recommend you see it with a few close friends and you all go in with those synapses firing. It's one heck of a trip.

Note: This movie is Not Rated, which means Blockbuster treats it like it's NC-17 / "X." This is no porno. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a PG-13 for a very brief sex scene (ok, it's technically two, but they are back-to-back and still take up less than 20 seconds total) and some language. Really, these are no big deal, and since most kids probably won't get much from this movie, it's not a good idea to show it to them anyway.

Overall: 4/5 neuropeptides (I rather enjoyed this movie aesthetically, but it did more for me than that. I disagree, in varying degrees, with much of what was said, but that's all the better).

"I will also fix the hobo suit." -- The Incredibles

2005-03-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

Considering the number of people I know who like the movie, I'm surprised it took me this long to see it. But I finally have and therefore bring this review to you. If it's at all incoherent, I apologize, but I was up way, way too late last night.

The Incredibles is Disney/Pixar's latest CG yarn telling the tale of superheros beaten down by evil lawyers. It's Disney, so you know how it turns out.

I actually liked this movie ... kinda. It has a number of flaws, but overall, I rather enjoyed it, especially for a modern Disney movie (most of which have been subpar). This movie's got some darn good visuals, fairly good plot, and pretty good characters, and overall makes for a quite enjoyable viewing experience. But it wasn't Great. And it could have been.

Let's start with the number one flaw (in my mind): the dialogue. Much of it was fine, but my Fakey Sense tingled every couple of minutes, alerting me to lines which were just off. It's hard to pin it down to single examples (none are anywhere near as bad as the fumbles of Day After Tomorrow), but here are the two that most stuck out, in my opinion: Robert's little speech to his family when they were incarcerated and almost everything out of Violet's mouth. That speech was terribly cliched, terribly hackneyed, and extremely embarrassing. It just didn't fit. Whoever wrote for Violet clearly knows nothing about either 12-14 year old girls or talking. She has the coolest powers of anyone in her family (again, in my opinion, although since none of them are offensive, she doesn't have the option of soloing, which kinda sucks for her. I suppose she could get a handgun of some sort, but everyone knows that superheros don't use guns) and isn't irritating like Dash, but almost nothing that she says is realistic. As I said, most of the dialogue does its job without any problems, but there aren't really any high peaks to offset the fair number of valleys.

Flaw Numero Duos: illogical causality. Some things just didn't make any sense. For example, the lawsuits (at least the two against Robert which were mentioned) would not be held in favor of the plaintiff. I do realize that they are lampooning the recent influx of stupid lawsuits, and that this is a necessary catalyst for the movie to happen, but no judge would award someone money because they were stopped from committing suicide, a crime (if you know of an exception, shut up. I want to keep my naivete about the judicial system not completely sucking, thank you). Because the movie doesn't even explain what specifically the second lawsuit is about, it, to me, seemed random. Syndrome's transition from "IncrediBoy wannabe" to "evil genius" didn't make much sense to me either. Clearly, he was dejected, but he claims that being sent home by Mr. Incredible taught him that "you can't trust your heroes" or something. Vastly illogical. I would have liked to see a much greater trauma than that cause his descent into evility. And did I mention Edna's manic depression? She suddenly decided with great conviction that Robert is fooling around. This isn't a huge deal, but it helped mar the flick.

Flaw number three: inconsistent tech level. Even during the introduction fifteen years before most of the movie, the superheros have technology far beyond that that we today have. Syndrome's gadgets are wildly fantastic. Edna's compound uses equipment to display her work that we can only dream about today. And yet everything else in the movie is at best five years in the future, and could probably exist just as easily a decade or two in the past. The army still uses cold war era tanks and machine guns. Offices are still predominately paper-based. Cars function and look almost exactly the same. Clearly, superheros and supervillians will have better stuff than the average shmuck on the street, but this doesn't excuse the ridiculous disparity.

Flaw number four: Disney. This means primarily two things: A) In me, Disney movies provoke this unrelenting desire to join in the action. For some reason, I badly want to enter the movie and change things. Since this is impossible, I experience great frustration. Ironically enough, this parallels Robert's primary dilemma, which almost tempts to write it off as intentional, but since this happens every time I watch Disney movies, I very very much doubt it. B) The PG rating is a strange one because it's not quite simple enough for most little kids to fully understand but not quite complex enough for teenagers or adults to fully appreciate. Perhaps there exists a thin region of age for whom this movie is absolutely perfect, but that makes your primary audience rather ephemeral. The most you can hope for in the long term is loyalty. It feels, to me, like an adult movie which was watered down some. I thought the movie could have really benefited from going for PG-13, just because every so often I sensed some artistic restraint (which is BAD beyond reason). I anxiously await Pixar's next movie, free from Disney's guiding hand.

Let me reassure you, however, that this is a movie worth your while. It's just not Great. And it could have been.

Action: 4/5 Spandex suits (The actions sequences were pretty darn good. I wasn't completely Wow-ed, but they were still very very good).
Voice Acting: 3.5/5 parallel pencils (Most of the voice actors merely did ok, merely sufficed. Some of the emphasis given to some of the words was very odd, almost to the point of a caricature. Robert Parr's voice actor did really well, in my opinion).
Story: 4/5 broken robots (Other than a few internal logical errors, I thought the plot was mostly quite interesting).
Sound: 3/5 frozen policicles (Good, solid superhero music and good, solid sound effects helped support the action, although they never really distinguished themselves).
Humor: 3/5 rocket ships (Although there were very very few direct jokes and/or gags, the movie had a goodly amount of humor lying about. It did its job).
Dialogue: 2/5 tiny cars (as I said, I consider the dialogue to be the weakest point of the movie).
Visuals: 4/5 flaming babies (This is Pixar. Clearly, the visuals will be darned good. They didn't knock my socks off, but then again, not a whole lot does. It would be nice to see them attempt realistic humans, just once. Nitpicks: lips [almost no one has them] and wet hair [very poorly done, that]).
Special Features (DVD): 3.5/5 blinking bombs (Mostly quite good. I don't know if it can be lumped here, but the casing of the DVD seems like overkill: sleeve, latches, and very secure/complicated center holder. What in God's name do they think we're planning to do with it? And I really didn't like the featurette "Jack-Jack Attack." Jack-Jack has way too many and way too random powers).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 3.5/5 (It was good, and entertaining, but it could have been Great).

