Movie: Brotherhood of the Wolf (with brutal spoilers)

This weeks' Netflix offering was Brotherhood of the Wolf.  While typing that, two of my cats started fighting, and while I was distracted by them I accidentally typed Brotherhood of the Roof.  That probably would have been a better movie.  Brotherhood of the Wolf seems like a good movie -- if you're not prone to motion sickness and don't put much thought into what's going on.  It's perfectly fine Saturday night eye-candy.  Once you start paying attention, though, it falls apart pretty quickly and pretty badly.

So, where do we want to start with the brutal spoilers?  Oh, let's just jump right into the racism.  You can pretty much sum that up with "Super-Dooper Magical Injun Powers" courtesy of Mani.  Try to figure out why Mani and Fronsac, our hero, are blood brothers.  From what we're told in movie, it seems to boil down to "well, I tried to kill him and didn't do a very good job, and then I felt kinda bad about it, so here we are."

Now of course, you do realize that the Native American will not be allowed to finish the movie alive, right?  I mean, that simply isn't done; happy endings are a white-folks-only club, right?  Unfortunately, killing Mani is kind of hard because his Super-Duper Magical Injun Powers make him hyper-competent.  So, the writers just take that away for no reason.  He just spontaneously loses his competence in the middle of a fight.  What makes this especially bad is that Mani already fought the exact same fight earlier in the movie, down to the same participants.  Yet for some reason in the first fight no one could even touch him, and now he's getting his ass kicked right up until he gets shot.

By the way.  If you're ever part of a super secret conspiracy that kills people several times a month, may I suggest that you not use an extremely distinctive one-of-a-kind bullet to do so?  And that you especially not brag about using them to "sign your shots"?  That little slice of stupid is cause to revoke someone's villain license all on its own.  Also, the ballistics of a silver bullet suck horribly.  Geeky types have tested this several times.  Silver bullets just don't have the weight or dimensional stability during casting to be effective.

The racism's pretty bad, but you can kind of turn your head and pretend you didn't see it or tell yourself that maybe they were at least trying.  Let's be honest.  We've all had to learn to do that somewhat with movies if we ever want to watch any of them, because there's so much of this stuff out there.  The sexism is a similar story, except worse.  We have a monster that attacks only women and children.  They specifically say that it avoids men.  Gee, thanks movie.  And of course that means every once in a while we get to watch a woman be brutally slaughtered by a large CGI animal.  Lovely.  Then there's the feral gypsy woman who I don't think ever actually has a speaking line -- but sure gives a lot of lusty grunts.  Why was she even there?  You could easily take her out of the movie without losing anything at all.  Then, just because apparently we haven't brutalized enough women yet, at 2 hours into a 2 and a half hour movie they suddenly decide to introduce an incest subplot and subsequent rape.  Again, thanks, movie.

Even if it weren't for the serious issues above, the movie would still hurt.  They tried much too hard with the cinematography, the plotting goes goofy halfway through, there are continuity errors galore, and our villain's unbelievable idiocy reduced me to hysterical laughter in the final battle.

You know the fight scenes from 300?  Imagine an entire movie filmed that way.  That is basically Brotherhood of the Wolf.  There are maybe 20 minutes of love story break from that, but even that's filled with lots of blatant, sometimes dizzying, camera moves.  Oh, let me tell you, the director loved his dolly cam.  The movie is often described as "visually stunning".  I can't argue with that, but if you've ever studied art, you've learned that the negative space can be just as important as the meat of the image.  That's just as true in a movie, and this one never gives your eyes a chance to rest from the constant movement and pace changes.

Then there's the CGI.  This monster is supposed to be a lion (snert) in armor.  Maybe they could try designing armor that was physically possible, could work without remote control technology that's still 200 years off, and could conceivably be worn by a lion?  Maybe even build a mock-up and use it for some shots.  You know, seeing as how it was 2001 and the ability to convincingly composite CGI with live footage was still quite horrible.  ("Makeup!  Can we get some mud on our monster, please?  And maybe a little blood?  This thing is supposed to have been running around the French countryside during rainy season slaughtering maidens left and right, and the hose hasn't been invented yet.")

And of course, fight scene after fight scene after almost identical fight scene.  By the time we got to Mani's great loss of competence, my reaction was a sarcastic "oh, this is good, because it's completely not like every other shot in the movie."  Honestly, I think they have 30 minutes of main plot, 20 minutes of sub plot, and the rest of the 2 hours 30 minutes is near-identical fight scenes and women being brutally slaughtered by a lion in a stegosaurus suit.

Then there's the plotting.  It starts out OK, except that they don't get around to introducing any significant hint of a conspiracy until halfway through.  They should have introduced that "the beast is proof the King is an idiot" book at the beginning as a reason for our hero to be here.  It would work much better than "well, this thing's been running around for going on 3 years without us even coming close to catching it, but we're sure this is our year so the hero should be here to preserve it when we do."  Nope, no conspiracy until halfway through.  Then half an hour later the writers decide a simple conspiracy just isn't enough and start twisting it into bizarre knots.  And of course they feel a need to suddenly introduce an incest subplot for the first time at the 120 minutes out of 150.  BTW, what the hell was up with Jean-Francois's arm?  There isn't really any plot-driven reason for him to pretend to have lost his arm.  He must have some serious Munchausen Syndrome.  "Pity me, I lost my arm to a lion, wah!"  And like it wouldn't be atrophied after being tied up in his corset 23 hours a day.

That's a perfect lead-in to the continuity errors.  I think my favorite is the magic species changing lamb-goat with a side of self-cleaning peasant dress.


How does an error like that even happen?  "OK, we're done adjusting the lighting and and I'd like to redo that reaction take, so cue the goat. ...  Oh crap, the goat got a little too close to the trained wolves.  Um...  Oh, we have this nice lamb we can use.  I'm sure no one will notice."

Speaking of "no one will notice", when this shep-goatherd lady shows up, don't be surprised if your reaction is "Hey, you died an hour ago!"  Because she was dead about 10 minutes in.  This is the dead-woman-turned-bait from Fronsac's introduction.  That's how bad the monster is: if you're miraculously restored from the dead, it'll kill you again.  (Actually the scenes were rearranged after shooting, and the editors figured that there were so many brutally slaughtered women that surely we wouldn't be able to keep track of them all.)

That's my favorite, but there's some other good ones.  How do you feel about impossible metaknowledge?  When the beast attacks Fronsac and Marianne at her nanny's place, Fronsac tells Marianne to leave slowly and not run, and in the meantime he jumps around like a flea on crack to keep the animals' attention focused on him.  That is indeed a good course of action with a lion if you're trying to keep it from eating your girlfriend; at close distance, felines detect prey by movement.  However, there's no way for him to know this thing is feline.  This is the first time he's ever seen it, and it's completely covered by armor.  Naturalist or not, I find it hard to believe he could identify it that confidently from seeing one leap and 2 steps as it prepared to kill him.

Then there's the flip side of that, the utterly unbelievable lack of knowledge.  This lion in armor has been running around slaughtering women for three years in all seasons, including snowy winters.  Am I seriously to believe it's never left a damn pawprint?  Because that would have made it very obvious very fast that it wasn't a wolf.

Now, maybe all of this could still have been rolled into a good movie if only we had a powerful, competent villain.  Unfortunately, we have Jean-Francois.  Yeah, the guy who hides his arm under a man-corset, develops uncontrollable incestuous lust at the last minute, and uses the incredibly distinctive bullets he bragged about to off people for a super-secret conspiracy.  You know, his brain just sort of falls out of his head 3/4 of the way through the movie.  He's perfectly fine, even kind of cool, throughout most of the movie and then suddenly he's off in skoodily-woodily land.

Then there's his death.  His abso-freaking-lutely hilarious point-and-laugh-until-you-hyperventiliate death.  I'm not sure I can adequately express the sheer hilarity of his death, but I'll give it a go.  First, he shows up to the ultimate fight of his life looking like...  well, looking like this.



::blinkblink:: What do you even say to that? 

