Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in robert's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, November 29th, 2009
5:42 pm	Thoughts on Upcoming Movies The Princess and the Frog is currently playing in two cities: New York, and Orem, Utah. I... don't understand. The trailer for Leap Year does not contain a single moment that is not a painful cliche that should have been left to die years ago. Oh, Amy Adams. Brothers: remake of a movie I didn't like + Tobey Maguire + Jake Gyllenhaal + Natalie Portman + Jim Sheridan = movie that can't possibly be any good. Nine (not to be confused with 9): a musical starring six Oscar winners. Holy shit. Trailer looks promising. The Young Victoria: does anyone plan on seeing this and actually staying awake? Sherlock Holmes: looks like a disaster of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen proportions (although I actually kinda sorta liked LOEG). Sherlock Holmes and Batman are now apparently interchangeable. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
4:54 pm	My Next TV Series I was going to post a poll, but apparently you need a paid account to do that, so I'll just ask it: what TV show should I watch next? Please keep in mind my tastes (as far as you know them) when responding. The choices are: Babylon 5 Breaking Bad Buffy the Vampire Slayer Entourage Firefly How I Met Your Mother Mad Men Oz Rome The Shield Six Feet Under The Sopranos Or something else that has fallen off my radar (the above list just reflects things that have been recommended or that I think I might enjoy). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
8:58 pm	Scorpio Falling It's so bizarre to me that Thunder Mountain opened just two years after Space Mountain, considering that, when I was a kid, the former was the "new rollercoaster" (because I remembered when it opened) and the latter was the "old rollercoaster" (because I didn't remember when it opened). Man, our perceptions of reality as children are just so incredibly fucked up. I mean, children are basically tiny little psychotics. I've reached the conclusion that I feel the same way about avant-garde films as I do about poetry: I can respect it as an art form in theory, but just about every individual example I've seen is completely full of shit. Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger can go fuck themselves. Oh, I'm on a jury! Full details will be divulged once the case is over. Prepare for comedy. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
12:36 am	A Flash of Genius More Flash Forward brilliance: Bryce is in love with a girl (or thinks he is) just because he had a vision of the future in which he meets her... because he had a vision of the future in which he meets her because he had a vision of the future in which he meets her, etc. etc. It raises so many intriguing philosophical questions about the nature of love and free will. I'd love it if, after they actually meet, they realize that they don't really like each other that much. Of course, I'd also love it if they got married and lived happily ever after. I'm easy. More Flash Forward idiocy: Tracy getting pissed off and storming out of the room because her recovering alcoholic father doesn't want her to drink around him; Aaron getting pissed off and throwing chairs around because Mark asked him if he sent a text to his wife; Wedeck getting pissed and telling Mark to get out of his face because Mark asked him if he sent a text to his wife; Mark asking Aaron and Wedeck this question in such an angry, accusatory way in the first place. In other words, good episode marred by too many characters getting pissed at each other for inane reasons. What a frustrating show. IreneWatch Update: Irene in Time: still playing, now in its 23rd week. Number of theaters: 2 (Santa Monica and New York) Number of IMDB ratings: 37 Number of IMDB reviews: 1 Box office gross (as of Nov. 8) : $178,990 (curiously, Box Office Mojo doesn't even list this movie in its chart of weekend grosses, even though it lists every single movie that comes out, even ones that play in one theater in Wichita, Kansas and make $100). I think I have an explanation as to who is seeing this movie: old people. Old people like independent films. Old people like schmaltzy crap. And old people don't use the IMDB. But this theory would be more plausible if the movie were playing in Palm Springs. But it's not. It's playing in Santa Monica and Greenwich Village. And anyway, $178,990 is not a lot of old people for a movie that's been playing for five months. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 16th, 2009
9:57 pm	2012 2012 is bold, brilliant trash. I pretty much loathed the movie, but I also kind of loved it in a way, because it doesn't even make a pretense of being a good movie. Indeed, filmmaking, in the way we normally understand the term, was clearly not Roland Emmerich's goal at all. The sole purpose of the movie is to watch things fall down and go boom. I mean, that's about as detailed a plot summary as you can get. It's disaster pornography in the truest sense of the term. It's The Day After Tomorrow and Knowing and Independence Day and The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake and Deep Impact and Dante's Peak all chopped up and edited into one gigantic highlight reel. Even the human characters exist solely to be placed in constant mortal peril, and to escape from said mortal peril by using various vehicles to juuuust... slip...through the falling debris. Or to jump over crevasses. Basically... well, you know that part in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy has to jump over the big hole in the ground before the big stone door closes shut, and he manages to make the jump and roll under the door and then barely reach back to grab his whip before he gets crushed by the door? Or in Temple of Doom, when basically the same thing happens (only this time I think it's his hat he grabs just before the big stone door crushes him)? Now, imagine that on a much larger scale, with collapsing buildings and land masses instead of stone doors and planes and automobiles instead of an archeologist. Then imagine it happening on a continuous loop for over two and a half hours. That's 2012. Oh, sure, there's a token acknowledgment that the characters are human beings, by way of a man-and-wife-are-separated, wife-has-new-boyfriend, man-is-jealous-that-kids-have-new-dad situation, but we all know how that's going to end up (poor new boyfriend... he might as well be wearing a red shirt with a Starfleet insignia). The only other bits of human interaction generally take the form of absurd coincidences (virtually unknown author meets government geologist who turns out to be his biggest fan, author's boss's girlfriend is author's ex-wife's boyfriend's patient, etc.). (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
