I’m really grumpy about the Dollhouse finale

Here’s why it sucked:

Throughout the entire season Alpha is billed as their resident boogeyman – he’s brilliant, he’s deadly, and he’s out there somewhere plotting his revenge.  And then he appears and in the climatic episode…does nothing.  How is he a bad-ass? How is he a genius? How is he evil?  His ultimate plan basically boils down to making Echo love him.  He doesn’t try to destroy the Dollhouse, he doesn’t kill anyone (ok, he shoots a shackled waitress in the neck, but who hasn’t done that?), he doesn’t give any particularly inspiring evil speeches, and his fight with Echo is substantially shittier than her fight with Ballard a few episodes prior.  He’s a lovestruck, neurotic pussy.  Even his outro sucks: we don’t see how he gets away, and am I the only one tired of people running up fire-escape-style staircases while gunshots (that always miss) clang off the metal around them?

They make him into the passive villain, the one waiting in a lair for his plan to succeed – whether it be a mindwipe or a nuclear countdown – while our heroes race against the clock to stop him.  He just rambles and messes with his homemade chair.  Not to mention the fact that his big plan is somehow a colossal failure.  Not only did giving Echo forty something personalities not make her the least bit crazy or scatter-brained (somehow she became more lucid), but it also made her immediately aware of how crazy Alpha was.

Also, as a side note, I hate when things go crazy for no reason and then people explain exactly why they went crazy.  I like the unexplained.  2001 works when HAL becomes nuts for no reason at all, and then they fuck it up in 2010 by explaining how it was a programming error.  The Force works in Star Wars when it’s this intangible energy of the universe, and then they fuck it up in The Phantom Menace by explaining how it’s controlled by these little Medichlorian creatures or whatever.  Likewise, I prefer Alpha going nuts for no reason.  But instead they show us in painstaking detail how the circuitry got messed up and the chair accidentally imprinted him with all those personalities at once.  Why can’t things just go wrong?  Am I incorrect in thinking that’s more scary?

There were other shitty things about the episode – the lackluster shock of Whiskey’s reveal, Agent Ballard’s ridiculous compromise, the abundance of hill-billy accents – but I think the total failure to give us the villain we wanted in Alpha is what really tanked the episode.

 

Major change

Jumping on the back of the soon to come ironic t-shirt website (@ ironictshirtcomedy.com) I’m moving the blog over to a new server so thewedge.wordpress.com won’t be active anymore, instead use simpletool.net.  Update your RSS feeds and bookmarks accordingly.

I’m still ironing out some stuff with the new design, so comments over at the new site are welcome.

 

My theory about why Americans don’t like soccer

Another thought I had that was just a little too long for Twitter.

We seem to like our sports to be episodic (for lack of a better word). Think about basketball, baseball, and football, all have easily definable segments (possession, at bat, play) that either end with success (a basket, a hit, or a first down) or failure (turnover, out, or failing to convert/turnover). So if someone does something awesome, it 99% of the time leads to some sort of success. So, Americans are very used to episodic-type sports.

Soccer, on the other hand, doesn’t have these chunks, coupled with the lack of scoring, you’ve got this situation where a guy makes an awesome move at midfield and it essentially leads to nothing.   So they moved the ball 10 feet further down the field and then someone just took the ball away or the dude kicked it out of bounds. Soccer is, essentially, a single big episode, which requires a whole different kind of watching. Americans are so conditioned to viewing sports episodically that I doubt they’ll ever be able to appreciate soccer, in the same way that I doubt many people overseas will learn to appreciate American football because it’s so choppy to them.

Essentially, my argument is that it’s all baseball’s fault.  Baseball established the episodic-kinda format and basketball and football (boxing/mma too for that matter) reinforced it.

Oh and why didn’t I mention hockey, which is seemingly an exception to this episodic theme?  Well, 1.) because it doesn’t support my argument and 2.) I’d argue that hockey has never actually been a truly popular sport in the same way that basketball, baseball, and football (and even boxing back in the day) are.

