Heimlich Maneuvers

Earnest Thoughts

2012-02-01T23:14:00.002-07:00

This week, I went to see a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, in the middle of its run locally at the Arvada Center. It was a particularly fun night at the theater for me, as this is a play I myself performed "back in the day." What's more, one of my friends who appeared in that college production with me was now appearing in this professional production... in the very same role I had.

It was a bit of a trip through the looking glass, and through history. I found that even though it had been 15 years, I still remembered a considerable amount of the dialogue. But the play still had the power to make me laugh. Indeed, I took away from the evening an even more profound respect for the writing of Oscar Wilde.

"Earnest" is an exceptionally funny play. There were jokes in it that we hit squarely in our production. Last night, I got to discover other jokes that we'd missed, but this production nailed. And in thinking more about this, I realized the potential for still other big laughs that neither of us had hit upon. All this in a 100 year-old comedy, when comedy is so routinely "of its time" that it doesn't last. Yes, a truly brilliant play, this.

As for this production, it's a strong, enjoyable staging. On the evening I saw it, the crowd was a bit sedate throughout the first act, but everything seemed to start firing in Act Two. The crowd woke up, the cast picked up the comic timing, and each began to feed off the other as happens in good theater.

Seeing the play brought back to mind many fond memories, but I do think it's a show anyone could enjoy, even if they know nothing of the play. It's just a fun, spirited farce. And if you live in the Denver area, you still have a few weeks to catch this fun production.

Michael

2012-01-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure what to expect from tonight's Michael Jackson-centric episode of Glee. Glee has done episodes before that were dedicated to a single artist, and I've generally been uncertain about those efforts too. They usually feature powerful vocal performances... but too many of them, to the exclusion of plot. And what little plot there is is usually painfully contorted to fit the available catalog of music.

Sure enough, the episode was stuffed to the rafters with music -- nine songs in total, which I think might be the record for a non-competition episode of Glee. And sure enough, some of the song choices were a stretch. (I know "Ben" is the perfect vocal match for Chris Colfer as Kurt, but is he really going to sing a love song about a rat to his injured boyfriend?)

But the thing is, this time the cocktail really came out well. The focus on the kids' futures -- particularly Rachel and Kurt -- made for a strong throughline in the episode. It was interesting to see Rachel act rashly and out of panic in accepting Finn's proposal (just as he did the same in making it). As always, it was great to see Burt deliver another "TV Father of the Year" speech to his son. And there were other good moments too, like Artie's impassioned rant early in the episode, and Quinn's much needed frank advice to Rachel.

And on top of all that was the constant that's been true of all the Glee "tribute episodes" -- the vocal performances were top notch. Kevin McHale proved last season his fit for Michael Jackson with his vocals on "Thriller" and "P.Y.T.", and he got to take lead parts in three songs tonight. And one of them, "Scream," was also our first chance since season one to put Artie in a fantasy sequence. Once again, it allowed us to see that one of the best dancers on the show is playing a character confined to a wheelchair.

The a cappella take on "Bad," the cello rendition of "Smooth Criminal" (complete with the actual cellists that made it a YouTube sensation last year)... the episode was full of great performances.

All that, and they even crammed in writing Blaine out for a short span so that Darren Criss could go star in "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway for a few weeks. With only minor missteps, this was one of the better Glee episodes in a long time. I give it an A-.

Cal Sweeney

2012-01-30T23:40:00.002-07:00

Tonight's new Alcatraz kept the show on a steady and interesting course. What struck me particularly in this episode was how the mysteries of the characters themselves are of at least as much interest and importance as the mystery of Alcatraz.

For example, there was the tantalizing throwaway line revealing that Soto hasn't driven a car since he was 11. (Some connection to the childhood abduction revealed last week seems implied.) Or take the appearance of Dr. Banerjee in the 1960 flashback, discussing her work at rehabilitating prisoners. I found these details more compelling than the also admittedly interesting "glowing door with secret keys (from the future?)" revealed at episode's end.

I mentioned last week that I felt the convicts' easy adaptation to modern life was an issue that would need to be addressed. The writers gave that a shot this week, in having Madsen get the drop on Sweeney because of his lack of ingrained instinct to put on a seat belt. And yet, at the same time, he found his way around bank robberies (including modern security cameras) with such ease up to that point, it felt like they were trying to have it both ways. I'll keep hoping for better development on this front.

Still, the case and criminal were once again intriguing. The balance of character and plot was good. The show continues to deliver on the things I've liked so far. I'll still be watching next week.

State of the Art

2012-01-29T20:50:00.003-07:00

This afternoon, I went to see the film that most odds makers are backing for this years Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Artist. A silent film, shot in black-and-white and in the old style aspect ratio; a story commenting on the history of cinema and the downfall of silent movies? Sounds like just the sort of pretentious thing Oscar viewers would go for, doesn't it?

But the thing is, it turned out to be a movie I think could be enjoyed by a much wider audience. Get over the obvious barriers to the film, and you'll find it's actually quite entertaining. Within the stylish framework, the movie actually has interesting characters and an emotional story to tell. It's the story of a silent movie actor who is unwilling to sell out his sense of the art and convert to "talkies" as silent filmmaking is on its way out in the early 1930s.

The two lead performers, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, aren't ones you'll likely know, but both carry the film wonderfully. They play within the silent conceit, heightening their acting just enough to push through without seeming hammy. And they're supported by a great cast including John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, and a scene-stealing trained dog. There are also brief cameo-style appearances by Malcolm McDowell and Missi Pyle.

I liked the movie well enough that it will slide into the #7 slot on my list of 2011's Best movies. There are movies I liked better, but they aren't in the Oscar running, so I suppose this means that so far, The Artist is not only the likely winner, but my choice as well. As for my grade, I give it a B+. I'd hope for an Oscar winner I could give a higher mark to, but then again, there are many past Oscar winners I've thought a whole lot less of.

Respect Your Elder

2012-01-27T22:01:00.001-07:00

I've been playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for about a month now. I just this week completed the "main quests," the most prominent storyline in the game. I figure it's about time for me to give my official review of the game.

I miss epic, open-world games like this. The Ultima series (specifically, Ultimas IV through VII -- parts 1 and 2) were my very favorite games as a teenager, and I feel like today, games of this type are too few and far between. They've been crowded out in the modern market by MMORPGs, which in my view nail the MMO part and tend to fail miserably at the RPG part.

Skyrim (like its predecessors) is a grand return to a world where it's all about you, the player, and the character you create. You save the freaking world. You rise to leadership of guilds. Yes, you do occasionally get tasked with menial MMO-type mini-quests to "collect 20 of this thing," but these are quite rare compared to epic, big story quests.

The environments are wonderful. Different cities have distinct looks. Prominent battles take place in beautiful settings. There's a satisfying and diverse array of enemies to fight (including dragons, yes plenty of dragons). The scale, scope, and arc of the story deliver everything I want from one of these games.

I've spent over 100 hours playing Skyrim so far, and despite completing the main storyline, I suspect I'll be playing it at least another 20 before it finally fades out and gives way to some other game. So needless to say, yes, I liked it. Loved it. Obsessed about it, starting at least 1/3 of my conversations with friends with "so this one time... in Skyrim..." It's a great game.

But I do have to mention a few quibbles.

First, the game doesn't do nearly as good a job with character as it does with story and environment. There are a few memorable characters in the game, and the designers certainly knew which ones they wanted them to be, because they're voiced by the likes of Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica) and soon-to-be-Oscar-winner Christopher Plummer. But the vast majority of the characters in the game have bland personalities and forgettable names. (Though there is an internal consistency to the way they're named, at least.) Basically, the game goes with breadth and not depth in the character department.

Second, the actual climax of the main storyline is a bit disappointing. Without spoiling much for people who want to experience the story themselves, I'll simply say that the final confrontation feels very similar to a confrontation that occurs roughly two-thirds through the main story. The finale did not feel like "the most epic fight I had in the game." Not even in the top 5, really. I'm not equating "difficult" with "climatic" here, but I was hoping for "distinct." Other confrontations I had in the game felt more memorable to me.

Third, the well-documented bugs plaguing the PS3 version of the game are a sticking point with me. I received the game for Christmas, and the first thing I had to do was exchange it for the Xbox 360 version before I opened it -- I didn't want to face the problem I'd heard about: "you'll play it fine for a while, but after enough hours of gameplay, your frame rate will be crippled to unplayable." It's unacceptable to ship a game on a platform and not truly support that platform. It would have been better to simply cancel the PS3 version altogether and just release the game on PC and Xbox 360 than to ship what was ultimately an unplayable game. Rumor is that the patch soon to be released may finally fix the problem, though this claim has been made with previous failed patches. Selling an unplayable game to people for nearly three months seems unacceptable to me in any case.

Those complaints may sound strong (particularly the last one), but I'm going to ultimately grade the game an A-. And that right there should tell you just how much I've enjoyed everything else about Skyrim. It's been a bulldozer pushing out of the way almost everything else that normally fills my free time.

And I haven't minded one bit.

Touch Type

2012-01-26T21:35:00.002-07:00

Last night, the premiere of a new series aired on FOX -- Touch. It's the latest from series creator Tim Kring, and stars Kiefer Sutherland. It felt like an attempt by both to step away from their last, well-known television efforts, and I'm not sure it was a resounding success for either of them.

Touch is a multi-faceted story primarily featuring the single father of a young boy who has never spoken in his life, and who may (or may not) be autistic. For certain, the boy is able to perceive complex patterns in the world, of how people's lives are supposed to intersect. He tries to convey these visions through seemingly random series of numbers, which his father tries to interpret in time to manipulate events for some better outcome. Quantum Leap for the new century?

Creator Tim Kring is the man who made Heroes, a show I abandoned early on, but which many people I know followed bravely through what were widely considered four ever-declining seasons. Here, it feels as though he was trying to create a less "mythology" driven show, more episodic in nature and with less of a convoluted, ongoing storyline. But if this pilot is any indication, each episode is going to have its own labyrinthine series of interlocking gears -- Heroes compressed into a single episode each week.

Kiefer Sutherland is trying to embody a gentler, more fragile hero than 24's Jack Bauer. But Bauer is one of the most indelible characters of modern television. When Sutherland screams "dammit" in this pilot episode (not once, but twice), I wanted to take the customary 24 drinking game swig. When his character Martin Bohm gets beaten up during the episode (again, not once, but twice), it's hard to accept that he doesn't fight back -- indeed, seems incapable of doing so. Sutherland may simply be too typecast for a role like this now.

The pilot did have a few interesting "aha!" moments, but I think the premise is going to be incredibly challenging to sustain as a weekly series. Every episode seems to promise a wheels-within-wheels puzzle that will all reconcile by hour's end. But we the audience know that this is what's going to happen, and so we're going to be looking to solve that puzzle before the answer is revealed. It seems to me the series will be audience-vs.-writers, in a war to see who can outthink the other.

I suppose you could say that every mystery story ever written, in any medium, has the same problem going. But here I think the ante is upped given the type of audience likely to buy into a rather science fiction-like premise. And I feel like the results will be typical of how this first episode ended. Yes, there was a fun moment or two. And a few moments you could see coming a mile off. And a few other moments that were simply too trite to be clever.

Throw in a few frustrating characters -- a bristling and unsympathetic social worker, and a nonsense-spouting "expert" on autism played by Danny Glover -- and I'm just not seeing the right ingredients in this soup. It definitely wasn't "bad" television, but it also seems to me it's going to need a lot of improvement.

But this was just a special preview of the series, and it isn't starting up on a weekly basis until mid-March. So whether or not I give it another chance is probably going to depend entirely on how busy I find myself six weeks from now. If most other shows are in re-runs, I might give another episode or two a chance. If the schedule is crowded, well then, tonight will probably be my first and last episode.

Only an autistic, pattern-seeing child could see the future and tell you the answer.

Chew On This

2012-01-25T23:19:00.002-07:00

I didn't have time tonight to write the post I'd been planning, so instead, you get this absolutely disgusting story about a man who rolled nearly 100,000 pieces of chewed nicotine gum into a vile ball.

On second thought, maybe I did have time to write the post I'd intended. I'm pretty sure I'm not sleeping well tonight, thinking of that.

And the Nominees Are...

2012-01-24T21:09:00.004-07:00

This year's Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and gave me a full realization of just how far behind I am in watching movies right now. Usually, by the time the nominees are announced, I've seen at least half of the Best Picture candidates.

This year, I've seen only one out of nine: Midnight in Paris. And I've only seen a sprinkling of the nominated Actor and Actress performances.

But I still found a few things interesting about the nominees. First of all, there was the fact that Hugo received the most nominations -- 11. More often than not, the film most nominated is the one to beat for Best Picture. If true, then this year's race may be a bit more fluid than some of the critics have predicted. Most have been pointing to The Artist, with those who can't believe a silent movie will win in this day and age pointing at The Descendants instead. Could we really have a three horse race now?

I believe for the first time since the Best Animated Feature category was created, Pixar had an eligible film that didn't make the cut. And "deservedly" so there, since Cars 2 was absolutely feet and ankles below the rest of their catalog. (By the way, do you buy "feet and ankles below" as an opposite of "head and shoulders above?" I wasn't quite sure how to put that.)

A real flaw in this whole "let's nominate more than five films" thing they've been trying over the last few years is that it's really easy to just look at the five Best Director nominees and know which of the Best Picture contenders are the "also rans." Interesting that Steven Spielberg's omission this year puts War Horse in that category.

There are only two nominees in the Best Original Song category this year. It seems to me that all Oscar categories should expand or contract in a given year to incorporate worthy nominees -- or a lack thereof.

Looks like I have some serious catching up to do if I want to have anything remotely like an informed opinion next month.

Kit Nelson

2012-01-23T23:48:00.003-07:00

The new show Alcatraz returned with another episode tonight, and I think took a nice baby step in the right direction.

The show held strong on all the qualities that made the first two hours intriguing. The case and the criminal were unsettling. The tiny hints of the larger mystery were tantalizing without being overwhelming. The mood was dark without being relentlessly oppressive.

But at the same time, the writing worked just a bit more on developing character. In the spotlight this week was Jorge Garcia's character, Diego Soto. We saw him become much more emotionally invested in this week's case, and by the end of the hour, we got a taste of why. Again, just enough not to frustrate, but not enough to give the game away. Abducted as a child? It should be interesting to learn more about that.

But while I did find this episode more compelling overall, and I definitely plan to keep with the show, there are two aspects I think the writing is going to have to address in the relatively near future.

First, how is it that these criminals freshly transported from 1963 are so easily "acclimatizing" to 2012? In tonight's episode, the criminal-of-the-week confronted our heroine, Detective Madsen, and after instructing her to throw her gun away, told her to throw her phone away. And then later, he easily located an abandoned bomb shelter despite a complete alteration of the terrain in the intervening decades. I think I'd like to see some of the criminals struggling some to come to grips with their new environment.

Second, I think they'll have to develop some new textures to play in the 1960 scenes. So far, the format seems to be "watch the warden find a clever way to torture the criminal-of-the-week." It actually reminds me just a little bit of the 1990s one season wonder American Gothic, in which an evil sheriff (played wonderfully by Gary Cole) tormented and controlled everyone who came into his sphere of influence. It totally worked on that show. And there's no question, we're dealing almost exclusively with some truly bad people here, so we don't mind seeing someone (the warden or anyone else) getting the best of them. But might it get old if the warden remains a mustache-twirling villain?

It's understandably a higher priority to flesh out the main characters in the present day, though. If the show flourishes and grows to a point where it needs to flesh out the evil warden, then I suppose it will be a hit and have plenty of time to address such things. I think I'm looking forward to that.

Over Under

2012-01-21T22:06:00.002-07:00

I saw my first new movie of the year this afternoon -- Underworld: Awakening. It probably wouldn't have been my first choice, but I was game enough to try to check my brain at the door and roll with it. I hadn't seen any of the Underworld movies since the first one, but I figured I probably wasn't going to be too out of the loop, story-wise.

Unfortunately, I was more right on that count than I'd even imagined. Underworld is stuffed to bursting with many things, but story isn't among them. What is there is a simplistic scaffolding built to hold a procession of action pieces.

Take any one action scene in the movie on its own, individually, and it's not half bad. The problem is watching them all back to back. The amplifier is cranked to 11 from the very beginning, and stays there for the entire film. There's really no ebb and flow to the movie. Every scene is the most spine-breaking, blood-letting, eardrum-rupturing set piece the writers and directors could conceive. Everything is outrageous, and so before long, it feels like nothing is outrageous. It's all just over the top.

There's some good, pulse-pounding music, and a fun (but too brief) appearance by Charles Dance, who last made a splash as Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones. Plus of course, if it floats your boat, Kate Beckinsale looking great in skin-tight leather-vinyl -- amazing for someone approaching 40 years old, actually.

But ultimately, I need just a bit less "dumb" in my "big dumb action move." I give Underworld: Awakening a D+.

Dialogue from S--[CENSORED]

2012-01-20T18:47:00.002-07:00

Skyrim has just a sprinkling of PG language. (They earn their M rating with violence.) But these videos will make you think otherwise:

Thankful All Over Again

2012-01-19T22:12:00.002-07:00

This past weekend, I got to take part in a fun new holiday-esque tradition, the second annual... well... name pending.

For two years running now, my boyfriend has bought an ultra-cheap turkey in the aftermath of Thanksgiving, and kept it frozen in his "could hold several bodies" freezer in the garage, waiting for January to roll around. You've heard of Christmas in July? Well, meet Thanksgiving in January.

Friends came over to his place, everyone bringing a Thanksgiving dish -- some traditional, some a little different (appropriate, considering the occasion). One brought along what turned out to be the best turkey recipe ever: Turkey with Herbes de Provence and Citrus.

Seriously, go bookmark that link or print it out, and hang onto it for the next time you have to cook a turkey. Unbelievable!

Just like Thanksgiving, the cooking was an all-day affair, but with fun activities throughout. Good food, good company.

Though we're still looking for the perfect name. Gobble-a-go-go was in the mix. Thankuary seemed decent. Janksgiving was right out. But in any case, it's a tradition sure to be repeated again next year, so we are going to have to work that name out.

The Internet Uprising

2012-01-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Today, Wikipedia, Google, and other online web sites (both large and small) were staging protests against two bills before the U.S. Congress: SOPA and PIPA. The bills are meant to attack piracy, but do so in such a draconian manner as to risk compromising core principles of the internet.

I was going to join several of my co-workers and write my own commentary on the issue. I felt myself in an interesting place as an employee of a company that provides entertainment that could be pirated, but that also relies on the internet for distribution. Thoeretically, I could have sympathies for both sides of the issue -- and I knew with every fiber of my being that the proposed legislation was wrong, wrong, wrong. I was going to use my time and space to implore people to take actions against the bills as recommended by Wikipedia: contact your local congressman.

But the day is waning, and some funny things have happened before I could get to writing this post. In a nutshell, the protests worked. Apparently, the sponsors of the bill were absolutely deluged with complaints today, as one by one, they all announced a withdrawal of support for their own measures. So, crisis... well, perhaps not "averted," but certainly "forestalled." It may well still be worth contacting your congressman to tell them they'd better fly right on this issue in the future, but it's not "all hands on deck" aboard the Good Ship Cyberspace.

So instead, a few random thoughts on the fact that the protest did apparently work.

Much has been made in recent years of how much money has infested American politics, how beholden politicians are to the rich people (and now, the corporations -- thank you Citizens United and the Supreme Court!) whose vast wealth gets them into office. And fundamentally, that hasn't really changed overall. But right up until literally yesterday, the sponsors of this bill had been unwavering in their message about SOPA and PIPA. They believed that any opposition to their measure was coming from an insignificant minority, from the very pirates they thought the bill would stop, and they were dismissing this opposition as anything from malicious to stupid. The money of Hollywood movie studios, most concerned about piracy at the moment, was ringing louder in the Congressional ears.

And yet, today, phone calls and e-mails from actual citizens made a difference. That's something that many people thought couldn't possibly happen anymore, and I was turning into one more than I care to admit. So, score one for representative democracy.

...I guess. Not a big score. After all, the desired outcome here was for Congress to "do nothing," and gridlock is really what they excel at.

I just wish there were some other important issues that people would get as worked up about as the internet. Maybe then some real improvements could happen.

Yes/No

2012-01-17T21:47:00.005-07:00

Glee is back for the new year, and delivered a mostly good episode. But there were some minor misfires along the way.

The opening presentation of "Summer Dreams" was undeniably perfect for the situation, though the song choice from Grease did probably put Glee in damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't territory. The staging was straight out of the movie, and I can't decide if that was the boring way to do it, or the only way to do it.

Helen Mirren cameos as the internal monologue of Becky? How awesome is that?!

Emma gets to sing again after a long time since her last number, and the staging of it was solid too! Okay, now we're rolling!

...except then came a lukewarm Glee mashup. The idea of putting "Moves Like Jagger" with a Rollings Stone song is an undeniably clever idea, but the actual orchestration of it was the epitome of "will you just pick a song and go with it?" to me. Still, Kevin McHale has one of the best voices on the show, and doesn't get nearly enough solos. So I guess between that and the good dance staging, I'll call this one a net positive.

But I'll have to call Will asking Finn to be his best man to be a net negative. Not so much for the awkwardness of a teacher asking a current student to do that, but just that I didn't buy any of the things Will was saying about how stalwart a person Finn has been. I've been watching the show the whole time, you see. (P.S. -- The background music in this scene was really odd. At one point, I swear they were about to start singing "Eminence Front" by The Who... though I couldn't figure out what possible connection to the story that would have had.)

If a downhill slide began there, though, it was completely stopped by the best musical number of the hour, the girls' performance of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." The montage that went with it, and the emotions plain on the faces of the singers, really made it a moving and powerful performance.

...which was then totally undermined by Will going to Emma's parents for permission to marry. The writers just had to get last more bump in the road in the Will/Emma relationship, I guess. I just couldn't fathom any other reason why Will would go to seek the approval of people he expressly told Emma should not be pursued for approval the last time we saw them. And they were even more horrible parents in this episode than they were the last time around. It sort of makes the prickliness of Mike Chang's father in this season's earlier storyline seem tame by comparison.

