Arts & Entertainment – Page 70

Bleak House

Victorian Zombies! Tonight I watched hours and hours of two series that have a lot in common: 1) they’re both shown on the SciFi channel, 2) they’re both revamps of notoriously nerd-ridden franchises, and 3) they’re both awesome.

Battlestar Galactica
Nothing cheers up a Friday like suicide bombings, descriptions of eyes getting plucked out, nighttime death squad abductions, stolen ovaries, abandoned and unwanted babies, and mass execution by firing squad! TGIF!

If there’s any doubt left that this is a well-made show, I’ll tell you it has to be. Because I wouldn’t put up with something this grim and depressing if it weren’t. At one point, Adama says, “things are going to be okay,” which really puts his intelligence into question. Dude, look around you. In the past three years, when has anything been “okay?” The only bright spot I have to hold onto is that as miserable as they all are, they’re still anal-retentive enough to cut the corners off all their paper, and even the windows of their computer displays. Well, that and the promise of seeing Fat Apollo get chewed out.

But then they have scenes like the first ones with Starbuck and her new roommate, which are cool enough to make the whole thing worthwhile. I’m kind of skeptical that a magic squad of paratroopers descends on the firing squad and whisks everyone away to freedom, so things aren’t looking too good for Apollo v1.0.

After watching tonight’s episode, I remembered a “Battlestar Galactica” comic book I had when I was younger and a huge fan of the original series. The cover had a drawing of people running away from Cylon Raiders as buildings fell and laser bolts hit all over the place. The title of it was “ANNIHILATION!” I remember thinking at the time how incredibly cool it was, and having to look up the word “annihilation” because I didn’t know what it meant.

Even armed with the definition, it never registered with me how the show I was watching was a goofy, happy-go-lucky take on the near-total obliteration of the human race. Or that Starbuck’s girlfriend Cassiopeia was a prostitute. So apparently, the story’s in the telling. There are a lot of really interesting aspects to the universe and the premise of the show that were there all along, just hidden under layers of cheesy 80s television.

Doctor Who
Much like “Doctor Who.” I’ve only seen a smattering of episodes from the original series — I’ve never seen an episode with the Daleks, even — and I was never a fan. I tried, I really did, because it just seemed like something I should like. A time-traveling alien, a robot dog, monsters, pretty-but-British-so-they’re-not-so-pretty-as-to-be-inaccessible women, and the second best theme song in TV history*. How could it go wrong?

A lot of ways, it turns out. Obviously, after Star Wars and “Battlestar Galactica” the special effects were going to be a disappointment. But there was still something about it that never grabbed me as a kid; it seemed too talky and distant, like it was aimed at very dour British children.

So the new revamp of the series has gotten a lot of hype, and it turns out it’s all deserved. I watched the first DVD of the first season, not the new ones that started airing tonight on SciFi.

It’s just great. The interviews with the exec producer and writers reveal that it was made by people who grew up with the show and dreamed of writing for it ever since they were little. But you don’t really need the interviews to see that; it comes through in everything. They captured everything that makes the premise so appealing, but with well-written stories from a post-Douglas Adams England.

It’s not just the special effects that have caught up with the concept, it’s the tone and quality of writing. The British have always cornered the market on clever, and here’s a great example of it all working. It’s funny without being campy or too ironic, clever without being condescending, fun without being inconsequential, serious without being too dark and heavy.

And the last bit is what baffles me. When I was younger, I never understood that in the UK, “Doctor Who” was targeted towards kids. It definitely wasn’t like children’s programming in the US; it seemed closer to “Star Trek” than anything I was supposed to be watching. With the new series, they’re clearly targeting a wider audience; in the DVD special features, the lead actor describes it as aimed at the whole family, which is the kind of thing you’re supposed to say on a press tour interview.

But just in the first three episodes, we’ve seen the destruction of the Earth, speeches about how time is fleeting and everything around us is going to die, two characters sacrificing themselves for the good of others, at least four violent deaths of speaking characters, and scores of reanimated Victorian-era zombies. I realize I had a very sheltered childhood, where I always got the Disney version of every story and still wasn’t even allowed to see Old Yeller, but it still seems a lot darker than what most American kids are used to seeing.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t, of course — the show is a hell of a lot of fun, and probably American kids need to get toughened up anyway. I’m just interested in how there can be that wide a cultural divide. We get Disney and Dr. Seuss, they get Roald Dahl.