If I could get footnotes to work, I’d insert this note here in support of the second argument: How many non-hockey fans can name who won the Stanley Cup last year?  I can’t, and I even watched a good chunk of the playoffs (go Flyers).  On the other hand, I imagine most people (or at least significantly more) could name who won the Super Bowl or the World Series.  So bam! take that hockey, in your face!

*Late Edit* Someone I was talking to brought up NASCAR.  True NASCAR doesn’t really fit the paradigm, but I also have a completely unscientific argument about how NASCAR is really fake-popular, so I think my point still stands.

End Soccer Talk, Begin Movie Talk

Got a chance to see Adventureland yesterday, it was good little movie.  One which is profoundly different from what the trailers would lead you to expect.  Instead of a raunchy sex comedy ala Superbad, it’s a really well done love story, which is really held together by Kristen Stewart’s(!) acting.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny, but it’s also got all this very real (and quite good) romantic stuff in it. Heartily recommended.

The greatest downside of my movie-watching experience was the audience who, during the trailers, laughed uproariously at the jokes in the sure-to-be comic masterpieces of Dance Flick and The Proposal (the Ryan Reynolds-Sandra Bullock vehicle, not the sweet Australian western by the guy who’s directing The Road).  It wasn’t a bad audience otherwise, but come on, Dance Flick?

By the way, I’ve gone back through some old posts and noticed some really irritating typos (really self? fucking up their vs. there?).  Just wanted to apologize, I don’t really proofread these things, feel free to point out errors you find so I can fix them.

 

A bit too long for Twitter

Just a thought I had as the Yankees blow their opener (also, terrible umpiring re: the non-call on fan interference in the 8th inning.  You have replay for a reason, assholes, and it’s a critical moment in a big time game on national TV, maybe you should use it.)

Anyway, ESPN keeps cutting in promos for their pre-NCAA championship coverage where the apparent theme this year is how MSU (who I have 50 bucks riding on tonight, so go Spartans!) has “inspired” all of Michigan.  This really bugs me.   I realize that a lot of this is just your typical ESPN-manufactured crap, but it’s crap we hear all the time.  Why do we have this intrinsic desire to make sports more meaningful?  Why can’t they just be a form of entertainment?  If MSU wins tonight, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden life in Michigan is going to become more bearable, it’s not going to give you your job back, and if you’re not an actual MSU fan you’re going to forget about the whole thing a week later. Well, except for me, because I’m going to just becoming off my 50 dollar spending binge.

The real height of this bullshit was after 9/11 during the World Series (yes I’m stealing this from Will Leitch’s book, go away) when the Yankees (and as anyone that knows me can attest, I’m a fairly hardcore Yankees fan) were supposedly “America’s Team” (which is btw my least favorite label of all time (Cowboys suck)).  So what did this imply?  That the Arizona Diamondbacks were on the terrorists’ side?  And then the Yankees lost the series (damnit).  So, I guess America lost.

The same thing is true with this MSU team.  Is UNC somehow the bad guy because their state isn’t completely falling apart right now?  (No, they’re the bad guy because 1.) I really want to win 50 bucks and 2.) if you like them and aren’t a.) an alum or b.) from NC you’re a freaking bandwagon jumper who gets away with it because everyone hates Duke more)  If MSU loses does that mean that the morale of Michigan has been irrevocably crushed?  No, it doesn’t mean anything.  It’s just a goddamn basketball game.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love sports, I regularly smash things and swear loudly when the Eagles and/or Yankess lose, but let’s not act like an MSU victory would fundamentally alter anything in Michigan or anywhere else.

Ok, this was a lot longer than a twitter post.  Self Deprecating bit: “ooh a rant! how edgy!” Angry reply to my self deprecating self: “Shut up, you”

 

Musings on the existence of God

Quick administrative note: If you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve abandoned the 50 movies thing.  The motivation just wasn’t there.  Hopefully there will be a lot more content on the blog once I finish the whole grad-school thing in June.  At least that’s the plan.  /administrative note

I can’t vouch for the awesomness (or the comprehensibility) of the following, as I came up with most of it around 2 am after reading a whole bunch of Bonaventure.  Feel free to critique at will and extensively.