Next came the bombshell about Finn's dad -- not a war hero, but a failure. I wasn't sure at the time why this was being tossed into this episode (though it did turn out to be building somewhere). But it did provide the setting for another great performance by Kurt's father... and an equally good one from Finn's mother.

It all worked its way to that incredibly odd swimming pool proposal. I'm not quite sure why it felt like "Emma" to Sam or Will. It just felt like the writers expressing a need to unleash their inner Busby Berkeley. But at least the proposal itself went off without a hitch.

A tender moment between Becky and Sue (a rare human one for Sue), and now we're heading toward a happy endi---

Stop the presses! Finn sits Rachel down for a speech, and from the moment he tells her to wait for quietly to finish, you know where it's going... and watch it like a car wreck in slow motion. And despite the fact that it was all just horribly awkward, I think it was meant that way, and is an interesting thing for the show to do. I do wish they'd laid the track for Finn's impulsiveness over maybe another episode or two -- perhaps suggesting the army one week, finding out the truth of his father in another, then tailspinning into the proposal in a third.

Then again, I probably wouldn't have wanted to see that much screen time devoted to Finn anyway.

Despite the fact that I noted a lot of bumps in the road above, I would say overall that the highs of the episode peaked higher than the lows dipped low. The story between Becky and Artie was interesting and felt honest. The groundwork for future material with Sam and Mercedes was promising. Sue being a rather normal human being was absolutely a step in the right direction.

All told, I'd call the episode a B+.

Rock On

2012-01-16T23:05:00.003-07:00

Tonight was the debut of the new TV series Alcatraz. It has been billed as the latest from J.J. Abrams, though that's really stretching the facts. It's actually the brainchild of some former writers on Lost (including one who has already left Alcatraz over creative differences), and produced by Abrams' production company, Bad Robot.

That's not the only Lost connection here, of course. Actor Jorge Garcia (who played Hurley) is one of the co-stars. Abrams' "resident composer," Michael Giacchino, provided the music for the pilot episode. And yes, if you want to get completely superficial, it's a show about mysterious things happening on an island.

If you're not up on the premise, it's actually quite simple. The fact that Alcatraz prison was closed in 1963 due to budget cutbacks is "revealed" to be a fabrication. Instead, every single person on the island -- inmate and guard -- simply vanished without a trace one night. And now, nearly 50 years later, the missing prisoners are reappearing -- not having aged a day -- and resuming their criminal activities.

In its first two hours, Alcatraz managed to set forth its own identity and clearly lay out the picture of what it's going to be as a show. And it's a pretty damn interesting one, I think. In a nutshell, I'd say this show is going to deliver on the promise and potential that I thought Person of Interest would have this season. Alcatraz is ultimately a procedural crime show. Every week seems set up to be about our heroes catching the criminal of the week. It is an ongoing mystery just how these people have been moved through time, and what the motivation for such an event might be. A tantalizing backdrop, I'd say, but it's clearly not meant to dominate the proceedings.

The cast seems quite good, based on the first two hours. Jorge Garcia is playing a goofy and instantly lovable characters that on some levels is very much like Hurley, though he's also a much more knowledgeable and intellectual character. Veteran actor Sam Neill is the secretive head of the operation to track down the criminals, and has a history with Alcatraz himself. His character seems perhaps too much a cold-blooded cipher at the moment, though I imagine he will be fleshed out into less of a caricature if the show catches on. As for the rest of cast, there aren't any faces I'm familiar with, though they do seem well matched to their roles.

Of course, there's one more "star" of the show -- the prison itself. Having just been to the real Alcatraz myself only months ago, I can say that from what I saw, the prison has been recreated in very impressive detail. Yes, the pilot, with a larger budget, clearly filmed some exterior scenes on the real island itself. But the interiors are definitely on a stage, as Alcatraz is depicted in both the 1960s and in present day. And while the show certainly takes some liberties with what they claim is under the prison, the cell block itself, the mess hall, and other key locations, look just like the real thing. Excellent work.

I takes a lot for me to want to bring another crime procedural into my weekly TV schedule; the channels are littered with them. But I found Alcatraz interesting enough to bring on. I looking forward to next week.

And the Golden Globes Snark Goes To...

2012-01-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

Another movie/TV awards ceremony, another chance to sit with my catty, witty friends and comment. (Not that we could really compete with Ricky Gervais.)

"So, where was I?" Awesome opening line.

After playing so many wild characters, Johnny Depp has become a character himself. What is this accent he's doing?

Christopher Plummer... just brush your right sleeve off there. Please? No? Well, you'll get another chance when you win the Oscar for this role in a few weeks.

Laura Dern's dress does work, even though it has a bit of a "bottom of the aquarium" thing going on.

Liquid gooooooooooold!

Standing next to Julianne Moore, Rob Lowe looks like George Hamilton. Seriously, you could just hand him out as an award statue -- he's gold enough.

The top of Kate Winslet's dress is a mess. It looks like she's Hulking out of it.

Jeremy Irons seems to be trying to win a Golden Globe. He's totally feeling up the woman from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

I guess Homeland wasn't expected to win. They couldn't have been seated farther from the stage.

I would certainly think the score for the silent movie would win Best Score. (Though I've heard there was some controversy about him lifting material from other films?)

Madonna is wearing chain mail, garbage bags, and a weight lifting glove?

Seth Rogen has practically stopped the show.

Is Michelle Williams going to go work out after the show? What's with the leopard print and the headband?

Peter Dinklage makes up for his oversight at the Emmys last year and starts by thanking George R.R. Martin. Good. I guess Tyrion gets to survive now.

I see George Clooney and Brad Pitt worked out a mutual admiration society meeting... "you introduce my movie, I'll introduce yours."

Though everyone in my group likes Nicole Kidman's dress, it invited comments such as: 1) she looks like a steampunk superhero; 2) sandworms are eating her boobs; and 3) her dress is playing Pac-man.

Applause to Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy's musical introduction.

Jessica Lange came dressed crazier than her character on American Horror Story.

Julianna Margulies' hair is pulled so tight, it seems to actually be stretching her eyes.

Matt LeBlanc wins an award... meanwhile, Courtney Cox can't even get a nomination. Injustice.

Bradley Cooper came as Errol Flynn.

Wind tunnel hair is in this year.

I did not know that Morgan Freeman loves to take a bath in a casket.

Is Ben Kingsley getting a hand job during the show???!!!???

Angelina Jolie has come dressed for a Robert Palmer music video.

Salma Hayek has come as the robot from Metropolis.

Modern Family would have been my pick for Best TV Comedy too. And they gave an acceptance speech worthy of it.

The side of Michelle Pfeiffer's dress ended up in the front.

David Bowie was nominated for Best Actress? (Oh wait, it's Tilda Swinton.)

Why won't David Fincher just go up there and give Meryl Streep her glasses? Is this retribution for Rooney Mara not winning?

I suppose Jane Fonda of all people is allowed to look like she's in a workout outfit.

Did Natalie Portman forget to take the hanger out of her dress?

The Descendants??? Whaaaaaaat? Cue the critics babbling about how the HFPA is just weird, and that this doesn't mess up their Oscar predictions at all.

"We've been told to hurry up." So I'm going to speak as slowly aaaas poooosible.

A Third Trip to Paradise

2012-01-13T18:39:00.002-07:00

I've written before about the documentary series Paradise Lost, whose two films cover the "West Memphis Three," three men convicted of the murder of three 8-year-old boys in the 1990s. (And, if you watch the films and/or do any reading on the case, you'll become convinced they were wrongfully convicted.) The series now continues with a third installment, Paradise Lost: Purgatory, which premiered on HBO this week.

This new documentary basically brings two main elements to the table to differentiate it from the prior two films: expanded coverage of the original case itself, and new evidence in the case that was formally publicized in 2007.

In that first area, examination of the original case, this documentary is easily the most unsettling of the three. After two films and some outside reading, I thought I'd seen most everything there was to see on the case. What I hadn't seen were crime scene photos. And I'm not sure I needed to. But this third film presents actual photos and video footage from the original crime scene, of the bound and mutilated victims. It's horrific. And though I'm not sure it was really necessary for the filmmakers to "go there," it does drive one important point home: though the focus of these documentaries has been around the innocence of the convicted three, the terrible crime itself was the first injustice here, and not to be forgotten.

The bulk of this third film brings viewers up to date on new DNA and forensic evidence, and new and more qualified experts who have interpreted both the new material and the original material of the case. It all stacks up in a powerful way. No longer is it just a matter of the three men being convicted on circumstantial evidence with no proof; now we see that there is compelling proof of their innocence.

The aggravating third act of the documentary then tracks the attempts of lawyers trying to present this new evidence to free the West Memphis Three. Orwellian blockages are thrown up in their paths, most significantly that every appeal in the case is heard by the same biased judge who presided over the original trials. A tragic mistake is compounded again and again.

It all culminates in an epilogue that had to be assembled by the documentary makers after they'd wrapped their originally intended film. Having finally made headway with the Arkansas Supreme Court, and with an appeal to schedule a new trial pending, the courts suddenly decided to instead accept "Alford plea" from the three men. This inexplicable nonsense within the justice system allows the three to maintain their innocence, but simultaneously requires them to plead guilty and agree to "time served." Basically, it forestalls the possible of a civil lawsuit against the state for wrongful imprisonment. It's an agreement the trio was willing to make, to avoid prolonging nearly two decades of incarceration through the process of another trial. (And with one of the three on death row, there was extra incentive not to roll the dice on a new trial.)

This may not be the last Paradise Lost film. It's definitely not the last documentary on the West Memphis Three, as filmmaker Peter Jackson is unveiling his own separate documentary on the subject in the near future. But it is another worthy (and enraging) entry in this compelling series. I'd rate it a B+.

Fictional Equality

2012-01-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

The full review of Skyrim I intend to do is still forthcoming. But I do have a Skyrim story to share today.

Among the many, many, many things you can do in the game, your character can get married. And as a few game writers and bloggers have noted, you can actually get married to someone of the same sex. It's not legal in most U.S. states, but it's legal in Skyrim.

In fact, it's pretty much a non-issue in Skyrim, and much of what has been written on the subject is praising software developer Bethesda for their simple, matter-of-fact stance on this in their game. The thinking seems to be (for both game makers and critics commenting on it) that if it's just a simple, non-momentous matter of course in the game, that's one stride closer to changing real world attitudes to make it just a matter of course in real life. And setting aside the fact that most people in the "need their minds opened" demographic are not likely to be in the "playing Skyrim" demographic, I think I agree.

But, I actually did have my character enter into a gay marriage in Skyrim. And having gone through the process, I do have some quibbles with how the game handles it.

Without going into elaborate details, the way it works is that a certain pool of around 60 characters in the world are "marriage eligible." And regardless of whether you are playing a male or female character, all of these chararacters will accept your wedding proposal (provided you do enough to woo them).

While I applaud Bethsda's "it's just not a big deal" approach, the fact that these characters all just swing either way feels to me like a subtle reinforcement of the mistaken belief that sexual preference is a voluntary choice. All these characters could choose to be in a "traditional" marriage; they're "choosing" to be in a same-sex marriage with your character, if that's your desire as a player. Which, as far as the real world goes, is total crap. The authentic approach would be that of the pool of 60 or so marriage candidates, some small percentage of them would be open to the possibility of a same-sex marriage (and not to an opposite-sex marriage, save perhaps one or two truly bisexual characters).

Now, since we're talking realism here, let's be realistic. The most likely scenario is that the game designers just wanted players to have as many marriage options as possible, and subdividing the total pool would just make things tougher -- for programmers, for players, for everyone. I don't think it's likely that the game makers were intentionally making a bad statement here.

I mean, if they were really trying to make a statement, then I think they'd have put a few other same-sex married couples in the game. (Not that I've seen every character in the game -- has anyone? -- but from what I've seen, if you and your spouse are the same sex, you're the only such couple in the entire world.) But gays and lesbians are hardly the only underrepresented demographic in the game. For example, where are all the overweight people in Skyrim?

Let's not forget, Bethesda was ultimately making a "slay dragons and save the world" fantasy game, not a "role play marriage" game. So no, I'm not really upset with the game designers over these points I'm making.

I'm just saying, let's put this supposed "statement" they were making about same-sex marriage in a more complete context.

My Top 100 Movies -- 95-91

2012-01-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Continuing through my top 100 movies...

95. GoldenEye. This is the best of the James Bond movies. Remington Steele deprived us of getting Pierce Brosnan as Bond years earlier (and also inflicted Timothy Dalton on us), but this was worth the wait. Sean Bean is a wonderful foil. Famke Janssen devours the scenery as a killer henchman in the model of classic thugs like Oddjob and Jaws. Even Alan Cumming and Joe Don Baker are fun (and watch for a before-she-was-famous Minnie Driver). The action moments are among the best of the series, the plot is just sensible enough to work, but just non-sensical enough to be fun. It's a tragedy that Brosnan's subsequent three Bond films were all among the most terrible in the series, because his tenure in the role started out so great. And Tina Turner's performance of the fantastic title song, over one of the better Bond credit sequences, is icing on the cake.

94. The History of the World, Part 1. Many of you will disagree with me... but many of you won't: this is Mel Brooks' best movie. Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs are good too, but I think Mel Brooks has the sensibilities of a sketch comedy writer, and this movie showcases that. Set up a funny premise, let it play as long as it's funny, then move on. So it is we get a hilarious opening parody of 2001, one of the funniest musical numbers ever put on film ("The Inquisition"), yet another "laugh-til-you-can't-breathe" performance from Madeline Kahn (in the Roman segment), and more. And it's all capped with even more sketch-style jokes in the form of what a mythical sequel movie would look like. Many great comedians (and too many no longer with us) show up to put in a few minutes in this fantastic treat.

93. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Michael Caine can perform both comedy and drama with what seems like no effort at all. And here, he almost gets to do both, playing an oh-so-serious character in an oh-so-ridiculous competition against the always funny Steve Martin. This con man comedy is made more than it could have ever been on the page by the wonderful interplay between these two actors. Countless quotable lines, wonderful twists in the plot, and the perfect balance between lightheartedness and mean spirits. And Ruprecht the Monkey Boy.

92. Clerks II. I never thought this movie would end up rated as high on my list as it is. But this is the one Kevin Smith film that I think has actual meat on the bone. Sure, the patter of his dialogue is usually fun, and I laugh as hard as anyone at geek humor like the "Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings" debate, or the crassness of the donkey show. But what sets this film above Smith's others -- and gets it into my top 100 -- is that it has an actual message about doing what you love in life, that what others might see as "settling" or even "failure" might be the very thing that makes you truly happy. And the big scene in which this message is driven home is surprisingly heartfelt, given the rest of the movie. Which, as a bonus, is hilarious.

91. U-571. I'll get grief for picking this movie above so many more well-known and/or well-respected naval films. Even I have to acknowledge, I simply should not like this more than, say, Das Boot or The Hunt for Red October. But there's a magic cocktail in the performances here. Bill Paxton is a truly talented actor, and Harvey Keitel can build a memorable secondary character like few others. And while it feels ridiculous to praise Matthew McConaughey too highly, throwing him into this sort of heroic role is making perfect use of him. The story is more tense than Red October, more fast paced than Das Boot. It would probably be ranked even higher if it weren't for the blatant Americanization of a real-life story (as I noted in an earlier review of the film.

Some May Call This Junk, I Call It a Treasure

2012-01-10T19:00:00.003-07:00

Some of my friends have acknowledged that they're so obsessed with Skyrim, it sometimes invades the way they look at things in their daily lives.

That probably looks something like this:

15 -- Things I Hate About You

2012-01-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

As I expected, my football screed from yesterday attracted a few comments. (Though on Facebook, perhaps a few more supporters than I might have originally guessed.) It also attracted a few people who pointed out that Tim Tebow himself is a quite self-depracating individual who does not make his religion half as big a deal as the sportscasters looking to fill time. Granted. And the people who wrote this said it in the nicest way. It was nothing like a fire.

And yet, I'm going to go and probably pour some gasoline on it anyway.

Let me try to explain what I really meant when it comes to Tebow and religion -- and what I'm about to say applies to many people; Tebow is simply a prominent example right now.

I agree, in the handful of interviews I have seen, Tim Tebow tries his best to deflate his own aura of prestige, acknowledging his team's efforts. He doesn't present himself with arrogance; he presents himself with humility (that doesn't seem false). But to pray over the outcome of a football game in the first place is tacit arrogance.

Pray for your continued health, or for the health of an ailing loved one. Pray that you'll reach whatever afterlife you believe in. These prayers, if granted, probably don't come at the expense of anyone else, and a higher power could answer those prayers and still be objectively considered benevolent.

Do not pray for things in a zero-sum equation. Don't pray that you'll get that job you're interviewing for. If you get the job, that means everyone else who interviewed for it didn't.

But at least if you're praying for the job, you're probably praying for something you really need. Praying to win an athletic competition? That's selfish both in "ecology" and in scale. And I do not like it.

Whether Tebow takes the credit himself, gives thanks to his teammates, or gives thanks to his God, the fact is, he sits there and openly prays for God to pick him over others. I don't believe a truly benevolent God would do that, not even to favor someone who prays a lot over someone who doesn't. I believe a worthy God would be above that kind of favoritism and ego stroking.

Even if the person praying is "just praying," not explicitly asking to be given anything, I find the timing of it to be disingenuous and suspect. Why pick that moment to tell God you think he's so great if not to implicitly seek a little quid pro quo?

No, Tebow is not the only person in professional sports who does this. But one way or another, he's become a poster child for it. And for me, that makes him the poster child of the thing I think I hate most about professional sports.

So I stand by my comment that Tim Tebow is an arrogant person. But yes, in a passive, relatively benign way that seems to be widely accepted in our society. A way that I personally reject.

That's more than you probably wanted to know about my thoughts on the matter. But hey, it's one day where you don't have to read "yet another movie review."

The Perspective of a Football Non-Fan

2012-01-08T18:12:00.005-07:00

I'm not a football fan. Not even a little. Ordinarily, I don't begrudge the enthusiasm of those who are. But with Tebow-mania as a factor, I have to confess that a growing part of me was starting to root against the Denver Broncos. I just wanted the whole thing to be over and done with.

Then, this afternoon, I suddenly found myself actually rooting for the Denver Broncos. No, I didn't get caught up in any wave of fandom. I didn't even watch the game. Actually, I went out to run errands around town during the game. And that's when it hit me:

The roads were almost empty. The stores were virtual ghost towns. Everyone was at home, watching the game on television. So I got around and did everything I needed to do with a minimum of hassle.

What if the Broncos could keep it rolling another week? I'd get another opportunity to go out next weekend and do things unimpeded! How cool would that be?

And sure enough, Tebow apparently Tebowed hard enough, and the Broncos pulled out a win. I still don't like the guy, and the arrogance of believing in a God that would see fit to intercede in something as mundane as a professional sports game as opposed to some other, more worthy cause. And that He would do it on your behalf because you're somehow more deserving than the other team.

But it looks like I do get another easy shopping trip. I'd better start planning what I need to do.

My Top 100 Movies -- 100-96

2012-01-07T15:05:00.005-07:00

For a long, long time now, I've been talking about how I was pulling my top 100 movie list back together. I had always intended to do that, and then talk about my choices here on the blog. But there was always "just one more movie" I wanted to watch again, just to be sure I'd placed it just right in the order.

I've now realized that I'll really never be done with this project. Well, obviously... even if I watched every one of the "check it out again" movies on my list, the top 100 list would still be open to changing any time I saw something new that was worthy.

So, I've decided to stop waiting, and go ahead and roll out the list. I figure I'll do five a day -- not consecutively, I suspect, but occupying 20 days' worth of blog posts over the next couple months. It'll be a snapshot of what my 100 favorite movies are now, and we'll leave it at that.

Of course, if you're linked with me on Flickchart, you could jump right to the "last page" and see my whole list. But here on the blog, I intend to say a few words about my choices. Comments welcome, of course.

Enough fanfare. Let's get on with it!

100. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This is the first of the Harry Potter movies to truly venture into darker territory. It also was the first not to be directed by Chris Columbus, and Alfonso Cuarón definitely brought a more adult, sinister slant to the proceedings. In the original books, I'd say that Harry Potter didn't quite make the turn to "less kiddie books" until book 4, but movie 3 marks that turning point. The three central children all step up their acting game, and new cast members Gary Oldman and David Thewlis add great work to the mix as well. It's also John Williams' last work as composer on the series. The time-turner sequence at the end is just great fun, and the climax when Harry conjures his performance is dramatic and moving. Great film.

99. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. It was not my plan to have two Harry Potter films end up back to back here at the bottom of my list, but that's how it worked out. Rather than go on again about the movie, I'll point you to my original review.

98. Chicken Run. Aardman Animations is awesome. And while this film wasn't quite as hilarious as the Wallace and Gromit shorts I saw first, I still loved it. I laughed at the jokes, I gawked at the painstaking animation in the elaborate finale. The voice talent, including Miranda Richardson, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, and yes, Mel Gibson, all work to make the characters come to life, and the talented animators complete the wonderful performances. A great movie.

97. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Though I loved The Hobbit when I read it as a child, I never had much of a connection to the trilogy that followed it. I'd tried to read it several times over the years, getting a few chapters farther each time, but ultimately abandoning it for boredom. In short, I wasn't waiting on pins and needles for this film. But the adaptation for this film was excellent, cutting off so much of the unneeded chaff. Peter Jackson spearheaded the most amazing designers ever assembled and created a fully fleshed out and credible world, and the cast is simply perfect. Composer Howard Shore does the best work of his career. Really, the only things that undermine this film in any way is the knowledge of where the story goes afterward -- Gandalf's death would mean more here if it were indeed final, for example. Still, a wonderful film.

96. Shakespeare in Love. It's become fashionable to complain that this film was not the most deserving of its year, to say that Saving Private Ryan should have won Best Picture. (And yes, it should have.) But say that in praise of the other film, not in dismissal of this one. Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes are a compelling romantic couple, and the supporting cast of Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, and Ben Affleck are all wonderful too. A touchingly sweet and clever story.