9:41 pm	V for Vendetta Yeah, I'm done with V.  It's not just crap, it's boring crap.  And who decided Elizabeth Bitchell is a TV star? From the "When Will I Ever Learn?" File: Went to the movies today.  Decided to see The Wedding Song, a French-Tunisian movie that's only playing in two theaters, one in Beverly Hills, one in Irvine.  I further decided that I didn't care enough about this movie to drive to the good theater in the 90210 to see it, so I went to the crappy Edwards theater in Irvine, even though I swore off all Edwards theaters years ago.  I'm constantly amazed by what Edwards gets away with, and this time they surpassed themselves.  This time, they didn't even show the actual film.  They showed a DVD, projected onto the screen.  It wasn't even digital projection, it was a freakin' DVD and a freakin' video projector.  And it wasn't even working properly!  It behaved oddly like a Netflix streaming video, in that it kept pausing and then speeding up to catch up with the soundtrack.  As if that wasn't enough, the picture was too dark.  And yet somehow, I was the only audience member to leave and ask for my money back. Everyone needs to stop going to Edwards theaters.  If you're reading this, you are the Resistance. Precious is only playing in 18 theaters in the entire country, and yet it made almost 2 million dollars this weekend.  That's insane!  What is going on here?! I think I'm going to go on an all cheese diet.  This doesn't mean I'll only be eating cheese, it means that I won't eat anything that's not covered in melted cheese.  Because I'm having increasing difficulty discerning the purpose of food that's not covered in melted cheese. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
11:10 am	Precious Little I didn't even realize that the woman on Flash Forward is Penelope from Lost.  I guess she just has one of those generic, forgettable faces.  And the American accent threw me off.  So this show has two former Lost cast members.  And V has a third.  It seems that sci-fi TV shows are just as intertwined, casting-wise, as sci-fi movies are.  Does Dominic Monaghan do anything but sci-fi/fantasy? Is it just me, or is Kristen Stewart just unbearably creepy?  She was creepy when she was basically a boy (in The Safety of Objects and Panic Room), and she's even more disturbing as an emo teenage sex kitten or whatever it is she's trying to be.  Like, I want to chase her into a windmill and then set it on fire. You know, if the state of California passed an ordinance prohibiting anyone who isn't a white or black male between the ages of 25 and 55 from operating a motor vehicle, I don't think I would object.  Because clearly this is the only group of people who knows how to drive.  And yes, I went there. I also think we need to do something about stoplights.  And by that I mean, get rid of them.  We don't need them.  They cause nothing but headaches and irritability.  In their place, I propose we install a judicious system of bridges, tunnels, traffic circles, and stop signs.  This could work.  It's time we made every major street a freeway. Normally, I try to see all the critically acclaimed movies, but I don't think I can bring myself to see Precious.  A movie about an obese, illiterate 16-year-old who's pregnant with her second child and who's abused by her mother and raped by her father?  It's bad enough they made movies based on the likes of Charlie's Angels and Bewitched, but I draw the line at a big-screen adaptation of The Maury Povich Show.  Especially one in which the main character cries, "Nobody loves me!" and Mariah Carey says to her, "Your baby loves you!  I love you!"  No.  Just... no.  There is no emotional or dramatic context  that would make that safe for laboratory animals.  And is the title really Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire?  Because that's fucking stupid.  Of course, I'll probably cave when it inevitably gets a Best Picture nomination.  Sometimes I hate my life. Oh, and could people not see this movie, so it gets quietly forgotten about and doesn't get a Best Picture nomination?  I know that's a futile request, because people seem really drawn to this movie for some strange reason (probably because of Oprah, but of course a movie about an obese black girl who's abused by her mother and raped by her father is going to get the Oprah stamp of approval).  I overheard a guy at the AFI Fest ticket counter who asked if there were tickets available for this movie in a way that implied he just had to see this movie, that everyone had to see this movie. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
12:21 pm	I have a growing suspicion that I've been a closet Communist all these years and have been too wrapped up in other matters to notice. (Comment on this)
11:38 am	Sci-Fi TV Show Mania I wish someone had told me that the finale of Battlestar Galactica is so retarded, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. Flash Forward, however, just keeps getting better and better.  Courtney B. Vance is awesome, John Cho is hot, Lee Thompson Young is hot, the show itself keeps getting smarter and taking more artistic risks (which I appreciate even when they don't really work, like the strange musical cues), there's all sorts of fascinating human drama at work, the pacing is excellent and the plot is always moving forward (unlike Lost, they're actually revealing stuff every episode, and so far there's no filler), and, really, my only problem with it is that the male and female leads are the two least talented actors on the show (Ralph is the Fiennes brother who can act, not Joseph!).  It reminds me of Journeyman in a lot of ways, so I hope it doesn't go the way of that show. In turn, V reminded me a lot of Flash Forward (even more so than it did the original V): the main character is an FBI agent with a family who gets caught up in strange paranormal circumstances while investigating a terrorist plot that turns out to be linked to the paranormal circumstances... the pilots of the two shows are basically the same thing.  I don't know if I can handle watching two of these shows simultaneously.  And the teenage son subplot of V looks terrifyingly like the Matt "I'm going to blindly follow whatever psychotic female I happen to be currently in love with so fuck you, Mom and Dad!" subplots from Nip/Tuck. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