Also, did I mention the scores of reanimated Victorian-era zombies? The show rocks so hard.

* Of course, “Space: 1999” had the best.

On Dharma-tattooed sharks and the metaphorical jumping thereof

If there’s one thing I learned from that lame “Lost Experience” game that ran over the summer, it was this: don’t let marketing guys create content.

Actually, it was this: however “Lost” does end, it’s going to be a disappointment.

My first reaction after seeing the final wrap-up of the game (youtube is down at the moment, so I can’t link to it) was that it was just unforgivably bad. But after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the concept itself wasn’t too terrible, it was just presented in about the worst way possible. If it hadn’t had such terrible, clumsy acting; if the series writers had been in charge of the pacing; and if it weren’t wrapped up in crass marketing disguised as a ridiculously complicated “alternate reality game,” it could actually be a decent resolution to a lot of the mysteries in the show.

After three-plus years of build-up, however they decide to wrap up the big questions of the series is going to feel small and anti-climactic. But once you realize that it’s not the resolutions that are key, it’s how the stories are told, you can really appreciate what a great job they’re doing with the series.

Just in the two weeks leading up to the season premiere, I heard or read about a dozen people in magazines, online, in person, and in the blog comments talking about how season 2 was a huge disappointment. It was meandering and pointless and dropped storylines and never had a pay-off.

Well, I loved season 2 as it was airing, and I re-watched much of it after I got the DVDs, and I think it was outstanding. The season opener was every bit as amazing and intriguing as the series pilot was. The story went off in a whole new direction while still staying true to the central premise — getting into the minds of these characters and finding out what events made them the way they were at the time of the crash.

Over the course of the season, they really, genuinely answered a ton of questions. What’s in the hatch? What happened to the tail-enders? What did Kate do to get arrested? What does the smoke monster do? What happens if you try to leave the island? Is Michael an evil douchebag, or just an annoying one? Who were the people on the boat that took Walt? What caused the plane crash? How did that prop plane crash on the island? Is the island a real place? What happens to the people who get kidnapped by the Others? Is Locke the only one who got “healed” by the island? Are major characters really going to be killed off? What happens if you don’t enter the numbers? They don’t needlessly stretch out the reveals, like “The X-Files” did, but instead give real answers that lead to a bunch more questions.

The season 3 premiere was tonight and, well, I think it was a huge disappointment. It was meandering and pointless and dropped storylines and never had a pay-off.

Well, maybe not, but it did feel to me like they’d built up a ton of momentum with the season 2 finale and failed to carry it through. The opening didn’t really do anything to surprise me (after two of the best season-openers in the history of television), and the rest of the episode didn’t say anything that we couldn’t have already inferred from the reveals of last year.

I’m sure it’ll pick up, but it’s kind of a let-down to spend months wondering about all the questions raised in the last season finale, only to get an episode where all we learn is that Jack is stubborn and had issues with his father. Where’s Penny and the arctic monitoring station? Or Michael and strange-powered Walt? Or the aftermath of the explosion? Or Sayid’s part-pregnant assault team on the boat? I already know we’re not going to get answers, and I’m fine with that. I just wish they would’ve started out not by telling us stuff we already knew.

The Blue and the Greying

From L-R: Sherman, Mr. Peabody Several years ago, someone recommended I watch Sherman’s March: a Meditation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. I’m glad I waited so long to finally see it.

The premise of the movie is that filmmaker Ross McElwee received a grant to film a documentary about Gen. Sherman’s march through the south, but just before he was to leave to begin filming, his girlfriend left him for her ex. No longer interested in a Civil War documentary, McElwee meandered through Georgia and South Carolina, roughly following Sherman’s route of destruction, spending the entire time trying to hook up with various eccentric southern women.

The movie’s more engaging than it has a right to be, considering it’s three hours of a neurotic guy lamenting his desperation and ogling women’s chests and thighs. Taken at face value, it’s an extremely personal and self-effacing document of people’s attempts to find meaning in their lives and someone to share their lives with — that story, it tells well.