That's it until next time...

Running Out of Timeline

2012-01-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

The other night, I got to try out a very simple little card game: Timeline. And I found it enjoyable... but with the caveat that it has an inherently limited shelf life.

Timeline is a deck of double-sided cards depicting inventions and discoveries throughout history. Everything from fire to black powder to the printing press to barbed wire fences to compact discs -- and everything in between -- is in there, in a deck of a couple hundred cards.

Each player is dealt a hand of five cards, which sit face-up on the table. In the center of the table is the timeline. Your turn is simple: choose one of your cards, and insert it into what you believe to be the correct position in the ever-growing timeline. Once you've made your choice, you flip the card over to reveal the actual correct date on the back. If you're right, the card remains in place, expanding the timeline and making things trickier for the player after you. If you're wrong, you have to discard your card and draw another to replace it. The first player to go out wins.

Some items are obscure. Others come one right on top of another, making precise placement tricky. But it's definitely interesting to play. Educational, obviously, but also fun enough.

But I think you can see the inherent problem here with liking the game too much. It's only a matter of time (ha!) before you memorize every card in the deck and know exactly where it should be placed. And then you don't have a game anymore. Unless, of course, you buy one or more of the multiple expansions available for the game. You could shuffle them all together for a massive draw deck and a much extended life of the game. (Though this won't be easy. They saved on costs by making the cards tiny, meaning they're also not easy to shuffle.) In any case, this is still one game you can't play too often, no matter how much you like it, because you're "wearing out" the game with each play.

I suppose this same problem exists for any game with a limited deck of "clue cards," a Taboo, Time's Up, Telestrations, or other game. (Hell, some of these games don't even start with the letter "T.") But the candle feels like it'll burn faster here. By the conclusion of two games, we'd seen at least half of the available cards we had. And while I'm not claiming all the players will have a perfect memory of what we saw, we're not amnesiacs either.

So, on the plus side -- it's simple to explain, and very quick to play. Perfect for those windows when your game group is waiting for more people to arrive. And perhaps if you use it only as a filler game like that, it will last a while.

I think you'll have to make your own call on this.

Down With the Sickness

2012-01-04T23:15:00.001-07:00

I am apparently starting off my new year with a full-blown, head in a fog cold. Water eyes, runny nose, sneezing, aching, even a bit of a cough. Basically, almost every symptom they mention in a Nyquil ad. It sucks, but it's a lot better than the "holiday tradition" my family had for about five Christmases running a while back -- at least half of us would catch some stomach flu from somewhere and be vomiting and wiped out on the couch through the big day. Blech.

Anyway, I say this not in a bid for sympathy (though if you want to offer it, thanks) but to explain that after a day at the computer at work, I just don't have anything left in me for the blog tonight. But I plan to kick it soon, and will be back here as soon as I do.

Viva la Resistance!

2012-01-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

One of the games I played the most in the last year was The Resistance, a simple little 15 minute card game intended for a large group. Up to 10 players can play, and it's really a "the more, the merrier" kind of thing.

Each player secretly draws a card identifying himself as either a saboteur, or a member of The Resistance. Players close their eyes for a moment so the saboteurs can learn each others' identities. The players then have 5 rounds to work as a group to identify the saboteurs.

Players take turns being "team leader," identifying a sub-group of players (of changing numbers each round) to go out on a mission. All players then vote openly whether they approve of the selected team -- whether they believe the mission will be successful. If the mission is approved by the majority, each player on that team secretly selects whether to support the mission or sabotage it. True Resistance players will, of course, always choose to support the mission, while saboteurs may elect to sabotage it. The secretly selected cards are shuffled and revealed, and any number of sabotage cards ruins the mission. The Resistance wins if they succeed in 3 out of 5 missions. The saboteurs win if 3 out of 5 missions fail.

The game is quite clever, and has some welcome extra wrinkles that similar "group trust" games (such as Werewolf) don't have. But unfortunately, the game doesn't really seem quite fair, either. In short, it seems virtually impossible for the Resistance players to actually win, and far too easy for the saboteurs to triumph. I have yet to see a game that wasn't won by the saboteurs.

The game does come with an expansion, which my group initially chose to ignore for the sake of simplicity. But reading through some of the special cards in the expansion, we speculated that they might go a long way toward balancing the equation -- we simply haven't had a chance to try the expansion out yet.

So, bottom line for now: for a cheap little card game, this may be a good buy if you can reliably field a group of at least six players. But you might end up needing to come up with some sort of house rule to make it more fair (and therefore, in the long term, more fun). Perhaps 4 missions out of 7 for victory, to give the Resistance more time to gather intel?

If I get to try out that expansion, I'll be sure to report back.

2011 in Review -- Games

2012-01-02T20:59:00.004-07:00

I had a lot of fun in 2011. But apparently, not much of it was over a game board. After playing over 300 games in both 2009 and 2010, my total this year plummeted to only half that: I played only 147 board games last year.

It's easily explained. My weekly game night with friends has morphed this year to a once every two or three weeks game night instead; we've picked back up with an older routine of bar trivia night. It's fun either way, but it does mean that I haven't been able to do much more than sample some of the great new games released this year.

Here's how the total broke down:

1 7 Wonders
2 Agricola
1 Alea Iacta Est
1 Amun-Re
11 Apples to Apples
1 Asteroyds
1 Carcassonne: The City
1 Cartagena
1 A Castle for All Seasons
1 The Castles of Burgundy
2 Coloretto
1 The Downfall of Pompeji
1 Detroit/Cleveland Grand Prix
2 Dice Town
1 Dominion
1 Eminent Domain
1 Fluxx
1 Food Fight
5 For Sale
1 Founding Fathers
1 Grass
6 Guillotine
1 Hansa Teutonica
1 Le Havre
2 Luna
1 Metro
1 Midgard
1 Mission Red Planet
2 Mr. Jack Pocket
1 No Merci
3 Notre Dame
1 Palazzo
3 Pandemic
2 Pillars of the Earth
1 Pokemon TCG
8 Poker
4 Puerto Rico
1 Reef Encounter
8 The Resistance
3 Ricochet Robot
1 Robo Rally
1 Saboteur
1 Scrabble Upwords
4 Set
1 Settlers of Catan
2 Skip-Bo
2 Sleuth
3 Sneaks and Snitches
1 Sobek
1 Sorry Revenge Card Game
1 Stone Age
4 Telestrations
3 The Speicherstadt
1 Thurn and Taxis - Power and Glory
3 Ticket to Ride
2 Ticket to Ride Europe
1 Ticket to Ride - Marklin
3 Ticket to Ride - Switzerland
2 Time's Up
3 Time's Up Title Recall
2 Timeline
2 Tobago
2 Too Many Cooks
2 Tower of Babel
1 TransAmerica
1 Vasco de Gama
1 Witch's Brew
4 Wits and Wagers
1 World Without End
1 Yspahan
2 Zombie Fluxx

This year's Most Played? Apples to Apples. It's not my favorite, not even among group party games, but it does always provide laughs. It's also quick to play, so perhaps it is a worthy #1 game in terms of fun-per-minute.

I love Agricola way more than its mere 2 plays would indicate. But let's face it, it's a real brain burner for some people. In my group, if you play it, that's probably the only thing you're playing that night.

What a good year Stefan Feld had as a designer. I've tried both Luna and The Castles of Burgundy, and I'd love to play both again as soon as possible.

Poor Hansa Teutonica. I got it last year for Christmas. And so did another of my friends. Yet with two copies in the group, it was only played once. And it wasn't bad, either. It just got chased off the hill by new games arriving.

Perhaps 2012 will see a few more games? Less would be just sad.

2011 in Review -- Movies

2012-01-01T12:09:00.003-07:00

In 2011, I saw many more movies than I imagine the average person does in a year. Still, it was a downward trending year for me: 126 movies this year, compared to 162 in 2010. I got out to the theater just about as much, though -- 25 of those movies were on the big screen.

There are a handful of 2011 movies still on my "to see" list, and several of those are among the "award bait." But for the moment, here are my picks for the 10 best of the year. I've included links to the original reviews I wrote on them, though my letter grades might not line up in perfect order as I've listed the films here. (My mid-year discovery of Flickchart, combined with some time to further reflect on what I saw, made me retool my grading just a bit.)

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
2. Win Win
3. The Muppets
4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
5. A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
6. Horrible Bosses
6. Paul
7. Rango
8. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
10. The Green Hornet

As you can see, it's not the strongest list overall. I'd call the top 5 solid contenders, but the other 5 are just charitably occupying spots that really should become unavailable as soon as I see more movies.

I mean, come on, Green Hornet in the top 10? (Even if it is poised to get knocked off as soon as I see something else decent.) Note also that there's really nothing in the way of a serious drama on the list. (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, maybe?) Lots of comedies, a couple whiz-bang action movies... so I'm still waiting for the moving tearjerker that should wind up somewhere in my picks.

Any recommendations for helping to shape up this list?

Happy New Year, Everyone!

2011-12-31T13:13:00.003-07:00

I've missed a few days blogging here and there over the past week. If you're a regular reader, don't fear a demise of the blog. Just understand there's a... distraction right now. I received the newest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, for Christmas. And it has a way of devouring a person whole. My formal review of the game will be coming at a later date, but for now, I have dragons to slay. In any case, during the past week: movies watched? Zero. Books read? Not even a chapter. And sorry, I just don't have the seemingly inexhaustible stream of Facebook awesomeness on tap that George Takei serves up.

So I'll just leave with a modestly deep thought. 2011 comes to a close here with a number of people in my life actually having a rather choppy ride in the last couple weeks -- to put it mildly. "Out with the old, in with the new" is a popular expression on New Year's Eve, and I'm feeling that sentiment a bit more keenly than usual this year. Here's hoping for good things for all my loved ones, friends and family, in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Get Lost, Lost

2011-12-29T21:12:00.004-07:00

I was recently asked whatever happened to my series of "re-reviews" of the TV series Lost, which I last left half a year ago, barely into the second season. I've always intended to get back to the (not-so-)little project, but haven't found the time.

But I did want to veer back toward Lost for a moment to mention the video game, which I only recently picked up cheap. Titled "Lost: Via Domus," the game follows the story of a new crash survivor (you) with amnesia about his past -- a convenience that enables the player to experience flashbacks about the character's past, exactly in the style of the early episodes of the series.

I wasn't expecting the game to reveal any sort of valuable piece of the Lost narrative. Now that the show is over, we know more than ever that everything was centered on the central characters; no auxiliary narrative like this could ever be that meaningful to the whole. But I was expecting to be at least a little entertained.

Sadly, I can't even really report that. The game is stupidly simple, boring, and straight-forward. It's built in the model of an "immersive world" story-telling game, but is built so on the rails that there's really nothing to ever figure out, and no real opportunities to steer off a single, straight-arrow narrative. Perhaps the game developers assumed that a vast non-gamer audience would be brought to their title by its Lost subject matter? In any case, their degree of difficulty and complexity falls far short of what is even average for the genre.

Add to that some really spotty voice acting. A few of the actors from the show do contribute the voices for their own characters, but the vast majority of the people you interact with most are played by sound-alikes -- though to call them sound-alikes is being quite generous. Kate is close-but-just-off, Jack is only sort-of-in-the-ballpark, I don't know who Locke is supposed to sound like, and Charlie neither looks nor sounds right -- he's like some new character in a green striped shirt.

Still, I was working my way quickly through the game... until Christmas came along. I received several more promising and exciting games as gifts, and the shoddy Lost game got kicked straight to the curb. Will I ever get around to finishing it? Maybe. It certainly wouldn't take much more effort. But still, is it even worth that? Probably not.

In short, even the Lost fans should stay away from this poor effort.

More Christmas Tunes

2011-12-28T22:57:00.004-07:00

Scrooged was not the only limited release soundtrack I received for Christmas. Not even the only Christmas-themed movie soundtrack, actually. I also received La La Land Records' new 2-disc soundtrack for Gremlins.

Jerry Goldsmith has always been one of my favorite composers. Perhaps my favorite, actually, because he never really got the award love he deserved, winning his only Oscar for The Omen, despite over a dozen nominations and a career that spanned decades and a heap of great movies.

Gremlins is an interesting fusion in his catalog. Indeed, the movie itself is an odd fusion, a surprisingly dark and violent movie masquerading as family Christmas fare. The music is definitely evocative of some of the scores Goldsmith wrote for other, more conventionally tense or horrific movies -- Alien and Outland in particular. But it also comes in the middle of the 190s, in a period where many composers had decided to try incorporating what those crazy new synthesizers could do.

Consequently, Gremlins is a soundtrack with one foot firmly in orchestral and the other dipping perhaps a bit too far in the synthesized. I say a bit too far only because of the inherent limitations of the technology at the time; it all sounds a bit goofy. (Much like the soundtrack for the original The Terminator -- released the same year as Gremlins -- sounds when compared to the also-synthesizer Terminator 2 released early in the 1990s.)

Still, the score itself is solid. Much of what I praised in Danny Elfman's Scrooged work is true here for Jerry Golsdmith. There are rousing action pieces for Stripe and the other Gremlins, soft and emotional pieces for Gizmo, and a sprinkling of Christmas standards over the whole. It's kind of interesting to compare and contrast the two scores, to see how two different composers handled movies that in some ways incorporated many of the same ingredients.

People who don't love Jerry Goldsmith as much as I do might not be quite so gung ho about the Gremlins release. And even I have to question the release of a 2-disc set, whose second disc recreates the sad original soundtrack released decades ago and featuring mainly pop tunes from the film. In short -- this one won't be for everybody, even among the film score nuts. But if you like Goldsmith, it's one you shouldn't skip.

Christmas Elfman

2011-12-27T22:17:00.004-07:00

I've blogged before about how I often watch the movie Scrooged in the run-up to Christmas. This year, my taste of Scrooged came from a different angle, as I received a new limited edition soundtrack of the film as a Christmas gift.

Scrooged was scored by Danny Elfman, and could be argued as the point where he finally broke out of just being "Tim Burton's composer" (though, of course, the two still do work together extensively) and became a respected film composer in his own right. And deservedly so, because Scrooged is quite the accomplishment in his career.

Though Scrooged is without question a comedy film, it has more than a fair dose of dramatic moments. (None more notable than the 10-minute impassioned monologue Bill Murray delivers at the conclusion.) Elfman's score stands out for being just as flexible as the film itself.

It has all-out action cues, such as the opening sequence in which "psychos seize Santa's Workshop" in the fictitious movie "The Night the Reindeer Died." It has playfully comedic cues, particularly those for Bobcat Goldthwait's much put-upon character. And it has poignant and somber cues for moments like the aforementioned monologue, and the romance between Bill Murray and Karen Allen. All laced with some fun musical phrases peppered in from a handful of famous Christmas carols.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say this is Danny Elfman's best score, but it's certainly a good one. I've enjoyed listening to this new, complete soundtrack. If you're a film music enthusiast, it's one to add to your collection.

Girl Movie

2011-12-26T18:31:00.002-07:00

On Christmas Eve, I went to see the new U.S. version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I had not seen the original Swedish film nor read the original book. One or both of those had long been on my to-do list, but just never bubbled to the top. So it happened that because of my interest in seeing director David Fincher's newest effort, this is the "Tattoo" experience that got there first.

This is a long movie, clocking in at two hours and forty minutes -- and feeling every minute of that length. That's not to say it's a boring movie, but the pacing of the story isn't sufficiently taut to fly by.

The opening unspools slowly, taking the audience through a longer-than-usual-for-a-mainstream-movie series of character introduction beats for the two main characters, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and troubled hacker Lisbeth Salander. You get a crystal clear picture of who both people are, and yet the two don't truly intersect with one another for what feels like too long a chunk of the movie.

Once they do, the film careens down an intriguing and suspenseful path as the two investigate a decades-old murder at the behest of a wealthy benefactor. The search is a satisfying mix of high and low tech, both characters are given strong material, and the revelations are exciting. The movie is firing on all cylinders at this point.

But then the mystery wraps up. And the movie soldiers on through what feels like two epilogues. See, the journalist's back story, as set up in the opening of the film, really demands a payoff for the tale to be complete. And yet, none of it feels as compelling as the mystery that's just come to a close. It's hard to argue with it being part of the film; it's just not as entertaining. (And does it really have to take another 30 minutes?)

Still, overall, the film does deliver what I was looking for. Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara are both fantastic as the main characters. Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, and Joely Richardson are highlights in the supporting cast. The movie does indeed make you sit up on the edge of your seat at times, and recoil to the back of it in other uncomfortable moments. David Fincher's careful style plays in every second, and another fantastic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross heightens it all.

I'd say it all works out to around a B. Some judicious editing in the opening and closing 30 minutes might have yielded a better film in my eyes, but what's there is still pretty good.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

2011-12-25T15:28:00.001-07:00

A Marginal Movie

2011-12-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

I just watched a new movie that was buzzed about a fair bit during its limited theatrical run earlier this year. Margin Call is a new entry in the growing list of movies about the banking collapse a few years back. Unlike Too Big to Fail (dramatized non-fiction) or Inside Job (a documentary), Margin Call goes the route of fiction. It's still very clearly grounded in reality, but unfolds at a fictitious company and concerns fictitious characters.

But the movie is so steeped in reality, in fact, that it's actually too thin on exposition. That's not a criticism I thought I'd ever level at a movie, but the truth is, the story is a bit hard to follow at times. At least one of those other two movies I mentioned earlier feels like prerequisite viewing for this film. It's not really enough to know "the banks almost collapsed" to really understand what's going on in this movie; you have to actually know some background details about the "why" of it. There's a scene or two in Margin Call that rapidly pays lip service to this information, but they're brisk and dense. The script doesn't want to shirk reality by having characters too carefully explain information to each other that they would already know, just for the benefit of the audience.

Another troubling aspect of the narrative is that that its hard to be sympathetic to any of the characters. There are a few Cassandra-type soothsayers who predicted the problem, but essentially we're watching people who caused the problem. Or certainly helped accelerate it, in any case. There's really not a single person to root for here, nor is anyone built up as an anti-hero you could enjoy in another sense.

But the movie does have a lot going for it, in the form of a tremendous cast. The list of great actors in here seems impossibly long, and each is better than the one before. Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Mary McDonnell, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons. Even actors I wouldn't normally associate with greatness -- Penn Badgley and Demi Moore -- are lifted to a higher standard by being in such elite company. And the truly amazing thing about the cast as a whole is that there's very little scenery chewing, shouting, histrionics. The vocal landscape of the film is tight and soft -- almost British in sensibility -- but the emotions and stakes still come through crystal clear. Truly excellent work all around.

If you're a fan of the craft of acting, you owe it to yourself to check this film out. If performances aren't what make a movie for you, well, then I'd advise more caution. The movie overall is good but not great. I'd rate it a B-.

Use Da Force, Yo!

2011-12-22T22:14:00.002-07:00

I could set this video up with something pithy, but really, what could I possibly add? It's a rap battle between Adolf Hitler and Darth Vader:

Surprisingly Good

2011-12-21T22:39:00.001-07:00

So, this post is in no way timely, but my iPod spat out a song on random shuffle today and I realized that while I've had the album for years now, I've never mentioned Has Been on my blog.

Has Been is an album by William Shatner. And if you're at all familiar with his ridiculous vocal stylings on 70s hits like Rocket Man, you're sure to be cringing at the thought that I own a William Shatner for any reason other than kitsch. But hear me out. Hear it out. Has Been is actually a collaboration with Ben Folds. Working with some of Shatner's prose poetry, Folds composed the musical accompaniment. And Folds is a skillful enough songwriter to be able to work with the bizarre, pause-laiden delivery he knew Shatner would bring to the recording process. (Talking, not singing, of course.)

The result is a totally enjoyable album, with almost every track a winner. Toss in a cover of a lesser known song ("Common People"), and some guest appearances from other artists (including Henry Rollins and Brad Paisley), and the result is a shockingly good effort. Sometimes, Shatner's performance style is used as a joke he's in on. Sometimes it's serious... and works. It all works. No other two people could have produced an album like this. While I don't really think any of the tracks are as thought-provoking as Shatner probably hoped they'd be, they are quite fun to listen to.

I have no idea if the album is even available anymore, though in the digital age there really doesn't have to be such a thing as out of print. So if you're a fan of Ben Folds, I definitely recommend picking up Has Been. Unbelievably, it's probably one of my favorite albums. In fact, if it weren't for the dreary and awkward poem "What Have You Done," (a track that's all Shatner and no music), I'd probably rate it an A. It's an A- at least, for sure. Check it out.

Penguin Party

2011-12-20T22:06:00.000-07:00

My sister got back from a trip to Disney World last month, and brought back a fun birthday present for me. There's a series of Disney-themed Muppet figures, different characters styled up with Mickey ears. Two series, actually, and this newer second series gets into some fun secondary characters like the band members of the Electric Mayhem.

Anyway, she brought me back two figures from the series. But there was a catch. Each 12-figure series is sold at random. You don't know which figure you're going to get until you open it. And as luck would have it, I got the same figure twice:

The Muppet penguins do make appearances here and there, but unfortunately were the only unnamed characters in the series of 12. Not the one you'd hope to get in duplicate, but there you have it. Poetic justice for guy that has made a living selling randomized booster packs of trading cards to people, I suppose.

Well, my sister felt bad about my luck, and so she got online and ordered me one more figure. I didn't know she'd done it until I saw her recently, and she hopefully presented me with another Muppet figure to open. We joked about the possibility of it being another penguin.

The joke's on me. Her. Us. It was a third penguin. The odds of a figure trifecta, assuming equal distribution of these figures, is 1 in 144. Maybe not odds either one of us would have chosen to beat, but I have to say, the gift is still kind of fun. Before, I had kept one penguin at home and one on my desk at work. But now, I've brought the one from work home, in order to form a bowling-pin-like triangle of penguins on my shelf. They're pretty fun to look at.

And they made a good story. (Well, I think so, anyway.)