4:21 pm	Thoughts on AFI Fest I had a surprising amount of fun at AFI, surprising because I only saw one movie (out of six) that was any good; I went by myself and thus had no one to talk to; it was at the Hollywood and Highland Center, which I hate; it was on Halloween weekend... in Hollywood; and being out all day in crowded places usually leaves me exhausted and vaguely insane, but not this time.  No, it was actually a pretty relaxing, cathartic experience, and I'm glad I went.  I say that as if it's over, though it's going on until next Saturday.  I may or may not go back.  I mean, even a free film festival isn't really free, especially if you're there all day, since you still have to pay for food and parking.  But the "free" part definitely contributed to my enjoyment, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy to get into the movies I had thought were "sold out" (they actually kept adding more tickets to the web site, so I was able to order them in advance after all).  And I loved eavesdropping on all the conversations around me, cineastes and posers and wannabes discussing what they've seen and what they're going to see and what they do for a living.  My favorite overheard line: OLD MAN (to the man sitting behind him, who clearly didn't want to sit behind someone wearing a hat): This hat, I will have you know, belonged to Jean Renoir! Anyway, here's what I saw.  The four movies I saw on Saturday all happened to be screened in the Grauman's Chinese Theater, which was cool, and afforded a very rare opportunity to see foreign films (which all four of them were) on a huge screen.  They were, in order: In the Attic (Jiri Barta) Stop-motion animation, which would normally elicit some degree of excitement from me, but this one felt like a mere exercise.  Story-wise, it's essentially Toy Story set entirely in a musty attic filled with forgotten old toys.  But this is no Toy Story.  For one thing, the characters are all universally dull and virtually expressionless.  Most of them are actual dolls, and Barta never really finds a way to compensate for the absence of facial expressions.  Even the one actual clay character (basically a lump of clay with a pencil stub for a nose) is mostly featureless and inexpressive.  Visually, this is one ugly animated film, and the villain (a large plaster bust of a bald man who abducts the heroine to keep as his own personal... well, doll) is just plain creepy, in all the wrong ways.  Actually, pretty much all the characters are creepy. After the movie, I was reminded why I don't like to stick around for the Q & A session at film festivals.  They invariably turn into awkward and embarrassing discussions in which the moderator and the audience ask really fucking stupid questions and the director hems and haws in a desperate search for an answer that would satisfy them.  Those asked by the moderator are generally of the "This is what I think the movie is saying.  Am I right?  Do I get a treat now?" variety, while those asked by the audience usually amount to, "Where do you get your ideas from?"  The most embarrassing moment in this particular Q & A was when the moderator said to Barta: "I know you've made a lot of short films in the past.  Is this your first feature?"  To which he replied, somewhat indignantly, "Absolutely not!"  The moderator then quickly tried to save face by blurting out, "Yeah, that's what I thought," which just made it even more embarrassing (although he really had no need to be embarrassed, and Barta really had no cause to be offended, since, according to the IMDB, he's only made one previous feature, and that was in 1986). Sweet Rush (Andrzej Wajda) Self-indulgent piffle, part period piece about a dying woman and her sexual/maternal feelings for a young man in her town, part metatextual biography about the making of this very movie and the lead actress (who is apparently a huge star in Poland, though I've never heard of her) mourning the loss of her husband.  The guy was hot, though (and he was the one who came for the Q & A, so I stayed for that). The Silent Army (Jean Van Der Welde) I chose this movie to see mainly because it played at Cannes, in their Un Certain Regard category, so I figured it had to have some merit.  Having never been to Cannes, I overestimated the base level of quality a movie needs to get into it.  Even Van Der Welde, in the Q & A, practically admitted that he wasn't trying to make a good movie, he was just trying to get his message out there (the message being that there are children being kidnapped in Uganda and forced to join rebel armies).  Well, shit, why didn't he just make a documentary?  He did in fact admit that he basically made two movies, one in his native Holland and one for international wide release, which is the version we saw.  The result is a movie that combines all the worst traits of both Hollywood filmmaking (mild-mannered white guy becomes an action hero as he comes to the rescue of a black child) and arthouse fare (elliptical storytelling and violence that occurs almost exclusively off-camera, and is therefore bullshit). Mother (Bong Joon-Ho) This was the one bright spot in the festival for me.  It still wasn't that great, and I'm still uncertain as to why Bong is considered a world-class filmmaker after just four features.  He basically just makes good, solid genre movies, stylish and entertaining but nothing groundbreaking (although I found his last film, The Host, to be neither stylish nor entertaining, despite some strong critical praise).  This one almost lost me right off the bat with its precious, self-conscious opening shot, but it gradually won me over until its (pretty terrific) ending. That was Saturday.  I went back on Sunday to see two movies that I genuinely wanted to see, both of which garnered considerable acclaim at Cannes: Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu) More Cinema of the Mundane (and why is Porumboiu, the least talented of this new wave of Romanian filmmakers, the first one to come out with a second breakout hit?).  Nearly two hours of watching a policeman walking down streets, walking down hallways, and eating food.  Not nearly as soporific as it sounds, and the movie is in fact a comedy (albeit a very, very subtle comedy) with a point to make.  But the point it makes is so oblique that all I can really do is shrug my shoulders at it. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke) Haneke is very hit or miss with me, and this is definitely one of his misses.  This is him taking two and a half hours to tell us that bad parents create bad children.  And he shot it digitally, in color, and then transferred it to black and white, just like In Search of a Midnight Kiss.  How can filmmakers possibly think this looks good? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 16th, 2009
