8
Apr
8
Apr
Tonight: each couple dances once to live music. Such a simple little innovation, but a genuinely good idea; you probably couldn’t sum up why the Australian version of this show is the best any more easily than that, as well as why Nigel Lythgoe’s desperate flailing to remake the American version is so wrongheaded.
Top three girls: hip-hop. I am deeply, deeply over girl/girl hip-hop routines where the girls are bitchy fabulous divas. I like girls to dance hip-hop and kick ass, not be flirty extras in a Ke$ha video or something. That having been said: the opening with the backlit screen was visually really impressive, and Jessie in particular seemed to me to be underdancing here; if Jess hadn’t clearly had a major misstep right at the end she would have been totally outclassed. Still: this was just kind of boring, like every other Jet Verne hip-hop this season has been.
Ivy and Nick: contemporary and lyrical jazz. I have trouble listening to “The Flower Duet” without thinking of yoghurt commercials. That is my only criticism of this otherwise flawless little piece. Ivy’s feet speak motherfucking volumes, and although I have been critical of Nick quite a few times this season, he definitely pulled it out full stop. And the live vocals really only made the piece even better.
The lyrical jazz was enjoyable, but that was almost all Ivy; Nick’s fuckups were numerous (and worse, obvious), and he just wasn’t dancing up to par when compared to just about everything else tonight. Also, Ivy is slightly miscast as a total innocent because she just, well, isn’t. (She’s got too much cleverness in her face to really pull it off.) But, even with all of that, it was still okay.
Jess Hip-Hop and Robbie: hip-hop and jazz. I love that Jesse Rasmussen has, over the course of a single season, become one of this show’s go-to hip-hop choreographers (mostly because I love the groove and imagination he puts into his routines). This was probably the best hip-hop Robbie has danced all season; it’s been really amazing to just see him get steadily better with every hip-hop routine he’s danced this season, because his first couple of routines were just clumsy and now he’s hitting all his moves so sharply and his freezes are just great and goddamn, did he seriously just do that drop spin better than Jess did? Jess was predictably good in her specialty. This was honestly a lot better than the judges gave it credit for.
The jazz piece was just fucking spellbinding, every single bit of it, the concept (happy clown’s best clown friend is dying), doing it to a live strings duet version of “Heart’s a Mess,” the dancing was just perfect – new pick for me for “best routine of season,” and I am totally eating crow about everything I said about Robbie earlier in season because seriously holy shit guys.
Jessie Contemporary and Philippe: tango and contemporary. Wow, seriously? Everybody else gets to dance in their comfort zone (Nick and Ivy get to do it twice) and Philippe and Jessie get tango, which is probably the second hardest ballroom style to pull off after quickstep? Sometimes, this show is just not a level playing field. That having been said: compared to some of the butcheries that tango has been on SYTYCD, this was fine. It wasn’t Mark/Chelsie from US season 4 or Brandon/Jeanette from US season 5 or even Talia/Ben from last year’s Aussie show, but it was workmanlike, and if they were a bit stiff in the first fifteen seconds or so after a bit they settled into their movements and pulled it off quite respectably. It was still just dancing rather than being a full-on performance, to be sure, but the judges acted like this was a trainwreck and it simply wasn’t.
The contemporary was quite good, and Philippe really deserves full credit for dancing contemporary as well as he has all season: I wouldn’t name another hip-hop dancer in any season ever who’s danced contemporary and jazz as well as Philippe has (not even Joshua). It was excellent; maybe not as showy as some of the other pieces tonight, but just good in all ways, and there’s not much else to say about that, as there so often is not much to say about routines on this show.
Top three guys: contemporary. This seemed designed to be the ultimate “make the teenaged girls scream” piece of choreography ever. Not to say that it wasn’t good; it was really excellent, and all three dancers were just so fucking solid. But it is what it is, you know? (And of course Philippe gets stuck doing all the lifts.)
Should go home: Jess and Nick.