"Or was it one-in-a-million?" -- Day After Tomorrow

2005-03-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

After much stalling, I finally bring you you a review of a truly, truly rotten movie. I watched it by myself, which is really really boring, so you'd sure as hell had better appreciate this! It's also almost as long as the Wonderfalls review ("Defy the chicken"), which should give you an idea of how much I hate it (and, as I said in the aforementioned review, feel free to skip to the ratings for a shorter summary).

Day After Tomorrow is ... Terrible. This rotten piece of sci-fi (I differentiate between Science Fiction and Sci-Fi. Dune or Timeline are Science Fiction. Look at me! I have robots and really cool rocket ships with explosions and people blowing each other up with ray guns! is sci-fi) was created by one of Satan's speech-writers in an attempt to screw with us and make us waste our money. The only redeeming qualities of the movie are the special effects (which are undeniably quite good, for the most part) and the MSK3k-ability of it.

Ok, let's start with why I primarily dislike it so violently. The. Lines. Oh my good gracious God, please deliver us from these terribly terrible lines. I can deal with crap science (which it has ad infinitum ), because it's really fun to laugh at it, but the lines injure the artist in myself. I honestly had to rewind and replay several parts of the movie just because I thought "They couldn't have said something so stupid, could they?" and my worst fears were always, without fail, confirmed. For example, here's a short dialogue between the main character and his boss:

Boss: "I hope you're right [that we're headed towards the next ice age within two months], Jack. My ass is on the line."
Jack (main character): "You saw the model."
Boss: "And I hope to God it's wrong."

What?!?!?!! Why would the screenwriter do this to us?!?! Why!??!?!? As I said, the only reasonable answer is that (s)he hates us and wishes us great ill. This sort of stupidity pops up all over the movie, making it a staple rather than fluke. My blood pressure is reaching dangerous levels right about now, so I'll be moving on to the mistakes more pleasant to mock.

As I mentioned earlier, the CG in this movie tends towards the "v. Good." Although it was almost all stupid (because of science reasons which I will mention in the hereafter), it looked really nice. I don't think that that's enough of a reason to waste time and money on this, but if you do, more power to ya. However, there's always an exception: The Wolves. More on them later, but they looked so fake that the director drastically darkened whatever scene they were in to try to hide how bad they look.

The music kinda sucked. I never noticed it unless it stuck out as if it was trying to tell us what to feel. The sound effects were ok, I guess, but most of them were connected with the stupid science, and that I do not forgive.

Which brings us to the stupendously insipid "science" elements. Oh boy, are they fun to lampoon. In fact, pretty much the only fun I gleaned from this terror of a movie was the privilege to rip on the false science with my friends. Let's start with the "explanation," or what it boils down to: "Heat from THE SUN enters the earth at the equator and the Atlantic current thingey takes it here and here, but GLOBAL WARMING is melting the ice caps, and that makes the Atlantic current thingey turn off, which causes an Ice Age." If you'll notice, this explanation doesn't actually explain anything. Terms are thrown around (and given overemphasis), but it never really shows us a relationship between the supposed causes and the supposed effects. It's hand waving of the highest degree, a hallmark of sci-fi.

A lot of the science is also flat out wrong as well. For example, it would have taken about three minutes for the helicopter pilot to freeze rather than a five or so seconds that it did, and opening the door wouldn't really have had much of a difference (or so I am told). Tents, despite evidence to the contrary, do not maintain a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit regardless of outside temperatures. The way New York floods is patently absurd: it's not a tidal wave / tsunami, but rather a massive influx of new water which could only occur if a huge part of the Arctic had suddenly melted and RAISED THE LEVEL OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN SEVERAL HUNDRED FEET. Now if we assume that the Arctic holds 15% of the world's water (which is probably far too much), that ice is as dense as water (which is certainly false), and that what must have occurred was the equivalent of dropping the Arctic into the ocean, you get the equivalent of A LOT OF WATER in the ocean, but it still isn't anywhere near what one would need to raise the sea level anywhere near that much. The ocean is freaking huge, for goodness sakes.

And another thing: Twisters in LA?!?! Much like the flooding, they NEVER EXPLAIN THIS. More insipid hand waving! "Um ... Well, you see ... uh ... GLOBAL WARMING! BOO! There. Weird weather explained." I honestly don't care if twisters really would form and New York really would flood that thoroughly that fast if what the movie makers are saying is true. At no point do they explain to us the causality, and that is just really sloppy.

There are more problems with the science, I assure you. I leave them to you to make fun of.

Speaking of causality, the continuity editors needed to be either fired or hired for this movie, because they either didn't do their job or their job needed to be done by someone. At one point, the movie makes a big deal of the main character's sled of supplies being destroyed. Three scenes later, they have it again! What the deuce!?!?! Moving anywhere above a certain point on the US is really really difficult, and yet the main character can make it by civilian truck from the Mexican-US border just about to DC (ignoring the lack of gas along the way). The concept of "time" is conveniently ignored for most intents and purposes. The "superfreezeing" eye of the storm is completely insane. Like most of the movies faults, the list of problems goes on.

Even when stuff occurs that is possible, it all fits together just a little bit (or, if we're being brutally honest, a big bit) too nicely. "Of course the wolves would be the only animals to escape" or "of course she would become stricken with blood poisoning and need medicine from the ship just as New York was about to completely freeze over." It's hard to go five minutes without using "of course" or "how very convenient" less than a half-dozen times with this movie.

A few trends: the characters are archetypical to the point of caricature (the Important Father Who Never Has Time For His Son, the Shy Gifted Brave Lovestruck Youngster, the Diligent and Dedicated Pediatrician Who Will Stand By Her Patients Until the Very End, the Loyal Friends Who Are Willing To Sacrifice Themselves For Their Leader the Protagonist, etc etc etc). Women, almost without exception, agree with the main character and his analysis of the weather problems, and men, almost without exception, disagree with him (at least until the end, when they admit their mistakes with their tails between their legs). The movie beats us over the head with its viewpoints at every twist and turn (the Vice President's speech is so ham-handed I almost doubled over laughing). And finally, Day After Tomorrow has a dangerously severe fetish for loooong boooooring scenery shots. I appreciate some nice pictures of arctic ice flow as much as the next guy, but do I really need to see three solid minutes of it while I wait for the movie to begin? If these had been cut down significantly, the movie would have been many degrees less boring (not the least because it would have been simply shorter).