6:42 pm	Sucking Okay, that's annoying.  I've been waiting weeks and weeks to get my tickets for AFI Fest, because it's free this year (free!), checking the web site every day to see if they'd posted the schedule yet (which they didn't do until a few days ago, even though the festival starts in two weeks).  I was really excited about it, because this is my first ever opportunity to attend a film festival like a critic (i.e. see four or five movies a day and not pay for a thing).  Tickets became available today at noon, but I worked all day and wasn't able to get to a computer until tonight.  And by the time I ordered them, all but four of the fifteen films I'd been planning to see were already filled to capacity (oddly, the first Saturday of the fest was pretty much the only day that wasn't "sold" out).  Yeah, I could still possibly get into the other screenings via the rush line, but that sounds like a pain in the ass, and is not guaranteed, anyway.  In retrospect, I should have ordered them by phone, or asked Jason to get them for me at noon.  I'm so angry! Something really strange happened today.  I was driving north on the 5 in Irvine, and I passed by an accident on the southbound sound in which there was an overturned vehicle and much hullabaloo, right next to the center divider.  And yet, no one on my side of the freeway was slowing down to rubberneck.  Even stranger than that, a minute later I passed another accident, this time on my side of the freeway, but on the shoulder, and still, no one was slowing down to see it.  Good job, northbound Interstate 5 drivers!  Way to show Californians how it's done!  If only everyone would learn by your example. I'm also happy that Bob's Big Boy is making a comeback.  They even just opened a new one in Orange.  Restaurants never make comebacks.  This is unprecedented. I never thought I'd say this, but right now, Family Guy is a better show than The Office.  Not that it's difficult to be better than The Office right now.  The last episode was pretty good, but god, that wedding episode was awful.  The ending was more painful than the ending of Little Miss Sunshine.  Fuck Mindy Kaling.  I know she only co-wrote the episode, but her brand of suck was all over it.  I kind of want to slap her a little bit. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
12:53 pm	Swanking Jason and Nicole went out for Thai food last night at dinner time, and they never came back.  Should I be concerned?  It's just like that one time when Amelia Earhart didn't come back.  Speaking of Amelia Earhart, when Hilary Swank wins the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Hilary Swank Role for her work in Amelia, are they going to give her additional Oscars for the time they forgot that Freedom Writers and The Reaping came out, or are they just going to finally give her the Lifetime Achievement Award she so greatly deserves?  You know, you'd think they'd have a category for Best Perfomance by an Actress in a Non-Hilary Swank Role, to honor those actresses who have the misfortune to not be Hilary Swank.  Then again, who cares about actresses who aren't Hilary Swank?  Acting wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Hilary Swank.  Instead of "acting," we should just call it "swanking."  Actors are now swankers. I'm already hooked on Flash Forward.  The first episode was kind of dopey, but the second one was much better.  I love that the show has a sense of humor.  If it wasn't for Hurley (and, once upon a time, Sawyer), Lost would be a humorless funeral, but the characters on Flash Forward make jokes and generally behave as if they have real, genuine relationships with the other characters.  I love that it seems to be covering all of the implications of the premise.  I love that it addressed the oddity of the L.A. FBI field office trying a solve the mystery behind this global phenomenon.  But most of all, it presents so many intriguing scenarios -- a man who knows he is going to murdered, a couple who knows their marriage will fall apart, etc. -- all in one show. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
11:05 am	Irene to Astonish IreneWatch update: Irene in Time is still playing in L.A.  It has actually moved from one arthouse theater to another arthouse theater.  It's coming up on four months since it opened.  Number of IMDB ratings: 32 (as a point of comparison, Der Januskopf, a lost silent film that probably nobody alive today has actually seen, has 35 ratings).  TomatoMeter: 38%.  I know I'm obsessing about this, but I will continue to do so until someone gives me a satisfactory explanation for this unbelievably prolonged run of a movie that only 32 IMDB users have seen and that nobody likes. I have to say a big "yay" for House to Astonish.  It's a podcast featuring two Scottish guys talking about comic books (what's the proper way to write the title of a podcast?  Italics?  Quotations marks?  Or has that rule of writing yet to be written?  And why is it called a podcast, anyway?  Are they somehow broadcast to your Ipod?  How do you spell Ipod?  Ipod?  I-Pod?  IPod?  iPod?).  But they're not typical comic book nerds.  In fact, they're actually very intelligent and witty and funny.  And not the way people usually think of geeks as funny or witty or intelligent (like, "He's a geek, but he's pretty funny... you know, for a geek"), but rather the way genuinely funny and witty and intelligent people would be if genuinely funny and witty and intelligent people read comics, which I guess only happens in Scotland.  I think they're both lawyers, too.  One of them is sexy and urbane and the other one is just completely adorable.  I have a little crush on him.  Or at least I would if I knew what he looked like.  If it turns out that he's ugly, then the deal's off. One thing I forgot to mention in my big Harry Potter review: the most annoying thing about The Order of the Phoenix is not, as I originally thought, Dolores Umbridge.  The most annoying thing about it is the scene in which Fred, George, and Ginny spend what has to be five full minutes chanting, "He got off!  He got off!" in response to Harry's acquittal at the Ministry hearing.  I mean, what is that? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