Oh, and his weapon of choice is this physics-defying bone-sword-chain-whip thingy.  It would actually be kind of cool, except 1) the movie has poured so much effort into its constant "visual stunningness" that this weapon just kind of blends in with the rest of it, and 2) Jean-Francois has little-to-no idea how to actually use it.  There was a point in here where I shouted at the screen "Dude, he has blocked you three times with the exact same move!  It's time for a different tactic."  Then he gets it stuck around Fronsac's arm and dagger.  I assume he's supposed to be purposely tossing the hero around, but it looks more like he's trying to get his weapon free and in the process is accidentally rolling Fronsac out of the way of the falling architectural debris that would have crushed him to death and ended this.  Well, that's not working, so Jean-Francois gives a good yank, and yanks Fronsac towards him right where Fronsac can just slit his throat.  I don't think Fronsac even meant to do it. He just had his second dagger out and Jean-Francois's throat kind of got in the way.  Well crud.  Now Jean-Francois's throat is cut and he still doesn't have control of his weapon back.  So he gives one last good yank and gets his bone-sword-chain-whip back, but in the process yanks Fronsac's first dagger right into his own chest.  And that's where I started laughing so hard I hyperventilated.  I can't even grant Fronsac the assist on this one.  Jean-Francois was killed by the sheer power of his own astounding incompetence.  It's only by the grace of God (pardon the pun) that he didn't accidentally off himself while practicing one day.

On a positive note, the actual story of the Beast of Gevaudan is quite interesting.  Go read it if you're into that.  I especially found the Asian hyena theory interesting.

So, final recommendation for this movie: if you're looking for some DIY riffing fodder and don't mind a strong R rating, this is a perfect candidate.  It's not completely painful to watch, but there is plenty of riffing opportunity.  If you're looking to disengage your brain and just watch some eye-candy, it's also got potential if you can ignore the racism and sexism and don't ask any pesky questions.  If you're asthmatic, however, I suggest you avoid it; the intense laughter could trigger an attack.

This tragedy could have been prevented with sex toys.

This week's movie is The Barefoot Contessa, and I've just spoiled the whole thing for you with that subject line.  Worse than that, I don't even feel that bad about it.  It's really one of those movies where the journey is at least as important as the end, if not moreso.  Besides, the movie starts at her funeral, and it's not long after we meet Vincenzo that they hint very heavily that he can't get it up.

Honestly, though, if your schwinky was blown off in the war, you really need to tell your bride this before the wedding night.  It gives you two a chance to place an order with Babeland for a good strap-on and a bunch of lube.  At the very least, he could get into it with the oral.  Seriously, dude, this is grounds for annulment.  A little upfront honesty would avoid a lot of embarrassment later on.

Of course, on the other side of that, even if you're 110% certain that having a kid would make your husband happy beyond words, you really need to discuss it with him first.  Especially if he can't help you with that.

So that was the last 20 minutes.  The hour and a half leading up to it was actually quite good.  I like the unexpected character development on Oscar, Vincenzo's introduction makes me fall in love with him at first sight, and Bogart is in top form.

That last one isn't really saying much in my opinion.  I know this is blasphemous to say, but personally, Humphrey Bogart couldn't act.  You watch him saying all these now-famous lines in Casablanca, and he's not saying them as a man about to send the love of his life off with another never to see her again; he's saying them like someone reciting famous lines from Casablanca.  Maltese Falcon, his partner is murdered and he's blamed for it, what's his reaction?  Slightly drunken grumpiness.  That's basically his default setting in every movie he's been in: slightly drunken grumpiness.  I'm telling you, his supporting cast carried him in every single flick.

Nonetheless, the others in Barefoot Contessa do not let him drag it down.  Personally, I think you could cut Bogie out without hurting the movie much at all. 

I'd have to say the biggest problem with Barefoot Contessa is near-fatal metastory.  "If this were a movie, I would have..."  Guys, come off it.  You don't even get the "it was original when we did it" excuse because Arsenic and Old Lace kicked your ass at it 10 years earlier.  (Arsenic and Old Lace's metastory is also near fatal, but in a way that means you'll die laughing.)

On the other hand, you get to watch two insanely rich guys cat fighting, and it's awesome.  I think one of my favorite lines was the retort to the "self-made" rich guy who just accused the hereditary rich guy of never working a day in his life: "You've never worked a day in your life, either.  To make a hundred dollars into a hundred and ten dollars - this is work. To make a hundred million into a hundred and ten million, this is inevitable."

So watch it, enjoy it, debate with friends about whether things would have turned out with a dildo, a butt plug, and a case of KY.

Movie: The Fountainhead (Brutal spoilers)

Alternate title: "Gary Cooper, noooo!"

I know, I know.  Those of you who know me saw the title, spit out your beverage and said "you watched what?!"  Here's the deal.  I know just enough of Ayn Rand's work that I wanted a little more information in order to be able to better criticize it, but at the same time I'm not willing to spend any significant part of my life reading it.  So I figured I'd watch the movie (she even wrote the screen play) and only waste 2 hours instead of 20 or more.  And I was even able to knit while doing so.

Let me tell you, this is a MST3K-worthy movie.  It's basically stretches of diatribe with the occasional break in which absolutely no one talks and characters make completely uncommunicative expressions at each other.  (Grant, are you in love?  Angry?  Sick?  A turtle? I'm not gettin' it.) 

Before I get into that, though, I will say that my opinion of Ayn Rand did increase a little bit after watching this.  That doesn't say much, because my opinion was extremely low before.  Nonetheless, instead of thinking "So, Ayn Rand: narcissist or sociopath?", I came out thinking "Let me guess; preacher's daughter?"  Then I wiki'd her.  Oh.  Russian Jew, daughter of a business owner, revolution in her teens; that explains a LOT.  Actually, I'd say that basically explains it all.

In any event, the Fountainhead doesn't come across as utterly sociopathic, so much as that it grabbed some good ideas and took them to the point where they became twisted and evil.  I'm all for individualism, and critical thought, and creating for the sake of creating without worrying about whether others will like your work.  (Actually trying to cultivate that last one myself.)  But I do not at all want to live in a world where the pinnacle of human existence is a rapist who blows up a building because he doesn't like the changes made to his design and then walks out of the room when he knows his best friend is about to kill himself.  That's one fucked up fantasy world Rand's built there.

(Ayn actually wrote this movie on the condition that her script not be edited in any way, much like her character designed the apartment complex he blew up on the condition that the plans not be changed in anyway.  She had a hissy when the makers wanted to trim the longest speech in a movie to date.  I'm trying to decide if the makers were brave, or stupid.  They did back down and show it in its rambling entirety.  Probably afraid she was going to blow up the lot if they didn't.)

(I doubt SHE would have gotten an acquittal for it.)

So, the movie.  It's not a good sign when the first line makes you snert.  "There's no room for originality in architecture."  SNERT.
"There's no room for mathematics in engineering!"
"There's no room for woodwork in carpentry!"
>Snort<   Yeah, that Frank Lloyd Wright guy, he's never going to amount to anything.  I mean, who's ever heard of him?

You know what they call an architect with no originality?  Unemployed.  But then again, the first five minutes of the movie are people spouting things that no one in professional architecture has ever actually said without being fired on the spot.  The next 20 minutes are solid diatribe, followed by some mooney eyes that end in about as blatant a rape scene as I can imagine someone making in 1949.  When a woman attempts to flee out two different exits, is crying, and scratches the hell out of the guy, that is a rape.  Pretty hard to deny, actually. 

[Supposedly Rand said "if it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation."  Further proof that Ayn Rand was really messed up in the head.  Personally, just because I wanted to boink a guy a few days ago when I invited him over once doesn't mean I still want to boink him when he breaks into my house later in the week after I've slapped him and stormed off when he called me a slut.  The invitation was pretty clearly rescinded.)

Then back to more diatribe.  The rest of the movie is basically diatribe and disturbing fantasy world.  It just kind of beats you about the ears.  Really, it couldn't be more heavy handed if it were wearing lead gloves.

So, actors/characters:

Gary Cooper: I'm trying to decide if he was really off, or if this was an example of his acting range.  See, I'm pretty sure that the character of Howard Roark was supposed to be played as an ambulatory block of wood, and that's exactly what Gary does.
(I look at Cooper in his role, I remember that he's the man who turned down the role of Rhett Butler because he was sure Gone with the Wind would be career poison, and I just shake my head.)

Patricia Neal: I think she's trying really hard to be Katharine Hepburn, and I can't fault her taste there, but it's kind of a Katharine Hepburn with brain damage.  Not the kind that makes you stupid, the kind that makes you crazy and irrational.  There was a scene where I thought for sure she was going to stab Roark -- and I was rooting for it.  Loudly.  Seriously, killing the main character could only have helped.  I wanted to shut off the player and go write the fan fiction where she stabbed him right then and there.