But after over 20 years of enforced cynicism and the unwelcome onset of video blogs, it’s difficult not to see the layer of artifice there. McElwee says in voice-over that he’s lost himself along the way, to the point that he’s filming his life just to have a life to film. But there’s still the nagging sense that he’s created a caricature to star in the movie, cribbing character traits from Woody Allen and Albert Brooks’ fictional selves and passing them off as himself.

He dresses as a Civil War soldier for a costume party, then delivers a drunken late-night monologue to the camera about how Sherman was a tragic figure and how he can relate. He starts to deliver a documentary-style speech about Sherman at a war memorial site before stumbling out of frame by a river bank. It just comes across as fake and threatens to ruin the believability of the rest of the movie.

It’s a pretty minor complaint over all, since the movie does what it’s presented to do, it has some genuine insight, and it actually manages to convey as much real information about Gen. Sherman as you’d retain from a “real” documentary. But it teeters uncomfortably on the edge of open, honest, personal filmmaking as it is, and I have to wonder if a few more years will make it seem insufferably self-indulgent.

Speaking of being insufferably self-indulgent: what I liked best about it was seeing the south of my middle-school years, the real south as I remember it before the strip malls and subdivisions and Republicanism sucked the soul out of it.

He goes to Stone Mountain and rides the skylift and the train around the park. We see shots of Atlanta’s old skyline, when you could still see the blue hamburger. He shows bits of Savannah and the coastal islands. He shows how even the cities in Georgia had an empty, hot, rural feel to them. He shows conspiracy freaks, vacuous discussions about religion, and morbidly obese mechanics wearing white T-shirts stretched to their limit. It’d come across as more stereotyping if I hadn’t been there and seen plenty of people exactly like that.

There’s a scene where first meets one of his targets as she’s singing with a band outside a Sears in South Carolina — that kind of image perfectly sums up southern suburbs in the early 80s to me: hot, strangely desolate, and just weird.

After being hit with that kind of nostalgia, then seeing these people all desperate for something to give their lives meaning — a job, a bomb shelter, or a girlfriend — it was hard not to feel as morose and insomniac as McElwee. Has it really been that long since I was there? What have I been doing since then that’s of any importance? I’m now as old as he was when he made the movie; why do they keep referring to each other as “middle-aged?” How come I can’t stand to be back there for too long now, but still feel strangely out of place out here?

The movie’s got enough deadpan humor and clever editing that it never feels too depressing or self-indulgent. But this feeling of desperation and tragedy and yearning for some bit of satisfaction you can’t find at home, that lingers after the movie ends. So I guess that makes it art.

Making Comics

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud has gotten a lot of praise over the years, and it’s justified. It’s well presented, and it has some genuine insight into how art works (not just comics) and how people communicate. And even when you don’t agree with the points he makes, the book itself is an excellent example of how to make a presentation and of what comics can do.

Making Comics is even better. This is just a great, great book.

Everything about it — from the art to the tone to the organization — is cleaner, more sophisticated, more direct and uncluttered. It’s like attending one of the best, most insightful presentations you’ve ever been to, with a speaker who can make his head pop off his body and change shape.

He covers the insights into art and communication that have been his trademark since Understanding Comics, but never condescends, never seems removed or too “old-school” to be irrelevant, and grounds everything in the practical. McCloud covers all the topics from staging and framing to facial anatomy to perspective to buying art supplies, always showing you what others are doing while reminding you there’s no one right way to do any of it. You’re not just encouraged to make your own comics, you’re inspired to.

Because it’s such a practical book, it might not find as wide an audience as Understanding Comics did. That’d be a shame, because it’s a great read even if you don’t plan on making comics yourself. (And I think after reading it, it’d be hard not to want to make them yourself). It doesn’t come across as a lecture or a textbook or even a book, for that matter, but as a conversation with someone who just loves comics and wants to share them with everyone.

I could watch “Heroes” for just one day

Entertainment Weekly just ran an article about Rosario Dawson in which Kevin Smith calls her a “hot geek.”.

Which to me is like saying “compassionate conservative;” it just doesn’t exist. The terms are mutually exclusive. For those of us who were nerds back when being a nerd meant something (mostly it meant rejection and shame), this whole new movement, what with your X-Men and Spider-man movies being big-ticket productions and movies about hobbits winning Oscars, is a disturbing trend.