Action: 2/5 magical reappearing sleds (Contrived, convoluted, and confusing, the action really quite sucked).
Acting: 2/5 chucks of ice (Really, really poor. It almost seemed like the actors weren't trying).
Humor: 1/5 continental hurricanes (When they did try for a laugh, which was not often, the jokes fell flat as a geometric plane).
Story: 1/5 $1500 raincoats (Haven't we seen this basic story line a couple hundred already, only done much better?).
Sound: 2/5 Gutenberg bibles (Extremely forgettable, except for when it obviously tries to railroad our emotions for scenes that couldn't do it for themselves).
Script: -1/5 bottles of penicillin (Yes, it is really that bad. The lines are just so incredible stupid).
Visuals: 2.5/5 frozen helicopters (Virtually the only thing about the movie that didn't suck. It could have gotten a 3 or even 3.5 if not for the terribly rendered wolves, the overly dark sets with the wolves, and less scenery. If I wanted pictures of beautiful vistas, I'd use Google Images).
Science (intended usage): 1.5/5 snowshoes (Most of it is utterly absurd and/or totally wrong).
Science (unintended usage): 4/5 crushed Porches (It's very fun to talk about how crappy it is. Indeed, reports of this quality in the movie were my motivation for watching it).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 1/5 stupid motorcades (Only see it with a few friends, and even then only if you really like looking at pretty pictures or to MST3k it).

"Ripoff!" -- Sock Baby

2005-03-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

Props (and, [dare I say?] mad props) to VA_Ninja for alerting moi to this weeks item. Good news: it's completely free! You don't even have to look at pop-ups or banner adds (how, I don't know, so don't ask).

Sock Baby is a 3-part series of video clips you can download from the in-ter-net straight to your com-pu-ter. It's a net ~20 minutes of pure campy fun, and I highly suggest the download.

The plot is kinda stupid and rather incoherent, but that's kinda the point. As I said, this vid is very campy, but by choice. It's tongue-in-cheek all the way. Because the vid is so short, I won't bother detailing the plot, but it goes something like this: two guys want food. They fight some aliens. The End.

The fight scenes are the meat of this vids. Although Sock Baby is obviously low budget, the fights are done surprisingly well. There was perhaps one shot near the end of the third episode which had visible seams, but other than that, it is all pretty darn realistic. There's a certain '70s vibe in the fighting (probably because the main character is a '70s throwback) mixed with a little Dragon Ball Z (but not so much lame as funny) and a dash of pure weirdness.

Because it is so short, I can't think of anything else to say. Just go watch it for yourself.

Acting: 4/5 bad suits (If we assume that they were supposed to act the way they do, the actors did a darn fine job making me giggle).
Action: 4/5 black lipstick tubes (Surprisingly good. The fight scenes were well choreographed).
Humor: 4/5 garbage cans (Although there weren't a whole lot of jokes in the classical sense, this vid maintained a certain level of farcical ambiance throughout).
Story: 3/5 plasma pills (Suitably bizarre and incoherent, the story did its job fairly well, although it could probably been made a little more weird).
Sound: 4/5 oversized sunglasses (Interesting, memorable, and funny in its own way, the music performed extremely well. The punch effects were just a tad too repetitive for my tastes, but they didn't really detract from the vid).
Visuals: 3/5 home-made tarrot cards (The background sufficed. The video quality is a bit poor, but beggars can't be choosers. The short animation and computer-generated parts were very good).
Value: 5/5 ruined socks (What, are you kidding me? It's FREE).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 gold medallions (It's definitely worth a download. Fun to watch, fun to share, and makes for some great injokes).

“At least let me start the bike for you.” -- Ong Back: Thai Warrior

2005-02-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

I saw this movie on little more than a last-moment whim. Too bad its in limited release. A few disclaimers: I missed the first 10-15 minutes of this movie (as I said, last-moment whim) and am not particularly well-versed with martial arts films.

Ong Bak: Thai Warrior (a few other links: here and here) is a delivery vehicle for some truly spectacular Muay Thai martial arts action, courtesy of up-n-coming star Tony Jaa. At least, I hope he becomes a star; anything that gives us more movies as awesome as this (which stardom would do) is a good thing. He's being billed as the next Bruce Lee / Jackie Chan, and although that may or may not tend to overhype the flick, it could very well be true.

Let's state the obvious: this movie is strictly concerned with one thing and one thing only, and that thing is the action. The plot is one big cliché and the characters can become almost invisible if you look at them from the side. But it doesn't matter. Because the action is really that good.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Plot summary: some asshole steals the main character Ting's village's god's statue's head or something (as I said, I missed the first part of the movie) and Ting has to get it back, so he ventures into the big city, kicks a lot of ass, and eventually gets that statue's head back. But you see, he really does kick a metric ton of ass, usually while spinning in the opposite direction in slow motion over a flaming river of lava while trying to save his cousin from certain death by a pit full of rabid sharks swimming around if electrified battery acid. And look damn cool doing it.

The action is phenomenal, in more ways than one. Yes, there are a lot of straight-up martial arts fights, many of which occur in an illegal fight club placed there by God to give Tony Jaa a pulpit from which to proclaim that getting hit by someone who really knows Muay Thai REALLY FREAKING HURTS. The blows look so very powerful, so very real, and so very graceful that we almost feel sorry for the guys receiving what much be massive internal injuries. Ting slams opponents with flying hits to the head with his funny bone, knee, and foot so frequently that it's a wonder he's not glowing red hot from all the impacts. However, in addition to the fascinating, cringe-worthy, fencing-foil/jackhammer blows, he works in long, protracted acrobatic sequences which are truly beauties to behold. Both types of action work very well. And did I mention that none of this is done with CG, wires, or pretty much anything other than people and planning? That just sweetens the deal that much more.

The camera angles all tended to be interesting and just a little bit unique. Much use was made of slow motion (thankfully, as the rapid kicks and punches would be far too difficult for the uninitiated to follow) as well instant replays (for some shots, we are shown the action twice, or even three times, through a different camera angle), but neither of these were used gratuitously. The locations are all gritty and realistic.

As a side note, I found a lot of comedy here as well. George, the aforementioned cousin, makes for a great comic relief element, injecting humor in between (and occasionally during) the awe-inspiring action.