Will go home: Jess and Philippe.
6
Apr
You may or may not have heard about what has recently happened to Constance McMillen. For those who haven’t, she’s an out lesbian who’s graduating from high school this year, and wanted to go to prom. When the school banned her from prom, she sued for the right to attend, so they cancelled the prom. Then the school was legally forced to have a prom, so their response was to throw two proms: one for Constance and her date and a handful of other students (including two kids with learning disabilities – STAY CLASSY, ITAWAMBA COUNTY), and one for everybody else which they kept secret. (Admittedly, the secret prom kind of looks like it sucked, but I think that has more to do with it being Bumfuck Wherever, Missisippi than any sort of guilty.)
It honestly just staggers me that people could be so hateful and petty. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, these shits were lying to her face for what must have been weeks, and for what? Because Constance seems like a pretty awesome person, all things considered. Are these people just trying to confirm everybody’s hunches about what Missisippi is like? Is that the plan? Because it’s fucking working like gangbusters.
I thought for a second that I should be all sanctimonious and write an open letter to Constance about how life’s going to get ten billion times better the moment she gets the fuck out of there and moves somewhere where gays aren’t considered third-class citizens – you know, like Iowa – but then thought better of it, because it’s pretty obvious from all these stories that, as said, she’s an awesome person and she knows pretty well that once she gets the fuck out of there things are going to get better anyway. But it also occurs to me for every Constance out there, there’s got to be a hundred other desperately unhappy gay teenagers, closeted or not, in exactly the same situation as her: having it reinforced, every day of their lives, that they are lesser.
So, to all of them: it’s not your fault. Yes, it is entirely possible to live in a town where everybody else is an asshole. And yes, when you leave, it will get endlessly better in more ways than you could ever believe. If you choose to stay and try and change minds, my heart’s out to you. But if you want to leave and just be happy, then do it; it’ll work out, believe me.
(yes I am still on hiatus shut up)
5
Apr
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist, and because of it, I am now finally in Wikipedia until somebody edits it or something.
5
Apr
Reading old Code-approved humour comics frequently raises the question “was that intended to mean what we now think it means?” So, here’s a question, in lieu of actual content: do you think the innuendo in these comics panels is a) intended by the writer or b) not?
1. From Marvel/Timely/Atlas’s Millie the Model # 92 (more about this title later, hopefully), drawn by Dan DeCarlo and written by Stan Lee, Millie is offered a sham engagement to a Hollywood hunk named “Tab Hudson,” and I always wondered if there was a definite meaning to his line in the second panel, or if I’m just being sophomoric. Of course the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
2. From She’s Josie # 15 (another title that probably deserves more comment) drawn by Dan DeCarlo and written by Frank Doyle, Pepper (who is awesome) asks for help:
Hey, everybody. Long story short: the next two weeks for me are nothing but writing my tax policy paper, studying, writing exams, and then collapsing in a heap for a couple of days having – hopefully – graduated law school.1
So I’ll be back in two weeks. Hopefully my guestbloggers will chip in with some content so this is not a barren wasteland for the next little while. I might do a post or something if something catches my eye and I feel the need to blow off steam, but don’t expect regular updates for the next little while, is my point.
3
Apr
2
Apr
Yes, I know, I’m a guest contributor and I’m totally hijacking one of MGK’s personal topics, but how can I resist the lure of the giant soapbox? It’s a chance to tell large numbers of people to go see a movie I like, and you will all listen to me oh the POWER MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!! In case that doesn’t clarify, let me stress again: I’m not MGK. If you have seen this movie, and do not think it is good, don’t blame him for my opinions. Oh, and also, you clearly hate babies and puppies and things that are awesome and are probably a Twilight fan or something.