A Christmas Carol, Featuring Tiny Twins

2011-12-19T20:50:00.004-07:00

For years now, I've lived in an apartment and condo that doesn't really have a lot of floor space to spare. So I never went out and got a full-sized Christmas tree; there was nowhere to put it.

My mom helped me a while back with a possible solution -- she gave me a cute, tiny little fake tree, barely more than a foot tall, that could fit on a shelf or fireplace mantle. And for a few years, I set it up for the holiday.

A couple years ago, I fell out of the habit. It was time to put up the tree, and I decided that the tiny little tree that seemed cute at first in fact seemed a little sad to me now. It was like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special in reverse. To avoid looking forlornly at the tiny tree, the new "tradition" became not putting up anything at all.

This year, I had some encouragement from my boyfriend to turn the tradition around once again. And it came with the contribution of a second tiny tree, a little larger than the first. Still small enough for me to have space for it, but now Christmas x 2.

I set it up last night, but had a bump in the road. The Christmas lights that had gone unused for a few years no longer worked. But I made a stop on the way home from work tonight, and now the problem is solved. And when I plugged in my twin trees? Well, I felt a nice, warm feeling. I hadn't felt particularly Grinchy before, but I feel decidedly less so now.

Thank you to my "Christmas benefactor."

A Killer Finale

2011-12-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Dexter's sixth season wrapped up tonight, and my feelings about it are decidedly mixed. I'm certain that it was the worst season of the series... but that's largely because I felt the bar had been set so high in the past. Even rocky Dexter was better than most of the rest of television.

The problem in my mind was that the show tried to be too cute with plot twists this season. In the past, Dexter has traditionally rocketed along at a whirlwind pace. Any "stunning revelations" in the plot were set up at best an episode or two ahead of time. This wasn't poor planning; on the contrary, the show had so much story to convey that it didn't need to labor on plot twists for any length of time to satisfy.

This season, on the other hand, had a couple of big reveals planned. And it tipped its hand way too early on them. I always watch Dexter with the same group of friends every week. By the end of the second episode of the season, someone in the group had figured out the season's major twist -- that Professor Gellar was in fact a figment of Travis' imagination (just as Harry is to Dexter). Had that been a secret paid off quickly, that could have been a fun springboard for something else. Instead, the writers tried to play games with this fact until the end of episode ten, all the while using increasingly strained ways to play with the truth about Gellar.

And then the writers did it all over again with the big reveal at the end of tonight's season finale. Ever since Deb started going to a therapist five or so episodes back, the talk of how important Dexter was to her was layered on just a little too thick. The references to secrets were not carefully veiled enough. It was obvious they were building toward Deb finally learning about Dexter's true nature.

This, I was more willing to forgive, because it's a moment basically six years in the making, and clearly something so monumental that of course they'd be saving it for the season finale. But my forgiveness was tested by the plot twist I didn't see coming, that they decided to make Deb confess true love for her non-biological brother. Creepy, weird stuff, I have to say. I just don't see how those extra stakes were really needed to punctuate the reveal. It would have been big enough already.

But despite the sometimes sloppy writing of the plot, I still enjoyed the season of Dexter overall because the writing of the characters was still as spot on as ever. The witty banter of Dexter's voice-overs. Deb's filthy (and funny) mouth. LaGuerta's icy calculation. And so on. The story may have slipped in places, but the characters were as enjoyable as ever.

So now, when next season rolls around, we'll be heading into truly new territory for the show. That's reason to hope they'll pull out of their story slump and get back to form. Either way, I'll still happily show up next fall for more of the great characterization and fine acting.

Fear Itself

2011-12-17T15:52:00.003-07:00

I'm not in a particularly creative mood today, so I'm going to link to this fun article on the "Nine Greatest Nerd Fears Today."

I will editorialize with these two comments:

1) These feel more like "geek" fears to me than "nerd" fears. I think if it's in pop culture, it is by definition not nerdy. Nerd fears would be more akin to finding out that the new game you were excited about was coded in a programming language you don't like or something like that.

2) For my money, their list would be considerably closer to accurate if it were in the reverse order. I know my #1 is the one that starts off this list, anyway.

Going Crazy

2011-12-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (as it is officially titled, complete with commas and period) recently hit DVD. It also recently garnered co-star Ryan Gosling a Golden Glob nomination. I missed it in theaters earlier this year, but recently found the time to catch up and check it out.

Steve Carell plays a schlub of a guy whose wife (Julianne Moore) has just asked him for a divorce. As he wallows in self-pity day after day in a local bar, he meets an oh-so-smooth lady killer played by Ryan Gosling, who decides to rehabilitate his image and self esteem. Things are going great, until Gosling's character meets Emma Stone as an intriguing woman who might get him to change his new-girl-every-night ways.

I can see how Ryan Gosling got attention for this movie. In every other film I've ever seen him in, he's deathly serious. Christian Bale serious. And while his character here is still fairly dramatic in nature, this is really the first time I can think of where he really gets to be funny. Neither he nor Carell take on the predominately straight role in the comedy; each takes turns throughout the film being the other's comic foil. The give and take between them is a solid core of the movie.

The rest of the cast is strong too. Julianne Moore's character is inherently unlikeable, given the film's premise, but she's still very fun to watch. Emma Stone plays a young woman far less secure than she usually plays, and is very appealing. Marisa Tomei is great in a small supporting role, and the cast is peppered with other fun recognizable faces, including the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon.

But what doesn't work quite as well for me is the sudden shift in tone two-thirds of the way through the movie. I'm not one to look down on dramatic elements mixed into a comedy (or vice versa). But there is a way to blend that concoction skillfully. This movie is essentially front-loaded. It's not a laugh-a-minute riot, but is essentially all out funny for over an hour. And then, crossing into the third act, the movie essentially goes rather serious. Not "someone gets a terminal disease" serious, but decidedly unfunny, compared to the bulk of the movie. I respect the desire to do something with more substance, but the transition between what feels like two different films left me with whiplash.

Overall, I'd give the movie a B-. It's probably worth your while now that you can watch it at home, cheaply and comfortably. But it also doesn't really feel like a career highlight for anyone involved -- despite everyone giving it their best.

Confusion Says...

2011-12-15T23:43:00.000-07:00

Such as, for instance, the writing of this fortune cookie?

Holiday Favorites

2011-12-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

Watching last night's episode of Glee sparked a short but impassioned conversation between me and my friends. It was Glee's performance of "My Favorite Things" that touched it off.

Specifically, we all want to know: how the hell did this get to be a Christmas song?

I mean, don't get me wrong. I've seen this song featured on several other Christmas albums. Glee isn't blazing a weird trail here; they're drawing from a well plenty of others have already used. But who went there in the first place, and what insanity spurred anyone else to follow?

The song came from the musical The Sound of Music. Where it has no Christmas-themed presentation whatsoever. In fact, while Maria sings it to the kids in the movie, she performs it in the monastery in the original stage production -- a decidedly non-festive setting. There's no mention of the holidays anywhere in the lyrics. So unless "brown paper packages tied up with string" makes everyone think Christmas, I don't get it. (Me, I think "groceries.")

Am I missing something here?

Extraordinary Merry Christmas

2011-12-13T21:38:00.003-07:00

Well, that was a fairly disposable episode of Glee. I'm not sure that's all too surprising, given that the competition episode last week felt like the real halfway point of the season, and this week had an agenda to push some Christmas album sales.

But I do wish it hadn't been quite so transparent in that agenda. There was almost nothing in the way of plot this week; instead, we got nine(!) songs. (A Glee record?) What little plot there was seemed forced. Rachel was suddenly extra-selfish after several tame weeks, just to set up the Christmas moral. Sue was just the opposite, suddenly extra-nice for similar reasons. It all seemed stretched to fit an array of Christmas songs picked out months ahead of time to allow time to produce an album... which it probably was.

The only real highlight was Artie's Christmas special itself -- though even that wore out its welcome after two solid acts of black-and-white, deliberately over-acted weirdness. (Well, the real highlight was Mercedes' deadpan delivery of "I think these are the end times.") And Glee was asking for even more suspension of disbelief than usual to imagine that could all be produced on anything close to Artie's supposed $800 budget.

So, at the risk of being branded a Scrooge, I'm going to dismiss this episode as a D. There simply wasn't much to see here. Sorry, Chewbacca.

Love, Baby! That's Where It's At!

2011-12-12T21:34:00.001-07:00

Last night, I got to see The B-52s in concert here in Denver. I know they're a somewhat divisive band for some people -- and that seems mainly to do with whether you like the strange vocal stylings of Fred Schneider. I love the band and was particularly excited to see them, since their new(ish) album -- Funplex -- has some of my favorite songs they've produced, and I assumed their set list would pull heavily from it.

Not only did they perform about half of Funplex in their 90 minute set (and the better half, at that), but they rocked through most of their greatest hits. For the first time in a long time, I knew every single song being played at a concert. From the catchy new "Pump" to the party favorite "Love Shack," and of course an encore of the newly re-popular "Rock Lobster," it was a fun and bouncy group of songs.

The band really rocked them too. Only one of the four core members plays instruments extensively, so they were backed by a somewhat younger trio on drums, keyboards, and bass. But those four "oldsters" brought just as much energy. They might be the most shamelessly geeky band I've ever seen, dancing in a wildly unhip surf rock style, having fun, and making no apologies. Fred Schneider can still go from laid back to deranged in half a bar of music. Vocalists Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson can still sing amazingly well; they can sing notes higher -- and stranger -- than anyone else in pop music. Guitarist Keith Strickland bounces around, interacting with the rest of the band, the crowd, anyone and everyone.

Really, the only dark spot on the night was the opening act, a band called Sauna. This very young group actually had a lot of musical talent, but were saddled with a horrible lead singer. She was just close enough to on-key that you could imagine them not having the "you're holding the band back" conversation, but enough off-key that they really should have that conversation. But I'd pretty much forgotten all about them by the time I was grooving to "Mesopotamia" and "Hot Corner."

If you're old enough now to have fond memories of The B-52s in the 70s or 80s, you should definitely go see them if they tour near you. For a couple hours, you'll feel that young again.

People -- Get Ready

2011-12-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

Another stab at a biopic? I probably shouldn't, but okay. How about The People vs. Larry Flynt?

It turned out that this was pretty strong for a biography movie. And that's because there was a spine to the narrative to connect the movie together. Ultimately, the theme of the movie is about free speech and the First Amendment. So rather than take random episodes from the life of Larry Flynt, the movie picked from episodes relevant to that theme.

Well, mostly. The first 20 minutes or so are a little bit rocky. A prologue showing Flynt as a young child selling moonshine has no real relevance to the narrative. And the early segments in which he meets the woman he would ultimately marry are a bit slow paced. Necessary, probably, as the fate of his wife in the final act puts him in a fighting mood that ultimately leads to his Supreme Court challenge. Still, it takes some time for the movie to find its way on to the proper path.

Fortunately, Woody Harrelson is a fine actor to guide the film through those rough patches and then carry it on once it picks up. His Flynt is a likeable rogue, entertaining one moment and infuriating the next. Edward Norton makes an unflashy appearance as Flynt's lawyer; he's a great actor, but doesn't really have any great scenes here. And then there's Courtney Love as Flynt's wife. It's hard to know what to make of her performance, because one imagines that in portraying such a shattered mess of a woman, she might be rather close to her actual personality. (Or at least, the one she seems to project; you could perhaps argue it's full time "acting," but I wouldn't try to.) In any case, it's a raw performance that serves the movie well.

All told, I'd say the movie pulls together at about a B-. Better than most without being exceptional, though a pleasant surprise for the genre.

Nausea

2011-12-10T13:28:00.002-07:00

The makers of the Vagisoft blanket are at it again with this new item:

What's more awesome? The fact that somebody thinks the world needed horrible pants to go with all those horrible holiday sweaters? Or the fact that they flat out call them "Nauseating Holiday Pants?"

A Horrible Comedy

2011-12-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

I missed it in theaters this summer, but recently caught up with the comedy Horrible Bosses on DVD. The movie was fairly well praised, even as some reviewers acknowledged it was hardly original. Indeed, its "we should murder our bosses" premise is basically Strangers on a Train fused with Nine to Five, with the sensibilities of The Hangover. In any case, it's a blend that totally works. And while some of that is certainly due to a script that's clever, funny, and tight, the lion's share of the credit must go to one of the best large casts assembled for a comedy in the last decade.

It starts with the three men who play the put-on employees with murderous aspirations. Jason Bateman proved the master of the "suffering Everyman" role in Arrested Development, and brings those skills to bear here. Jason Sudeikis is way funnier here than in any Saturday Night Live sketch I've ever seen him in. (And though that could seem like faint praise, I do mean to say he's very funny.) And while I've never watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I certainly liked Charlie Day here too. The trio is well grounded in believable normalcy, but engages in plenty of fun hijinks too.

But stealing the screen are their three bosses. Kevin Spacey plays his best villain since Seven, and is as hilariously unhinged as he was chillingly calculating in that masterful suspense film. Colin Farrell plays against type as a manic drug addict with no charm or skills. And Jennifer Aniston is brilliant, funnier than in any film she's made since the end of Friends. (Again, that could seem like faint praise, but I mean she is riotously funny.)

Now spice that mix with more great secondary roles. Jamie Foxx straddles the comedy/drama line with a thug both intimidating and ridiculous. Ioan Gruffudd makes a memorable appearance as a "wet work" man. Bob Newhart cameos with humor as dry as only he can make it. Wendell Pierce leverages his detective image from The Wire for laughs. And Donald Sutherland also kicks things off with a brief appearance.

The one weakness of the movie is that it perhaps takes a little too long to get to the meat of things, given that the audience knows exactly where the movie is ultimately heading. Still, it delivers the comedic goods, and rates an A- in my book.

Christmas Community

2011-12-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've never written about the show Community before. (Though it's one of the shows I most look forward to in the week now, it has been consistently awesome since the last half of the first season, and it totally sucks that it's about to get benched for an indeterminate period.) But I couldn't pass up comment on tonight's fantastic Christmas episode.

The thing is, it took one shot after another at a show I do regularly write about, Glee. And it did so spectacularly. Frankly, when next week's actual Christmas-themed Glee episode rolls around, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to take it seriously any more after having seen this.

The details were all hysterical, from the constant talk of "Regionals" to the casting of someone resembling Glee's ever-present pianist, to the a cappella music used for scene buttons. And it was wrapped all up in a brilliant Invasion of the Body Snatchers bow.

The writers of Community have delivered some of the biggest laughs of the TV season, including the over the top "parallel realities" episode to last week's anime-fueled foozball competition. It's a shame that so few people seem to be watching.

In any case, whenever Community does come back, I'll definitely be there.

Hold on to Sixteen

2011-12-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't have the time to re-cap last night's new Glee episode... well... last night. But here it goes now.

Competition episodes are a very mixed bag for Glee. Here, the writers wisely took a page from the past good ones, and had plenty of plot aside from the competition. Those plot developments then informed the song choices when they came around. Good work there.

But actually, if anything, the show had a little too much plot. All the stuff with Sam felt awkwardly shoehorned in. It's not that I'm not glad to have him back on the show. But it was weird to have him back chasing Mercedes when her new boyfriend wasn't even around in the episode. Weirder still to reveal that he was stripping for money, and to not have that be a major dramatic plot point that took an episode to deal with. Weirder still to have his parents on for a minute and a half, and agree to blindly send him off to school in another state with basically no questions asked. It was all too much.

But the other plots worked. Having already committed to going down the hideous road of the Quinn-Puck-Shelby plot over the first part of the season, I think they extricated themselves from it about as well as could be possibly expected. Quinn still probably isn't redeemable in my eyes, but at least she's not going to be a firestorm anymore. And Rachel was the perfect character to pull her off the dark path, because having her deliver the message that an adoptive parent, not a birth parent, is the true parent (when the parent in question is her birth mother) was spot on. In fact, props all around to the use of Rachel in this episode.

And her absence from the performance was so good for other characters. Tina got more to do in this episode than she had in the rest of the series combined. And she proved herself an even better girlfriend than Kurt's dad is a father. She was totally supportive of Mike. She stood up to Mike's father -- and got through. She didn't lash out at Mike when he laid into her from frustration. And she even made sure Mike didn't miss the application deadline. Wow. AND she got to share the lead on one of the songs. I hope Tina now doesn't fade back into the background again for the rest of the season.

The songs were mostly solid. It got off to a truly rocky start with that Toby Keith song. An awful song, and awfully hard to believe the kids would be singing it. Not a good use of Chord Overstreet's pop voice, either. But the competition songs were all great. The return of the Glee Project "Gerber baby" was strong, and the song selection from Evita to twist the knife of Kurt and Rachel was perfect. The "I Will Survive"/"Survivor" mash-up was one that really worked, and the performance was great (if a bit arm wavy). And the "Jackson Medley" performed by New Directions was one of the times you could reasonably believe the crowd reaction in the episode. Good vocal showcases for almost the entire cast, good matching the songs to those voices, and good song selection for plot resonance -- particularly Mike's dad being there for "Man in the Mirror."

There were a few other random false character notes, such as Blaine's objection to selling sex when just last season he was writhing around in a shower of bubbles with the Warblers. And as a complication in the Blaine/Kurt relationship, Sebastian is too big a tool to be believed. But minor quibbles. Overall, I give the episode an A-. Nicely done, Glee.

Poetic Tragedy

2011-12-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

I saw another good Facebook ad recently. Not Vagisoft blanket good, but still worth sharing. This time, I had the presence of mind to snap a picture:

Other than being dressed in a Jedi robe, that guy doesn't look a thing like Obi-Wan Kenobi -- Alec Guinness or Ewan McGregor. But then again, this is apparently the "REAL LIFE" Obi-Wan, so I guess this must be about the guy George Lucas based the character on, right?

I'm actually not against the fan-fiction aspect of this. An improvised Star Wars story, eh? That's pretty much what George Lucas was doing too, wasn't it? (Oh!!!)

But "Poetic Tragedy?" To me, that kind of sounds like it's going to be improvised in Shakespearean verse or something. Which would kick it to a comedic level that could be entertaining... but the oh-too-earnest fanboy picture suggests to me that's probably not the case.

I could have clicked the link for more info, of course, but I prefer imagining my own scenarios.

Collapse in Judgment

2011-12-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I went to see a new play called Collapse, being performed at the Curious Theater Company here in Denver. The play is making its "world premiere," though this is something of a technicality, as the play has been performed in at least one other city before (and has since undergone some rewrites).

In any case, it's very much a new play, concerning itself with new topics. Playwright Allison Moore has melded the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota with the recent economic recession, peppered it with characters whose lives are falling apart in a variety of ways, and presented a one-act play on the theme of "collapse."

The play is fundamentally dramatic, but sweetened with a healthy dose of humor. At the performance I saw, the jokes were landing very well with a laughing, receptive audience. The two secondary characters in this four-character tale were particularly effective at serving up laughs. The dramatic elements of the play felt a little rougher around the edges. The main characters are a married couple dealing with a variety of problems. The woman is a rather one-note, highly strung control freak on a fairly superficial journey to "learn to let go." The man is a survivor of the bridge collapse, suffering from PTSD. The character works on the page, I think, but works toward such an amped up, adrenaline fueled climax that I think it would take a rare actor to truly pull it off.

The cast of this production is pretty good as a unit. The strongest link is Michael Morgan, who plays the sex-addicted Ted. I mentioned that the comedic elements of the script work best, but Morgan elevates them even beyond that, delivering a performance that's both funny and layered.

The set is a neat blend of literal and metaphorical, with a bridge running over the living room of the main characters. The staging within that space, though, was quite distracting to me. No one in this play seemed capable of sitting on a chair or sofa in a normal fashion, and on occasion would even walk on them -- which should have driven the control freak character nuts.

My good friend was the stage manager of the production, which is how it came to my attention, and I once again was glad to enjoy her work. She'll often regale me with stories of rehearsal and backstage drama, no hint of which ever seems to show up on her stage. Pat on the back for you!

Collapse runs one more weekend, if you're here in the Denver area and want to check it out. I think I'd still like to see a few more script revisions in it overall, but it nevertheless is an entertaining play that carries a good message without getting overly pretentious. I'd grade it a B.

Mashed Blog Entry

2011-12-04T23:54:00.003-07:00

I didn't really leave myself time to write a proper blog post this evening, so I'm going to just fill with a link to:

Wax Audio.

I think I've said before that I'm generally not a big fan of mash-ups. I don't like it when the two songs don't get used equally -- when it sounds basically like one song with a repeated phrase from a second song annoyingly spliced in. And some of the mash-ups at the above site do fit into that category.

But some of the others you'll find there are pretty damn sweet. I'll leave it to you to explore and find the ones you like. Enjoy, and I'll try to be back with a review of some thing or other tomorrow.

Off Roading

2011-12-03T13:10:00.004-07:00

The word from the critics was that Cars 2 was finally the film that snapped Pixar's streak of superlative movies. I didn't find that hard to believe; the original Cars was definitely my least favorite of their films. But the criticisms did move the sequel to my "catch later on DVD" list.

The time has come. And indeed, Pixar has set a new low. Cars 2 isn't a terrible movie; there have certainly been barges full of worse animated movies. But it is markedly worse than any other Pixar film. It's not simply "not great," it's actually "not very good."

It looks dynamite, at least. Pixar one-ups themselves visually every time they make a movie, and this one is no exception. From the opening sequence (set on an ocean oil rig), to sequences in Japan, the Riviera, and more, the modelling of environments and effects in this movie is jaw-droppingly beautiful.

But it's a good thing it looks like a million bucks, because it plays like a lame direct-to-video sequel to the original movie. The plot is quite threadbare. A half-assed moral of "even an idiot can be smart" is sort of crammed in there, but the movie basically lacks the heartfelt message of other Pixar movies.

The annoying character of Mater takes center stage, and crowds everyone else out of the movie so thoroughly that you have to wonder why Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, and other voice actors from the original would even bother to return for this one. It's not at all like the Toy Story sequels, where all the old characters get their due as new characters are brought into the mix. This is a new movie built around Mater and new characters, and all the veterans are left with that used car smell.