Action: 5/5 broken chairs (The action completely makes the movie, and it is stunning. If you're in the mood for some no-holds-barred realistic fighting, this is your movie).
Acting: 2/5 statue heads (It sufficed, but was objectively mediocre).
Humor: 3.5/5 globs of wasabi (Some was giggle-inducing, and much merely put a wide grin on my face. Lovely overall).
Story: 2/5 voice boxes (A stock Kung-Fu plot in every sense of the word, but it could have been much worse).
Sound: 4/5 lengths of rope (The music in this movie is fast-paced and invigorating. It strikes exactly the right cord, and I wouldn't mind listening to it on its own).
Visuals: 4/5 bundles of barbed wire (Great camera angles, great/realistic background).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 syringes (This movie is a great way to spend a pair of hours. A very fun film indeed).

"I'm concerned you don't know what you're asking for." -- Dead Like Me Season 1

2005-02-20T23:57:00.000-08:00

Please pardon the references and comparisons to Wonderfalls that may pop up throughout this review. Both shows were created/co-created by the same guy, so it's hard not to.

Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season is a very, very good show that falls just behind Wonderfalls in greatness (see? First sentence of the review and I'm already dragging it in). Although certainly not as unknown as Wonderfalls, it's still not exactly, say, O.C.

This is the story of Georgia "George" Lass, an 18-year-old college drop-out killed during her first 35-minute Lunch "hour" at her first temp job by a zero-G toilet seat from the Mir space station during its death plunge into the atmosphere. She switches from Dead to Undead after her funeral and is drafted as a grim reaper by Rube (another grim reaper). We spend the rest of the season watching her and the family she left behind adjust to this new arrangement.

This show is, in short, brilliant. It's billed as a black comedy with a heavy dose of drama, but this is vastly incorrect. Dead Like Me is primarily a drama about loss with just enough humor to, like a shot of vodka, take the edge off. It's ultimately positive, but the questions it deals with can be really quite bleak. After all, the characters are in a constant state of loss: George losses her life, her family, her chances at a real future, and a postmortem friend early in the season, her family lost her, her parents are losing their marriage, etc. And since she's a reaper, we are privy to multiple violent deaths every episode. It's a subtle recipe, but nevertheless works, and we get extremely poignant and well-done drama about the most depressing of subjects without feeling like ending it all. Very nice.

The cinematography here is great; I recognize a lot of camera effects and angles from Wonderfalls. Acting, also excellent; we buy everyone. All the actors really nailed their characters, from their subtle nuances of speech to their facial expressions and gesticulations to their lines. The music was also good, but it seemed like they reused a lot of it. The special effects and stunts all seem believable and plot-centric; they add rather than detract.

Interestingly enough, I like the episodes made after Bryan Fuller left to do Wonderfalls much more than the episodes he worked on, at least at first. I've since gone back and re-watched the first couple episodes and they were more interesting the second time around than they were the first, but my favorites continue to be the later ones.

I have two main problems with the series: A) There are some answered questions about reapers in my mind (For example, it seems like they are supernaturally less noticeable than normal people sometimes, but it's never really spelled out, which is frustrating to me), and B) As far as I can tell, there is a ten-or-so-month gap between the second to last and the last episodes. It shoots from two months after her death to the one-year anniversary. Wow. I want to know what we missed? Other than those nit-picks, nothing. And I highly suggest you show around; it retails for $60, but Amazon sells it for $45 and I picked it up at Fry's for $35.

Acting: 4.5/5 parking meters (Awesomely awesome).
Humor: 3.75/5 miniature waffles (The comedy is the perfect cord for the show, but objectively speaking, it's not really that funny; there are few laugh-out-loud moments).
Story: 4.5/5 Polaroid cameras (The story is all-around excellent. Bizarre enough that it doesn't seem too close to home, but real enough to make us fidget a little).
Drama: 5/5 Post Its (If you're alive, or at least know someone who is, this show will speak to you. The drama is heavy-hitting and light in turns and has a superb way of making you think, contemplate).
Sound: 3.5/5 disgruntled bears (Very nice music, but not particularly great, and repetitive at times).
Visuals: 4.5/5 bed springs (Enrapturing).
Special Features (DVD): 3/5 toilet seats (I am disappointed in the special features. Some of the deleted scenes are good, but the featurettes are way too short and there is almost nothing at all in the way of episode commentary).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 Franken-Fruities (One of the best shows ever, and certainly one of the best shows on TV today. Either Showtime is insane for not brining it back for a third season or they decided to retire it gracefully; after George gets into the swing of things, I can't imagine the show will be any good).

"I'm not hungry yet." -- The Godfather

2005-02-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

Finally, after many long weeks of dawdling, I bring to you a review that is technically negative. ;-)

The Godfather is an exercise in patience. Patience is required to get through it's ridiculously convoluted and long plot, patience to get through the screwy acting, and patience to get through the sheer longevity of the film (if it is fitting to even call this a film).

So, we start out hearing some guy whine about his daughter or something. I wasn't listening very hard. The room was so frickin' dark that it seemed almost as if it swallowed the sounds. Anyway, we find out that we're at the wedding of the Godfather's (reeeeaaal original name. They totally stole that from the title) daughter. The wedding itself is very trite, just like every other movie wedding EVER. We're "introduced" to about a hundred or so major characters. I say "introduced" because this movie's idea of introducing a character is to give us about five seconds with them. After the wedding, stuff happens, like the Godfather getting shot up a bunch of times (but *gasp* survives! How the hell did *that* happen?!?!), Michael showing no emotion, other people getting shot, Michael still mimicking an oak board, Michael doing bad things, and then finally, after much broo-ha-ha, just ending without any sort of denouement (I guess the ending could be considered a denouement, but no more so than most other points in the movie).

The acting. Oh, what can I say about the "acting"? Marlon Brando's Godfather performance was so screwy. He talks like he's not got a throat, can't move his facial muscles, and somehow survives everything but his grandson (and what the heck was up with that!?!?). Michael, as I already said, needs to take a class in acting or two before we see him in any other films, or many get an Emotion Implant from a Hollywood plastic surgeon. The women in the movie were typically either screaming or acting all pissy. Why, I don't know. The director's probably some kind of misogynist or something. The acting skillz (or lack thereof) of everyone else are irrelevant, since they all pretty much just die.

Special effects: these people's idea of fake blood is runny ketchup. There were a few lackluster explosions and a lot of obviously fake gunshots in there, but nothing really made up for the corny fake blood.