So, on to Slither. Slither was a 2006 horror-comedy (with the emphasis on horror) written and directed by James Gunn, a horror veteran who got his start writing for Troma Films. His profile had been seriously raised by his screenplay for the Dawn of the Dead remake, and it wasn’t too surprising that he eventually got a shot at directing his own feature. It was, perhaps, a little surprising that he wound up making a film that was such an unabashed throwback to the splatstick horror movies of the early 80s; at the time, horror fans accused him of ripping off Night of the Creeps, but that misses the point. Slither isn’t ripping off any particular 80s horror movie any more than Metallica was ripping off any particular heavy metal band. They just knew they liked the sound and made it their own.
In the same way, Slither takes the tropes of splatstick (physical comedy, combined with grotesque body-horror) and makes them its own. Human beings bloat up like balloons as they gobble down vast quantities of rotting meat, only to be consumed from within by slugs that then jump down people’s throats and burrow into their brains…all so that they can proceed to deliver a speech about marital fidelity in perfect unison. Then spit acid at people. It’s the kind of unabated, disturbing freakishness that requires an R-rating to deliver…and unlike the vast majority of horror films of the last decade, Slither doesn’t water down its horror to cater to a PG-13 audience. This is the kind of movie you used to have to sneak into, back in the day; unfortunately for Slither‘s box office, it’s harder to do that now.
But Slither has more than just gross-out comedy and startle moments going for it; the film has a charming cast of characters that make you genuinely root for them, aided in no small part by the cast. Gunn went for character actors over stars (at this point, I will remind you that there’s an entire comments section in which to debate my labeling of star Nathan Fillion as a “character actor”.) Gregg Henry, one of those quintessential “nobody remembers his name, but everyone remembers his face and performance” actors, makes you delight in every narrow escape of the sleazy mayor as things go from bad to worse (to worse to worse to worst.) And Michael Rooker gives a great performance in a thankless role, taking the thoughtless husband who becomes the host of an alien parasite and making him sympathetic even under a metric fuckton of prosthetics.
But most importantly, Slither is sneakily subversive about the tropes it’s borrowing. Characters constantly behave just a little different than you expect them to in a movie like this; the teenage girl who might as well have Obvious Victim written on her forehead turns out to be a smart, determined survivor, and the brutish heel who’s destined to turn into a monster winds up having a sweet, decent streak in him that you only find out about just before things go bad. The movie’s subversive streak can be summed up in a single scene: One of the characters, having been turned into a breeder for brain-slugs, begs Fillion to kill him. Before you have more than a second to anticipate the traumatic, brutal decision he has to make, Fillion whips out his gun and blows the guy’s brains out. Because jeez, did you see what he looked like?
Unfortunately, Slither bombed at box offices (in no small part because the perfect audience for a splatstick horror movie is sixteen year-old boys, and they’ve cracked down a lot on sneaking into R-rated movies since the golden days of the 80s.) But movies like this are destined to do better as cult DVD hits, building up their reputation through word of mouth and devoted fans. I know I’ve had to practically force a couple of horror fans to sit down and watch it; afterward, one of them said, “Slither is this generation’s Evil Dead II.” High praise, indeed.
And if none of that convinces you, I will say that this movie has the single best karaoke scene ever committed to film. Seriously, I would watch a full 90 minutes of that woman singing karaoke. I’d describe it, but…it has to be seen to be believed. Just like Slither.
1
Apr
So I briefly considered doing an April Fools Who’s Who post where Batman would be, like, 2 percent Rex the Wonder Dog, but rejected it because after thirty seconds I was all “there’s no way this is actually going to be particularly funny, it’ll just be a series of all those shitty ‘jokes’ people already make about Batman anyway.” So in lieu of an April Fools post, here is a serious (sorta) post about Blackest Night.
Short short version: I didn’t like it.
With caveat: But I didn’t hate it either.
With second caveat: Because it was just kind of there.
Lately I’ve been less impressed with Geoff Johns’ work. When I say “lately,” I really mean “for years now,” but I digress. Johns is kind of interesting in that he’s actually pretty good at writing an ongoing title; I still consider his run on Flash to be a particularly strong one, and Flash is a series where the likes of Grant Morrison have stumbled, so you know that’s a book not everybody can write really well.