9:30 am	Harry Potter and the Deathly Plot Holes I often get criticized for being too critical.  Well, it turns out there's a law that supports my position: www.jargon.net/jargonfile/s/SturgeonsLaw.html A-fucking-men. I seem to be in imminent danger of turning into one of those obsessed Harry Potter fans, due mainly to the magnificent seventh book and the magnificent sixth movie.  I finished rereading the entire series yesterday, and now I find that my life is a little less full without them.  Except I often found myself torn between my love for the characters and my mild frustration over the fact that the plots of the books often don't entirely make sense.  And there are so many characters to love: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Luna, Mrs. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Neville, Neville's grandmother... that's about it, really.  I'm not a fan of any of the other characters that we're clearly meant to love, like Hagrid, that boy-hungry pedophile with a heart of gold (I cringe every time a Hagrid chapter comes along... Why is it necessary to give Hagrid an annoying subplot involving whatever mythical creature strikes his fancy that year in almost every single book?  Why not give a subplot to, I don't know... any other teacher besides Hagrid?  I'd happily read about the exploits of Professor Sprout and her quest to grow a new strain of magical butternut squash before I'd read a Hagrid subplot... although, come to think of it, it does kind of annoy me that the herbology teacher is named Sprout); or Fred and George, who are one-note characters that are annoyingly interchangeable (someone needs to tell Rowling that identical twins don't have identical personalities); or Sirius, who's just a douche.  Or poor Ginny, who's never been given an actual personality.  Hedwig and Pigwidgeon often exhibit more personality in one sentence than Ginny has in seven books, and they're owls. But then there are those nonsensical plots.  In the first book, for instance, why is it necessary to hide the Sorcerer's Stone at the end of a series of puzzles that someone looking to steal it can figure out?  Like, why have a room with a locked door and a bunch of keys with wings flying around?  Wouldn't it make more sense, from a security standpoint, to have a room with a locked door and.. oh, I don't know... no key at all?  I guess I can sort of see the argument that this series of puzzles appeals to Dumbledore's whimsical sense of logic, and that he's using it as a test of some sort.  Except what does being good at chess and logic problems have to do with being worthy to possess the Stone?  And isn't it all rendered moot by the final test with the Mirror of Erised anyway?  Still, I can't really complain, as it does make for an entertaining read (except that it slightly annoys me that Rowling doesn't even give us a chance to figure out the potions puzzle on our own).  And at least it makes more sense than the movie, in which Ron inexplicably deems it necessary to remain seated on the chess knight as it's being smashed into pieces.  Couldn't he have simply gotten off?  Would that really have affected the outcome?  For that matter, in the book (in which he actually is the knight), couldn't he have just ducked?  Or simply stepped off the board?  Is it a rule in wizard chess that the pieces have to be destroyed before the game can continue?  Of course, Ron always was kind of an idiot. The second book mostly makes sense, and in fact it's one of the more cleverly plotted books of the series (and any lingering questions about the plot, such as why exactly Lucius Malfoy chose to use Riddle's diary as his instrument of revenge against Mr. Weasley, or how he knew that giving it to Ginny would result in the Chamber of Secrets being opened, are answered in the sixth book).  The only part I don't buy is that, in a school containing Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, et al. (not to mention all of the other professors from the past 50 years), it takes two 12-year-old kids to figure out where the Chamber of Secrets is and what sort of creature is inside it. The third book makes sense only if you subscribe to a theory of time travel that I simply cannot support.  There are basically two schools of thought on the subject of time travel: 1. that going back in time and changing the past is not possible because any changes made to the timeline have already occurred, and 2. that time is fluid, and that any changes made to the timeline either create an alternate timeline or alter the current one.  Considering that the first theory completely denies the existence of free will, I have to call bullshit on it (free will is such a given for me that I can't even stand discussions debating its existence).  According to this theory, it's impossible to go back in time and kill your mother before you're born, because it would have already happened and therefore you wouldn't exist and would thus be unable to go back in time, etc. etc..  Um... no.  When you're dealing with science fiction, "impossible" should be a red flag word.  Not to mention the fact, that, you know... it's impossible for murder to be an impossibility.  It's a bullshit theory created to account for all the supposed paradoxes inherent in time travel, but which nonetheless has become more or less the standard for time travel stories (or, more commonly, time travel stories attempt a sort of wish-washy and nonsensical amalgam of the two theories, which is worse). And, unfortunately, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, seems to hold to this theory.  So under these rules, Harry saved himself from the dementors, and he always saved himself.  