And our villain.  He's evil for the sake of being evil.  You've all heard the advice for writers that (outside of parody and certain comedic styles) a villain never sees himself as a villain, that somewhere in there he's the hero of his own story?  Rand hadn't.  Nah, Ellsworth just woke up one morning and decided "you know, I think I'll go be evil.  That sounds like fun.  I'll just go out and start destroying people.  I mean, gotta fill your day somehow, right?"  Oh, and never name your kid Ellsworth.  You name your son Ellsworth, he's basically guaranteed to grow up as a petty evil bastard with a funny accent.

So, final conclusion: Fountainhead, worth your time? 
If you are a hardcore MSTy -- and I mean hard core -- go for it.  Great fodder if you can stand the beating. 
As an alternative to reading the novel, watch the first 20 minutes and then stop when the mooney eyes start, because it basically just goes on like that with a break for a rape scene. 
As a movie in its own right, well...  Let's put it this way.  The Fountainhead is often used as an example of what a screenplay should NOT be.

Oh, BTW, if you need a name for a sci fi character, may I suggest "King Vidor"?  God, the MST jokes you can pull from the director's name alone.

Blog: Movie/TV: Shogun

I have no idea how to label the entry when I review one of the old epic miniseries like Shogun or Roots.  Anyway, Shogun.

Um...  Well, let me put it this way.  It's an American movie, about Japanese history, with a white guy thrown in, made in 1980. 
Oy vey...
Given that, it's not nearly as bad as it could be.  Nonetheless, there is much unintentional amusement.

Language: Even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Japanese language will provide you with giggling opportunities.  Now, I'm always fond of a movie using "Ikura desu ka" for "How are you?", which I think I heard somewhere in the first chapter -- although perhaps that character was asking the hero how much he costs.  ("ikura desu ka" = "how much is it".  To the best of my extremely meager knowledge, there is no direct open-ended equivalent to the English "how are you" and the closest is "Ogenki desu ka" = "Are you well?") 

However, it is hard to beat in the first chapter when the hero is still in captivity and the not-nice local second-in-command and the evil Jesuit (which is largely a redundant statement in this movie) interpreter come in where the hero is sleeping, and the Jesuit insists that "you must get up right now and greet Omi-san with 'Konnichiwa'."  Konnichiwa?!  Good afternoon?  Apparently the reason it's so urgent he get up is because he's slept until 3 pm.

Names: Mariko, Fujiko, Kiku, and many more, not even so much as an "O" honorific prefix floating around among the women until we meet Lady Ochiba -- and I suspect hers was a fluke.  These are modern names that came into popularity in the early part of the 20th century.  Using them here is the equivalent of setting an movie in Queen Elizabeth I's court and naming her ladies in waiting Keisha, Madison, and Taylor.

Stereotypes:  The makers just can't keep their stereotypes straight.  My favorite here is that if a married woman is so much as alone with a man other than her husband, she can be executed -- but it's perfectly OK for her to take a bath with one because the Japanese have no body taboos.

The magic burn cream gets high points on my list, too, because I know that knowledge of Western medicine was highly valued later in the 19th century because it was much more effective than Japanese medicine at the time.  And we still don't have that kind of magic burn treatment even today.

Timing:  Either Blackthorne becomes the second foreigner in all of history to be granted the title of samurai within just a few months of arriving in Japan, or even after several years of full immersion in Japanese culture he is only able to speak the most basic of sentences.

I also personally find it flaming hilarious that Blackthorne is made "Hatamoto" before he is made a member of the samurai class.  Hatamoto in that time period was the title for a samurai in the direct service of a lord (rather than further down the hierarchy).  In other words, he's given one of the highest possible ranks for a samurai before he's made a samurai.

Karma:   For those interested in such things, there are a multitude of opportunities to shout "that's not karma!" in the last couple episodes.  What they are describing as "karma" could maybe come under the term "dharma", but mostly they're just talking about good old-fashioned Western destiny.  It is absolutely not karma.

Basic Plot:  We are at the tail-end of the warring states period.  We've got about 10 hours of movie time here.  We can spend it watching a fictionalized Tokugawa Ieyasu fight to gain power over all Japan, or we can spend it watching a frankly rather lackluster romance. Romance it is! :P


So, is it worth watching?  Um...  It's probably not worth 10 hours of your life.  But, there is Toshiro Mifune. ::squees and claps::  If you want the full Mifune filmography, you almost have to.  Or, if you like laughing at anachronisms and can pick them out of a movie set in 16th/17th century Japan, go nuts.  That's largely outside my knowledge, so I've only touched the tip of the iceberg.  (Although, what is the deal with all the hakama having white ties no matter what the main fabric?  I have never seen or heard of such a thing before.  Is it a historical bit I didn't know, or did they have to special-order wrong hakama?)  Or, if you don't know anything at all about Japan and don't give a crap, and like long drawn-out lackluster romances with occasional long stretches of dialog in a language you can't understand, this is the flick for you!

Movie: Hard Candy (no spoilers)

This week's Netflix offering was the independent psychological drama "Hard Candy".

It's hard to figure out what to say without spoiling because the spoilers start about 20 minutes in, and both the back-of-the-box blurb and the trailer are nice enough not to excessively spoil them, so I hate to do it.  But I'll give it a go.

1.  Watch at least the first half hour, because it changes drastically about 20 minutes in.  I almost bailed at the 15 minute mark because it wasn't ringing true for me at all, but I'm glad I stayed until the change.  It still didn't ring true for me afterwords, but in a way that was perfectly OK.  It's 100% fantasy fulfillment, utterly unrealistic, but very good nonetheless.
2.  According to the filmmakers, about 50% of viewers love it, 25% leave the movie still trying to figure it out, and 25% hate it with the fiery heat of a thousand suns.  Consider yourself warned.  (I'm in the first 50%.)  (Also, I'd love to know if there's a gender bias in those statistics.  Actually, I'd be shocked if there weren't.  I'd lay money men are more likely to hate this than women.)
3.  Excellent psychological movie.
4.  Also, the director and/or cinematographer has a wonderful eye for imagery.  Beautiful shots.  When you consider the limited setting, that's even more impressive.

Movie: Rosemary's Baby

I don't have a lot to say about this one.  It's slow, it's dull, it's very much a product of its time,
and it's made by a man who later went on to rape a 13-year-old.  Rosemary has the intelligence and maturity of a typical 6 year old.  The movie also nicely demonstrates the importance of both no-fault divorces and HIPAA.

However, I will give it one cookie.  Spousal rape is the tool of Teh Evilz.  The movie was made 8 years before the first state repealed the spousal exemptions from rape laws, so in this regard, it was ahead of its time.  I am reaching a bit to hand over this cookie, but that's worth it.

It's still a slow dull idiot movie that's painfully 1968, though.  Snigger with me as Guy tells his pregnant wife that she shouldn't be on her feet while simultaneously plying her with booze.


Now, for a nice non sequitor: As I'm usually quite bad with faces, it's always a little odd for me when I can pick out actors I've seen before, especially minor ones.  This time the mental commentary was kind of funny.  "Hmm, the hangdog looking building manager looks awfully familiar.  Who is...  Oh, it's the boozey leprachaun head they throw at us in House on Haunted Hill."

If you've seen the version with Mike Nelson commentary (Legend Films), you know what I'm talking about.  If not, you probably think I'm insane.  Suffice to say, Elisha Cook Jr = hangdog building manager in Rosemary's Baby = boozey "why the hell did you come into this house again" guy from the original 1959 House on Haunted Hill.

Movie: Jacob's Ladder (with brutal spoilers)

Back when I watched Taxi Driver, I remarked that the problem with movies done from a mentally ill POV is that mental illness is actually quite boring most of the time.
Same problem here.

Actually, there are a lot of problems here.  That's just one.  Another is that the movie can't decide what it wants to be.  War flick with vast government conspiracy chaser?  Demonic supernatural horror?  Psychological 'descent into madness' thriller?  Oh, they all look so good, let's just moosh 'em together and see what comes out.

Then there's the anachronisms.  Made in 1990, set in the 1970s.  Maybe.  Except parts of it are really blatantly 1990. Only it can't possibly be set 20 years after the Vietnam War segments and it has to be the 70s or early 80s.  Except for half the women's clothes and the kids' slang, which are really blatantly 1990.  And that's before we get to the ending, which makes all anachronisms completely unforgivable.