But I’ve never liked his event books. A Geoff Johns event book, to me, always reads like the literal translation of an algorithm designed to create A Good Event Storyline. Like, if you put together a trend line, and the Y-axis was “How Well The Heroes Are Doing,” you’d get a squiggly line in most books: the line starts out at about the midpoint or slightly below (IE, “normal”), then dips down sharply when the baddies start kicking hero ass, then pops up a bit as the heroes get their second wind, then goes down deeper when the villain turns out to have a serious master plan for which they weren’t ready, and then climb to the finish. Whenever I read a Geoff Johns event comic, I feel like he looked at that line in advance and then wrote his storyline to hit those beats exactly, regardless of whatever story he wrote.
You can see it when you start going back through the story and realizing that a lot of the surprises and big moments were totally pointless. For example: why did they need to “deputize” Barry Allen and Lex Luthor and Ganthet and Mera into the various-coloured lantern corps? Answer: they didn’t. At no point during the main story do these deputized Lanterns matter because they’re now Lanterns. It was just a cool aside, if you think sticking a power ring on a character suddenly makes them cooler. A lot of people do.1 Granted, the Lantern Deputies actually mattered within their own Blackest Night miniseries, but as comic fans, we all know the optional extras don’t count for assessing the main story unless they end up in the collected edition, and Blackest Night: The Flash ain’t gonna be in the main book.2
What about Dove? What was the point of all that? Apparently Dove I couldn’t be raised by Nekron because he was “at peace” (apparently every other dead superhero ever was emotionally troubled when they died, I guess). And then Dove II, for reasons that were never actually explained (that I saw – maybe there was a Blackest Night: Dove one shot or something), is a living anti-zombie ray and can blow up zombies. Why can Dove do that? Because… something. Possibly to do with the Life Entity that makes the White Lantern Corps.
And why was Mera a Red Lantern again? Seriously, I don’t know anybody who even pretends to understand that shit.
Or how about the ending? The key to beating Nekron is by resurrecting Black Hand – okay, that’s not a bad idea. As villains’ Achilles’ heels go, perfectly serviceable. So, how do the heroes figure this out? Well, Deadman shows up in the last issue and tells them.
…
No, really. That’s what happens. If you want to hammer home the point that Hal Jordan – who’s the pointman for this entire saga – is a fucking idiot and shitty superhero, I can’t think of a better way to do it than double-underlining the fact that he basically charged into a fight with an evil god of death with one plan that somebody else told him would work that didn’t work, and then stuck around when that didn’t work, only to get saved when somebody else comes up with a plan for him to do something. “Space cop” really doesn’t do Hal justice. Most cops I’ve met can come up with their own plans.
Of course, that’s not what bothers me about the ending: what bothers me about the ending is that everybody called this a year ago. “Hal Jordan becomes the White Lantern and blows up Nekron.” You knew this was coming. You wanted to think it would be more complex than that, that maybe Geoff Johns’ forever-hardon for Hal Jordan (a comic-book woodie so immense it makes Brian Michael Bendis’ stiffy for Luke Cage look like half a pack of Rockets) might bow to the urge to not be predictable. And, when I saw the last page of issue seven, with Sinestro being the White Lantern, I momentarily doffed my metaphorical cap to Johns out of respect. Then I read issue eight and realized that it was all just a last-minute swerve, because of course Sinestro can’t be the White Lantern, he’s not good enough to be the White Lantern, it’s got to be Hal Jordan leading the White Lantern Corps of everybody who died.