There was no original timeline in which he wasn't saved, or someone else saved him (I mean, how could there be?).  Okay, fine, whatever.  But if that's the case, that means Buckbeak was never actually killed, in any timeline (an idea that is supported by the fact that Rowling thought to insert a sentence explaining why they heard the thud of the axe anyway).  Why, then, does Dumbledore tell Hermione to save him when he sends her back in time?  He would have known that he wasn't really killed, and he would have no way of knowing how he was saved.  Of course, this is Dumbledore we're talking about. The fourth book is the most egregious example of nonsensical plotting of all.  It's a shame, too, because, apart from the seventh book, it's easily the most purely entertaining book in the series, and if it wasn't for the lapse in logic, it would be one of the best.  But it's a huge lapse in logic, and I found it even more unforgivable reading it the second time around than I did the first.  The plot centers around Voldemort's efforts to abduct Harry so he can use his blood to create a new body for himself.  Well, actually, the plot centers around the Triwizard Tournament and Harry's unwilling participation in it.  The Voldemort plot is the behind-the-scenes stuff that we don't fully find out about until the end.  But rather than write these as two separate plots, Rowling tried to combine them into one plot by making the Triwizard Cup the means of Harry's abduction.  There are numerous, fundamental problems with this.  In fact, Voldemort comes off looking like a complete moron for devising this plan.  First, Wormtail brings him Bertha Jorkins, and he finds out about the tournament.  And somehow, from this bit of insignificant information, he gets the idea to have Barty Crouch Jr. turn the Cup into a Portkey, and then find a way to get Harry into the tournament despite being underage and then make sure he wins, so that, a year later, Voldemort can have his new body.  Um... what?  Why, now, does the portkey have to be the Cup?  I mean, Jesus, this is the most needlessly convoluted Villainous Plot I've ever heard of!  The Portkey could have been anything.  It could have been a book, and Barty, under the guise of Professor Moody, could have simply said, "Harry, could you hand me that book, please?"  And if it's really that easy to make a Portkey (Barty apparently created it on the way as he was walking from the castle to the maze), wouldn't Dumbledore have thought of this?  Wouldn't this be something, like Apparating, that the spells protecting Hogwarts would have prevented?  I can even overlook the odd decision, for the sake of narrative momentum, to spread the Tournament across the entire school year, despite the inconvenience it must be causing for Madame Maxime, Karkaroff, and all the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students.  But the Cup business is just the most ridiculous kind of contrived plotting, the kind a fourth grader would come up with, and I simply cannot forgive it.  It's worse than the plot hole in The Lost World: Jurassic Park that incenses Jason so much that he insists it's the worst movie ever made because of it. And another thing: why is it so hard for the Ministry to find Sirius?  When apparently any owl can find anyone on the planet, anywhere, no one should ever be able to elude the law.  Just follow the damn owls!  Rowling is a pretty smart writer, but she has problems when it comes to maintaining logic within the communications and transportation systems of the wizarding world. The fifth book isn't quite as bad as the fourth book when it comes to nonsensical plotting, but it's up there.  This time, the plot centers around Voldemort's efforts to acquire the prophecy concerning him and Harry from the Department of Mysteries.  Once again, he spends an entire year working on this goal, sending various people to retrieve it for him before determining that only he and Harry can do so.  He doesn't want to break into the Ministry himself because he wants to keep his return a secret.  So, once again exhibiting the intellectual capacity of a Quaffle, he lures Harry to the Ministry with a false vision of Sirius being tortured, hoping that he will notice the glass sphere containing the prophecy and pick it up, so that his Death Eaters, whom he has sent ahead, can take it from him.  Let me repeat that: the Death Eaters are already hanging out in the Ministry.  Somehow they have emptied the entire building (it's never explained how exactly they accomplished that), giving themselves free reign of the place.  So why couldn't Voldemort simply pop in, take the prophecy, and pop out?  Once again, transportation doesn't seem to be a problem, as both Apparating and using Floo Powder are entirely possible within the Ministry (these wizards really have a lot to learn about security), and there's nobody there to see him.  But no, he has to trust that Harry will notice the prophecy and that he wouldn't simply smash it when the Death Eaters show up.  So then, when the ensuing battle doesn't seem to be going in the Death Eaters' favor, Voldemort shows up anyway!  And that's when the Ministry officials show up!  This is the Big Bad Evil Genius that everyone fears?  This imbecile?! And, oh yeah, once again Sirius is impossible to find by law enforcement officials, but can easily be contacted using any Hogwarts owl.  And he's able to use the Floo Network to get to Hogwarts.  Really?  Is it really that easy to get into Hogwarts?  Dumbledore's a fucking idiot, too (I suppose it's possible that he gave Sirius some kind of code to get into the fireplace at Hogwarts, but since nothing of the sort is ever mentioned, I'm fairly certain that this is yet another thing that Rowling overlooked). The sixth book is the only one that makes complete sense. The seventh book is wonderful, glorious, astonishing... but the first chapter bugs the crap out of me.  Lucius Malfoy has just escaped from Azakaban.  He's on the run from the law.  So, for that matter, is Voldemort, and most of the Death Eaters.  So where do they choose to hide out?  Malfoy Manor!  It reminds me of an old Human Torch comic book from the '60s, in which two super-villains escape from prison, and one of them says, in all seriousness, "Our headquarters will be my house!  The police would never dream I'd go there!" There's one more thing about the books that I find somewhat troubling: are the paintings in Hogwarts actually alive?  I always thought of them as the magical equivalent of computer software, "programmed" to behave in certain ways.  But some of them, especially the portraits of the headmasters in Dumbledore's office, seem to have actual thoughts and feelings.  Are they sentient creatures forever trapped within their frames (which is a disturbing concept), or is this just part of their "programming"? (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