That brings us to another problem: the ending.  I have seen some stupid endings in my day, and let me tell you, this is a contender.  I mean, you know it's going to be lame when the dead kid shows up and leads Daddy up the Stairway to Heaven, but no, it has to get even stupider.  Hasn't Hollywood outgrown the "entire movie was a dream sequence" conceit?  I know it was popular in the 1930s and 40s (Wizard of Oz, Cabin in the Sky), it just doesn't work anymore.  

I don't know, maybe WoO and Cabin worked as well as they did (and you can take that as you will) because the moviemakers basically gave you two choices for why this story is happening: weird ass shit is really happening, or it's a dream.  Jacob's Ladder hands you excuse after excuse after excuse.  Maybe it's the experimental army drugs.  Maybe it's brain damage from the 106 fever.  Maybe it's a supernatural entity coming back to collect Jake because it missed the first time.  Oh, how about "it's all a dream".  How about that excuse?

Or maybe the "all a dream" trope only works when there's a tornado involved.  In any event, in Jacob's Ladder, it was as though they didn't think I was groaning "Oh my God, you aren't going to go with this stupid ending, are you?" loud enough, so they decided to make it worse.

Fans of the movie are doubtless going to say I don't understand.  They may be right; I wouldn't know if they were.  But I really don't think they are.  It's the jumbled thought processes of a man coming to terms with his life as he lays dying on a battlefield operating table.  I get that.  I just think it's a really bad rendition of the idea.

Personally, I think the real point of the movie was to tape a lot of bloody body parts and people shaking their heads around real fast. :P

Poor Buster Keaton

I was watching Benny and Joon tonight, and the character of Sam is supposed to be a "second Buster Keaton".  This is a little funny because the most famous sequences from the movie are Chaplin bits.

The Dance of the Dinner Rolls definitely is.  It's from The Gold Rush.
I'm almost certain that the Runaway Hat thing in the park is also Chaplin, although I can't name the film off the top of my head.  I suppose if you take the entire sequence it's probably a mix of Chaplin and Keaton gags -- but Sam is awfully high on the Chaplin for a Keaton fanatic.

Movie: Steel Magnolias (brutal spoilers)

I'm going to be blasphemous.  I didn't care for Steel Magnolias.  In fact, I kind of got the impression that people have confused it with a similar but better movie.  Everyone who's suggested it to me as been all "Yay, strong women sticking together and supporting each other, yay!" and um...  OK. If you say so.

It's a very typical -- I'd say archtypical -- 1980s women's picture.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's another movie where even if you haven't seen it, you've probably seen it.

I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd been able to pretend that Shelby had some rare condition that was completely not diabetes.  Because that was completely not diabetes.  They even tried to make it "special" diabetes, but it's just not cutting it.

First, so she has an insulin reaction, and you can tell because she has a... kinda seizure-y type thing? That's... unusual.  I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's unusual.  My grandmother's aunt, or so I'm told, would fall asleep when she had an insulin reaction and could not be woken up until some form of sugar had been forced down her throat.  My grandmother would turn violent or throw a temper tantrum.  My extremely diabetic teammate in high school once had a bad insulin reaction while on a field trip bus, and they knew because while trying to fall asleep on his seatmate's shoulder in the middle of the day, he asked "isn't it cold in here?" -- in 90F weather with no air conditioning.

You look up "insulin reaction", seizure is not one of the common things to come up.  It's usually some form of cognitive change (confusion, temper, or temper tantrum), or falling asleep and not responding to attempts to be woken up.  If it gets to the seizure point, a doctor needs to be called, even if the juice makes them feel better.

Next problem with the diabetes issue comes as a result of the other big problem with the movie: a woman with baby fever with no regard for her own health.  Death is an acceptable side effect if it gets you a kid made of your very own genetic material.  Real women have babies. Full stop.
Yeah, it's one of those.

So of course Shelby has to have a baby of her very own genetic material with no consideration that she's got a very good chance of passing on her "special diabetes".
Now the major concerns of a diabetic woman becoming pregnant are:
1) Birth defects.  Blood sugar levels off either way can cause problems, so you have to keep them under control.  (Shelby didn't put any thought on-screen into this aspect of her choice.  What little we see is "It might kill me but I'm OK with that because Real Women Have Babies.")
2) High blood pressure and it's associated effects.  From my reading, blindness is usually the first major complication that shows up from diabetes-induced high blood pressure during pregnancy.

Not with Shelby though.  Somehow the "special diabetes" completely trashes her kidneys while doing absolutely nothing else.  No eye problems, no heart problems, just boom.  Kidneys are completely gone.  (It's OK, she just borrows one from Mom.  And you thought it was bad when your kids take off with your clothes!)

And then finally she just goes into fatal renal failure with virtually no warning signs.  Two pangs of pain in the back and boom, she's braindead.  No fatigue, no nausea, no extremities swelling, no abnormal creatinine levels.  Just drops like a rock.

But not before she drags the telephone outside to try to call for help, instead of calling from where the phone is located.


There are better Female Buddy Flicks out there.

(Poor Netflix.  You know how it tries to bring up suggestions on movies you might like?  It's just thrown up its hands and given up with me.  Can't say I blame it.  I mean, I loved Van Helsing and liked League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, yet didn't care for Underworld.  How to you guess with someone like me?)

Babylon 5 DVDs - the technical issues

Babylon 5 was an awesome series.  If you're a sci fi person and you haven't seen it, you should.  If you liked Star Trek DS9, you'll like Bab 5 even more (and, um, that's not a coincidence. ^_^;)

However, the DVD releases have some technical issues.  The way I hear it, Straczynski was perhaps a little too farsighted.  He realized that 16:9 proportion HDTVs were coming and that syndicated reruns and video sets of TV series were going to have a market and acted accordingly, and IMHO that actually makes the current release worse than it would have been if he'd been as shortsighted as everyone else in the mid 90s.

Three problem areas:  Live action shots, CG shots, and live action w/ CG special effects.  (Yeah, that pretty much covers everything.  Hang with me here, though.)

Live action shots have the least problems.  Straczynski realized that widescreen TVs were coming and so taped the live action portions in widescreen on high resolution movie film.  However, shots were still framed for the ubiquitous 4:3 TVs at the time.  So at best, there's a lot of basically empty space on the sides of every wide shot.  Close-ups are worse, though.  A lot of his closeups are so close to show facial expressions that the tops of heads are cut off.  This was fine on a 4:3 where the framing made it obvious (or more accurately, less jarring) that this is why the heads are chopped off.  But in widescreen, you've got someone's hairline cut off and tons of empty space in the sides of the shot.  It looks for all the world like they've made a mock widescreen by cutting off the tops and bottoms of a 4:3 shot.
(Even knowing scenes were actually filmed widescreen, I'm still convinced the Sci Fi channel did just cut off portions of some of the later episodes during their first widescreen showing, because the contents of Cartagia's desk were really quite important to that scene.  But that's beside the point.)

Bigger problem is the CG scenes.  They were NOT originally rendered in high resolution 16:9.  The idea was that by the time 16:9 HDTVs became commonplace, computer rendering technology would be much better, so they would just re-render the scenes for widescreen with the better technology.  I can see where at the time that seemed like a good idea, especially given how slow rendering was at the time (and probably still is, really).  Looking back, I can also see how what actually happened was almost inevitable.

See, there were a few important questions that were not answered when they made this decision.  Will the future technology be backwards compatible with our files?  Will our files be high resolution enough to look good with the future technology? And, the one that bit them in the ass, do we have a robust storage system for all of our files?

When you're doing CGI, you aren't working with a single file.  Usually each object, or at least each major object, is in a separate file for easier reuse and lower file sizes.  Well, they've lost some of the models; they just don't have them any more.

So, they CAN'T re-render the CG scenes, because they don't have some of the important files.  They don't have good archival copies of the CG scenes, because "we're just going to re-render those".  All they have is the lower resolution NTSC format.
So, they're mixing the excellent image quality of the widescreen live-action scenes with the absolutely awful quality of the NTSC CG scenes that have not been stored well.  To be perfectly honest, the switching back and forth from great quality to horrible gives me a headache to watch.

And, of course, to widescreen the CG shots they do have to chop off bits of the screen.

The worst to me, though, are scenes where CG effects are used in live action shots.  They can't redo the CG effects.  Sometimes they can recomposite the original effects over the better widescreen footage, which doesn't always looks so good.  Sometimes they can't even do that and the entire image quality drops, which gives the effect of "Whoa, Delenn, you went all fuzzy all of a sudden".  And whenever they do a composite shot, they have to chop off bits to maintain the widescreen ratio, because they don't have the sides of the shot in the special effects footage.