I think we can all admit that the vast majority of the things we encounter on a day to day basis are contingent.  That is, the chair I’m sitting in (for example) did not necessarily have to exist.  Nor, one could argue, did I have to exist.  The universe (and here I’m defining “the universe” as what we perceive as reality to avoid the whole messy “what is reality as it truly is” issue and also because I’m primarily operating within a medieval frame, which predicates that our sense perception is in fact providing a reasonable approximation of “actual” reality)  could putter along nicely without both me and the chair, thus we are contingent.

Moving beyond this, one could claim (I’d imagine that almost everyone would accept this) that the entire universe itself is, in fact, contingent.  However, at some point do we need to posit some necessary thing (be it event, object, universal constant, etc.) upon which the existence of the universe rests?  More clearly, was the Big Bang a necessary event?  Or are the various physical laws which led to the Big Bang necessary? It seems the answer should be “yes” to at least one of these questions.

However, the existence of a necessary thing implies the coherency of the idea of a necessary being.  If we accept Hartshorne’s formulation of the ontological argument (which is logically valid ) than this coherency implies that God exists, and indeed must exist.  That’s a troubling notion for this little conflicted atheist.

So where does the argument break down?  Possible objections that I can see:

• One could claim that no thing is non-contingent.  Of course, this leads to some questions regarding how exactly the universe came to exist.  I guess the question is: Is there a need for an ultimate necessary cause for the existence of contingent things?
• The universe is, in fact, not contingent, but necessary.  Of course, this doesn’t really solve the issue at all, as it still supposes a necessary thing.
• The existence of a necessary thing does not imply that the idea of a necessary being is coherent
• The ontological argument is not logically valid.  <–I don’t see how this is an argument anyone could make, as it’s entirely valid as far as anyone can tell.

Of these, the first seems most satisfying to me, however I can’t really come up with a good argument for how an entirely contingent existence can, in fact, exist.  Anyone got any ideas?

That’s all I got, I apologize for any difficulties in understanding that my surely crappy prose/analysis creates.

 

Movie #42 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson movies make me want to kick a puppy.

 

Movie #41 Rachel Getting Married (2008)

The whole #50 movies thing is sorta stalling out, as I’m sure the fact that I’ve watched 100+ movies since I started am only at review 41.  Oh well, onto Rachel Getting Married:

I’m not going to go over all the reasons why this is a good movie.  For that, read any other review, it’s well made and has good acting..blah….blah.  In the interest of being unique, I’m just going to talk about what I didn’t like and why I wouldn’t recommend this movie.  The film is shot in a very naturalistic style kinda grainy, handheld cameras, this weird thing with diegetic vs. non-diegetic music.  On top of this, the characters are (sorta, just wait) written very realistically, particularly the immediate family of Anne Hathaway’s character, Kim (this is sort of a problem in its own self, more later).  So, obviously Jonathan Demme is going for a very realistic film.  Then he chooses to place alongside this realistic set-up the second most unrealistic family interactions recent film.  (Of course, the most unrealistic family being the ludicrously annoying family in Dan in Real Life, whose “family fun” antics made me want to die.  Well, actually they made me want to make something else die, but anyway.)  Aside from the fact that the titular wedding is essentially the multi-cultural dream wedding straight out of some hippy dippy liberal white-guilt fantasy (this is pretty grievously bad by the way), the whole interaction between the families is so ridiculous “ooh lets have a dishwasher loading contest!”  What the fuck?   The toasts and various speeches given throughout (especially by the husband (whose name I forget but who sported these weird 1980s African dictator shades)’s family) are equally as ridiculous.  Why would you set up all this hard hitting realism and then engage in this nonsense?  I have no idea, but it certainly yanked me right out of the film.

Thing I didn’t like number 2:  The characters in this movie were pretty damn unlikable.  This most likely stems from them being written very realistically.  Odd complaint, eh?  Here’s the problem, realistic people aren’t usually that likable, or that compelling.  This is especially bad when the characters, like those in the movie, have undergone a bunch of really heavy shiz-nit in the past.  Basically, I wasn’t rooting for anything to happen to them.  I just wanted them to go away so the movie could either a.) move onto something interesting or b.) end.  Eventually choice b. happened.