There is a fun new cast, at least. Michael Caine is a suave and smooth James-Bond-as-a-car that's the most interesting new addition. Emily Mortimer takes on a vaguely Moneypenny-esque role. Eddie Izzard, Joe Mantegna, and John Turturro all ham it up as new characters too. But it's all in service of a plot that's long on action and short on emotion, and that's simply not what Pixar does best.

I give Cars 2 a C-. I doubt this means that another animation studio will now sail in and be "the new Pixar"; my suspicion is that Pixar itself, which is leaving behind sequels for a new original story with its next film, will reclaim its own crown. Still, it's a disappointing stumble from the champion of the art form.

Dirty Laundry

2011-12-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

You know those ads on the right edge of your Facebook stream? (Well, if you check Facebook on your mobile device more than a computer, maybe you don't.) Usually, they're totally forgettable and riddled with spelling errors. But occasionally, one sticks.

For about a week there, Facebook was advertising to me the Vagisoft Blanket. Don't worry, you can click the link; it sounds dirty, but it isn't.

If it just ended with the goofy name, I probably wouldn't have remembered it or mentioned it. But some of the copy in their ad (and on their site) is just too precious.

For example, they claim the blanket is softer than "a freshly laundered bunny." Really, do you "launder" bunnies or "wash" them? (Or perhaps you dry clean them?) If you were to launder a bunny, I would think the inside of the machine would look like a slasher movie afterward; softness doesn't really enter into it.

It's also softer than "the anus of a silkworm." I certainly wouldn't consider that a particularly soft place. I wouldn't want to touch it to check.

But bravo, Betabrand, whoever you are. You got my attention.

Never Again

2011-12-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I decided to re-watch a somewhat recent favorite movie, Finding Neverland. The basic description of the plot is "it's the story of how J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan." But that's overly simplistic, even flawed.

First of all, I've heard some criticisms that it's a fairly inaccurate tale. But I actually find this to the film's advantage. Rather than slavishly veer into biopic territory (and I'll come back to that in a moment), the film is only inspired true events. And it's a very appropriate choice, given the real theme of the film: inspiration.

The film has a lot to say about the creative process. Where do ideas come from? How do they develop? But the film doesn't only concern itself with creative inspiration. In the movie, Barrie begins a friendship with a widow and her four children, and the film is equally about how they inspire each other to live richer and more full lives.

It's this theme that allows this film, while still essentially a "true story," to sail clear of biopic territory. Most biopics fall down in my view from lack of a narrative arc. Such movies present a series of "episodes" from a person's life, without it all adding up to anything. Here, the message is crystal clear. There's nothing in the film that doesn't support it, and so a beginning, middle, and end of the story is clearly mapped out.

The acting in the movie is rock solid. Johnny Depp plays Barrie, in what may be his most restrained performance of the past decade. It's a fine demonstration that he doesn't need the wild affectations of Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter, or anyone else, to serve up a moving performance. Kate Winslet plays the widowed mother, and is excellent as always. Young Freddie Highmore makes his first film appearance, and firmly establishes himself on the very short list of child actors with actual talent; his performance in the film is perhaps the most moving of all. The cast also includes Julie Christie and Dustin Hoffman in supporting roles.

This concoction of perfect elements results in a movie I find particularly... well, given the theme, how appropriate is this? ... inspirational. Finding Neverland definitely has a spot in my top 100 list, and an A grade.

A Mocking Review

2011-11-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

I recently finished the book Mockingjay, and with it The Hunger Games trilogy. Though I did enjoy the book, it left me with an odd feeling about the series overall. I've read several criticisms of the first book, all saying the premise and plot lift heavily from other sources. And yet, now that I've read the whole trilogy, I definitely feel like that first book was the best of the three.

What to make of that? Is "someone else's idea" the best part of The Hunger Games? Or can author Suzanne Collins be credited for a putting a good new spin on things, even though she didn't conclude her story as well as it began? (How many countless authors have fallen victim to that?)

I compared book two, Catching Fire, to The Empire Strikes Back, in that it went out on a big "middle chapter" cliffhanger. In other ways, I could compare Mockingjay to Return of the Jedi. The book travels a predictable path, in pursuit of a predictable conclusion. The double-edged sword of setting up specific story expectations over a series is that you must then write what you've telegraphed.

Perhaps sensing this issue, Collins pulls up in the last 30 pages and has an entirely different and unexpected ending to her book. And this too is a double-edged sword. It pulls the story off the rails, but isn't really earned. It's not an illogical ending, just an out-of-the-blue one. And it's capped with one more lift from existing work; the book has an epilogue that felt very reminiscent of Harry Potter to me.

All that sounds like I'm pretty down on the book, but that's not really the case. The characterizations remain strong here as they've been all along. A fair amount of what makes the story predictable is that the characters are all so well drawn that you easily anticipate what they'll do next as the plot unfolds. Collins' writing style remains fast-paced and compelling, pulling you through the story swiftly.

All told, I'd rate the book a B. So, while the series certainly doesn't end as strongly as it began, the final volume is definitely at a high enough level that I can recommend the series overall.

We'll see how it all comes together on film, when the first movie adaptation opens next March.

I Kissed a Girl

2011-11-29T23:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a mixed reaction I had to tonight's new installment of Glee. There were several great things in it, but some bad things too.

On the great side, the storyline of Santana's coming out continued, and culminated in a scene the show really needed to have -- a rejection from a family member. We've seen the positive side of coming out through Kurt (though he has had to deal with bullying); an equally important story (and message) to present is someone coming out, being rejected by someone close, but still carrying on.

But... this story about Santana was in equal -- perhaps even in larger -- measure about Finn. And I'm pretty conflicted about that. The motivation seemed sincere, that he saw Santana going down a dark road, and wanted to turn her off of it at all costs. But it played out in a rather unsatisfying way. A string of people pour out their support to Santana in words and in song, including Blaine and Kurt, who I think really ought to know better than just about anyone on the show. But it takes Finn to finally get through? Finn, all-American jock? I worry this robbed Santana's character of some strength in her great moment of triumph.

The touching relationship between Bieste and Cooter hit a too-typical TV manufactured rough patch. And while it did lead to a nice solo for Bieste with some great staging, it did leave the overall taste of a plot done to death on countless other television series.

But not the bad taste of the Puck-Shelby plot. Just when I was praising Shelby for taking the appropriate high road, her daughter falls on a table, so she falls into bed? What?! And no, I can't give points to Puck for telling Quinn what a hot mess she's become, because I'm too creeped out at the shag the teacher storyline right now.

The Rachel plot, at least, seemed solid all the way. The only way I could ever really see her character do something selfless like help Kurt was when, in her mind, it was selfishly to help herself. Her motivation seemed perfect and genuine. And to then have her get caught, and risk her own future? That'll teach her to ever do anything nice. It could be interesting to see where things go for her from here.

So, the music. Set aside the oh-so-bland practice room staging of half the numbers, and the songs themselves were actually pretty strong. Kurt and Blaine's duet worked, Puck's take on Melissa Etheridge was solid (despite the creepiness), and the episode title number "I Kissed a Girl" was a definite highlight. Not sure what to make of the slow version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." I do like when Glee rises above karaoke and presents a truly different version of a song, but I'm just not sure the song is that elastic. (And if it is, I'm definitely sure that Cory Monteith just doesn't have to vocal chops to stretch it there.)

Bieste's "Jolene" was a surprisingly strong number. Dot-Marie Jones doesn't have the strongest voice either, but she still poured emotion into the song, and the staging of the number helped amplify that. Meanwhile, the episode conclusion, "Constant Craving," was rather the opposite -- strong vocal performances, but a bit lacking in the emotion.

So... what, I don't know here. Maybe a B on the strength of good song performances? On the strength of the good moments in the plot overpowering the sketchier ones? I might have to digest this one a bit more.

Iron Mayhem

2011-11-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

I've written before about how Joss Whedon's role as writer and director of the upcoming movie The Avengers has made it a must-see for me, even though I don't tend to think too highly of comic book movies. (A friend once told me that you could add a full letter grade --at least -- to my review of a comic book movie and get a reasonable guess how the "average" movie-goer would receive it.)

Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for Marvel Studios), a whole suite of movies seems to be a required prerequisite for The Avengers. In some cases, I probably would have seen the movie in question anyway (exhibit: Captain America). In others, I almost certainly would not have (exhibit: Thor).

Somewhere in between falls Iron Man 2. I gave a B- to the first Iron Man movie, which is to say that I liked it overall, but felt it had quite a few flaws. The commercials for Iron Man 2 led me to suspect the sequel would be more of the same, which was enough of a deterrent that I never bothered catching it in the theater. But... required viewing and all.

Reading now what I wrote of the first Iron Man, "more of the same" feels right on the nose to me for describing the sequel. Once again, Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic, effortlessly portraying a smug asshole you ought to hate, but love instead. Gwyneth Paltrow brings fun spark to the always thankless role of the non-super-powered character in the superhero movie. The movie succeeds whenever it focuses on these characters.

Once again, the villain feels too cartoonish in comparison to the tone of the heroes. Sam Rockwell tears into an amped-up egghead with relish, but hits all the same notes he did as the heavy in Charlie's Angels. Mickey Roarke is a better anchor as a dark and brooding villain, but doesn't get enough screen time to really drive the story as much as he should. (Once again, for what must be the hundredth time, I have to ask why movie-makers feel the need to have more than one villain when making a superhero sequel?)

As with the first movie, the big action climax is so stuffed with CG that it starts to feel lifeless. It's better CG than the first film, I'd say, so my fatigue point came later -- but when the fight is literally against an army of robot drones, and your hero is wearing invulnerable armor, it's hard to feel any sense of stakes.

That would probably all average out to a C+ in my book (knocking off points from the first film for the "been there, seen that" nature of the second), but then I have to count one more strike against it. The "required reading" for The Avengers feels far too transparent here. A lot of screen time is devoted to setting up Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Samuel Jackson as a Nick Fury who does more than cameo for 40 seconds in other movies. At least one of the two really needed their own movie, in my opinion. (In fact, I feel like the Black Widow movie would have been pretty cool, had they made it. Scarlett Johansson's action scenes are the best action beats in the movie.)

In any case, their collective presence here feels like it's crowding out Tony Stark in this story -- a "hero creep" problem to mirror the "villain creep" problem of superhero sequels. Multi-hero movies can work (such as X-Men: First Class), but I think the movie has to be carefully crafted that way. As The Avengers will be. This movie, trying to serve the "team" master at the same time it's trying to be an Iron Man solo movie, slips in both categories as a result.

So overall, I'd rate Iron Man 2 a C. That puts it squarely in the center of my curve, and in the spectrum of Marvel "prep films" too. Of course, if you believe my friend, you should bump that up to a B to get to what you might think of it.

Maid to Order

2011-11-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of critical buzz earlier this year around the comedy Bridesmaids. Some of the talk simply focused on the quality of the film. Others trumpeted it as a sign that, "see? Female-driven comedies can succeed at the box office; the sexist notion of comedy as a man's game should be dispensed with." Well, that second notion is clearly true. But regardless, how is the film itself?

Well, in my opinion, not bad. It's a simple buddy premise, where a woman with her life in relative shambles is asked by her best friend to be the maid of honor at her wedding. As the woman is barely able to hold her own life together, her efforts to plan all the festivities that conventionally lead up to a wedding are predictably chaotic. And rather funny.

Kristen Wiig is the star of the film, and anchors it wonderfully. Her comedy is razor-sharp, and she's a likeable protagonist you want to root for. The supporting cast is just as strong. Maya Rudolph is great as the bride-to-be, and effectively plays a realistic and normal person, quite unlike her Saturday Night Live characters (or her current Oprah parody on Up All Night). Rose Byrne, so great in the drama of the TV show Damages, proves equally skilled here at comedy. Melissa McCarthy, now an Emmy winner for Mike and Molly, is powerful. Ellie Kemper, always a strong supporter on The Office, is just as strong here.

When a good scene hits its stride in this film, it delivers solid belly laughs. You'll laugh, you'll cringe; it's great stuff. But the weakness of the movie is that oftentimes, the scenes take a while to hit that stride. The movie clocks in at 2 hours and 5 minutes. That's a ponderous length for a comedy, really; most top out an an hour and 45 minutes, tops, and there's a good reason for that. Slow pace is the death of comedy.

The director and editor needed to cut around 20 minutes out of the movie. And it's not even that I'd suggest they cut the "non-funny" parts. The movie actually had a nice sweetness to it, and that sentiment is a large part of what makes it work overall. But if they'd just trim a bit off the front (and some off the back) of almost every scene, a tighter film would result.

For example, there's a sequence on an airplane as the bachelorette party flies to Vegas. It does deliver plenty of laughs -- but only after nearly five minutes of relatively unfunny setup. Or take a sequence near the end of the movie, where Kristen Wiig's character is trying to get the attention of her cop boyfriend by committing traffic violations in front of his patrol car. She drives by him perhaps 8 or 9 times, each time with a different joke. We'd have appreciated the scene just fine if they'd just stuck with maybe the three best gags.

But even though the movie does often have to build back up the pace that it itself deflates, it never fails to indeed build that pace back up. Bridesmaids is a keeper overall, and worth catching if you haven't already. I grade it a B.

Sensational, Inspirational, Celebrational...

2011-11-26T15:43:00.002-07:00

This afternoon, I went to see the new movie, The Muppets. I'd been looking forward to this one -- probably a little too much -- for most of the year. But in the last few weeks leading up to the release, I read about how Frank Oz had decided to dump all over the script, proclaim it not faithful to the core of what the Muppets are, and decline to participate.

I'm only barely getting used to the idea of a Kermit not voiced by Jim Henson. Now I have to accept a Fozzie and Piggy not voiced by Frank Oz? Needless to say, my enthusiasm for the movie took a hit.

It turns out, that might have been just the thing I needed to realign my expectations to something reasonable. To a place where the movie was then able to soar over them.

I think Frank Oz must have just had a chip on his shoulder over someone else from outside "the fold" coming in to write a Muppet movie. Understandable, I suppose, but unfair. This movie was respectful, even reverent of the Muppets. There were plenty of references thrown in for fans who watched their original show and the classic Muppet film trilogy. And aside from a fart joke that felt out of place (written for Fozzie -- so okay, Frank Oz, I'll give you that), it felt pitch perfect for all the characters.

The movie was stuffed full of the humor that made the Muppets great -- from dumb puns to fourth wall breaking commentary to celebrity cameo foolishness and everything in between. There were musical numbers, from fun originals to a touching new performance of the all-time Muppet great, Rainbow Connection. And there was a lot of true and tender sentiment too. If you ever loved the Muppets, you'll get swept up in it.

The human cast is solid too. Jason Segel and Amy Adams anchor the film well, and are particularly funny in their musical numbers. Chris Cooper is a wonderful villain in the tradition of Doc Hopper from the original Muppet Movie. And cameos abound, too many to list, and at least one that should definitely not be spoiled.

I'd say overall, the movie doesn't quite reach the heights of the original Muppet Movie. But it sure comes close, and is a far sight better than any Muppet film has been since the 1980s. I give it an A-, which is high enough to make it officially my favorite movie of the year so far.

One Last Tale of San Francisco

2011-11-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

I've reached the final evening of my San Francisco vacation. Well, afternoon and evening. We stopped off at a second winery on the drive back from Napa, the Robert Mondavi Winery. We passed on a second tour to follow our experience at Sterling Vineyards, opting instead for a tasting.

Whatever alchemy was going on earlier wasn't really present in this second tasting. Generally, I found the Mondavi wines to be quite representative of what I usually think of wine, and why I don't drink it often. There was one exception, a Moscato D'Oro dessert wine, though I hesitate to even mention it. It's crazy-sweet, sweeter even than a typical bottle of sparkling cider that serves as a champagne substitute for many social events. It was like drinking soda. So sure, that was great. But it felt like it hardly counts. (Except in the wallet, where it would cost you significantly more than said sparkling cider.)

A good friend of mine had suggested one more stop we should get in on our trip, the Marin Headlands. Just on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Headlands offers a beautiful view of the city skyline. And you don't even have to hike for it; just park your car, step out, and you're basically there.

We were getting back from wine country at sundown, but decided to stop all the same. A beautiful view at night is still a beautiful view, isn't it? The added bonus of this was that everyone had thoroughly cleared out, and we had the entire place to ourselves.

There was a cold wind blowing, and it was getting really dark, so we chose to stay only for a few minutes. To give you an idea of how fast it was getting dark, here are three pictures I took within a five minute period (blurry for lack of a tripod):

In any case, this place was as advertised by my friend -- an inspiring view. And as close as it is to the city, there's really no excuse for not going if you should visit.

We closed out our evening (and our vacation) with a crab dinner on Fisherman's Wharf, and then headed back to Denver -- exhausted, with aching feet, but happy. It was a fantastic trip.

Happy T/B-day

2011-11-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's a double holiday for me -- Thanksgiving and my birthday. (A conjunction that occurs every few years.) I'm taking all that as an excuse to take the day off on the blog today.

To my U.S. readers, enjoy the holiday. To all, I'll be back with more tomorrow.

A Sterling Experience

2011-11-23T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of a wine drinker. (See, the fact that I said "wine drinker" and not "wine enthusiast" should say a lot.) But one of the things my boyfriend wanted to do on our San Francisco trip was drive up into wine country, Sonoma or Napa Valley. I thought the idea sounded like fun too, so we dedicated the bulk of our last full day to the adventure.

We didn't have a particular destination in mind, but on advice from the hotel concierge, we headed toward Sterling Vineyards. Afterward, an old high school buddy would dub it "Disneyland Napa" -- the words of a true wine enthusiast, I'd imagine. And that may be true. But I have two responses: one, my uncultured taste buds weren't going to know the difference; and two, would you take a vacation to Anaheim and not go to Disneyland?

In any case, it was a great chapter in the vacation saga. Sterling Vineyards is everything the mind would conjure for a sun-drenched, wine paradise. I mean, here's the stereotype you drive through at the gate, for pete's sake:

It just gets better from there. They have an aerial tram that takes you from the valley floor up to their palatial winery...

...where they have a rooftop patio that affords you a view like this:

Insane. I have a whole arsenal of photos of their wine making process, but I'll spare you the photo-shelling. Suffice it to say, it was a fun and interesting tour, and punctuated with samples of seven different wines they make there. Oh yeah, good times. This non-wine-enthusiast was motivated to bring back a couple bottles for a future Flashback to a Great Vacation. (For the moment, they join the Vampire wine I mentioned not long ago. And yes, despite the fact that I now own three bottles of wine more than the average non-wine-drinker owns, I maintain that I'm not a wine drinker. But don't go all Betty Ford on me here.)

Perhaps the best highlight of the Sterling Vineyards tour is that it provided the one photo I have from the entire trip of the two of us together. All along, we'd been taking pictures of each other and everything around us, but a nice old couple saw us going through that routine and kindly helped us out:

So, wine enthusiast or not, I'd definitely recommend the Sterling Vineyards tour, if you're ever within a stone's throw of Napa Valley.

Say Hi to Caesar

2011-11-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

Muir Woods is a park close to San Francisco where you can go to see the famous giant Redwood trees of California. It's featured heavily as the place where ape Caesar loved to visit in the recent movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Well, at least the idea of it is. What's actually depicted in the movie is more like a fusion of the Muir Woods and the Marin Headlands, and isn't really quite like either. But in any case, you can see some really big, really old trees at the Muir Woods, an environment not quite like any other -- and certainly not like any forest in Colorado. This was high on our list.

At first, it was looking like this visit might be a bit of a disappointment. For a place that's supposed to be nature at its purest, it comes off quite unnatural at first. Actually, it comes off like a Natural History Museum. Sidewalks of asphalt have been paved through the woods, lined with wooden fences on either side, providing a simple and easy path to walk. Signposts -- just out of reach -- explain to visitors the various points of interest. And the light that manages to poke its way down through the hundred-foot trees is so diffuse that the whole place starts to look like a diorama. It was neat... but not what I was expecting.

But it you keep walking along the mile-and-a-half paved loop through the forest, you'll reach a few actual trail heads near the back. Head back on to one of these trails, and you leave behind the sidewalk, the fence, and all the oddly false trappings. Now you're out for real among the ancient, giant forest.

I'd only thought to hike back up a few minutes, get far enough away from the high-traffic sidewalk for some solitude, and sit to enjoy the surroundings. But then we heard from another hiker coming down that an amazing view of the ocean could be had if you hiked 45 minutes up the trail. Well, we had our hiking boots on; we'd come to see some amazing sights; sure!

When you leave the official Muir Woods loop, you almost immediately leave the helpful map provided at the visitor center. And then you start to come to some forks in the trail. We spent maybe three minutes walking the wrong way down the wrong trail before my boyfriend pointed out the obvious: we're trying for an ocean view, the sun is setting in that direction, we should be chasing it.

The thing is, the sun seemed like it was starting to set rather rapidly. It was about 4:15 in the afternoon, and being in the already sun-challenged woods, we figured we really didn't have much time to reach our destination before we'd have to turn back, not being prepared in the slightest for a night hike. Ten more minutes, we resolved, and we'd have to turn back regardless.

In five minutes, we made it to this:

And this:

And this:

Stunning. I could have stayed there for hours. I would have loved to watch the sun set there. Except for the aforementioned issue of the hour return hike at night. So we lingered around ten, maybe fifteen minutes, got tons of pictures, and then started back.

I can't recommend this experience highly enough, if you're ever in San Francisco and up for a hike. Go to the Muir Woods, then follow the Ben Johnson Trail up to where it intersects with the Dipsea Trail. Follow the Dipsea Trail upward for about 10 minutes. If the hike hasn't taken your breath away by that point, the view surely will.

Basic Cable

2011-11-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

I have to backtrack in my San Francisco narrative now, because I left out soemthing from Saturday night, that followed our Chinatown visit.

One of the things on the SF "to do" list was to ride a cable car. Pretty cliché, I admit, but these are the things you do when you're a tourist. But it seems that time has taken the old notion of the San Francisco cable car and fractured it in two.