Lots of fans are unhappy with the image quality on the DVDs, and of course everyone has different ideas of how it could be fixed.  Me personally, assuming it's possible, I'd rather have just the original 4:3 format shows, with the associated lower image quality in the live action shots but consistent quality throughout.  It's the jump in quality between scenes depending on whether there's CG or not that gives me headaches.  And frankly, I'd rather have the full shots of the CG scenes than the extra unessential side areas of the live shots that we get when converting to 16:9.

Maybe I'll Pack This Nano Up

As I usually do in November, I've been participating in Nanowrimo.  You might not know this except for the status widget temporarily living in my side bar, because I haven't really been talking about it.  There's so much stressful stuff going on in my life this time around that I wanted this one to fairly light, low emotional investment compared to some year, and most importantly, be eminently bailable.

It's gone OK for the most part.  The story's been pretty fun and there haven't been any angst puppies.  But, then a non-writing problem came up.  If you're reading this in November, see the block of red where 3 days were short and two didn't get any writing at all?  Well, that's when what was supposed to be a squeeful indulgence of buying a fancy new sewing machine turned into a complete fiasco that took a ton of my mental energy and a significant amount of time (including taking off of work early one day) to sort out.  It's still not settled, but it has settled down and right now I think it'll come out well, but it took a lot of footwork on my part for that to happen.

So now I'm about 5,000 words behind.  That is absolutely overcomeable.  In the past there have been times I wrote that much in a single day.  In 2007, there were several times I did that much in a single day.  But you know what?  I just don't want to.

I'm just not feeling the love.  The story's fine, there's nothing I want to do different.  I'm not unhappy with it.  I'm just not feeling it.  The part I'm doing now ought to be the good part.  My main characters have been kidnapped by terrorists and they're in the midst of the exciting death defying escape complete with crawling through Jeffries tubes and spouting technobabble, and once they escape the civil war will start, and it all ought to be cool.  This is the part I was looking forward to writing.  But now I just want to get it over with.

More importantly, I don't want to spend my vacation doing this.  (Apparently I want to spend my vacation crazy quilting, which isn't the easiest thing with the sewing machine fiasco, but that's beside the point.)

Before I pack it up completely, I think I'm going to start playing with another story.  If my muse goes nuts on the new, or goes "No, I do want to finish Emily and the Emperor", then great, we'll do it.  If that's not happening either, then that's fine, too.  Nowhere is it written that I must bat 1000 every time in everything.

Movie: Dead Again (Aggressive Spoilers)

It's Halloween (obviously).  Normally, like many people, I like to watch one or more horror or horror-parody movies on Halloween.

The original plan was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, but I couldn't even make it through the first 10 minutes.  The movie now holds the record for shortest bail-out time.  Especially since the first 7 minutes and 35 seconds of the movie are not actually the movie.  It's instead a racist skit/diatribe by the... producer?  Director?  Major fundraiser? going on and on about how Chinese bootlegs have robbed him of his retirement fund.  WTF?!  Seven minutes and thirty-five seconds of it.
So then we get into the movie, and two things immediately make me hit the kill button:
1) You know what's worse than bad acting?  Fake bad acting.  Fake bad acting can be effectively used for comedic value for 27 seconds; then it's just annoying.  This promised to be a full movie of it.
2) So you can do the masturbating ax murderer gag, and in doing so you can show a full set of genitalia -- penis and scrotumm -- but they have to be a rubber penis and scrotum.  Guy can't just whip it out, it's gotta be fake.  But you can show it all, it just can't be real.
...  That's some weird-ass American logic right there.

At least it was right up in my face "this isn't for you".  None of this painfully dragging out for a while, do I want to keep going or not stuff.  Nope, flat out "kill it, kill it now, kill it lots."

So, bailed early on, and thus needed another movie.  Well, I didn't feel like anything in my collection (although now I wish I'd just watched The Crow), so I went through my Netflix instant viewing and watched the 1991 Dead Again.

This is one of those movies where, even if you haven't seen it before, you've probably seen it before.  It's one of those reincarnated murder things, and everyone's switched up bodies this time around so you've got to figure out who's where, and isn't it cute that the writer thinks this is a super-original idea?

We go through a pretty mediocre movie, but it's not horrible up until the end when we hit one of the Trippiest Climatic Battle Scenes Evah!  Of the movies I personally have seen, battle is second only to Taxi Driver's, and I'm actually tempted to boot it to first because Taxi Driver's at least fit in with the rest of the movie.  Here it's just a completely slice of WTF.

First, though, there is no message so important that it justifies breaking down the front door belonging to a woman who is terrified of you and never wants to see you again.  Well, maybe one: "the serial killer is in your closet".  Even that one's really better done by cell phone, though.  "Neither of us killed the other and oh, here's your anklet" is not even on the list of possibilities.  I mean, seriously.  Give her a call, or have the cute whistling friend she's sure to listen to do it, and tell her not to let the seemingly harmless British guy in because he's the killer.  Oh, and since he's not recycled, you're on your way to turn him in to the police right now along with the evidence -- the long lost uber-valuable anklet and a suspiciously dead mom with fluid in her lungs and other evidence of being violently smothered.

But no, our hero's stupid.  I actually cheered when he got shot for it.  Luckily for him, fatal wounds aren't.  Point-blank gunshot to the chest, that'll just knock you cold for a minute.  But that's OK because when you come to, you'll leap with more energy than ever.  You'll be downright genki.

Oh, and to the evil killer guy (and more importantly, the writer), when you've just established 30 seconds ago that a gun will not fire -- either out of ammo or jammed -- then putting it in some unconscious person's mouth as though to blow their brains out is completely not threatening.

And, final advice to all villains everywhere: do not make random wild cross-room leaps in slow mo, because the hero may opt out of slow-mo use that time to line up a trap that couldn't possibly be in place fast enough if you had instead made your wild leap in real time.  By staying in real time himself instead of joining you in slow me, he can calculate complex approach angles, line up heavy props -- even adjust them for maximum effectiveness.  Never could have done all that if you two had been in the same time dimension. Next time, just stick with the usual 9.8 m/s^2 fall acceleration, OK?

Whoo boy.

IDYD Ch 3: This should have been a gimme

Back to the book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional by Wendy Kaminer.  Chapter 3 is about "Positive Thinking".

This one should have been a complete gimme.  Granted, The Secret hadn't been written yet in 1992, but there were plenty of books almost exactly like it that had been.  The problem is, as usual, IDYD's complete absence of any sense of scale.

Can we all agree that there's quite a bit of distance between clinically proven cognitive-behavioral techniques, and The Secret-styled "just think your self rich, famous, and happy" self-brainwashing?  That there is a difference between visualization of a specific procedure as a mental rehearsal in addition to physical practice (a technique which has been empirically shown to improve performance over physical practice alone), and the idea that if you just sit on your butt and "visualize" what you want hard enough, it will come to you with no other work on your part whatsoever (let me know how that works for you)?

Well, this book can't tell the difference.  In fact, it denies that techniques which have been shown to work actually do so if the author doesn't like where they've come from.  For instance, when you were in school were you advised to have a dedicated study area and a specific time when you sat down and studied?  I was, and I found it did indeed make studying easier.  I didn't get distracted by other shiny activities because this was when I always studied.  It was habit.  But Kaminer insists that suggestion is bullshit that only a fool would try because it's "Pavlovian".

Um, I'm sorry, but humans do respond to stimuli and we do form patterns and get into habits.  Have you ever been driving along a route you take often but this time actually have to take an unusual turn-off for an errand, and you just kind of zone out and miss your turn-off and then have to curse a lot and turn around, because you were on autopilot? 
Of course you haven't!  That's Pavlovian!  Only a fool would do a thing like that!

Mostly, though, this chapter is dedicated to complaining about unbelievably out of date sources and throwing the reader wildly at conclusions.  For instance:
"Don't worry, be happy.  If it is difficult to imagine many people successfully obeying Peale's orders, it is frightening to consider what might happen if they did.  If conflict avoidance is a primary goal, democracy itself is a secondary one, not to mention the justice that sometimes follows conflict resolution."

Whoa, throw on the brakes here.  How in the world did we get from "don't worry" to "avoid conflict at all costs, even that of democracy and justice itself"?  Non sequitor much?  God, when the Lion King came out two years later, her head must have just exploded.  Hakuna matata, everyone! 