Only the most naive of nerds would see this as welcome, fulfilling some life-long fantasy that someone who looks like Rosario Dawson would walk into his gaming session in the back of the comic book store and confess her love for him in perfect Klingon. The cold hard reality is that when someone who looks like Rosario Dawson can speak Klingon, then there’s even less need in the universe for someone who looks like you.

So sorry, Mr. Smith. You’ll still be welcomed into the Dragon Con with open, sweaty arms, but your friend will have to stay outside. We have a cosmic order to maintain. Open the gates too wide, and you get stuff like “Heroes”.

For all I know, “Heroes” was a true labor of love by a dedicated, hard-core comic book fan who’s wanted to do a story like this ever since he was a teenager. It sure doesn’t come across like it, though. Watching it, you don’t get an image of a dedicated artist passionate about telling a story, but a group of NBC execs passionate about cashing in on the success of the X-Men movies and “Lost” and too unoriginal to do anything other than copy the format of every other “disparate people brought together by supernatural circumstances” package series.

The whole thing has a junior-varsity, C-list vibe to it. Even starting with the opening text crawl, a completely unnecessary prologue that threatens this is just the “first volume” in an “epic story.” Then the pompous, overblown, and completely unoriginal title credit: “Chapter One: Genesis.” They’re getting the comic book feel down, but unfortunately it’s an Image comic book.

And it just goes on like that. It’s not horribly inept or offensive, just completely unoriginal, unsubtle, and ham-handed. You’ve got two-dimensional characters in stock situations doing uninteresting things. Everybody talks in exposition. The mysterious, intriguing villain is neither mysterious nor intriguing. The performances are mostly competent but completely unremarkable (which is a feat, considering all the awful, clumsy exposition-heavy dialogue the actors have to deliver). It’s all Generic Television Superhero Product.

For me it was all summed up by one scene: our Japanese character, who’s named Hiro, because you see that’s clever, is having a conversation about being a loser with his salaryman friend in a karaoke bar, because you see they’re in Japan, and on stage are two guys doing the “I Want it That Way” bit. It was a dull, pointless conversation between stereotypical characters in a totally stereotypical situation, with an obvious and clumsy and already-outdated and not very clever topical pop culture reference.

There was one moment at the very end of the pilot that had a halfway-intriguing twist and almost made me curious as to what happens next. I read on that NBC site, in an interview with the creator of the series, that the idea for that came from his friend Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of “Lost.” Reading that just made me kind of sad for the guy, that his one original idea he has to admit came from somebody else.

I don’t think I have enough pity to keep watching the show past a second episode, though. If I want to watch a series about people with strange new powers in a real-life setting, I’ll watch “The 4400” or “Smallville.” If I want to watch a series about a bunch of disparate people brought together by unnatural circumstances, I’ll keep watching “Lost.” Or maybe I’ll just read a real comic book.

PS: Boners!

Keep that spark alive. In your pants.

I was thinking more about those Hummer ads, and something just occurred to me:

For decades, we’ve had hundreds of ads for dozens of products where the underlying message has been the same: Buy this product and you’ll get a huge boner.

In the past few years, advertisers have been able to run commercials for products whose purpose is exactly that. And the ads always show guys fishing or gardening or sitting at the kitchen table with their wives. In other words, they finally have the chance to come right out and say “buy this to get a boner,” and they say everything except that.

Marketing types live in some bizarre alternate universe.

Walt Disney’s Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

from Amazon.com I must be all kinds of dense, because I’m having a hell of a time making it through The Odyssey. I was meaning to be reading it for pleasure but I can’t tell one name from the next and it just feels like homework.

So I switched to The Once and Future King. And it only took me 40 pages of deja vu before I realized I had seen all of it before, as The Sword in the Stone. According to Amazon, the book is actually a compilation of short stories by T.H. White, the first of which was made directly into the Disney Version (what with its being about an orphan who proves himself and all).