On the one hand, you have a number of trolleys that travel around the city. These run on tracks, and get power from an overhead line. But they don't look like the cable cars conjured in your mind when you think of San Francisco. In fact, they deliberately evoke other cities. On the interior of each trolley car is a poster that tells you which U.S. city the car originated from; the exterior is painted up to evoke the mood of that city.

On the other hand, things that look just like "old fashioned cable cars" still run limited routes around the city. But they have no overhead connection to any power cable.

The former mode of "cable car" was what we rode down to the Castro, but that left us still wanting to do the touristy thing we'd set out to do. So Saturday night, we were searching for a place to get a drink. (Actually, we were trying against impossible odds to find a sports bar that might be showing the Avs game. But on college football night, that was an enterprise doomed to failure.) We found a candidate online, and decided that even though it was walking distance, we'd ride the cable car for six blocks or so, so we could cross that off the list.

We didn't realize the protocol for boarding a cable car. Basically, you have to lay down on the tracks in front of the thing, or it is NOT stopping. At least, that's what it felt like. We stood under the sidewalk sign where the car was marked to stop... and it flew right on by us. Some locals then informed us that you have to jump out in front them to get their attention, but we'd already been waiting for ten minutes, and didn't feel like waiting any longer. I mean, we'd already waited longer than it would have taken to walk the distance.

When the bar was a bust (as I mentioned earlier), we decided to try one more time and grab the cable car on the way back. When a cable car finally rolled by, it looked like it might be out of service, but I still dutifully jumped out into the road and flagged it down. In service, it turned out... just empty. The operator and the money taker were aboard, and that was it. I imagine they wondered why we were so lazy to pay for the seven block trip to the end of the line, but they took our money all the same.

The up side was, we got a whole cable car to ourselves for a few brief minutes. A cool experience that perfectly satisfied our original touristy instinct.

Putting in Time at Alcatraz

2011-11-20T14:04:00.001-07:00

Sunday morning in San Francisco, we'd booked tickets on the ferry to Alcatraz Island, and went to tour the old prison. Though it was a beautiful, sunny day, the place felt dark and haunted. I can't think of another place I've visited that felt so oppressive and ominous. My boyfriend mentioned his visit to the Anne Frank house. I'm certain a visit to a German concentration camp would rank. In any case, you can easily get a sense for the tone of the place.

I suppose in my mind, I had a picture of the place being larger, even confined on a small island as it is. But the truth is, there just aren't that many rooms needed for a prison. The island has a number of outbuildings that provided housing for some of the prison guards, but the prison itself is straightforward: a basement area for processing and showering prisoners, the cell block above, a library, an office, an exercise yard, a dining hall. That's about it.

I perhaps had a mental image of multiple cell blocks in different wings or something, but all the cells were basically in one large room, stacked three high, divided by three "hallways." More like stacked shipyard crates than anything else -- though there was a separate corridor used for maximum security, and six cells for solitary confinement, in pitch blackness. (Stepping in one of those definitely made my heart speed up.)

Alcatraz is in a beat-up, rundown condition:

One of the reasons it was closed as a prison in the first place was that the cost of maintaining it had grown too high. Intellectually, you know you're looking at 50 years of decay, and that the place surely didn't look like this -- smashed windows, encroaching mold -- in its heyday. And yet, it's probably more appropriate that it does look this way. I imagine that it captures the feel of the place perfectly.

It might not seem like a souvenir of this place would be high on the list, but a unique option presented itself, and I couldn't pass it up. Near the end of the prison's run, surplus naval pea coats were issued to the inmates as cold weather gear for time in the yard -- simple, black wool coats. They didn't really look any different from coats many people have and wear today. The Alcatraz gift shop had these coats for sale. An old photo of the prison is sewn into the inner lining to mark it a souvenir, but when you're wearing it? It just looks like a black pea coat. So I picked it up, a souvenir unique in being completely functional.

That took care of the morning. In the evening, we'd head to Muir Woods -- an excursion I'll pick up next time.

Down to Chinatown

2011-11-19T10:34:00.005-07:00

Let me pick up my San Francisco adventure where I left off. That evening, we decided to visit Chinatown. San Francisco is said to have the largest Chinatown district in the U.S., and having been there now, I believe it. It runs at least 10 blocks in one direction and five in the other, and is crammed full with enough stuff that would seem crowded in twice the space. The roads are suddenly narrower, the buildings smaller. On one side of the street, you're in San Francisco; on the other, you're in what feels like another place entirely.

Of course, you have to sample some food when you go to Chinatown, and I was given the recommendation to check out the House of Nanking. It's rated a top 10 area restaurant in many guidebooks, and is known for its sesame chicken. I like sesame chicken. Let's do it! The food was indeed pretty good, though also rather salty. I didn't mind, but your mileage may vary.

If you're a souvenir hound, Chinatown is definitely a place you should visit if you go to San Francisco. Or maybe not; it could be very dangerous for you. I was tempted to pick up a number of things, though none quite said "perfect" enough for me to give in. But whether you collect fountains or bobbleheads, weapons or playing cards, there's something in Chinatown for you.

Walking out of Chinatown, we also came upon what for my money is the strangest street in San Francisco. Now, perhaps you've heard of Lombard Street, which has one block billed as the "crookedest street" in the city. (And we drove that later on in the trip.) But cool as that is, I think it had nothing on this bit of weirdness... and sadly I think only an aerial photo could really do it justice.

This tunnel, maybe two or three blocks long, continues the road on the other side. That road above it? Not perpendicular. It's a dead end of another road on top of this one. Strangest bit of traffic layout I've ever seen.

And with that, we came to the end of a fun, full day. With two more full days to come.

From the Wharf to the Castro

2011-11-18T18:53:00.006-07:00

The second full day of my vacation to San Francisco was the first full day actually in San Francisco. When we'd made it to our hotel the night before, we wandered out to find dinner close by, but held on to any real exploration until the morning.

That morning began with Fisherman's Wharf. We walked down to Ghirardelli Square, then out to the bay and back along the water. Chocolate I could get at home held only brief appeal for me, I must say, but the walk from there was pretty cool. The view from Fisherman's Wharf is fantastic, from one iconic bridge to the other, with Alcatraz and other neat sights in between.

A number of old ships are anchored in a sort of museum along the pier, and that is officially part of the Golden Gate National Park system. So once again, it being Veterans' Day weekend, we got to enjoy the attraction for free. We went aboard one of the ships and had a look around:

The San Francisco skyline is just really different to look at. It's not quite like any other city I can think of. Parts of it look almost Asian to my eye, though the whole is too sparsely packed (and too peppered with other influences) to come off like an Asian city. Really neat.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the sea lions that have been sunning for two decades near Pier 39, and then took a train to what turned out to perhaps the one disappointment of the trip, the Castro District.

The Castro is the largest "gay neighborhood" in America. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see there, but I figured there would be things to see there. I did grab this amusing picture...

...but basically, I found the Castro to be surprisingly unextreme. I think if you were to take an average person to both the Castro and to a Star Trek convention, that person would definitely find the Star Trek convention to be the stranger experience. I mean, I don't really know what I was looking for, but my experience in San Francisco's Chinatown (which I'll get to) was much more the "trip to another world" I thought I'd be seeing here.

Maybe you have to be there late at night. Or maybe -- and I think I'll choose to go with this -- gay is gradually becoming mainstream enough that the neighborhood doesn't offer the same culture shock it did in the 1970s.

In any case, that was enough time walking around that we decided to head back to the hotel for a break in the late afternoon. But, oh! One side detail probably worth mentioning: the trip down to the Castro took us by the place where the Occupy Wall Street protesters in San Francisco have set up camp. Literally. That was an interesting thing so see -- a park filled corner to corner with tents, with all manner of protest signs in evidence. Pay toilets rolled up everywhere like an outdoor rock concert was going on. A very laid back vibe for a protest that some news outlets would have you believe is a threat to our very society. Too laid back to bring about any actual change? Food for thought.

I've still got the evening to cover, but I think I've rambled enough for one blog post. So, look for my continuing adventures in San Francisco soon.

Mash Off

2011-11-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a brief break from vacation stories here to catch up on the new episode of Glee that ran earlier this week. This episode, Mash Off, started off with a some big strikes against it in my book. First, it was continuing the oh-so-creepy storyline of Puck and Shelby's kiss. Secondly, it was to be an episode featuring mash-ups, which I generally speaking find to be some of Glee's least compelling musical numbers (for reasons we'll get to).

Imagine my surprise to find it a pretty great episode. It certainly helped that Shelby immediately took the right course of action with Puck and rebuffed his advances as those of a schoolboy crush. She walked the tightrope she probably had to walk to keep the biological father of her daughter as a possible presence in her life, but never left any room for romance on the table. As it should be.

That plot also concluded in the only reasonable place for Quinn -- Shelby finding out the truth of what Quinn tried to do, and putting her in her place. As I said of the prior episode, Quinn's actions were unforgivable, and I'm glad the show is not asking us to forgive them (right away at least). Instead, we're going to see Quinn spiral on downward.

The class president storyline took an interesting turn as Rachel performed an uncharacteristically selfless act (spurred on some by Shelby) and backed Kurt for the job. Her speech to the small assembly was good, but her explanation later to Kurt was better still -- that part of the dream for college was sharing it with Kurt. These two really are one of the best character pairings on the show, and this moment really showed why.

The same storyline gave us Kurt's impassioned speech against dodgeball. That made me want to stand up from my couch and cheer. I have no idea whether dodgeball is actually still played in schools, but it was when I was in elementary school. And it's exactly what Kurt described: brutal, institutionalized bullying, sanctioned by the school system. From the picking of teams that batters esteem to the game itself that batters the kids, it's horrible. And the writer of Kurt's speech spoke of it with the voice that could only come from someone whose experience sucked as bad as mine. Alright, I don't suppose it scarred me for life or anything -- I honestly haven't thought of it in forever. But if I had a kid, I wouldn't want him or her going through the same experience, not as it was for me, and certainly not as the bullier either. Nice shot close to home, Glee.

Speaking of which, we then had the plot of Santana's outing by Finn. It was tough to watch, because it was painfully honest. And everyone was equally to be liked and disliked, too. Santana's insults have been dialed up a few notches in the last few episodes, to a point where I think many of us were asking, "wait, wasn't she spearheading an anti-bullying group last season?" Now we see that it was all part of a plan (wow, Glee had a plan and executed it!) to build to this moment.

Santana went too far with Finn this week, unprovoked, for no good reason. So you can't fault Finn for firing back. And yet, you can't forgive him for the bullet he fired back with. For someone who hasn't lived it, I simply can't think of an analogy for the sense of terror that goes with leading a life in the closet, afraid that somebody is going to "find out" when you aren't ready to acknowledge it on your terms. But I can tell you exactly what it looks like; Naya Rivera's reaction as Santana in that scene was the one of the most brilliant and subtle moments of acting that's ever been shown on the series. Yes, the later scene in Sue's office (with Will and Burt) was strong too, but the fear and horror of that first reaction was amazing. I'd put her up for an Emmy. I'm not kidding.

I'd be on my way to giving this episode an A, but it stumbled a couple times musically. So here's my problem with mash-ups. Sometimes -- and I think this is the exception -- the two songs in question do actually blend together in a satisfying way. The Adele finale of this episode ("Rumour Has It"/"Someone Like You") was one such rare example. Each song is sparse enough to leave room for the other to have equal voice.

But then you have the Hall & Oates number ("I Can't Go For That"/"You Make My Dreams Come True"). The staging and fake mustaches were pretty awesome, but musically, it sounded like one group of people trying to sing a song while another group of people were rudely interrupting with a repetitious single phrase from another song. No blending at all. (And the entire number was heavily auto-tuned all around for extra injury.)

Somewhere in the middle was the dodgeball number ("Hit Me With Your Best Shot"/"One Way or Another"). It started off in the "will you shut up a second, I'm trying to sing this song!" camp, but finally reached a place of almost-meshing near the end. It didn't help that Naya Rivera's voice completely outclasses Cory Monteith's.

The Shelby/Will mashup of Lady Gaga (really? again?) and Eddie Rabbitt with Crystal Gayle wasn't as potent as I would have hoped two of the stronger voices on the show could deliver, and the staging was pretty dull too. Necessary shoe leather to push the plot along, and little more.

But we did kick off with the pretty awesome "Hot for Teacher," complete with an avalanche of homages to the Van Halen video. And kind of totally dirty, just like the original too. So call the episode of bookend of strong musical numbers with some questionable stuff in the middle.

In all, I'd call the episode an A-. Solid stuff from Glee.

Tales of Yosemite

2011-11-16T19:22:00.001-07:00

Hello again, readers! I'm back from my San Francisco trip, and I thank all of you for indulging me the time off from the blog. I had an amazing time, full of amazing adventures I'll probably spend the next week or so sharing.

I'll start from the beginning, which was not actually a San Francisco adventure. When my boyfriend and I were planning out things we might do on the trip, the thought of Yosemite National Park came up. We knew it wasn't quite "close" to San Francisco (it's a four-hour drive away in fact), but it's certainly closer to there than it is to Denver. It seemed like it would be a shame to be that close and not to go.

So that became the plan -- we'd fly in on our first afternoon, then just drive straight out to the last significant town west of Yosemite, stay there, and spend "day one" in the Yosemite Valley, the seven-mile stretch of the park that contains its most well known attractions.

You drive into the Valley right by the famous El Capitan, and pass four huge waterfalls on your way to the visitor's center. We got in several good pictures...

...and then picked out a trail to hike to take us to Mirror Lake. Well, it turns out that a major rock slide in 2009 has blocked off that path completely, though we only found this out when we'd driven back in there, hiked as far as the "trail closed .7 miles ahead" sign, and decided we'd already committed too much time to this trail to go back and choose a different one. So chose to hike on in as far as the trail closure anyway, and maybe see some of the rock slide.

One advantage of taking the trail marked "closed ahead" is that very few other people are hiking it. We had the place pretty much to ourselves -- or at least, as much to ourselves as I could ever imagine getting in such a popular tourist destination. (And by the way, entrance to the park was free for Veterans' Day weekend.)

I was never a big nature guy as a kid, and the journey from there is let's say still a work in progress. But this was a really enjoyable hike in a beautiful place. A great way to kick off the trip.

We finished up in the mid-afternoon and started the long drive back to San Francisco, where we'd wake up to begin our second full day. And I'll pick up from there in an upcoming entry.

On the Road Again

2011-11-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

Faithful readers, I am once again heading off on a vacation, this time to San Francisco, the City by the Bay. I've never been before, and I'm really looking forward to it.

When I took my last trip to Orlando, I was prepared ahead of time, with enough content prewritten to keep the blog trucking along every day while I was gone. This time out? Well, sorry, but I just haven't got it together. Nor do I have any desire to take time out while I'm vacationing to write here. So for next few days, there aren't going to be any updates. But I'll be back early next week, and I'm sure full of vacation stories to tell.

So... until then!

The First Time

2011-11-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I stopped watching the "next week on _________" teasers that run at the end of television episodes. One too many things got spoiled for me that way, and I thought to myself, "I know I'm going to watch this show next week regardless, so why not just be surprised?" I found that almost instantly increased my enjoyment of that show, and the others I followed, and from there my policy developed into active avoidance of spoilers.

But with tonight's Glee, there was no avoiding it. I mean, I suppose I could have stopped reading the various entertainment web sites I check out, but short of that, there was no way to avoid the full court press of promotion for tonight's Glee episode. The creators were pushing it; the cast was pushing it. Then the Parents Television Council did that stupid thing they always do and got preemptively angry about the awful, naughty things that young kids in the heartland would see (providing greater publicity in the process).

There was no way not to know that this was going to be the episode where some of the characters had sex for -- as it spoiled right in the title -- The First Time. And I'm sorry to say, I felt the episode didn't really live up to all that hype.

First off, let me be clear that I thought this was by no means a "bad" episode of Glee. The heart was certainly in the right place. The episode was built entirely around strong character stories for the couples of Finn and Rachel, and Blaine and Kurt. As a bonus, there was a great subplot for Coach Bieste, a nice runner for Artie, and some nice moments for both Tina and Puck. And the writers wisely didn't seem to mind that this focus meant that characters who don't normally sit on the bench would have to this time. (Schu has never appeared so little in an episode, to my recollection.)

But the episode didn't quite feel natural to me either. In order to grease the skids for this particular drama, a lot of the characters had to be unusually direct and say things I just couldn't buy them saying. It started right away in the teaser, with Artie confronting Blaine and Rachel -- in front of two teachers! -- about their sexual histories. In any reality, a school teacher would tug that student into place so fast, your head would spin; never mind the unlikelihood that historically shy Artie would say such a thing in the first place.

But the unusual candor was just getting started. There was Bieste confiding her feelings and her love life in Artie (even less appropriate). There was the too-together-for-a-high-school-student Sebastian, unbelievably aggressive in his pursuit of Blaine. There was Tina, who believably shared a magical "first time" with Mike -- but less believably seemed to sully that more than a bit by sharing it with the other girls. There was the crazy-directness of Mike's father, who tore into Chang a bit too fast and brutally, just because the script only had time and space for a 30 second scene. There was the touching check in with Karofsky, seeing how he's found his way since leaving McKinley -- yet unbelievably opening up at the drop of a hat to Kurt about all that. There was Artie's unusually vulnerable speech to his entire cast on opening night; it's believable that this is how he feels, but hard to believe he'd share that with all those people.

All of this was set to a soundtrack of many of the blander songs from the mostly bland West Side Story. Oh, and a song that even Billy Joel won't perform in concert any more. (And speaking of inappropriate and unrealistic -- that woman the Warblers were borderline harassing had to be a teacher, right? Since Dalton Academy is an all-boy school, I mean? That felt really wrong.)

So, on the one hand, I really want to applaud the nuanced portrayal of teen sexuality. But on the other, the execution of the idea just wasn't up to Glee's best. Unless of course the point was that it was supposed to be a bit awkward, just like a teenage sexual encounter. Nah... I doubt very much that was intentional.

I grade the episode a B-. The idea would get an A, but the script really needed a few more drafts for polish.

A Little Respect

2011-11-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

I rarely discuss politics here on my blog, but I'm going to take a moment tonight to talk to my fellow U.S. residents.

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take a vote on the Respect for Marriage Act. This legislation is designed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, the law passed in 1996 that defines and restricts marriage in the U.S. at the federal level to "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."

This may be one of the few laws on the books designed to legally force a group of Americans into a state of second-class citizenship. So long as it remains in effect, any victories in forward-thinking (or, more accurately, non-archaic thinking) states to legalize gay marriage are essentially hollow ones. While the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect, these married couples enjoy none of the legal benefits of their union at a federal level:

They can't file taxes jointly. They're not able to collect survivor benefits for each other's Social Security if one dies. No green card can be obtained to allow one spouse from a foreign country to avoid deportation. I won't go on, because I've read a figure that puts the number of federal rights conferred by marriage at over 1,100 specific items. That's over 1,000 benefits every other married couple likely takes for granted.

If the Respect for Marriage Act passes this committee, it will proceed to a vote in the Senate at large. The best case is that it will pass there (and in the House of Representatives), and the prejudicial law will be struck down. In any case, a vote will force any bigoted members of Congress to go publicly on record with their intolerance and face the consequences; even that would be some step forward.

To this end, the Human Rights Campaign is dedicated to supporting the Respect for Marriage Act. Maybe you can't donate time or money to their efforts. But surely you can do this:

The HRC is collecting signatures for a petition to be delivered to Committee members in advance of the vote. Please take a moment and go sign their petition. Seriously, it won't take more than about 15 seconds, tops.

We now return to the lightweight blather normally associated with this blog. Thank you for your time.

The Beat Goes On

2011-11-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

All this week, I've been having fun with the new Dance Central 2, Harmonix's sequel to their Kinect-capable dancing hit.

The new game has added a lot of bells and whistles that I've barely scratched the surface on, but the big upgrade is that it now simultaneously supports two dancers. No more of the awkward dance-offs of the first game. Another big upgrade is to the recognition capabilities of the software in general; I find that this game tracks your movements much more accurately and effectively than the original. It's not that the original was bad in this regard, it's just that the improvement really makes a difference when space is tight in your place as it is in mine.

But, on the down side, I think the set list is a bit weaker this time out. There are some gems in there, sure. But there seems to be a lot more hip hop and R&B in Dance Central 2 than its predecessor. Or maybe it's that the handful of "classic" songs (if you will) don't make me think "ooo, I love this song" as much as the ones in the original. It's not too big a deal, though; you can export all your songs from the first Dance Central to keep on playing them in the new one. (Along with any downloadable content you've purchased.)

Still, new tunes, new moves, new fun -- it's all I was looking for, and I have yet to even really explore the many improvements they've made to their navigation (which now supports speech recognition), their training and workout tracking modes, and so forth. In all, a fun game, one not to miss if you own a Kinect. I'd rate it an A-.

A Very Merry Christmas

2011-11-05T11:45:00.004-06:00

Last night, I went to see the new movie, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. The first Harold & Kumar film was a pleasant surprise to me. I went almost on a whim, and ended up liking the movie far more than I expected I would. The second film was an unfortunate disappointment to me. I was hoping for the some of the same fun and laughs of the original, but found that this sequel to a "dumb comedy" had gone far too "dumb" and not nearly far enough with the "comedy." For this third movie, I was hoping/expecting something between those two extremes.

I was pleasantly surprised to find this movie the best of the three Harold and Kumar films. It worked on several levels. The humor was sharp, without being overly raunchy. But best of all, it was often smart humor too. There were clever in-jokes made for all of the key actors, and the work they've been doing since making the last H&K film.

On television lately, there's been a lot of humorous mileage out of "cute babies," particularly on Modern Family and Raising Hope. This movie threw its hat into that ring by bringing a baby into the mix, and the hilarity that ensues is some of the best in the movie. (Assuming you don't take it too seriously and end up offended.)