8:07 am	The Tragedy of the Unappreciated Artist I'm developing an obsession with the tragedy of the unappreciated artist.  Like Vern and Johnny, the two vaudeville guys from Family Guy.  I think they're the greatest characters ever created.  Certainly the most tragic.  Because all Vern wants to do is spread his love of vaudeville, but he's got two things going against him: A. nobody ever listens to him, and B. he's really bad at vaudeville.  But he carries on, regardless.  Even death cannot stop him.  The fans of the show kept bitching about how much they hate him, so they killed him and Johnny, his faithful pianist (the real genius of the duo), off.  But Vern's ghost undauntedly continues his mission of spreading the word of vaudeville to deaf ears.  And poor Johnny, who has to play Vern off from the depths of hell because of his fondness for little boys, but still has that big smile on his face and oh my god, it's just so heartbreaking!  Doesn't anyone understand?!  They should have a religion based around them! Or Max Linder, the great silent comedian.  Max Linder was really the first screen comedian, even before Chaplin and Keaton, and in fact he was a big inspiration for them.  He basically invented the movie comedy (and that old Marx Brothers gag with the broken mirror in which one person pretends to be the mirror image of the other?  Max Linder did it first).  And Daniel Bruhl's character in Inglourious Basterds was absolutely correct when he claimed that Linder was better than Chaplin (though he was wrong when he said that he never made a movie as good as The Kid, which is actually kind of a lame movie).  He had tremendous success in his native France, but for some reason he became ignored and ultimately forgotten when he moved to the U.S.  He eventually became so depressed at being pushed aside by the younger comedians he inspired that he killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife.  That's like... the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life. Tarantino's shout-out made me happy, but it's not enough.  I demand a biopic.  And not some crappy Richard Attenborough biopic, like Chaplin, but a good one, like a Milos Forman biopic, that will make Max Linder a household name (it worked for Salieri).  And I want a Criterion Collection of his complete works (those that have survived anyway). (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
10:01 pm	Irene in Time I'm really baffled and disturbed by this movie, Irene in Time.  This is the latest movie by Henry Jaglom, who's been making independent movies for a good long while now and has earned a pretty favorable reputation.  He was a close friend of Orson Welles's.  His movie Deja Vu made my Top 10 list the year it came out.  But then along comes Irene in Time, which is just an awful, awful movie.  Everyone hates this movie.  Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars, and he loves everything.  And that's just the people who have seen it, which isn't many.  It only has eight reviews on RottenTomatoes (when I saw it, it only had four, which made me think that maybe the critics knew something about Henry Jaglom that I didn't and I was just a fool for not staying away).  It has exactly 28 votes on the IMDB, one of which is mine.  But here's the baffling part: it opened in L.A. three months ago, and it's still playing!  How is this possible?  Did Henry Jaglom personally rent out space for this movie to be shown, regardless of attendance?  Just who the hell is seeing this movie?! The movie, incidentally, is about a woman crying about her dead father for an hour and a half.  His death isn't even a recent occurrence.  He disappeared when she was just a girl, and she's now in her 30s.  I didn't want to hate this movie, because there are individual scenes that are actually quite good, and the lead actress is excellent.  But she's crying about her (long) dead father for an hour and a half.  And singing really awful songs, one of which I have to believe (with apologies to the Killers, to whom I erroneously credited this claim) to be the Worst Song Ever Written.  It's called "Dancing With My Father," and the maudlin lyrics perfectly encapsulate this terrible movie: Now I'm dancing With my father Making circles in the room Now I'm dancing With my father By the light of the moon I'm dancing I'm dancing I'm dancing with him. That's the chorus.  The verses are actually much worse, but in order to write them out here I'd have to look them up.  And yes, I wrote the above lyrics from memory.  That's how many times I was tortured with this song. And speaking of bad movies: Tyler Perry, that is most definitely enough.  Tyler Perry does for black people what Nia Vardalos does for women (i.e. reduces them to stereotypical idiots). (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
9:04 am	Twit This is what I hate: any sentence bearing the construction: "The opposite of ____ isn't ____, it's ____."  Because such sentences are almost always completely wrong.  Like that line from Rent that everyone likes to quote (they even had Wonder Woman quoting it in a comic book): "The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."  Well, no. Peace is most definitely the opposite of war.  You can't just change antonyms whenever you feel like it.  And whoever said creation was so great, anyway?  War is an act of creation, after all. But the one that really annoys me is: "The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."  Because people don't treat it as merely a pseudo-profound song lyric, they say it as if they genuinely believe it to be true.  At least, neurotic attention-whores who think being ignored is much worse than being hated say it.  But it's like saying the opposite of hot is room temperature. When did people start Twittering a lot?  It seems like Twitter went from being something I'd never heard of to something used and talked about  by everyone I know in the span of like a week.  And everyone keeps telling me I need to start using Facebook.  But why?  I look at people like Shanti, and, well, basically all of Jason's friends from YouTube, and they're always Twittering and Facebooking and texting and taking pictures and shooting video and tagging pictures and editing video and looking at pictures and watching videos and I'm exhausted just watching them.  Has it not occurred to anyone that I don't want to keep in constant contact with everyone I've ever met? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