Actually, the Lion King is a good example of my argument about this book's tendency to take an extreme majority opinion as though it were an extreme minority one.  I'm sure Kaminer was all "oh noes!  Look at how the Recovery Monster has invaded even children's movies with it's 'no responsibility ever, just be brainwashed' life message."  But what does Simba, and by extension the cute little kiddies in the audience, really learn?  "No worries" is fine on your average no-major-crises day and can even get you through hard situations that are beyond your control (because seriously, what exactly is a 20-lb cub supposed to do against a 400-lb beta male and a pack of hyenas?), but you can't live that way forever.  Eventually you've got to pony up and take some responsibility and do the hard crap.  Ultimately the message is not Kaminer's fantasy society's "The 'recovery movement' is right; just give up your initiative and go along with what you're told and everything will be OK", but rather actual society's "that 'recovery' stuff is crap.  You gotta grab the initiative and yank yourself up by your bootstraps."

Back to the book, though, it seems in this chapter that Kaminer does not know the definition of worry.  Early she complains: "To suggest that some personal, political, or social problems might be worth worrying about misses Peale's point."  Um, I would argue that there is not much at all worth worrying about.  There's plenty to be concerned about and to do something about.  But worrying is neither action nor planning.  "Worrying" is sitting there spinning your mental wheels, going over something over and over in your mind without actually addressing it or even logically considering how to address it.  There is nothing worth only worrying about.  If it's worth worrying about, it's worth instead using that energy and time to actually do something about or really consider what can be done.  If on the other hand, something isn't worth that useful physical or mental energy, it's certainly not worth the competely useless activity of just worrying about it.

By the way, the "Peale" she's railing about will be Norman Vincent Peale, and in particular his famous 1952 work, The Power of Positive Thinking.  She spends page after page, I'd guess at least a full third of the chapter, ripping this book apart.

Let me say that publication date again: 1952.  She's railing against a book that, at the time of her own publication, was 40 years old.  Let's look at the state of science in the 1950s:  smoking was good for you -- especially if you were pregnant, because you wanted that baby to be as small as possible when it was born; condoms could be washed out and reused; and Disney was shoving lemmings off cliffs and calling it educational.  (Lemmings don't actually commit mass suicide.)  On a psychological level, Freud's theories were in the early stages of falling out of favor, but more effective forms of pyschological therapy were 20 or more years off.

The Power of Positive Thinking may deserve a good shredding, but it's hardly an immediate problem.  Picking apart a 40-year-old book on positive thinking is a bit like picking apart one of those old medical recommendations for women to smoke while pregnant to reduce birth weight.  It's bad advice in a vacuum, but most people realize now how dated it is.  (She also fails to mention that it was considered pretty darn nutty when it was published, and Preacher Peale's professional psychologist partner started going "I am so not with him.  I didn't have anything to do with that POS" when it came out.)

She then ups that ante by spending several more pages instead complaining about Napoleon Hills Think and Get Rich, written in 1936.
::blinkblink::  Honestly!  This is the best she can do?!  She can't at least grab one of the McWilliams' books co-credited to infamous cult leader and nutjob John-Roger that were published in the late 80s/early 90s (and loved by Oprah, so she'd even get to tie in to the previous chapter), if not one of the even nuttier books I know were out there.  She honestly couldn't find anything more recent and topical than 40 to 55 years old?!?!  Geez!

Yeah, she's convincing me this "Recovery Movement" thing of hers is a new, modern, and immediately pressing problem. ::eye roll::

So, finally, last third of the book is dedicated to talking about est.  WTF is est?  est was a series of expensive "New Age awareness training seminars" which went defunct in 1984.
1984.
IDYD was written in 1992.  Again, she can't find anything more topical than a series of training seminars that could only be afforded by a small elite group and had been defunct for 8 years?

The most frustating thing about IDYD, though, is that she does have a few good points, but they're so buried under the BS.  For instance, she does point out the Big Problem with positive thinking: "There is no such thing as luck (positive thinkers don't generally believe in luck), which means that there are no hapless victims, only assholes who invite their own abuse."  Yes.  That's what a lot of us are on about with crap like The Secret; the dark side of "your thoughts literally rather than just perceptually create your reality" is that means that those in dire straits have brought it on themselves.  However, she talks about the 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking for seven straight pages, the 1936 Think and Get Rich for five pages, the defunct est program for 4 pages, and this actual real problem for 2 paragraphs.  (Hint:  Good writing would be to put this argument about the dark side of Positive Thinking at the beginning of the chapter, and then relate all later source-shredding back to it.  Bad writing would be... what we got.)

Next chapter: Support groups: evil incarnate or just whiny?

IDYD ch 2: It Came from the Television

"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional" by Wendy Kaminer.  Let's review what the book has said so far.
"Everyone in the whole world is a huge whiner."

OK, that about brings us up to now...

In all seriousness, I think perhaps the biggest problem with this book is that it is a massively majority opinion that has mistaken itself for a minuscule minority one, a self-proclaimed lone voice of reason in an insane asylum, if you will.  The author portrays the world as largely populated with people who claim either abuse resembling the Holocaust because their parents didn't help them with homework one night or proudly proclaim that they are victims of an addiction to... whatever.  The most trivial of items will work.  These people insist on talking about their addiction or hardships incessantly to anyone who will listen, much like some half-crazy guy on the subway, while simultaneously refusing to listen to anyone else.  And above all, any addiction or claim to past trauma is a immediate, compete and irrevocable "get out of responsibility free" card.

Pfph.

This is not the case now.  This was not the case in 1992, when the book was written.  It was not the case before.  There is still massive stigma against therapy.  Just the phrase "my therapist" is an immediate conversation stopper in most company.  Look around your workplace.  Has anyone there come up and told you while on the clock that they're have a drug or alcohol addiction?  Statistically speaking, 6% of them do.  If they inadvertently advertise it, do the people around them go "oh, it's not their fault. They have an addiction," or do they go "Lousy drunk/pothead/druggie/OK-I'm-not-exactly-up-on-my-slang-here.  Why doesn't he get his act together?  They ought to fire the bum."  If anything, trying to claim addiction or a hard past as an excuse for your actions will get you smacked down twice as hard -- one for the act, and again for trying to talk yourself out of the consequences of it.

I'm not saying either is the way it "should" be.  I'm saying her personal little codependent nightmare world where the "recovery movement" has destroyed America complete with Mom and apple pie has never existed anywhere except in fear-mongering media portrayals and maybe some really bad sitcoms.

Bad sitcoms are not how the Recovery Monster will come through your TV to get you, however, and that brings us to Chapter 2 in the book: "Testifying: Television".

I'm trying to figure out the punctuation there.  It's not like other chapters are "Testifying: Radio" and "Testifying: Semaphore Flags".  Colons are always kind of tricky as punctuation goes, so maybe I'm in the wrong here, but that just doesn't look right.

Here the author goes on (and on and on) about about how the Recovery Monster's soul-baring, spilling-every-thought-in-their-head (especially the ones she doesn't want to hear.  "Stop talking about child abuse!  We need to focus on real issues!") minions "dominate the mass marketplace and help make it one that is inimical to ideas", and they have laid waste to intelligent discourse by utterly infiltrating... talk shows.

::blinkblink::

Right, because everyone emulates the guests on Jerry Springer.

I didn't know my eyes could roll 360 degrees.  They're talk shows!  Worse, with this book's publication date, they're 80s talk shows.  I am old enough to run for Senate, and there has never been a time in my life when talk shows have not been considered trash television.  If anything, talk shows trigger a strong knee-jerk anti reaction.  Anything featured on a talk show has to be bad, anything someone does on a talk show is a sign of a trashy loser.

So, the rest of the chapter, do we go off this to talk about how the Recovery Monster has spread from talk shows to say, popular entertainment?  Or worse, the nightly news?
Well, no.  Talking about the news would mean admitting that everyone in the media exactly the same things she was saying, going to popular entertainment would mean facing that "the recovery movement" is a huge laughing stock.  So we stick to talk shows, and how the Recovery Monster has turned them to a force of evil instead of their previous force for... evil. Hmm.

That's enough for one day.  Next time: "Est.  It's not just a suffix anymore."  (What the hell is 'est'?)

OK, this book needs a blow-by-blow commentary.