Cinematography: Mr. Coppola appears to think that if he makes all his shots really really dark, we won't notice the crappy acting, poor special effects, shoddy story, and interns accidentally falling into almost every scene. He sets up his camera angles such that the audience is denied key information, like the face of the waiter pouring wine just before Michael kills that other drug guy who dies, or like when we couldn't tell that the Baker was a Baker and not a hitman. This is vital information that we need to know!

Acting: 2/5 piles of crapola (The only redeeming feature was the believability of the various waiters. Man, THOSE guys knew how to wait!).
Sound: 1/5 fishes (Wow. Do we really have to hear that same little ditty over and over and over again?).
Visuals: 2/5 slot machines (Way too dark, and the camera angles sucked. The shots of Sicily were nice, though, or at least they would have been if Michael would get out of the shot).
Humor: 5/5 toll booths (But only if this was meant to parody bad films).
Story: 1/5 guns (I've seen better storytelling in MST3k episodes).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 1/5 fluffy kitty cats (AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!).

"Defy the chicken." -- Wonderfalls

2005-02-06T23:00:00.001-08:00

Ironically enough, this review is gonna be more gushing than Niagara Falls. If that bothers you, then just watch the show's DVDs instead of reading my review. Edit: I'm told that this review is too long. If you agree with that sentiment, go ahead and skip to the end where I rate everything numerically. That gives a decent summation of why I think you should buy this.

Wonderfalls is by far the finest television I have ever seen. It has everything: a unique twist, compelling characters, enthralling storylines, great special effects, terrific acting, and quirky humor. And those bastards at Fox canceled it, so in an act of catharsis, I will now rant and rave about how much I loath Fox for the next paragraph.

Fox sucks. Fox has done everything in its power to smother Wonderfalls. They:
A) had their meathooks in it at every step of the way (as the episode commentaries make clear), changing what they wished
B) debuted it in the middle of the season in a terrible time slot
C) then moved it suddenly and unexpectedly to an even worse time slot
D) gave it very little publicity
E) gave up after 4 episodes
F) and needed a huge fan movement to release it on DVD (their one saving grace).
This was one of the very few unique things on television, and they ditched it to make room for reruns of crap. Grrrrr.......

Ok, I'm done. I'll try not to mention Fox (may they rot in hell) for the rest of the review, but I don't make any promises.

Let's start with a quick synopsis of premise: Jaye Tyler is a 24-year-old native of Niagara Falls, New York who gleaned a Philosophy degree from Brown and came back to her home town to live in a trailer, work at the Niagara Falls gift show (called Wonderfalls), and drink various forms of alcohol at the local tavern / eatery / gathering place, The Barrel. Her father Darren is a doctor with a very frank manner of communication and strong connections to the Republican party (he is friends with many politicians and, as we learn in the documentary and episode commentaries, a musical talent: he writes and performs inspirational Republican folk songs, although these sadly never made it into the show). Her mother Karren is a socialite who writes travel guides (and is a closet Democrat). Her sister Sharon is a successful immigration lawyer (and a closet lesbian). Her brother Aaron (yes, Darren Karren Sharon Aaron Jaye) is currently working on a doctorate in Comparative Religions (and, ironically, a "closet" atheist, although I'm not too sure about how secret it is). Jaye's best friend since forever is Mahandra McGinty (I hope to God I spelled that correctly), someone almost as selfish as Jaye herself. She works at the aforementioned barrel. And finally, the Requisite Love Interest: Eric Gotts. He married his college sweetheart Heidi, honeymooned at Niagara Falls, caught her fellating the bellman, went to the Barrel to get drunk, got a job there as bartender, and started getting over Heidi, all in the six days before he met Jaye. Following that? Good.

This cast of characters, while a bit quirky, would make for a fairly pedestrian show if not for that spice of life that makes the show stand out: the Muses, as the writers term them. If it's a man-made animal, such as the smoosh-faced wax lion or the creepy barrel bear, there's a good chance it's told Jaye to do something completely bizarre. That's right: inanimate objects tell a disaffected Gen Y narcissus to run around performing nonsensical acts which ultimately benefit everyone involved. Generally, these commands are cryptic (and can mean any of a number of things as the episode progresses) and have a very roundabout way of working out. Of course, Jaye's rather resistant to their commands (she resents being "Fate's bitch"), so they occasionally have to torture her into doing their bidding by incessantly singing a number of particularly annoying songs off key until she can't take it anymore and has no choice. Sometimes, it is her very resistance that causes the commands to come to pass.

I know that that sounds kinda tacky, but it's really not.

Jaye is a great lead character. Although very much an antihero who literally resents being thought of as selfless (although she doesn't mind it when Eric thinks of her that way), the holder of highly questionable morals, and a complete slacker, she is thoroughly likeable. We understand her well enough that what she does is, to some degree, expected, but she always seems to have a few more facets we haven't seen yet. She, like everyone, is a good person at her core, but her cynicism, selfishness, and wit all come together to form a certain charm that makes it very hard to wish her ill.

Character alignments in this show tend towards the complex, due in part to the actions of the muses. We like all the main characters for various reasons, but they are often in opposition to each other because of both completely mundane reasons and because they react naturally to Jaye when she does weird muse-induced things (which is usually to resist). That information level about why Jaye does what she does is constantly played on for humor and plot advancement and it only gets more complex as more people learn about her predicament. The series has no truly clear villains, although Eric's (semi-ex)wife Heidi comes close (there are twists in her character that make it hard to completely dislike her. No spoilers here).

Moving on. The acting in this series is top notch. Every single actor can just nail their lines perfectly, and the unspoken parts are just as good and believable. A reaction here, a gesticulation there, and a few smirks thrown in for good measure make these characters feel very real and vibrant. They can effortlessly switch between drama and comedy and back again without the slightest hitch. And the chemistry between every single character is both highly dynamic and completely believable. The casting directors are seers of the highest caliber.

The comedic aspects of this show are clearly integral to the show, but they aren't the end-all, be-all. As absolutely great as they are, they are merely a natural consequence of the drama as it unfolds, rather than some other shows that shall remain unmentioned that care for nothing but the asinine joke. Wonderfalls has sophisticated, intelligent, and very quirky comedy going for it, and it all works exceedingly well (although it admittedly requires a certain taste, there are bits and pieces of all types of humor in here). This show has me in stitches every time I watch it. There's just always something to laugh at, even amidst the highly emotional trials and tribulations of the Jaye-Eric relationship.