The reason I thought this story was interesting: the Sword in the Stone was always one of my least favorite Disney movies. I thought it was slight and pretty forgettable, like an unfinished chunk of a larger story. But what really stood out and bugged me were all the anachronisms — Merlin wearing a Hawaiian shirt and all that. Contemporary Disney movies like Jungle Book and Robin Hood handled it better. King Louie was genuinely cool (although the British Invasion vultures were kind of annoying). And I still say that having the depiction of the merry men in Robin Hood exploit all the country & western stuff that was popular at the time (with Smokey and the Bandit) was a genius move.

At the time, though, I assumed that The Sword in the Stone was an original invention. I’m not dense enough to think that Disney invented King Arthur, of course, but I just always assumed they’d done their own take on Le Morte D’Arthur or something — like they did with Mulan. And the anachronisms were just annoying Disney formula, like the Genie in Aladdin. (That wasn’t based on a re-telling, was it?)

What’s particularly odd is that in the book, I love it. I think it’s great hearing Merlin talk about electricity, and reading the narrator describe everything in contemporary terms and dialect while explaining that that’s exactly what he’s doing. It’s integral to the whole character of the book and the way it’s told, and it’s a genius move for an adaptation/re-telling.

So this is one of the rare cases where reading the original makes me appreciate the Disney version more. (While at the same time, being a little disappointed that it wasn’t as original as I’d always assumed). It also leaves me wondering if there are any other Disney movies that aren’t direct translations of a book; the only ones I can think of now are two of the most recent, Lilo & Stitch and Atlantis.

Restore the Balance (you impotent, self-indulgent little stain of a person)

Car commercials are getting a lot more aggressive lately. Used to be the worst was that Mistubishi ad with the creepy woman in the beret pop-locking in somebody’s passenger seat like she was having an event. Now it’s hard to watch commercial TV for too long without feeling like you’ve been assaulted.

VW has been all up in everybody’s business, either trying to charm you into buying a Rabbit, scare you into buying a Jetta, or shame you into buying a Passat. The ads for the Rabbit, like the car, would be completely unremarkable and forgettable except for that damn song which grabs on like one of those Wrath of Khan worms. VOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLKSWAAAAAAGEN!

Then those Jetta ads, which don’t seem to be working as hard to sell you cars as they are to freak your shit out. People driving along having some dull conversation so you think it’s an ad for wine coolers or something then BAM! they get T-boned. The ads always end with two people saying “Holy Shit!” — the one in the ad, and me.

Then of course there’s the Passat ads, about “Low Ego Emissions.” I’ve gotta admit I kind of like the concept behind those. And you’ve got to like any series of ads that has a Nemesis. Not long after the Passat ads started, Hummer launched these:

This one also got a “Holy Shit!” out of me. The version posted there on YouTube is the one that’s running now, the one after somebody must have complained. The version I saw ended not with “Restore the Balance” but the real message of the campaign: “Restore Your Manhood.” The other ad in the series is a woman who gets pissed off when a rude woman cuts in front of her son on the playground, and her only recourse is to go out and buy a gas-guzzling Hummer. (She doesn’t even head back to drive the Hummer over the woman’s child, which would’ve at least made some sense).

Before I get lumped in with the “ecofeminist” who posted the YouTube video, and the other tofu defenders complaining about the ad, let me make one thing clear: it’s not the whole “you got to stop being such a damn pussy and start eating steak and drivin’ a big-ass truck and GIT-R-DONE!” that bugs me.

I mean, it’s stupid as hell, but nothing to get all upset on the internets about. Advertisers have been pulling this kind of nonsense for years, trying to grab guys by the short hairs and point and laugh at their flaccidity until they spend money on their whatever. There were a few months at EA where every morning on my way into work I had to walk under a ginormous screen showing an ad mocking guys for being impotent pussies until they bought a copy of Madden or Fight Night or whatever.

But that’s marketing; that’s what they do. There’s some parable that keeps getting trotted out about a scorpion giving a ride to a field mouse or a racoon or something. I forget the details, but it ends with the scorpion killing its passenger and when the passenger asks why he just says “I’m a scorpion” and the moral is that it’s pointless to get angry at a person for being true to his nature. Same goes for ad people: humilating you or flattering you into buying something is their purpose in life. There’s no point in getting all indignant about it.

And that’s why the Hummer ads have me baffled. Being honest is antithetical to what these people do — and if we are going to start seeing truth in advertising from anyone, it’s going to be Hummer?