Someone suggested that I read "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions", and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

From the title, I thought it would have potential.  I do grow tired of people who mistake imperfect families for dysfunctional.  Being made of human beings, no family is perfect, and somewhere in the 80s we got the idea that if you weren't the Huxtables, your family was dysfunctional.  If you can make the joke "my family put the fun in dysfunctional", odds are your family isn't.  There's nothing at all fun about a dysfunctional family.

The author of IDYD is railing against "the recovery movement".  What is "the recovery movement"?  Damned if I know.  It's this vague half-fictional entity that's destroying society.  As near as I can tell, anything that isn't yanking yourself up by your bootstraps is this evil society-destroying entity.  Of course, virtually no one needs any bootstrap yanking because the only form of abuse is violent incest.  If you were not raped by your parents, you were not abused.  Point blank.

This is actually a good place to jump into the blow-by-blow, I think.  I am currently half-way through chapter 3 of 7 + a conclusion.  The first ones may get mooshed together, and I don't know how much detail I'll go into the later ones.  Hell, I very well may bail at any moment.  But this book deserves a good ripping as long as I can handle it.

So, intro and chapter 1.  I'm putting them together because I didn't realize the book had started with chapter 1.  It seemed a continuation of the introductory explanation/whining. However, this is a good place for me to put a caveat.  Just as, at least according to her early insistence if not her later writing, the author insists that she is criticizing the "movement" and not the people within it, I am criticizing how she says things, not necessarily what she says.  Some of what she says, but not all of it.  She does have some good points in here, but she's cast her net too widely, painted them with too broad a brush, buried them too deeply and committed other horrible cliches to them.

So, problem with how this author makes her point.  First, she is very much a Suffering Olympics person.  If anyone anywhere has ever had bigger problems or more suffering than you, you have no right to say anything about it ever.  She is also astoundingly black and white.  Hence the attitude that abuse is being raped by your parents, full stop.  If you think any other behavior was abusive, you're a whiny mindless sheep.  (The reason I repeat the phrase "raped by your parents" is because she repeats it, several times, as her standard for abuse.)

She's also misusing sources -- taking them out of context, not giving them when it's critical, that sort of thing.  I think my favorite so far, though, is when in her complaints about the overuse of the concept of codependency,she writes "Almost everyone -- 96 percent of all Americans -- suffers from codependency, experts assert" -- and gives no citation.  This statement right here is the crux of the entire book.  Anything that 96% of the population experiences is normalcy; she's here to complain at least somewhat about normalcy being pathologized.  But with no citations, what experts are we talking?  Are we talking recognized and respected experts, or are we talking "Dr. Phil" type 'experts'?

I will say, there are some positively hilarious tidbits in this, though.  One of my favorites in Chapter 1:
"Whether alcoholism is an inheritable disease or a learned behavior is a controversy about which I have no opinion.  (I do doubt, however, that absolutely everyone who drinks habitually or in excess is a victim of her genes.)"
*snert* Nope, no opinion here.

She also has problems with etymology.  I'm sorry, but the word "disease" actually does come from the roots "dis" and "ease" via the French, des+aise.  It's not simple coincidence like god and dog.  Yes, it gets annoying to hear it over and over in cheerful voices, but that doesn't make it not true.

Whoo.  I write it out and it's worse than I thought.

Tomorrow: how the horrible society destroying monster will attack you through your television.

Movie: Underworld (Heavy spoilers)

Underworld: What happens when your GM can't decide between Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and then watches The Matrix.  And for this reason, White Wolf sued.  The Wachowski brothers, on the other hand, just shook their heads.  And maybe snickered.

What to say about Underworld.  Oh, I know.  BWAHAHAHA! *points and guffaws*  I mean, the leather bodysuits and trench coats, and the corsets, and the Hot Topic goth-wannabe wear.  And just the name "Kraven" on your cowardly villain.  No.  Just no.  Bad writer, bad.  You were supposed to search/replace that before sending it to print.  And the genetic bullshit. And going out of our way to wake up Viktor so he'll be around for the "he's evil" reveal when it could have just been written that way straight up to begin with.  And none of these battles really mean anything at all because there's absolutely no reason to root for either side.  And then Michael turning into this thing that's supposed to be a werewolf/vampire hybrid but looks more like a half man/half spotted newt.  And the guy going into Super Standoff Mode and pulling out weapons and all the while he doesn't realize that half his head's been cut off.  And the "oh poopie" look when he does realize it.  Bwa ha ha!

At least as funny as 300.  I can't believe there isn't a Rifftrax for this thing.  How is that even possible?

One thing I will give Underworld credit for (OK, the only thing) is the gender swap on the usual stereotype.  I mean, usually when you have a chosen one that's being fought over and chased and captured and uncaptured and recaptured and who doesn't really do much, but who has a lover who is constantly bailing them out and doing really kick-ass things to do it, usually the chosen one is female and the ass-kicking lover is male.  This was a fairly nice change of pace.  Except that the movie's awful.

End conclusion on Underworld: hilariously horrible.

DVD box text WTF?

The last couple of movies I've gotten from Netflix, the story summary has been... off.

I guess Chushingura wasn't terribly bad. The back-of-box text is:
"At the dawn of the 18th century, honorable Lord Naganori Asano (Yuzo Kayama) refuses to buy off a crooked official (Chûsha Ichikawa) and subsequently gets tricked into performing ritual suicide. Asano's masterless and displaced followers suffer humiliation and poverty while waiting for the chance to prove their loyalty by avenging their leader's death. This tense, deliberately paced drama is based on a venerable Japanese legend."

That's not really how it came across to me. Instead of "honorable lord refusing to buy off crooked official", it seems more like "well intentioned but inexperienced lord botches expected social niceties and incompetent shogun allows things to get completely out of control."
1) To me, it doesn't seem like bribery if someone gives you a gift worth 200 ryou and expects you to return the favor with... a gift worth 200 ryou. That just seems like the exchange of gifts between business/political associates that's common in some cultures, and the problem here is that Asano's list of customary amounts is about 50 years out of date.
2) Asano's not so much tricked into committing seppuku, as he lost his temper and drew his sword in the Shogun's palace, which the Shogun didn't much appreciate and which was well-known to be a stupid thing to do. Oishi wasn't trying to get Asano to pull his sword. Actually, it surprised the living crap out of him that Asano really did it.
3) Tragedy coming about because of a central leader's incompetence is definitely a major aspect of the film. The only time we see the Shogun, he's complaining that the guy who was just attacked and is bleeding from multiple sword wounds got blood on the Shogun's good kimono. We actually see the Shogun's dog longer than we see the Shogun, in a scene were the dog is being carried through the town in a palanquin while peasants are made to bow down to it. The Shogun refuses to hear Asano's reason for drawing his sword, which would have placated the underlings. Instead he destroys the Asano clan, while sending Oishi home without so much as a "shame on you". Every bit of the story was avoidable with decent leadership.

Oh, and "deliberately paced" is code for "there's really only 90 minutes of story, but it drags out for 3 and a half hours." Gosh, the movie must spend at least 20 minutes just replacing tatami mats -- and believe me, I wish I was kidding.

Still, I can at least see where the back of box text came from, even if I really disagree with it.

This time, though. I got Furin Kazan, released in the US as "Samurai Banners", and it's box blurb is:
"Yamamoto Kansuke (Mifune Toshiro), a Bushido fighter, has risen through the ranks through dishonorable means, a fact that his warlord knows nothing about. To Takeda (Kinnosuke Naka), Yamamoto is the consummate leader, a man beyond reproach. But when they both fall for Princess Yufu (Yoshiko Sakuma), Yamamoto is forced to compete with Takeda, who soon discovers what his once-loyal disciple is all about."

Did we watch the same movie? Um, no. Not at all. Kansuke, a ronin, gets hired on due to a dirty trick, but after that he rises through the ranks because he's a brilliant strategist. Granted, he starts as a sneaky bastard, but everyone knows he's a sneaky bastard. He gets called on it by an enemy about 45 minutes in and then he can't be a sneaky bastard anymore because no one's falling for it. As for the "forced to compete" bit, Yu's been dead 7 years by then and the competition come about because Yamamoto's spent the last 15-ish years leading the campaign to take over half of Japan and has the final battle all planned out so victory is just about guaranteed and then Takeda's goes all "oh, I decided I wanted to plan a battle, so I just moved the army." Oh, and if Takeda really didn't realize that Kansuke had a special devotion to Yu until the end of the movie, he's too stupid to rule anyway.

The movie is really more about ambition. I think it's summed up by the repeated line "What you want is something immense, that's out of your grasp. What I want is right in front of my eyes." Kansuke dreamed great big, and so did great big, and ultimately screwed up great big.
This one's a good movie, though, worth the 166 minute run time.