I want to take this opportunity to graciously thank the writers for knowing that Fox is headed by idiots (who wouldn't know gold if it was given to them as jewelry by rappers) and therefore ending all the major story lines in the season (series) finale. The story is itself extremely interesting and could probably stand alone without the comedy (it would be a lesser show, of course, but still superior to a *lot* of what's on TV now). In the interests of not spoiling anything, I'll shut up about it.

The cinemetography in this show is exquisite. The directors make great use of camera speed-ups and slow-downs: one moment, the camera is rapidly zooming from one point to another and the next, it slows down for a quick pan shot of something before zipping along to the main action. You really have to see it to know what I mean, but everything just comes together really really nicely. I also like how the episode commentaries walk us through what part of which shot was shot where (scenes around the Maid of the Mist fountain, for example, had to shot half on one side of the Falls and half on the other).

Sounds: fun and light, but perfect. Andy Partridge wrote the theme song "I wonder why the Wonderfalls" and it is just as quirky and off-beat as the show. Cute lyrics, catchy main tune, and lots of little side instruments make it very distinctive and fun to listen to. The other music is less distinctive, but this is a good thing: is supplements, not supplants, the jokes, character development, and action.

The special effects in this series kick ass. It's mostly the muses, but every minor effect is done very well and very realistically. Great care is taken to make each muse an actual character, giving them their own unique idiosyncrasies and mannerisms along with very funny "suggestions." If you read a short dialogue between Jaye and a nameless muse, someone who has seen the series could probably identify the muse being spoken to. It's hard to pick favorites, but the lovesick ass' reaction when Jaye lashed out at him is to die for, and I cracked up when the brass monkey commanded Jaye to "Lick the lightswitch."

Acting: 5/5 killer ambulances (Extremely well-done. Every single actor deserves some sort of medal).
Humor: 6/5 blurb words (The comedy in this series really goes above and beyond the call of duty. Unlike most TV and movie comedy, it is the flowing result of the plot and tends to advance said plot as well).
Story: 5/5 wedding chapels (The plot lines are really fun to follow, partially because we really care what happens to these characters and partially because the plots are so absurd that watching them tick along is very interesting).
Drama: 5/5 Mold-a-Rama machines (The actors have this superhuman ability to channel true heart and soul to create very poignant scenes of drama amidst all sorts of zanniness).
Sound: 5/5 Berreta 9-mm's (The theme song is worth tracking down, downloading, and listening again and again, and the rest of the music perfectly complements the action, but stays firmly in the background).
Visuals: 5/5 murder kits (Perfect muses, excellent cinemetography, and great misc. effects all populate the world of Wonderfalls).
Special Features (DVD): 4/5 fig pancakes (Perhaps the one fault of the DVD, if a 4 can be called a fault. I really like the episode commentaries and the music video is very cute, but the documentary could have been longer and I would have paid at least another $5 for another disk full of deleted scenes, actor bios, and other such stuff).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 5/5 Russian Mail-Order Brides (You know how I award a lot of 4s and 5s to the individual categories but deny all those other things I've reviewed 5s? This series is why: they are inferior to it. It was a human rights violation for Fox to cancel this monumental show. I wish all the best to everyone involved in making this thing work, because it is absolutely deserving of admiration and exaltation. I give this series the highest possible recommendation).

“Nobody ever listens to me!” -- Dark City

2005-01-30T14:08:00.000-08:00

I first saw this week’s movie during a Philosophy class I took during our unit of Free Will / The Soul. A few weeks later, I picked it up at Fry’s for $6. When a movie on this quality can be vended at $6 without a sale, I need to do a review on it.

Dark City is a science fiction masterpiece that easily rivals The Matrix in magnificence. The two share many similarities (including some sets that The Matrix reused), but at the core they are fundamentally different movies that are great for different reasons.

Dark City starts with a lame voice-over by Kiefer Sutherland’s character Dr. Daniel Schreber giving some plot exposition. Apparently, the studio thought that the movie was too hard for audiences to understand and forced the director to add this. Shmucks. Anyway, the basic premise is that this dying alien race called The Strangers has taken control of the city and is manipulating everything and everyone in it in a series of elaborate experiments designed to find exactly what makes humans unique. John Murdock, our protagonist, wakes up in a bathtub without any coherent memories. He looks around his motel room, gets dressed, finds some clues here and there, gets a call from Dr. Schreber telling him to get out, and quickly leaves the room (spotting a gruesome murder by the bed on his way out, by the way). He eventually finds out his name and starts following the breadcrumbs. To tell more would be to spoil it, so I won’t.

Visually, this movie is nonparallel. Shot in Film Noir style (and heavy on the dark tones), it has a look similar to, but less grainy than, Blade Runner. The special effects, which are relatively scant, work very well, very rarely seeming trite, lame, or overdone. The cinematography is also pretty good; the camera angles are interesting and clever. Likewise, the music was form-fitted to the razor-thin mood changes. There’s not a lot to fault the movie on here.

You’re either gonna love or hate the acting. The movie’s characters have been attacked as “flat, one-dimensional, emotionless, and cliché,” and this is true to a certain extent. However, as you learn more about the world of the movie, it starts to become apparent that this was a stylistic decision the director made based solidly on the plot. Just try to keep in mind that the actors are competent, the director does know what he’s doing, and the producers did give the movie sufficient time and money. Kiefer Sutherland in particular has a polarized following: he plays his doctor as slightly mad with badly halting speech barely above a whisper. I kinda liked it: odd, but not too odd; strange, but not so strange as to be utterly unlikely. You may disagree. To each his own.

But in the end, Dark City is science fiction, and science fiction, is an asker of questions in its heart of hearts. Good SF focuses on the characters over the SF elements, and the movie indeed does that, but the characters are merely a means to an end, case studies meant to help us get answers: What is it that makes each person unique? Are we merely the sum of our memories, or is there something else? In many ways, we the audience are meant to act like The Strangers, overseeing their experiments to “find the human soul.” Like all good science fiction, however, the movie never definitively answers these questions (oh sure, John Murdock does at the end with easily the most profoundly lame sentence in the entier movie, but the film itself leaves the answer unbubbled). It merely provides a new way of asking the questions, but leaves the ultimate answers to you.