But with these ads, they’re calling out their core market exactly for what they are — impotent turds with more financial worth than self-worth. They’re coming right out and saying, “You are so hopelessly insecure that even the most mundane of life’s setbacks send you reeling into an impotent rage for which the only solution is to immediately buy a ridiculously oversized, impractical, environment-destroying vehicle that should never have been released to the mass market.” In other words, the exact same message as this parody ad, but for reals.

If other advertisers decide to follow Hummer’s lead and start telling it like it is, I just have one urgent request: please, please, please, stay true to advertising convention and keep urine and menstrual fluid a bright royal blue.

Vast Wasteland

see also: Piven, Jeremy It’s counter-intuitive, but having a TiVo encourages a healthier relationship with the television box. You’re always hearing from TiVotees who go on about how they watch less TV than they did before they got one, but now I’ve got proof. Over the past month I’ve been subjected to more TV at my parents’ house and on airplanes and in hotel rooms than I’ve watched in the past four years.

The first thing that becomes obvious is that so much of TV is absolute crap. There’s a whole section of my TiVo subscription list that I always thought of as guilty pleasures, but now I can watch completely guilt-free. Because now I’ve seen what’s out there, and it’s worse. And what’s worse, I’ve been having to see it Clockwork Orange-style, unable to turn the channel but still instinctively reaching for the rewind, fast-forward and skip buttons like some kind of a phantom limb.

Or worse, stuck on a plane with a huge projection of Jeremy Piven all up in my face for an hour during turbulence.

Jeremy Piven’s Journey of a Lifetime
Also known as Jeremy Piven is an Enormous Douche. I’ve got no idea how something this loathsome made it to the normally-innocuous Travel Channel; I’m guessing there weren’t enough sexxxy spring break girls in it to make the cut for E! The premise is that inexplicably well-known supporting actor Piven makes a spiritual pilgrimage to India with a camera crew and a book about yoga he picked up while in LA.

One of the remarkable things about this show is that it manages to make egomaniac Anthony Bourdain seem low-key and selfless. Hell, he makes Richard Gere seem well-adjusted. We get shot after shot of Mr. Piven doing yoga here, talking to a swami there, feeling visibly moved by the plight of a child over there before being driven back to his luxury spa here. The key theme isn’t so much “India” or “East Asia” but “get this guy on-screen as much as possible.” It’s not filmed like a travel documentary but a campaign ad. Although I’m not sure what office he could be running for other than Arch-Douche of Doucheland.

And all the while he keeps bowing and saying “Namaste” in that insufferably pompous nasal whine. I like to think that the typical shooting schedule for the “documentary” consisted of 10 minutes getting footage of him shouting “look at me” during some deeply significant ceremony, followed by 20 minutes of the camera crew just beating him repeatedly.

Bones
I’m sure she’s a fine actress and all, but Emily Deschanel has that weird Cro-Magnon thing going on. I’m just sayin’. It was surprising, is all, because Zooey’s hot.

But the show is stone dumb, even for Fox. Read the character names and descriptions on that Wikipedia site, for starters: “Temperance Brennan” and “Seeley Booth” are your heroes. Take that petri dish of stupidity and add the desire to one-up CSI at every level, and you end up with forensic pathologists at the Smithsonian who have holographic technology straight out of Aeon Flux.

Plus it has a message: the one I saw was about a murdered prostitute addicted to plastic surgery and Dr. Temperance Brennan lamenting about people so convinced they’re ugly that they willingly give up their individuality. Which is a good, albeit preachy, point, although the whole time she was talking I couldn’t stop staring at her protruding brow ridge.

The Closer
This one isn’t so bad, actually; it’s your typical old-school hour-long crime show. I just wish somebody would give Emmy Award Nominee Kyra Sedgwick a dialect coach. One of the things about her character (who’s pretty much completely unlikable and annoying) is that she’s supposed to be from Atlanta. Nobody from Atlanta talks like that, not even on “Designing Women.”

Grey’s Anatomy
I only caught a few minutes of this one, and I don’t get it. I keep hearing about what a huge hit it is, and I guess I assumed it was a show about a hospital. From what I could tell it’s a show about self-obsessed average-looking women who wanted to have sex with equally average-looking guys. Maybe it’s got some subtleties I just didn’t pick up on.