5:34 pm	So, wait, there are two vampire movies based on two different young adult book series coming out this fall, and they're both directed by one of the Weitz brothers (i.e. two different Weitz brothers)?  And there's a TV series based on a third vampire young adult book series, also coming out this fall?  I'm so confused by life. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
11:36 pm	Inglourious Basterds I find myself wanting to talk about Inglourious Basterds, even though I really wasn't crazy about it and I don't care if I ever see it again.  But I still kinda liked it.  In fact, I don't remember ever having such mixed feelings about a movie before.  Most of the individual scenes were superb, particularly the brilliant opening scene.  And yet, they really didn't add up to anything, and the climax, which should have been just batshit crazy as hell, was really pretty banal and lame. Most of the movie was like that, actually.  Even though I could admire most of the scenes individually, when taken collectively, they did not actually form a Quentin Tarantino war movie.  Or, indeed, any other kind of war movie.  What they form is another Quentin Tarantino movie about movies.  Which is kind of funny, because when I first heard about this movie, my first thought was, "Thank god, it's a WWII period piece, which means Tarantino can't throw in any of his pop culture references, and we won't get another Death Proof."  But like Death Proof, the movie is pretty much nothing but pop culture references.  It's Tarantino doing Sergio Leone and John Ford, which is actually more annoying than Tarantino doing grindhouse or Hong Kong action movies or blaxploitation, because Leone and Ford already did Leone and Ford better than anyone (and I'm not even a big Ford fan).  This is his spaghetti western, basically Once Upon a Time in the West transplanted to Nazi Germany, but Once Upon a Time in the West is already a perfect movie, easily the greatest western that has ever been made or could ever be made, so all it did was make me want to watch Once Upon a Time in the West again.  And so we got something that simply does not come as advertised: war as seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino (I believe that's what the trailer claimed).  Don't be fooled.  Indeed, the Basterds of the title aren't even the true subjects of the film. With this movie, Tarantino reveals the true depths of his film geekiness.  He is clearly not interested in anything but movies anymore, and so his past two movies have just been movies about movies.  Which kind of saddens me, because he could probably make a movie about anything if he really wanted to.  And it saddens me because there was so much talent displayed on the screen.  The two-and-a-half hours flew by, and the experience of watching it gave me much the same feeling as Eyes Wide Shut and There Will Be Blood did, the kind of satisfyingly exhausted and enervated feeling that can only come from watching a long movie made by a master filmmaker whose talent makes you desperately wish they had made a better movie (though I really liked EWS and disliked TWBB, so I'm not sure why the experiences are so similar in my mind). (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
8:45 am	I Hate Summer I don't understand How I Met Your Mother.  How is this a show that's been going on for years?  Hasn't he met my mother by now? Whoever said money can't buy happiness was an idiot.  Of course money buys happiness.  If money didn't buy happiness, we'd all be happy just sitting around in a empty field eating grass and twigs.  Nobody (well, almost nobody) is just happy automatically.  What makes us happy are the things we buy.  This is why I'm always much happier when I have money.  It's basic math. After years spent rejecting democracy and capitalism and desperately trying to find a political and econonomic ideology that suits me (even considering myself an anarchist for a number of years), I've now reached the conclusion that such an ideology doesn't exist, that I don't support any political structure at all, including anarchism.  Anarchism, and even democracy, require way more faith in humanity than I possess.  Likewise, supporting any economic structure but capitalism requires more faith in humanity than I possess.  What this means on a practical level, I don't really know.  But as Ferris Bueller said, "A man should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself."  So that's all I've got. (500) Days of Summer seems to be turning into this year's Little Miss Juno.  Could everyone please stop falling in love with these fucking lameass indie comedies?!  Thank you very much.  I don't know what I hate more, the movie or the parentheses in the title, which are self-conciously quirky but ultimately pointless and meaningless in a way only the creator of a lameass indie comedy could come up with. This is what else I hate: attorney service workers (attorney servicepeople?).  Because part of my job is to go to courthouses and file stuff for attorneys, and there's always two or three of these people (whose job is pretty much doing nothing but this) ahead of me in line with huge stacks of files from different attorneys, which take forever to process, and meanwhile I just have the one file that takes a few minutes.  And I can always spot them even without the big ass stack of papers.  Partly it's because they're the only people in the courthouse who are dressed as though they just came from rehearsing with their garage band, and partly because they always have this really cocky attitude, as if they're more entitled to be at the courthouse than everyone else just because they practically live there and know all the clerks on a first-name basis.  And they're obnoxious in the way lawyers would be if they weren't lawyers and didn't have college degrees. (8 Comments |Comment on this)