Acting: 3.5/5 chalk spirals (Although I feel the acting fit the movie very well, none of it was in and of itself particularly notable).
Sound: 4/5 forehead syringes (This movie had very small variations in tone and emotion, and the sound captiured these minute changes very well).
Visuals: 4.5/5 Automat meals (Definatelly one of the better parts of the movie, the visuals have some serious kick).
Story: 4/5 postcards (I am thouroghly satisfied with the storyline. Events flow reasonably).
Philisophical Merit: 5/5 goldfish (As I said, I first watched this in a philosophy class. It completely belonged there).
SF Elements: 3/5 subway trains (Although there did what they were supposed to do and they were visually beautiful, I feel that the SF elements of this movie are more fantasy, or “soft,” than I would like them to be).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 dashes of teenage rebellion (This movie ranks among my favorites, right alongside 12 Angry Men, K-PAX, The Matrix, and LotR).

"Dad, the goat kicked your Geo's ass." -- Big Trouble

2005-01-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a sleeper film that was tragically swept under the rug for events outside its control.

Big Trouble is a star-studded screwball comedy based off Dave Barry's book of the same name. Anyone familiar with Dave Barry knows that he's got a penchant for the absurdities and exaggerations, and this film has a dearth of both. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and showcasing the acting chops of Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, Johnny Knoxville, Janeane Garofalo, Jason Lee, and Andy Richter (with cameos from Barry Sonnenfeld, Martha Stewart, and Dave Barry himself), this sucker is rife with talent.

It starts by introducing the characters, using the voice of Tim Allen's character (Eliot Arnold) as the omniscient narrator, pausing the action from time to time to let the voiceover catch up. The movie splices in bits and pieces here that both get us up to speed and set the frantic pace of the movie. And boy is it ever frantic. It throws memorable character after memorable character at us until we almost drown in weirdos (not a bad thing, mind you). In short, the movie starts in Miami with Eliot Arnold working at his own two-bit advertising agency, Puggy (a homeless man who looks like Jesus with a Jones for Fritos and "Martha Stewart's Living") arriving via boat in search of good Cuban food, Henry Desalvo and Leonard Ferroni getting off a plane with the intent of assassinating Arthur Herk (a pompous perverted prick), and Snake Dupree and Eddie Leadbetter (a couple of ex-cons) just tryin' to get by. The number of characters increases exponentially as the movie progresses until it becomes prudent to start taking a tally. Like always, I don't want to spoil anything for you, so I'll just say a few more things about the plot: hunting rifles, goats, and cowboy boots with a "W" on them.

This movie is laughtastic. Literally everything and everyone is, in some way, just a little bit "off" and you never quite acclimate to this storm of satire, this flurry of funny. Fun is poked at everything from toad hallucinogens (and the effects therefrom) to Gator fans, from Russian arms dealers to private security officers. Although the movie shellacs everything in absurdity, many styles of humor can be found here: satire, parody, slapstick, witty dialogue, obscene wordplay, and others. It's a funny movie, capische?

But despite its great virtues, this movie bombed (no pun intended). Why? Simple. It was originally set to debut in December 2001, but it makes fun of airport security and culminates with a nuclear bomb danger. The producers felt that the humor would perhaps strike a raw cord after the September 11th tragedy, so they sat on Big Trouble for a year, publicized it little, and left it in theatres for a very short time.

Acting: 3/5 water pistols (It was ok, I guess).
Sound: 4/5 telephone cords (The music was form-fitted to the movie).
Visuals: 4/5 airplane doors (Well done all around. Creative camera angles, fun use of the "pause" button, and good special effects all have their cameos).
Humor: 5/5 Super Soakers (A splitter of sides).
Story: 5/5 heavy metal suitcases (For madcap speed and sheer ridiculousness, you'll find no better. I love it).
Special Features (DVD): 2/5 police cruisers (Sadly scant. We're given a commentary track, an 8 minute version of the movie, and two movie trailers).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 Ugly Fish (Great fun).

"The wind called; he leaped to meet it.” -- The Last Dragonlord

2005-01-16T01:46:00.000-08:00

This week's feature is (gasp) a book that has, in my opinion, been lost between the cracks. This is still a positive review, but at least give me credit for varying the medium.

The Last Dragonlord is this wonderful marshmallow fantasy about weredragons and Platonian souls. Fun to read, too.

Our protagonists are Linden Rathan and Maurynna Kyrissaean, but your first question is probably "What the heck is a Dragonlord?" So here's the basic idea: a long time ago, wild magic caused a number of human and dragon souls to be split in half. Now I don't know about you, but I for one don't think being cut in half would be a whole lot of fun. Neither did these souls, so they put themselves back together, albeit backwards. Instead of one human and one dragon, you get two half-human / half-dragons. Dragonlords. Among other small things, Dragonlords are extremely strong, tough, and perceptive, enjoy riding sentient horses, live for a very long time, and (as an afterthought, of course) can transform into huge fire-breathing dragons.

Due to a number of blue-blooded deaths, the kingdom of Cassori is without adult royalty and the Dragonlords are called upon to judge which noble will take the crown until the young prince Rahn is old enough to rule. Our friend Linden is one of the three chosen to go. He has been the "Little One," the youngest of the Dragonlords, and the only one without a soultwin (remember how each Dragonlord is the result of a swap of half-souls? Well, each Dragonlord also longs to "join" with the Dragonlord made of the other halves) for many many years. Maurynna Kyrissaean is a sea captain who is friends with Linden"s oldest human friend (a bard names Otter) and is an avid Dragonlord fan. Anyway, an ancient organization called the Fraternity uses powerful blood magic in a nefarious attempt to gain control of a new Dragonlord and is foiled (which is clearly as surprising as Rosebud or Luke's parentage).

This is a fun book. It's no Hamlet or Lord of the Rings, but if you're looking for a bit of easy reading, this is the novel for you. The writing is brisk but vivid, engaging but highly accessible. Perhaps the best word to describe the book is "satisfying." A few words of warning: you'll find a very strong romance "subplot" entwined within the overall conflict, which has the potential to alienate some, but for the most part it is tasteful and well done (I usually just feel embarrassed when moments such as these come up in literature or film, but not here). Also, there are a number of sex scenes in the book but they are almost always "fade to black"s and to my recollection there is only one bit that is it all explicit (and it's rather PG-13). Finally, some of the concepts are more than a little cliché, but some slack can be cut (after all, fantasy stories almost have to be trite just to be called fantasy and this is Bertin's first novel).