But the best mileage by far is milked from the 3D conceit of the movie. This is no simple 2D conversion of an existing movie. And while I'm not sold on 3D in the movies in general, it was absolutely integral here -- more so even than in a movie like Avatar. From the Platoon-style parody that opens the film, through the Tarantino-esque shootout in the middle of the film, to the final shot of Santa driving his sleigh right at you, the movie is crammed full of hilarious 3D gags. And no matter how many times you see wisps of pot smoke wafting toward you in 3D, it keeps being funny. In short: if you think you're ever going to want to see this movie, do yourself a favor and go see it in 3D at the theater.

The comedy pairing of John Cho and Kal Penn is in perfect form here, and the two bring some surprising and genuine sentiment to the movie as well. There's a holiday sweetness to the movie that I found unexpected, but didn't feel at all forced. And then, of course, Neil Patrick Harris kills his cameo, just as he did in the first two movies. There's an extra added "meta" level to the joke this time out, making his appearance once again a highlight of the movie.

I might be surprised to say it, and you might be even more surprised to read it, but I'd rate A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas an A-. It's one of the better movies (and best comedies) I've seen this year. It gets my enthusiastic recommendation.

A Fiery Sequel

2011-11-04T18:42:00.000-06:00

This week, I finished Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games, and the middle book of a trilogy. There are some people who compared the original book to Battle Royale, a Japanese novel written ten years prior. I can't comment on that, not being familiar with that other work. But this second book did call to mind a different similarity -- to The Empire Strikes Back.

See, The Hunger Games was a relatively self-contained book. There were threads to imply where the story would go if continued, but it seemed equally poised not to continue, like the original Star Wars. Then along came Catching Fire, a book that continued the story, but took it straight up to a cliffhanger, leaving nothing resolved at all.

That's not to say that the book was unsatisfying. Indeed, I found the first half of the book to be quite compelling, perhaps even more so than the first book. Things took a political turn in this second book, with the main character having to deal with the fallout of her actions in the first book. Because of what she's done, the whole society is on the brink of upheaval, and in particular, the lives of her family and friends are in danger.

But after this intriguing setup, author Suzanne Collins takes a bit of a misstep in my opinion, by making the second half of her book a retread of book one. Oh, you liked the arena battle concept of the first book? Well, here -- let's do it again! This puts her in a difficult position of having to innovate more clever things that the first book presented, and having to do it in a slimmer page count, as this only represents the back half of the book.

Now granted, there is a little more to it than that. Characters and plot points are being set up in a way I expect will be paid off in the final book. Nevertheless, I was disappointed that the book veered away from new territory to re-tread familiar ground. It was still interesting enough to easily pull me through to the final page, but didn't finish on as solid footing as it started out.

So in that respect -- not being better than the original -- I suppose Catching Fire isn't like The Empire Strikes Back. I'd rate this book a B+, which is to say it's really only a letdown by comparison. I'm still looking forward to the end of the trilogy, and will probably jump right into the final book next time I start reading.

A New Dawn

2011-11-03T22:18:00.000-06:00

I always try to watch some appropriate movie for Halloween every year. For a while, it was actually Halloween, John Carpenter's classic boogeyman movie. This year, I decided on the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.

It would probably only be a slight exaggeration to say that I was blown away by the film when I first saw it in theaters. It took the amped up "fast zombies" of 28 Days Later, mixed in some humor and effective tension, and wowed me. Watching it again now, I saw some flaws that I either didn't notice or overlooked that first time around. And it basically comes down to using character stupidity to grease the plot.

The opening act of the movie is fantastic. We follow the lead character as she discovers the zombie apocalypse and fights for her life -- believably -- against something she doesn't understand. The middle chunk of the movie is almost as good. New characters get introduced, and they all behave rather reasonably for the circumstances, not immediately trusting each other, but doing things you logically would in order to survive.

But the logic police fall asleep on the job as the movie enters the final act. (Spoilers here for the rest of this paragraph, if you haven't seen it.) First, you've got the deranged father than wants to see the birth of his zombie baby. Then there's the girl that loves the freaking dog so much that she literally gets everyone killed. Because she goes after the dog, everybody has to go after her before they're able to form a good plan. Without a good plan, they don't make it back to safety without letting the zombies in, and so they have to go through with their plan to flee before that plan is fully ready to execute. Every death that follows as a result of this is basically on that dumb girl's need to save the dog. Which, by the way, didn't need saving, as the movie had established well by that point, the zombies have no interest in the dog. Sigh.

Ultimately though, this is all just enough revise my thinking about the movie to an A-, not enough to make me stop liking it. There's just still so much good stuff going on here. Truly gruesome and menacing zombies. Really messed up and horrific moments (like having your freshly dead husband suddenly try to kill you when you don't even understand what's going on). Plenty of humorous accents, many contributed by Ty Burrell (now best known for his Emmy-winning role on Modern Family). And a cast of actors that's great, despite none of them really being a household name.

It's a visceral, kinetic, exciting movie, a high-water mark that director Zack Snyder hasn't come close to matching in his subsequent films. (Though a mark which writer James Gunn did match -- and exceed -- when he wrote and directed Slither.)

Basically, watching it again kicked the movie out of my top 100 list. But as I said, I still consider it an A-. A must see for horror enthusiasts.

Grading the New Class, Part 2

2011-11-02T18:56:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, I fired off some quick thoughts about the new TV series I've sampled this season. Since then, a few more have debuted, so I felt the need for an update:

Once Upon a Time -- One of two fairy tale-themed shows to premiere this season, and of the two, the one that got markedly better ratings and seems certain to last at least a full season. It's also the more boring of the two. I watched the first episode and was fairly unimpressed. I'd originally decided to give it one more try, but when the following Sunday rolled around, it came up against the DVR train wreck that is Sunday night. I decided not to bother, and I haven't really felt that I missed anything.

Grimm -- Only one episode of this darker fairy tale series has aired, but it put out a similar vibe to Kolchak or The X-Files. I wasn't blown away, but I did see a little promise here. I'll probably give this one another chance or two. I'm not sure whether I'm hoping for it to find its feet so I can keep watching it, or hoping for it to come unraveled so that's one less show I feel compelled to watch.

American Horror Story -- This is the latest series from Glee creator Ryan Murphy. He also created Nip/Tuck, so the totally dark and twisted tone of American Horror Story shouldn't be a total surprise. The series seemed most like Twin Peaks to me at first blush, with weird piled on top of weird and served with a side of weird. Having watched Glee, I assumed immediately that the writers didn't really have any idea where any of it was heading. On the one hand, that left me a bit concerned that none of this weirdness would ever come together or pay off. But on the other hand... I just really liked the demented tone of that first episode. As more episodes have aired, the tone has continued consistently. And a few pieces of the weirdness have been explained... or at least been elaborated on. So in all, I've been pleasantly surprised by this new show. It's definitely my favorite of the new TV season.

Coming up on Sunday (why are they all on Sunday?!) is the premiere of Hell on Wheels on AMC, which seems to be putting out a Deadwood kind of vibe in its promos during The Walking Dead. That's enough to get my interest, so I expect I'll be checking that out as well. Of course, if I'm expecting Deadwood quality, I'll probably be disappointed. We'll see.

Pot O' Gold

2011-11-01T21:42:00.000-06:00

It's been three long weeks since the last new episode of Glee. At least the episode we got tonight was a pretty good one, continuing this third season's trend of character-focused stories. But there were several rough spots.

The story of the rival Glee club continued, with Santana and Brittany switching over before the end of the episode. Santana had such a full head of steam going that I did sort of question that she'd accept going from "singing backup for Rachel" to "singing backup for Mercedes," but I'm willing to just roll with it and say that she's just being rebellious and maybe doesn't quite know what she wants.

The Sue-for-Congress storyline continued. Sue remained a step or two on the wrong side of the cartoonish line for my tastes. But the storyline as a whole took a big step up when Burt stepped in to run against her. Once again, Burt Hummel -- best father on television. Sure, seeing him stand up to Sue was fun, and his speech to the family near the end was sweet too. But the most winning moment was when he thanked Schu (and his glee club) for saving his son's life. Maybe literally; Burt clearly believed that in his heart. Mike O'Malley, once again knocking it out of the park with his acting.

Then there was the plot introducing the new exchange student Rory, played by Glee Project winner Damian McGinty. This is the second Glee Project contestant to appear on the show, and the writers continue to do a good job with them. I didn't watch more than a few minutes of The Glee Project, and I didn't actually know until after the first episode that one of those guest stars had been culled from that group. Here, the promotion was so heavy that I knew well in advance, but I feel like it was still very natural -- like the writers were naturally just looking for a replacement for Sam. He seems like he could be a good addition to the mix.

But I have the most to say about the Quinn-Puck-Shelby storyline. I'm really torn about it. On the one hand, I'm happy that the writers have decided to plant their flag on a hill -- any hill -- and continue consistent character behavior over the course of several episodes (something they really struggled with in season two). On the other hand, I'm really hating all the characters involved right at the moment.

Quinn's attempt to jam up Shelby with Child Services was so far over the line that I'm not sure what her character can do to be redeemed in my eyes now. It's not that I don't believe she would do it. Indeed, there have been a few people in my life (and that's a few too many) that got screwed over in a custody battle because the person fighting on the other side made up complete falsehoods and got a court to believe them. So yes, people that behave as Quinn has behaved do exist. And they are villains. Period.

So then there's Shelby, who at the close of the episode is kissing a high school boy literally young enough to be her son -- Puck is in the same grade as her daughter. Ick. Unless the next episode shows Shelby instantly realizing what a horrible impulse that was and trying to set things right, she's pretty far gone as a character too.

As for Puck, the him-bo caught between the two of them? How is it that "stupid" can be so lovable on Brittany and so not on him? His character isn't looking great either in all this.

How about the music tonight?

Well, I've always had a soft spot for "Bein' Green," and it was a great song to introduce the new character. Solid vocal performance too. I liked it worlds more than the song they gave him for the end of the episode, "Take Care of Yourself."

They sent Blaine back to the Katy Perry well for "Last Friday Night," and it was hardly the sensation that last season's "Teenage Dream" was. It felt like what it was -- an overly mechanical way for the writers to drive Santana out of the glee club, though the vocal performance was strong enough (as it usually is for Darren Criss).

"Waiting for a Girl Like You" was a good choice for Puck, though the simple presentation (while appropriate) didn't really give him a chance to shine.

As for the newly minted "Troubletones?" Well, they did indeed rock their version of "Candyman." Oftentimes on Glee, when one or more characters are having an "oh my God, they're so good" reaction to another character's vocal performance, I don't usually buy it. (See Rory's finale in this very episode.) But here, when Finn and Schu looked on in shock at their new rivals, I bought it. The girls brought it.

It's really hard to overlook the damage done to Quinn and Shelby's characters here and put the whole episode into a fair context, but I figure I'll call this episode around a B. I guess that's how much goodwill you can buy from me with a good scene with Kurt's dad. (Is there any other kind?)

A Timely Movie

2011-10-31T21:08:00.004-06:00

When I first saw the trailer for In Time in front of another movie, I wasn't enthusiastic to see it. It looked like Logan's Run meets action film, a brainless bit of fluff masquerading as something that had at least a little bit of brain. I made no plans to see it.

Then I found out that In Time was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the writer and director of one of my very favorite movies, Gattaca. I changed my tune immediately. Surely this was just a case of a movie studio cutting a bad trailer, trying to present an intelligent science fiction allegory as a bit of shoot-'em'-up fluff they figured would appeal to the masses.

Sometimes, what you see is what you get.

In Time posits a world (which Harlan Ellison claims was his idea first) in which aging stops at 25 -- at which point every person on Earth has exactly one more year to live before they drop dead on the spot. Time has become the new currency; you sell minutes off your remaining year to buy goods, and work to get minutes put back on your clock. Society has stratified into a strict class culture, where the poor struggle to hang on to life as the rich live almost literally forever.

It all sounds like an interesting jumping off point for some social commentary, doesn't it? And with so-called "class warfare" being a hot political issue these days, surely the man who wrote Gattaca has some provocative things to say on the matter.

Or maybe he just wants to make a sci-fi Bonnie and Clyde. Despite the intriguing set-up, In Time quickly devolves into a running, jumping, chasing, shooting action flick. And a mindless one at that. One character after the next engages in behavior that makes absolutely no sense, given the circumstances. Good guys triumph not through their own ingenuity, but through dumb luck, and stupidity on the part of the villains.

The movie wasn't a total loss, as some of the action was at least interesting, as action for action's sake goes. Also, Justin Timberlake is likeable enough in the starring role. (Anyone who might question his acting chops clearly hasn't seen The Social Network or Alpha Dog.) The rest of the cast falls short, though. Amanda Seyfried is a personality free love interest; Cillian Murphy is surprisingly dull as the investigator pursuing the hero; Vincent Kartheiser is just a cartoonishly more weaselly version of his Mad Men character; Matt Bomer is unable to convey his character's motivations in his limited screen time (and the script does him no favors); Johnny Galecki is supposed to be 25 years old? (Yeah, right.)

I'm shocked to find that I'd ever be recommending a Michael Bay movie, but if you're looking for a shallow sci-fi chase film, The Island delivered better thrills. In Time, I rate an average C.

Spider-man(sion)

2011-10-30T22:25:00.002-06:00

With Halloween tomorrow, bringing with it the final day of haunted houses, I hesitate to even mention this. But I had a fun experience last night at a haunted house here in Denver, and I figured that some of you might be looking for something to do tomorrow night.

It's the Spider Mansion, at Heritage Square near Golden. It's a 5 to 10 minute experience with all sorts of fun different elements. There are several actors scattered throughout, dressed both as famous horror movie characters and general scary archetypes. The scares are well placed to get you from directions you aren't expecting. I'd say more, but it would kind of spoil the fun, now wouldn't it?

But I will offer two tips. First, for this haunted house in particular: they allow no more than 4 people in at a time, and the line gets long. I would imagine it will be longer still tomorrow. So if you go, do yourself the favor and pay the extra $7 for the VIP pass that lets you jump the line.

Next, a tip for haunted houses in general: take a screamer with you. Though I did enjoy this experience, it wasn't as fun as the last time I visited a haunted house two or three years ago. Why? I didn't have a jumpy, nervous screamer going through the place with me. Without such a person, sure, you get a few good startles. You appreciate the atmosphere. But you don't really get into the experience. Next year, I'm totally taking a screamer.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Sea Minus

2011-10-29T11:28:00.001-06:00

I recently watched the 2002 film The Salton Sea, starring Val Kilmer. It's vaguely a film noir, in that the main character is a narrator and that there is a bit of a mystery in play, but it's more of a "drug haze" movie. The subject wasn't of particular interest to me, but I had heard some positive reviews of it -- and in particular, heard that Val Kilmer was very good in it.

It turns out that the film has a pretty significant twist in the plot. A couple, arguably. It's not necessarily a "twist ending," but it does unfortunately play out that way, because the turn is held back until the onset of the final act. And I found that a shame, because frankly, I found the film a bit boring up to that point.

Up to that point, the film really is nothing more than a drug haze movie, a Blow or a Requiem for a Dream. I at least liked it more than the latter of those films. Requiem for a Dream relied heavily on crazy camera work and rapid editing to convey the world of drug use, where The Salton Sea doesn't need to stoop to tricks. It relies on the solid performances of Kilmer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard, and others. The acting requires no trickery to sell the environment.

But when the real truth of the story arrives -- and I think I can say this without actually spoiling too much -- the film is revealed to be a revenge story. It's far more compelling. The movie becomes less "diorama" and more "story," and is infinitely better for it. But I confess that I'd been driven past the point of no return by then. I'd already become bored, and a strong ending wasn't going to completely save the experience for me.

Not completely, anyway. It certainly turned it around to a place where, though I wouldn't really recommend the film, I wouldn't call it "bad" either. I'd grade it about a C- overall. I'd much rather the script had just laid all the cards on the table early to draw the audience in, rather than try to keep us guessing.

Taking It Down a Notch

2011-10-28T20:50:00.000-06:00

Last night, I went to see the band Portishead in concert. I was not at all familiar with their music before being asked a while back if I wanted to go. When I went and listened to one of their older albums, I found them a difficult band to categorize.

In some ways, I heard touches of Evanescence in the band. The voice of the lead singer, Beth Gibbons, definitely reminds me of Evanescence's Amy Lee. But the comparison basically ends there. The music itself it much more low key, perhaps brushing against new age as Evanescence brushes against "nu metal."

There's probably not much point in me "reviewing" the concert in the traditional sense, because if you want to see them yourself, you probably can't now (unless you live in Europe). The English band almost never tours on this side of the Atlantic, and last night's show was the final one in this particular American tour. But it was a very different concert experience that I did feel I had to comment on.

Basically, this was the most mellow concert experience I've ever had. (Admittedly, my concert experience isn't all that great, though -- so take that with a grain of salt.) I couldn't help but contrast it with my recent night out to see Primus. Primus is just three people, in many ways making as much music as they possibly can. Portishead had six musicians on stage, making maybe half the sound of Primus. It was a study in restraint; measured instrumentation, threadbare riffs, atmospheric vocals. This is not to say that the experience was "less," but markedly different.

Usually, when I go to a concert, my eyes are peeled the entire time. I want to take in every part of the spectacle, watch how the musicians play, watch for fun people in the crowds -- everything. With Portishead, I felt the goal was not just to entertain, but to transport. I found myself wanting to just close my eyes and let the music pour over me, to feel the sonic vibrations and see the play of the lights behind my eyelids. Hmmm. Describing it, I admit that might sound a bit drug trippy. But I find myself hard pressed to describe the experience well.

I do know that I enjoyed myself, though. It was great to have a concert experience that wasn't all high octane, pulse-pounding backbeats. A fun and refreshing change of pace.

A Perfect Kiss

2011-10-27T19:38:00.000-06:00

About six years ago, when it was playing in theaters, I wrote a review of the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. A rather lame and superficial review. I figure that between that injustice I did to the film, and the fact that it's now over half a decade later, writing about the film again would be okay.

In short: go watch this movie!

The longer version: this movie was written and directed by Shane Black, the man who wrote the first two Lethal Weapon movies. He was a pioneer in the "buddy cop" genre, and in this film, he tweaks everything he made quasi-sacred. Robert Downey Jr. stars as a petty thief who gets mistaken for an actor, and is thrown into training to play a detective in an upcoming movie. He trains by shadowing a private detective played by Val Kilmer. The two of them wind up embroiled in a murder conspiracy, and hilarity ensues. Lots of hilarity.

The comedy in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang plays on many levels. At its most shrewd, it comments on movie-making itself. The whole "I'm an actor" conceit is a vehicle to skewer spoiled Hollywood celebrities. The main character himself is the narrator, and a really lousy one. He gets bits wrong, or out of order, or muddled. And he doesn't just tell his story, he talks to the audience with full knowledge of the fact that he's telling a story... and doing it badly.

But then there are base slapstick jokes, clever sight gags, speedy word play, and all sorts of other humor peppered throughout the film. It's like an episode of Arrested Development, packed so tightly that it rewards multiple viewings.

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are both fantastic in this movie (as is the "femme fatale" of this psuedo-noir, Michelle Monaghan). Downey is sarcastic and self-aware, and totally likeable. Kilmer is equally coarse but fun, berating his partner for believing in every stupid cliché about movies, the private detective business, and more. And an extra bonus about the Downey/Kilmer pairing is the reputation both had as actors at the time. Kilmer was and still is widely known to be difficult to work with. Downey was coming off his second plunge into drug abuse, pre-Iron Man and pre-Sherlock Holmes, at a point in his career where no one would work with him. That two "impossible" actors would appear together in the same movie? Unreal!

You don't have to like either actor, or the detective genre, to like this movie -- though you'll certainly love it more if you do. It's enough to simply like storytelling in general, as this movie is such a carefully crafted send-up of the process. In that original review, I rated the movie an A-, and expressed uncertainty about whether it would be on my top 100 movie list. Having watched it again lately, let me amend all that: it's a grade A movie, and definitely is on my list.

Before There Was Tru Blood...

2011-10-26T19:21:00.001-06:00

Around 15 years ago (holy crap -- it was 15 years ago!), I had a regular RPG night with my friends. We played Vampire (The Dark Ages version) every week or two, playing the same characters for over two years. Good times.

I actually have a souvenir of those times. One night, one of the group came in with several bottles of wine. He saw it in the store, it was cheap, and so on a lark, he bought us each our very own bottle of... Vampire wine.

It turns out they still make the stuff: see?

Anyway, I kept the bottle. Intact, actually. I took it with me when I moved to Virginia, a memento of my friends back in Colorado. I brought it back with me when I returned. It has survived no less than six moves, and I've never been tempted to open it because I'm really not much of a wine drinker.

But recently, I have to confess to some twisted curiosity. I mean, I'm sure a worthless bottle of wine aged 16 years is still a worthless bottle of wine. But I'm still friends with all of the people who were in that old role playing group. Maybe there would be so kitsch value in popping open the bottle some time when we're all together and letting everyone have a taste. I mean, I could still keep the bottle as a memento afterward, and then there would be two stories to go with it -- the receiving it, and the drinking of it.

Or maybe it's better to just hang onto it until it's a 20-year old bottle of wine. Or 30. Or more. Maybe I should save it to pop open some day when I'm old and grey, and use it to recapture memories of my youth?

Or maybe I'll just be disappointed at what I waited for for decades.

I'm not sure there's a point to me sharing any of this, other than: hey, I didn't have anything better to talk about tonight; did you know there's Vampire wine?

A Sexy Movie

2011-10-25T21:16:00.000-06:00

One of these days, I'm going to learn my lesson and stop watching "biopics." Movies that bring you the life story of some person, no matter how compelling the person, always seem to bore. Whether its audience knowledge of how the "story" will end, or a meandering lack of story caused by overstuffing the film with minute details, I can't think of a biopic that's truly entertained me.

And yet, I recently gave another one a try: Kinsey. This is the story of the scientist who in the 1940s did pioneering research into human sexuality, and caused quite a storm with the books he published on the subject.

It was the cast that pulled me in. Liam Neeson plays the title character, and I don't think I've ever seen him be bad in anything. Laura Linney plays his wife, while his research team includes Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell, and Timothy Hutton. Want more? Okay, you've got John Lithgow as his father, and other colleagues, financers, and subjects played by Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, William Sadler, John Kaskinski, and Lynn Redgrave. Not to mention numerous other unknowns who seem to be bolstered to great performances of their own by the exceptional talent surrounding them. A better cast has rarely been assembled.