As I said in the beginning, I don’t really recommend this movie.  However, it’s undoubtedly well made, acted, whatever, I just didn’t enjoy it.  You might.  Anyway, make of that what you may.

 

Movie #40 Session 9 (2001)

Originally, I wasn’t going to review this movie.  Not for any particular reason, but I’ve basically only been reviewing movies that I’ve really got something to say about recently (hence the sporadic updates recently).  Then, I realized that this movie stars David Caruso (who doesn’t once take off his sunglasses dramatically, which is bullshit) and I felt compelled.  Plus, it has the cop from the original CSI, so it’s like a super CSI connection thingermajig.  Finally, it’s directed by a Bowdoin grad (who also directed the half-sweet The Machinist), really Polar Bear pride necessitates that I review this.  Holy crap, I just realized that Brad Anderson (the director/Polar Bear) also directed Transiberian, that movie was really good.  Anyway, on to the review:

The basic premise is that a construction crew gets hired to remove asbestos from an abandoned mental institution and, surprise surprise, zaniness ensues.  And by zaniness, I mean insanity and death.  Who could have expected that an abandoned mental hospital would be filled with evil?  This movie is pretty damn creepy.  It’s kind of a slow burn but the end gets real damn intense.  Plus it manages to do it all without much gore (although there’s one pretty messed up scene involving an eyeball and a not-quite-dead fellow) and there’s a refreshing lack of jump scares.  Actually, a lot of the tension in the movie is set-up by making you think there’s going to be a jump scare and then not delivering, so you’re constantly kept on the edge.  It’s fairly brilliant.  On top of all this, the direction is more than competent.  It’s stylish without being overly notable, plus there’s some definite indie-flair that I dig.  The only real problem that I had with the movie was that I guessed at what the end twist was, something that also happened during The Machinist.  Still, it didn’t take away from the movie too much, because it wasn’t so obvious that I was positive so I stayed engaged (unlike The Machinist.  Hence my verdict of half-sweet for that movie).

I’d heard this movie was decent and I’m pleased to say it’s better than merely decent.  I was pleasantly surprised.  In the end, it’s a pretty effective bit of psychological horror.  I’d put it right up there with The Orphanage and The Descent as one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in the past few years.  Go U Bears.

 

Movie #39 Taken

I know what you’re thinking, “Dan why would you review the ridiculously awesome Ironic T-shirt movie Taken?”  Well, duh hypothetical questioner, this is a different movie that stole that amazingly awesome movie’s title.  Whereas our movie was possibly the sweetest and most awesome thing ever made, this movie has Liam Neeson.

The basic principle is that Liam Neeson is really bad ass and his daughter gets kidnapped so he has to kill an absolute shitload of people in order to get her back.  It’s kind of cool watching Liam Neeson kill the ever living shit out of random European dudes, but this movie really has no plot or anything that will hold your interest for more then thirty minutes after it ends.  I don’t even know how I can write a proper review, there’s nothing really worth commenting on; Liam Neeson kills this dude, Liam Neeson kills that dude, Liam Neeson talks in a very deep voice, Liam Neeson breaks a dude’s neck.  It’s not really a bad movie, but it’s not anything worth raving about.  It is certainly fun to watch Neeson kill people, although I’m not sure that there’s really anything to get out of this movie.  In the end, I tentatively recommend this movie…it’s fun to watch the badassery within but aside from that there’s really nothing to be had.  There’s no need to see it in theaters, but once it’s available for renting, check it out.