Characters: 3.5/5 wine-colored birthmarks (The characters felt believable and fairly complex, but they are mostly stock and our allegiances with virtually all of them are too clear for them to be masterpieces).
Setting: 4/5 grandfather trees (A rollicking Mediterranean world full of life).
Magic System: 4/5 gratuitous explosions (Although the soultwin concept is a tad hackneyed and the blood magic nothing new, the synergy and continuity of the magic in the book is very enjoyable. You get the feeling that 'this is how the magic should be').
Satisfaction: 5/5 mile-wide smiles (I put down this book with a firm sense of contentment).
Story: 4/5 pints of stock solution (Most of this we've seen before, but for fantasy, it ducks and weaves all over the place and it doesn't really feel as cliché as it could).
Re-Readability: 5/5 Llysanyins (The fun of the book is in reading the book rather than surprises and unexpected twists. If anything, knowing what was ahead made the book that much more enjoyable because I was anticipating more).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4/5 standing stones (It's just a great way to spend some hours).

"You've got some red on you." -- Shaun of the Dead

2005-01-08T21:28:00.000-08:00

I was really planning on reviewing a book this week, but the movie I saw yesterday was just too good to pass by.

Shaun of the Dead is an absolutely glorious dark comedy about a Londoner named (shockingly) Shaun. Simply put, this is the funniest movie from 2004 that I've yet seen.

The film starts with some fairly mundane British humor as we are introduced into our protagonist, Shaun, a 29 year old working at an appliance store. Parallels are frequently made between normal loser Shaun and the classic zombie image (But, as they say in the film, "we aren't using the zed word"): he wakes up groaning, moaning, and walking jerkily, he shuffles obliviously to and from the store, and his life is highly repetitive (every one of his dates with girlfriend Liz ends at a pub called the Winchester). After he botches setting up a dinner reservation, Liz dumps him and he and Ed (his loser roommate who spends his days playing video games, drinking beer, and selling drugs) spend the night getting really drunk at the aforementioned pub.

This is approximately when the the zom- er... life-challenged humanoids (hereafter referred to as LCHs) start really showing themselves and the movie takes a turn for the supernatural. In a great scene, Shaun walks down to his local convincingly store completely oblivious to the gorey scenes around him. When he returns home, he and Ed discover a girl staggering around in their back yard; they assume she's drunk until she attacks them. They discover what she is and run back inside (but not before running into another LCH). A news show tells them how to take 'em out: "Remove the head or destroy the brain." They proceed to do that and comedy ensues.

To make a long story short, they get Shaun's parents, Liz, and Liz' friends and go to the Winchester, hoping to find a secure locale. A Deus ex Machina eventually resolves the situation (although to be fair, it had been well set up beforehand) and we are treated to a fantastic Epilogue.

As I said above, I thought this movie was uproariously funny, but it has its moments of genuine drama as well. A few disclaimers: the gore is really quite bad (in one psyche-scarring scene, a character is ripped and torn apart right in front of us), although as long as you realize that its all fake, much of it can be funny as well (in an absurdist sort of way); likewise, if you try to empathize with Shaun too much, the movie can be a real downer here and there. If you have a problem with naughty language, parts may offend you (particularly in the beginning). In short, the movie works best if you don't take it too seriously.

Acting: 4/5 body parts (The acting was flawless, but the film didn't require anything particularly difficult from the actors).
Sound: 3/5 undead snarls (The gore sounded appropriations squishy, the music fit when necessary. In short, good, but like acting, nothing special required).
Visuals: 4/5 prosthetic wounds (The LCHs were fabulous. For the most part, the gore was highly realistic. The shots were also pretty well done, especially when they were going over potential plans).
Humor: 5/5 pints of Guinness (I was in stitches).
Story: 3.5/5 projectile records (A simplistic story that was highly conductive to humor but not not really all that exceptional in and of itself).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 Jaguars (See this movie unless you have a good reason not to).

"Your produce alone has been worth the trip." -- K-PAX

2004-12-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

So this first review is about an incredible movie that nobody knows about.

K-PAX is the story of a man who calls himself Prot (pronounced "proat" and played beautifully by Kevin Spacey) and claims to be from K-PAX, a plent about 1000 light years away in the constellation Lyra. We first see him at Grand Central Station from whence he is immediately taken to a mental institution. There, he meets up with our other protagonist, a psychiatrist named Dr. Mark Powell played by Jeff Bridges. The rest of the movie seeks to answer (or not answer) one question: is Prot really who he says he is or is he a human?

The first half or so of the movie conclusively proves that he is from K-PAX whereas the second half conclusively proves that he's really a human. The ending is highly provocative.

It is a crime that this movie did not win at least one Oscar. If nothing else, Spacey deserves one for his performance during the hypnotism scenes (Dr. Powell "regresses" him so as to learn about his past). He really nails the emotions of a shell-shocked child, an apathetic teenager, and a grief-stricken family man. It's hard to say anything without giving the whole film away, so I'll only give you one piece of advice: make sure to have a box of tissues nearby.

Besides the acting, this movie really fascinates me because it has an intelligence and poise that you rarely see in movies. You have to actually think during the film and it doesn't hand you the answers on a platinum platter. The dialogue is so witty and yet so natural for these characters that they make believable PhDs (and aliens), and at no point do you get the feeling that they're narrating.

In short, I highly recommend seeing this movie if you haven't. Rent it, borrow it, buy it (Amazon sells it for only $9), trade crack for it, whatever. Just see it.

Acting: 5/5 sticks of dynamite (Awe-inspiring).
Sound: 3/5 ducklings (Decent, but not particularly noticeable).
Visuals: 3/5 silver eggs (Good, but the movie didn't really require anything spectacular as some of the best scenes were of the two main characters talking in an office).
Humor: 3.5/5 talking heads (It definitely has its moments, and what moments they are, but this is decidedly not a comedy).
Story: 4.5/5 strips of flannel (A very interesting sequence of events. No real flaws, but I'm hesitant to give it the full 5 if it doesn't completelly blow me away).

Overall (not necessarily determined by the above categories): 4.5/5 sugar cookies (One of the best movies I've seen in a long time, but again, I'm hesitant to give it the maximum).

(PS: Any suggestions for new categories would be very helpful).

The Modus Operandi

2004-12-30T19:35:00.000-08:00

Ahoy hoy! Welcome to my blog. Here, I plan on doing a number of things: spotlighting various works that have gone unnoticied ("sleeper hits," as they are often called), reviewing movies/books/etc, random rants, and mabye even posting some short fiction of mine. I can't say for sure how regular I'll be posting, but I plan on shooting for once a week on Saturday or Sunday, at least to start.