Kenneth Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory
I’ve seen three sermons/infomercials by this guy, and the recurring theme of each wasn’t so much faith and belief or even Christianity, but “Praise Jesus I’ve got so much money.” He talks about his boats and his planes and his big houses and his big cars and how all of us could have as much money as he does if we just have faith. And tax-exempt status, I’m assuming.

There are plenty of televangelists out there a lot more toxic — as far as I’m aware, Kenneth Copeland hasn’t blamed 9/11 on the liberals or said “nyah, nyah” to a stroke victim. I was just surprised by the rhetoric of the Copelands, having grown up watching Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker (yes, really) reveling in their wealth and excess and seeing how that whole thing played out.

Decompression

The day after crunch mode ends on a project is like a bullet train hitting a concrete mammoth. “Brick wall” seemed too mundane. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, instead of finding myself sitting in a hotel room with nothing to do and too bored even to nap.

There’s still plenty to do, of course, but the key point is that I didn’t have to do anything today. I’m torn between halfway feeling guilty about goofing off today and then realizing that I don’t feel guilty about goofing off today and feeling guilty about that. Luckily things will get crazy busy again within a couple of days, and all that nonsense will stop.

I ended up going to Hollywood Boulevard to see Pirates of the Caribbean at The The El Capitan Theater. A while ago I complained about the El Capitan having too much of the Disney Regimented Whimsy vibe going on. That was a perfect example of what happens when Disney goes horribly awry; today was a great example of what happens when Disney gets it right.

The theater has piratey stuff over the sign, all through the lobby, and in the balcony. In the basement there’s a museum with props and costumes from the movie. If you pre-ordered your ticket, you got a bucket of popcorn and soda included (the tickets are ridiculously expensive, but a) that’s Disney, and 2) it was worth it). They had the organist going as usual, which is always cool; a drawing for tickets to Disneyland; and before the show started they did a flaming pirate skull/dungeon effect behind the screen, which was really well-done and great for getting geared up for the movie. It was pretty much exactly the promise of the theater — the Disney thing combined with the Great Movie House thing.

As for the movie itself: not bad. I’d been reading reviews panning it, and hearing people say they didn’t like it, but I don’t think it deserves the negativity. As far as movie-trilogy-franchise-building goes, it was suitably entertaining. And it worked all right as a movie in spite of being the Jan Brady of the trilogy — unlike The Two Towers (a better movie), Pirates had an arc to it.

What it needed was an editor. And a few more script revisions. In the first, stuff happened because it kind of made sense to happen. It was still as formulaic as a big Disney action franchise requires, but there was motivation for everything. The second just seems as if they threw everything they could think of up on the screen. I’m sure there was a thread through the whole thing that made it vaguely story-like, and I’ll bet that it was explained in one of the hundreds of lines of dialogue I couldn’t comprehend at all. Plus the thing could’ve stood to lose an hour or so.

Speaking of bad editing and meandering purposelessness, here’s a video I made from Hollywood Boulevard. I got myself a video camera for my birthday and was playing around with it and iMovie. But if you’re into that kind of thing, the internet makes it possible. Let me reiterate that this is a home movie, so don’t watch it expecting something interesting to happen.

Blur

SLEEP! Hard to believe I’ve been in LA for a week already. On one level it feels like it’s just been a day or two. On another level, it feels like I’ve been here for months. That would be a side effect of the wicked crazy crunch we’ve been in. Any notion that I’m no longer working in videogames is belied by the fact that I’m up until the oui hours (as in, “oui, je suis très fatigué”) and seeing nothing more than the office and my hotel room.

I was playing around with the MacBook’s webcam and even after four tries, I couldn’t stifle a yawn before the picture went off. I think that says it better than anything else.

Things will get back to normal at some point, I’m certain.

In other news, the pilot for the Amazing Screw-On Head TV series is watchable online at SciFi.com. I haven’t been able to watch it yet, both for lack of time and because of the hotel’s lousy internet connection. Someone watch it and tell me how it is.

Also, my favorite song at the moment is “We Run This” by Missy Elliott.

R.I.P. Hank and Dean

The rest of this post is a spoiler for the season 2 premier of The Venture Brothers:
Continue reading “R.I.P. Hank and Dean”