MST3K Drinking Game

I was going through a very old binder (I swear the things reproduce when my back is turned) and found something I just have to share: the start of an MST3K drinking game.

• When the movie drives a crew member into an identity crisis, take one drink.
• When there is a reference to
• A previous episode, take one drink.
  
• Trumpy (outside of the movie "Pod People", of course), take one drink.
• Someone's "area", take one drink.
• A woozle who's name is Peanut, take one drink.
• A "war wilf", take two drinks.
• Gamera, take one drink.
• When one crew member vetoes another's joke, take one drink.
• When the movie has a moment so stupid, the cast can only laugh, take one drink.
• When the cast explicitly declares the movie's badness, take two drinks.
• When someone uses the phrase:
  
• "lip and tongue action", take two drinks.
• "Think about it, won't you?", take one drink
• "You can't handle the truth", take one drink.
• "Can I be in your movie?", take one drink.
• "If so-and-so and what's-their-face had a baby" (names filled in as appropriate), take one drink.
  
• When there is a name drop gag you get, take one drink.
• When the crew comes up with alternate lyrics to a movie's music, take one drink.
• When TV's Frank dies, take one drink
• If it's for keeps, chug it.
• When there's a Star Trek gag, take one drink.
• When there's a "It's a Wonderful Life," reference, take one drink.
  
• When you hear the words Capsnaffler or Fentuzzler, take one drink.
• When someone attempts to flee the theater, take one drink.
• if they succeed, take two drinks.
• When there is a riff by Cambot or Gypsy, take one drink.
• When a bot is destroyed, take one drink.
• When the credits include John Agar, Burt I. Gordon, Roger Corman, Robert Z'dar, Peter Graves, Tony Zarindast, or any Estavez, take one drink.
• If the credits include Raul Julia or Joe Don Baker, take two drinks.
• When a crew member voices a plant or animal, take one drink.
• When there's a monster named "Paul", chug it.
• When someone leaves the safety of a car to flee a monster, take one drink.
• When the 'bots exalt about underwear, take one drink.
• When the end of show stinger is from a host segment, take one drink.
• When someone loses consciousness, take one drink.
• When someone other than Frank dies, take two drinks.
• When the crew addresses the movie as an entity, take one drink.
• When the movie drives a crew member to cross-dress, take one drink.
• When Servo has hayfever, take two drinks.
• When someone references the crying Indian "litter on the highway" commercial, take one drink.
• When the crew does a sight gag, take one drink.
• When the movie recycles footage, take one drink.

Please, think about it, won't you? :)

Movie: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I am sooooo late to the party with this one.
Actually, because I am so late, and it was so popular, and it is fairly recent, I won't go into the movie itself too much. If you were going to see it, you probably already would have.

What I'm going to do instead is put the entire world on notice: Never again do I want to hear someone say you can't have a good female lead in a good action movie. Ever.

Heck, this movie comes very very close to failing the male equivalent of Bechdel's Law. (Bechdel's Law being the principle that a movie should 1) have at least two women in it, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.) I have only seen two movies that fail the male equivalent. One is (of course) Thelma and Louise*, and the other is, interestingly enough, My Neighbor Totoro. (Dad and the boy are the only male characters. I'm not sure they ever talk to each other; if they do, it's about the girls.)

Here, the only reason Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon passes is because there's one scene where two men talk to each other about a sword. Maybe two scenes. And yet the movie holds the record for Oscar nominations for a non-American film, grossed about a bagillion dollars, and is widely (and rightfully) regarded as awesome.

So world, don't tell me it can't be done.

(And if you haven't seen it, you really should. We have some really bitchin' female leads here, and you just don't get to see that very often.)


*OK, confession time: anyone else, when you saw Thelma and Louise, did you also check the credits to see whether it was written by a man or a woman? I did. (It was a woman, BTW.) I was giving it even odds. In the early 90s I think it would have been difficult to find a male writer who would write a female buddy pic, but at the same time it was so over the top with the man-hating that I had to wonder if it was a guy trying way too hard to pass. I mean, it's not just over the top, it is so over the top. You've got to have the formatting to really express the misandry here.

Movie: My Sister's Keeper

Yesterday was a significant life-event anniversary, and I decided on a movie as a treat. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of movies in the theaters right now that really grab me. Out of curiosity when looking at the list of movies playing, I clicked on My Sister's Keeper's trailer, and it looked pretty good, so there I went.

The spoiler-free part:
If you are expecting a realistic movie, your suspension of disbelief will be stretched until it snaps like a cheap rubber band. However, if you're instead willing to pretend this is an alternate universe with much scarier codes of medical and legal ethics than our own, and just get into the emotional aspects and character interactions, it's a pretty good movie. It made me bawl like a baby, but you probably guessed that already. I'm willing to bet the original book is better. There are parts that very much seem rushed, cut off, or just not well developed -- very common in movies based on books.

Also, very good job capturing how inadequate parents operate, especially since this is a situation where people expect the parents to be hyper-competent instead of incompetent. There's one parent who has basically checked out of his responsibilities, and one who has completely defined herself in terms of one child -- thus requiring that child to fulfill her needs. And as a result none of the children are getting the care they need. Jesse has to care for himself, Kate has to care for her mother's emotional needs as well as her own, and Anna has to take care of everyone to the point where her own health is an acceptable and expected casualty. Some parts are obvious ("Give your sister your kidney, dammit! It's your duty to save her life!"), and some are more subtle. There's a scene where Anna is cleaning up one of the nastier aspects of Kate's illness, and I found myself wondering "Where are the parents? Why is this 11-year-old expected to wipe her sister's ass instead of shouting 'Mom, Kate needs some help'?"

Now, the Spoilerific part of the entry:
Some of the issues that I had with suspending my disbelief.
1) The premise. We have a preteen suing to avoid being forced to give a kidney to her sister who has gone into renal failure due to active leukemia. The whole time I was sitting there thinking "Would any reputable doctor actually take a kidney donation from a healthy preteen, even if they were willing?" If the movie hadn't largely been a lark on my part, I probably would have looked that up before going. For those with the same issue, I looked it up when I got home, and a very quick jaunt through the internet suggests the answer is "Technically yes, but..." Only a third of transplant centers will accept donations from mature but underage identical twins, fewer still from mature minor non-twins, and donations from immature minors are exceedingly rare. You throw in to this movie that the desired donor has made it clear she is NOT willing to undergo procedure, and that the recipient is suffering from leukemia that is not in remission, it would just never happen. No doctor that Sara would be wiling to let operate on Kate would take a kidney out of healthy preteen kid to put it into a kid that will almost inevitably die anyway because she's cancerous and will not be able to handle chemo or radiation with only one kidney.

2) Mom The Lawyer pleading her own case. What's the saying? A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client. No lawyer of even moderate ability would do this, unless possibly she thought she could bully her daughter hard enough on the stand to make her drop the case right there, in which event, great mom, huh? But then again, the movie is a long string of "Great mom, huh?" moments, sprinkled with the occasional "Great Dad, too" and "Geez, Dad, grow a pair" moments.

3) Judge De Salvo repeatedly threatening to have Campbell's service dog removed from the court. Hello, service dog. As soon as he declared it to be a service dog, she had no right to do or say anything about its presence in the room, and I really hope a judge would know that.


I am kind of imagining about 10 years after the movie.
One, I really hope that when she reached adulthood, Anna found a really good psychological counselor to work with, because the poor girl is going to need one. "Nope, your parents didn't love you or think of you as a person, you were just spare parts for your sister, it was your job since infancy to save her life and in the end you failed."

Two, I bet by the time Anna is thirty at the latest, and probably much younger, she never speaks to her mom except on the yearly family vacation and that usually ends in a screaming match. Of course, Mom doesn't understand why her daughter hates her so, because in her mind she never did anything wrong. And she probably still thinks Anna was selfish for wanting to keep her kidney, still refuses to believe that Kate's wishes were Kate's wishes, and on some level blames Anna for Kate's death. Frankly, Mom really needs a good psychologist too, but I'm sure she'll never go to one because again, in her mind she never did anything wrong.

As for Anna and Dad, they probably get along better but are still distant. He wasn't as directly into the "Parts: The Clonus Horror" bit, but he never stood up for her, either.

So, finally summary on My Sister's Keeper: Completely unrealistic, but pretty good from a psychological and emotional aspect.