 

Nikolai’s Oscar Thoughts

Seeing as I’ve actually seen all the movies in each major category (as opposed to certain fairies who run this site) I figured I’d add my own Oscar thoughts.  I won’t go through the whole list – just things where I disagree with Dan or have more to add:

PICTURE THOUGHTS:     
 Frost/Nixon – This wins my most overrated movie award.  How were so many people impressed by it?  It was enjoyable, well-done, and entertaining, but in my opinion vastly inferior to many other movies that didn’t get nominated for Director, Picture, etc.  Sure Langella deserves an acting nomination – his Nixon is awesome – but other than that it was hugely forgettable.
I liked all the others, but in my mind Slumdog rises above the rest with its unique, fairy tale, almost whimsical style.  The other three are fine, but nothing remarkable.  I liked Benjamin Button better the first time when it was called Forrest Gump (maybe too harse, Fincher gives it a lot more style than Gump had); Milk again has Van Sant doing a great job using editing flourishes to keep it interesting, but I found that it ultimately felt fairly inconsequential; and The Reader is one of Dan’s “people like it because it’s sad” movies.
At the end of the day my biggest problem is that there were plenty of movies I liked better than those nominated.  Sure, I understand that The Dark Knight and Wall-E are not going to get Best Picture nods (though if Beauty and the Beast can, why not Wall-E?), but I liked Revolutionary Road more than The Reader, The Wrestler more than Milk,  and Doubt more than Forst/Nixon (I guess you can leave Benjamin Button in).

ACTOR: Obviously Rourke, although Langella did a great Nixon.  I do differ from Dan on Sean Penn - after seeing him in 21 Grams and Mystic River I’m amazed that his character was so convincingly effeminate and foppish.

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Throwing up Robert Downey Junior is a pretty weak attempt by the Academy to look more hip and in-touch.  If they were making anything more than a gesture they would have nominated Dark Knight for Picture and Nolan for Director.  Ledger died so they’ll give it to him – I get it – although I wonder if they actually think he deserves it (by the way, I do).

ACTRESS: I disagree with Dan in that I liked Revolutionary Road and thought that Winslet was a much better character in that than in The Reader.  They might give it to her because she did two solid roles this year, although Streep (who is kinda like the Daniel Day-Lewis of women – well, maybe Cate Blanchett) is awesome in Doubt (as Dan said, everyone in Doubt is awesome – I just wish the movie was longer so I could watch those characters argue more).

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Both women in Doubt are amazing, but I’d give it to Adams.  Her whole loss-of-innocence shtick is phenomenal.  I liked Vicky Cristina Barcelona a fair amount, but I did not think Cruz was as amazing as people claiming.  Getting props for playing crazy is like getting props for playing retarded – it needs to be really, really good for me to think it’s worth it.

DIRECTOR:  Slumdog.  Just fucking do it.  Danny Boyle is an amazing sequencer (I invented that word to describe him) – the way he edits cohesive sequences (train station at the end, chase scene at the beginning, training riding scene in the middle, etc) is incredible, plus I love the little editing tricks and weird camera angles he loves to use.
Although I think Aronofsky deserves more credit for The Wrestler - he makes these flashy, almost avant-garde indie movies, gets shit for being weird, and then says, “Fine, I’ll make a totally normal, delicately directed character story” and it’s fucking fantastic.   The behind-the-back shots, the images he chooses to hold, all fantastic.

SCREENPLAY (ADAPTED AND ORIGINAL): This is always my favorite category where movies that get shafted in the big categories pop up.  So that’s where The Wrestler, Wall-E, Doubt, and In Bruges were hiding (still no Dark Knight, the fuckers).  I’d give it to Doubt and In Bruges.  In category A. I think Slumdog and Button were more visual or directoral achievements, and Frost/Nixon and The Reader sucked.  In category O.  Happy-go-Lucky I fucking hated, Milk was better visually in my mind, and Wall-E was great but the In Bruges script was just so damn tight.

FINAL COMMENTS:
Dan thinks that comedies don’t get enough attention anymore, but I just can’t think of any I’d consider a Best Picture of the Year contender.  Not to fret, comedies, because I didn’t think this was that great a year for movies anyway.  Nothing got me the way No Country or Michael Clayton did (well maybe Wall-E, Dark Knight, and Slumdog, but only one of those got any Oscar attention).  And as I mentioned in the Best Picture category, I liked other Oscar-legitimate movies more than most of those picked as Best Picture nominees.  Hell, I liked Valkyrie more than two of them.  The only solution to this problem is for me to write a fucking great movie.