There are even a handful of good scenes in the movie. There's an unconventional seduction. An awkward dinner. And possibly the most uncomfortable sex scene I've seen in a mainstream film. All a testament to the aforementioned cast.

But the movie never can transcend the biopic problem. In this case, the movie spends far too much time setting up Kinsey in his years before switching his research field. The entire first act is filled with his attempts to catalog wasps -- not really relevant to his legacy or to establishing his character, and the significance of which isn't clearly articulated in the film.

The film also doesn't really have an ending. The final act tracks the defunding of his research due to its controversial nature, but lacks any real sense of closure. The movie never says "that was it." It doesn't follow Kinsey to his death, to his failure to continue his work, to whatever... I honestly don't know what happened to the man after this. The film just reaches a certain minute count, and then just stops. No summation, no message, no nothing.

If you want to see some fine acting, the film might entertain you -- though I suspect it will bore you at stretches too. But ultimately, I rate it a C-. You might not find all these actors in one movie, but you could certainly find them all individually in better movies.

A Fright Night at the Movies

2011-10-24T21:04:00.000-06:00

'Tis the season! Halloween! I got involved in a discussion with a friend today about good movies to watch at this time of year. What started off as a trickle ended up a torrent of suggestions. I thought to myself, maybe there are others out there looking for a good movie (or movies) to watch during this week leading up to Halloween. So here come a few suggestions.

I'm going to start with the assumption that you've seen "the classics" and the well-known, mainstream options -- Halloween, The Thing, Poltergeist, The Ring, Alien, and so forth. If you haven't, go watch them; my work is done. Beyond that, however, I'm going to try to dig a little deeper -- worthy films that, in my experience, most people I know have not seen.

If you liked Halloween... I suggest The House of the Devil. Though made just a couple years ago, it is a faithful and loving homage to the tense slasher films of the late 70s and early 80s.

If you liked The Thing... I recommend Frailty. There's actually no "monster movie" comparison to be drawn between the two. But like The Thing, the core of this movie is the question: "how do you survive when you have no one you can trust?" And the situation is far more realistic (and therefore unsettling).

If you liked Scream... try Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Like Scream, the movie has a lot of humor, and makes sport of tweaking slasher film clichés.

If you like gore... watch Slither. There's plenty of humor here too; the movie doesn't take itself at all seriously. But it's also the most disgusting horror film I've seen in the past decade or so -- in a good way.

I hope this has been of use to you Halloween fans out there. Happy holidays!

Active Avoidance

2011-10-23T22:58:00.004-06:00

Many movie critics and entertainment journalists have written articles over the past few years praising the virtues of going to see a movie on the big screen. As prices rise and theater-goer manners plummet, some people feel compelled to take up a battle cry and say that going to the movies is still an experience worth having. And me, I mostly buy it; there are plenty of movies that I want to go see in the theater.

But I'm also thinking that there are some movies that are better suited to viewing at home.

I was discussing this weekend's new movie, Paranormal Activity 3, with my boyfriend. We've both seen the two prior films. We both enjoy scary movies. But we decided not to go to the theater to check this one out. And that came about from us comparing notes on those past experiences.

When I went to see the first Paranormal Activity, it was still a month or so before it actually opened nationwide. At that point, a guerrilla marketing was in full swing, trying to build up word of mouth about this low budget independent film. The movie was being screened only in a few cities (mostly college towns), and only at midnight. You had to work to see this movie, and I drove up to Boulder to do so. And I did enjoy that experience (obviously enough to then want to see the sequel a year later), but it didn't blow me away.

My boyfriend, on the other hand, watched Paranormal Activity alone in his house at night. Like me, he enjoyed it without being wowed. But then, the movie ended. And with no "decompression time," he was... alone in his house at night. Wait. What was that noise? Was it the cat? Was it the furnace? Was it something coming from... the attic?

I must say, the "immersive" experience sounded a hell of a lot more appealing to me than the "saw it first" experience. Not to mention, "saw it first" doesn't even apply here -- Paranormal Activity 3 was far and away the number one movie this weekend. Tons of people saw it.

So, despite the good reviews that critics have unexpectedly bestowed on the film, I've decided not to see it. I think this is one to wait for on DVD a few months down the road.

Nook Again

2011-10-22T21:21:00.003-06:00

Several months ago, I wrote about my purchase of a Nook e-reader. I'm bringing it up again to just confirm that this was an awesome purchase. I'm a total convert to the whole e-reader thing now. It hasn't quite reached the point where I've decided to purchase an e-book for reading even when I already have access to a physical copy, but I can't say for certain that won't happen some day.

There are a couple of down sides, I admit, but they seem pretty minor. Basically, you can't use it during airplane takeoffs and landings (my tip: bring a magazine). And if you're a "read in the bubble bath" type of person, you'll lose considerably more if you accidentally drop your book. But aside from that, it's a big win.

In fact, I've actually found that I've read more books so far in the months since getting the Nook than I did for probably the last year or two. It has me back in a habit that I probably haven't truly been in since before college. (Ah, college, the moment when reading stopped being recreational for me and became work.)

If you're on the fence about an e-reader purchase, I'll throw it out there one more time. Do it! You'll love it!

When Everything Is Not Enough

2011-10-21T18:18:00.002-06:00

A good helping of critical praise was heaped on last year's small independent film, Everything Must Go. It stars Will Ferrell as a lapsing alcoholic who loses his job on the same day his wife kicks him out of the house, leaving all his possessions on the lawn. The 90-minute film is about his slow journey to acceptance of what has happened, as shown externally by his decision to sell off his stuff in a yard sale.

I'm on the fence about Will Ferrell as an actor. I don't like him at all when he's in stupid mode, stripping down for a cheap laugh. But he has a more intelligent mode of humor as well, and has shown some decent dramatic chops too (in films like Stranger Than Fiction), so I figured this might be worth a shot.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really seem to amount to much. It's too dark and dry to include too many jokes, but it's too simple a premise to say anything really profound. The main character is simultaneously pitiable for his predicament, and deplorable for the role he had in its making; he's hard to root for or against.

Really, the movie feels like an experimental one-act play. It's even mostly confined to one "set," the front lawn of his former house. And as a play, it feels like the playwright needed to "workshop" it a bit more. The movie doesn't really have a message or a point of view, but plays out as perhaps some episode from someone's actual life, where the writer said "hey, that would make a good movie" without really dressing it all up for the occasion.

Will Ferrell is good enough in his role, and the cast includes some other good performers, including Laura Dern and Stephen Root. It's not bad. There's just not much to it, and it becomes boring far too quickly. I'd call it a C-.

Really, I'm not sure how much hype small movies like this really get, but if you've heard any, don't believe it.

Just One More Thing

2011-10-20T19:20:00.002-06:00

I've already written a review of the new prequel to The Thing. But I was involved in an interesting discussion earlier this week, and now feel compelled to revisit it. My core review hasn't changed, but there was an aspect to the film I didn't mention before.

For all the movie's flaws, it's abundantly clear that the writer and director have a reverence for John Carpenter's original film. The script goes to great lengths to explain away every last detail about the state of the Norwegian camp as seen in the first movie. What's with the missing grenade? What's with the axe in the wall? You probably weren't burning for the answers to these questions, but the movie provides the answers all the same.

But here's the particularly interesting... uh... thing. I mentioned in my review that this new film comes up with a new way in which a Thing can possibly be identified. And it turns out that this too connects with the original film, specifically its ending.

If you've never seen the 1982 John Carpenter film, turn away right now, go do that, and come back later. Or, if you're pressed for time, know that it had an ambiguous ending, and then skip the rest of this paragraph. You may recall that the movie ends with Kurt Russell's character staggering away from the flaming wreckage of the Antarctic base, only to encounter one other survivor. The trouble is, neither one knows whether the other has been replaced by one of the creatures. Unable to trust each other, they settle down to freeze to death in the subzero night.

The new method used in the prequel film to identify a Thing can actually be applied to that final scene of the original movie. And it turns out, it provides a conclusive answer. Okay, sorry to keep interrupting the flow here, but now I have to warn you away from spoilers about the new film; if you don't want to know anything about it, you're just going to have to opt out of this post now.

Last chance.

Okay, in the prequel, the main character is able to tell that her partner has been replaced because the earring he was wearing -- an inorganic (and therefore unmimicable) piece of material -- has gone missing. Well, take this knowledge back to the final scene of the original, and it turns out that Childs (the character encountered by Kurt Russell's MacReady) has an earring! So he is in fact human. And of course, we the audience have been following MacReady every step of the way; we know he's not a Thing either. So it turns out that the two survivors at the end of the film are survivors. Neither is a Thing.

Now, on the one hand, I kind of feel like this revelation cheapens the ending of the original film. That final note of uncertainty was the perfect way to close a film all about distrust. But, on the other hand, the bleak hopelessness of the ending is unchanged. If anything, it's even darker now -- we know that two human survivors probably froze to death because neither could trust the other.

I just don't know how to feel about it. Except I will say this: given how meticulously the writer planned all those connections between the new prequel and the original, I have to assume that this connection was intentional and not accidental. And on that front, I have to say "job well done" on finding a way to inject new insight into a nearly 30 year old film. It certainly sparked some discussion among my friends.

Something Special

2011-10-19T23:08:00.003-06:00

I was recently involved in a discussion of interesting DVD special features -- good, bad, and ugly. As someone with a too-large DVD collection, I've seen my share of each category. Here are a few that came up:

Insomnia -- The director's commentary on this film by Christopher Nolan presents the movie in the order in which it was filmed. You get to see the out-of-order jumble that is the standard for movie making, and marvel how anyone can keep it all straight.

Galaxy Quest -- This disc has an alternate audio track that plays the whole movie in Thermian, the language of the movie's aliens. Well, I think the whole movie. No one has ever made it through the whole thing.

The Abyss -- The special edition of this film has a warts-and-all documentary that shows what a tyrant director James Cameron is on the set. But he did get results here.

Total Recall -- I've mentioned this one before, but it bears mentioning again. This disc has a terrible commentary track of Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger narrating everything that happens on screen in incomprehensible accents.

The Matrix -- The box set of all three movies has a pair of commentaries for each film, one by two philosophers who ate up all that heroes' journey junk with a spoon, and one by a group of film critics who loved the original film but trashed the two sequels in their reviews (and do so again at length in the commentaries).

The Mist -- Director Frank Darabont originally wanted to release this movie in black-and-white, but couldn't get the studio to go for it. But you can see his original vision by selecting the special black-and-white presentation of the movie on the DVD.

Can anyone think of other good ones?

Primus Numbers

2011-10-18T18:32:00.000-06:00

Last night, I went to see Primus in concert. They were returning to Denver after playing Red Rocks only a few months ago, to further promote their recently released album, Green Naugahyde. This concert, in a much smaller and intimate venue, was probably more my speed anyway.

The thing is, the three musicians in Primus (Les Claypool on bass, Larry LaLonde on guitar, and Jay Lane on drums) are crazy talented. Whether you like their music or not, I think you can still appreciate that there just aren't many rock musicians today that can play at this level. At a place like Red Rocks, I don't think this can be fully appreciated. But last night, at the Ogden Theater, I was looking forward to really watching them play, to see how they were making the music with their instruments.

From that standpoint, I'm sorry to say that the concert was a little bit of a disappointment. I felt like a group of magicians were doing their best to actively prevent you from figuring out how the tricks are done. The drummer was hiding behind a massive kit of at least 20 pieces; it was hard to see inside and actually watch him play (from my vantage point below stage level). The guitarist was standing in the dark for most of the concert; the lighting design seemed uninterested in showcasing someone who wasn't the vocalist, and he had no idea how (or desire to) find a light to stand in. And leading the band, Les Claypool didn't seem to want to face the audience any more than was strictly necessary; whenever he wasn't singing (and if you don't know many Primus songs, know that they tend to have much longer instrumental sections than vocal sections), he spent about 80% of the time with his back to the audience, twitching-dancing in place and maybe watching the giant video screen behind the band.

By all that, I mean that I wouldn't call myself a "fan" of Primus, I'm absolutely an admirer of their skill and technique, and felt disappointed that I wasn't really able to study it during the show.

It was still a good show, at least. They played two sets themselves; no opening act. The first set was a sampling of many of their best-known classic songs, while the second was the entirety of their new album, in order. The crowd was certainly into it, with some people putting on a bit of a show themselves with their air instruments and wild dancing. (And of course, Primus having a bit of a reputation as a "jam band," lots of weed wafting through the air.)

Unless you're actually a fan of the band, or way into the technique of making music as I am, I'm not sure you'd enjoy seeing Primus live. But if you're in either of those camps, you should definitely check out the band if they tour near you.

The Almost Great Beyond

2011-10-17T23:52:00.000-06:00

I just watched one of the more recent of director Clint Eastwood's myriad films, the 2010 drama Hereafter. A different title would have conveyed the flavor of the film more effectively; imagine it had been called "Death Actually."

Okay, this movie doesn't actually have the sprawling cast and numerous subplots of Love Actually. Nor is it anywhere near as good a film. But the structure is similar, in that three different (and for most of the film, unrelated) stories are presented involving characters grappling with death in a variety of ways. There's a woman who's coming to terms with her own near death, a psychic unable to live a normal life because of his visions of the dead, and a young boy who has just lost his identical twin brother.

It's all heavy material, and yet perhaps not as heavy as I would actually have preferred it to be. There are a few scenes that pull on the heart strings, and yet I feel like the movie spends too much time on the supernatural, the ethereal, to really provoke the powerful emotional responses.

A fair chunk of the cast is unlikely to be recognized by most audiences. The couple of faces likely to register are Matt Damon (returning to work with Eastwood again after Invictus) and Jay Mohr (not remotely comedic, in an uncharacteristically serious role). Still, the mostly unknowns are actually one of the stronger elements of the film. French actress Cécile de France conveys strength and vulnerability where needed, while young twins Frankie and George McLaren actually play the most emotional drama in the film, and very effectively.

Hereafter is actually a decent and entertaining film, but it's also really "just good enough" to make me imagine the even better film it could have been. It's intriguing, but stops short of going really deep. It tugs on a few emotions, but doesn't go on to present anything truly profound. I'd rate it a B-.

And Another Thing

2011-10-16T23:47:00.001-06:00

The reviewers weren't being kind, but I still had to go see The Thing this weekend. John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing is in my top 100, safely far enough up the list that it will probably always be there, so I just couldn't help but want to see what they'd do now, almost 30 years later. It couldn't possibly be good, though, right? Prequel, following up a beloved movie? Recipe for disaster.

I lowered my expectations so much that this movie managed to slip over them. Actually, for the first half of the movie, it cleared my expectations by a fair amount. This new incarnation of The Thing started out with a pretty firm grip on the same sense of paranoia as the first. It had a few standout interesting (and smart) characters. And it seemed to not just rely on CG; there were several actual effects used to portray the creatures, lending the film a faithful continuity with John Carpenter's film.

But it couldn't quite sustain. The roster of characters was a bit too long to make every character matter. CG effects stepped in in increasingly flashier ways; along the way, the psychological thrills gave way to conventional monster movie scares. And the characters stopped acting smart and instead were just lucky enough to keep on surviving. (The ones that did, anyway.)

Making the main protagonist a woman was an interesting choice, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead portrays her well. Concocting another way in which a "thing" might be identified (different from the memorable blood test of the first film) was clever. But ultimately the film gives in to simpler urges and becomes a "run from the killer" movie that is only marginally more interesting for having a more unconventional killer. And of course, there's the problem of all prequels -- that you know exactly where the story has to end up in order to facilitate the beginning of the prior (er, subsequent) story.

Overall, I'd rate the film a C+. It's good enough not to offend you that someone tried to revisit The Thing. But neither is it good enough to truly recommend.

Grading the New Class

2011-10-15T13:35:00.004-06:00

In years past, I've often blogged about some of the new television shows debuting in the fall. I didn't do that this year, I suppose, because none of the shows I sampled really grabbed me that strongly. Here's a quick rundown of what I've (for the most part) already stopped watching.

Pan Am -- Interchangeably dressed characters in a tiny, bland set. The first episode was slow paced, despite being stuffed full with plot threads -- runaway bride, disappearing girlfriend, undercover spy, extramarital affairs, and more. The second episode was so dry, I couldn't finish it.

2 Broke Girls -- I was halfway through the first episode before it made me laugh, and then I thought "maybe this isn't so bad after all." I found the next two episodes to be more like the first half of the pilot than the second. The "highlights" every week were horse poop jokes. No thanks. It's a shame, too, because the two lead actresses were both very good, bringing unexpected dimension, believability, and likeability to their lame, stock characters.

Terra Nova -- The two-hour pilot was surprisingly dull, considering the plot included dinosaurs and time travel. And that was as good as it got. The next two episodes were lamely recycled Star Trek plots, with shallow characters and weak acting.

Ringer -- If it wasn't for Sarah Michelle Gellar's "Buffy aura," I wouldn't have made it through as many episodes of this as I did. Cheesy soap opera stuff that actually did get kind of awesome in the last three minutes of every episode. Too bad it's a 42 minute show.

Revenge -- I haven't bailed on this show yet, but I probably should. It's also cheesy soap opera, but executed much better than Ringer. The problem is, after only three or four episodes, the series is already as formulaic in its own way as any of the myriad crime dramas that run on network television. You know the exact format to every single episode.

Person of Interest -- A cool gimmick, the whole "system with spy cameras all over the city" premise. Good actors, too. But from these good ingredients sprang the most conventional crime-of-the-week series, just like the 12 others CBS has on its schedule.

Homeland -- This Showtime series, running after Dexter, is the one new show I have some enthusiasm for at this point. A rescued Iraq war veteran is suspected by a federal agent (with poor credibility) of having been turned into a sleeper agent. It seemed like the show was going to play the "is he a spy or isn't he?" game for the duration of its season, but then seemed to come out and declare the truth at the end of the first episode. Suddenly, I'm intrigued to see just what sorts of stories they are planning to tell. And the solid cast includes Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin, and Mandy Patinkin.

There are a few more new shows still to come later this month, but overall, I'd say it's a pretty lackluster new crop this year. Which is probably fine. I need to watch less TV anyway.

Train (Criss-)Crossing

2011-10-14T18:50:00.000-06:00

I've been slowly working my way through the Alfred Hitchcock canon -- just periodically, not methodically. This recently brought me to Strangers on a Train, the famous story that has inspired numerous subsequent murder stories. Two strangers meet on a train (I know, shocking from the title!), and converse about the people they wish were out of their lives. One carries through with the over-the-top notion to each murder the other's victim, and drama ensues.

There's a lot about the movie that works. The acting is rather good for it's time. Farley Granger (also seen in Rope) stars as a tennis player with a conniving wife that won't grant a divorce. Granger plays just the perfect notes of spinelessness that make the whole plot possible. You believe he'd be nice enough not to reject the crazy man approaching him on the train at the start of the film. You believe he'd be panicked enough not to go to the police early while he has the chance. You believe he's too soft to envision a way out of his position. Truly skillful work. And Robert Walker, as the other part of the equation, is a very capable psychopath. He's just the right amount of unhinged, just the right amount of refined.

The visual style of the film is superb. The film is in black and white, and makes excellent use of the format. Harsh lights and deep blacks are carefully used to drive the duality of the characters and the story. There's extensive use of rear-screen projection that, while not good enough to fool the eye today, certainly opens up the film enormously in scope. And then there's the thrilling visual climax, a fight on an out of control carousel. The breaking down of the carousel is a truly spectacular visual effect for 1951, and must have truly gripped and terrified the audiences of the time.

The writing, however, lets the film down too frequently. The movie is asking you to believe a lot -- that a man would be so unstable that after a chance meeting on a train, he'd feel compelled to commit murder. The 10 minutes at the top of the film just aren't deft enough to make this idea credible, and actor Robert Walker must step in to bridge the gap.

He does so, as I noted earlier, presenting a truly creepy character that almost convinces you the story could happen. Except that the script then saddles the character with pangs of guilt in the second act. It's impossible to believe that the man who would commit the act at all, the man with the calm composure displayed throughout the first hour, would start to come unraveled later on.

And then there's that climax I mentioned on the carousel. Though it may have made for a dazzling visual, the situation is simply preposterous. It's set up by a police officer firing into a crowd of innocent bystanders, and illustrating exactly why this would never actually happen -- he hits one, the ride operator, who slumps over on the carousel controls. You are then asked to believe that carousels actually have a "fly itself apart" speed that dutiful ride operators are keeping them from achieving. There's just no moment of the finale that is in any way believable.

There are plenty of people to make an audience that could see past these flaws. Film historians could appreciate what was accomplished for the time. People who prize strong visuals in a movie would find much to love here. But story is pretty key for me, and in that area, I felt the film had too much weight dragging it down to receive a high mark. I rate it a C overall.

#1 With a Bullet

2011-10-13T18:42:00.000-06:00

So last night, I'm settling in to watch some with some company, and I hear this noisy cricket on my side patio doing its thing. I'm certain I'm never going to find the thing to deal with it, but I'm too annoyed not to at least try. Of course, we didn't find the cricket.

We did find a bullet.

An unfired, 9mm Luger bullet, just sitting on my patio by the grill.

What. The. Hell?

I suppose it's possible that someone has taken out a hit on me and this is some sort of warning. Or maybe a time-traveling Nazi was hiding on my patio and dropped it there.

I think the most likely explanation is that the people living in the condo above me were messing with this out on their patio and dropped it. Or maybe it was carried there by this particular cat in my complex that seems to sometimes get confused and think it lives at my place. (Now and then, it stops at my porch and meows to be let in.)

I don't particularly feel like knocking on my upstairs neighbor's door to say, "hey, is this your bullet?" But I'm not sure I want to just throw a bullet in the trash, either. So for the moment, it's just sitting here on my mantle, perhaps waiting for a few dozen compatriots to show up to make an interesting necklace or belt or something.