And in the end, isn’t the ending just “hit the bad guy harder”? Sinestro tears out Nekron’s heart, but that’s not enough – so blast Nekron’s secret weakness with more White Lanterns. Isn’t this becoming a pattern with Johns? Like, people keep asking me what I think of Legion of Three Worlds and here it is: the ending of that story is “our tiny band of Legionnaires isn’t enough to beat the Time Trapper? Then we’ll hit him with all the Legionnaires ever.”3 What was Infinite Crisis except more and more people hitting Superboy-Prime in the face again and again harder and harder, and then somebody hitting Alexander Luthor’s vibra-dimensional-tower thing that was powered by The Breach?
I hate to go to the Crisis On Infinite Earths well again for comparing Johns’ work unfavourably, but – look at how that book’s climax pans out. The heroes attack the Anti-Monitor4 directly while Dr. Light and Alex Luthor start draining his power both indirectly and directly, and then the Negative Woman (of all people) starts frying him to soften him up for a mega-super-blast from Dr. Light. But that’s not enough, and the Anti-Monitor takes back his shadow-demons for a fresh burst of power – except, whoops, the heroes thought of that beforehand and poisoned them with magic and stuff. All of that planning (okay, and Darkseid getting involved) softens up the Anti-Monitor enough for Superman to punch him to death, but that doesn’t feel like “just hit him harder” – it feels like they’ve both gone twenty rounds.5 It feels earned in a way that Johns’ event climaxes never do, because it doesn’t come out of left field.
And yes, I get that Johns is trying to say something about teamwork and tenacity and heroism. I get that because whenever he tries to say something about teamwork and tenacity and heroism, one of his characters makes it clear. Usually in a fairly direct way. With a speech about teamwork and tenacity and heroism in a way that nobody ever really talks. (You know what Superman says when the Anti-Monitor comes back for that one last time in Crisis? He fucking loses his shit, he’s so angry now, and screams “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH” when he punches the Anti-Monitor to death. It’s pretty awesome.)
But, after all of that, I didn’t really hate it. People might think that I hated it so much I want to cockpunch Geoff Johns, and I don’t.6 I could rant on about the resurrections everybody saw coming (and Maxwell Lord, which I don’t think anybody saw coming)7 or how a promise of “death is death, from now on” in comics has a shelf-life of “until it’s convenient,” or how the series can’t just end on a high note but there have to be teases of the next DC mega-event (why didn’t Ralph and Sue come back to life? Ooooh the white lantern is gonna get taken by somebody! Et cetera), but I really don’t care that much: DC’s output is just kind of joyless and tedious these days, not in a particularly vicious or cruel way but just kind of there, and everybody knows it, and “Brightest Day” isn’t going to be a turnaround to “more innocent and fun stories” because comics companies have learned that they can spike their sales for a few months every time they promise that and then it’s back to the emo snuff porn that the hardcores want.
But, on the bright side, they got rid of J’onn’s ugly-ass new costume, and that’s not nothing. Now, if they give Aquaman the beard back, we can talk about progress.
31
Mar
Jessica P. Ballroom has a bad back and has to leave the competition, but luckily they have Jess H. to replace her, which is great because that way nobody even has to remember different names too much. (Also, Natalie Bassingthwaite is wearing an incredibly ugly dress. Is she pregnant? That could explain the dress.)
Jessie Contemporary and Nick: hip-hop and cha-cha. The hip-hop felt cheerleaderish to me; moves too far ahead in the beat, and both Nick and Jessie are capable hip-hop partners in that they’re good enough that were they paired with a hip-hopper nobody would have noticed the jazzy flowiness of their moves where sharper urban freezes would be required. However, they weren’t paired with hip-hoppers this week, but each other, which served to reinforce each other’s flowiness and make it stand out. I really liked Jesse Rasumussen’s choreo (he builds his routines really well), but this was merely average at most.
The cha-cha felt stiff. Great choreo (it’s Gilkison, come on), and I didn’t get the chemistry between Nick and Jessie at all: it seemed forced rather than natural, and so did everything else about this routine. The technique wasn’t bad, but Nick in particular seemed to be thinking through his steps.
Jess Hip-Hop and Kieran: foxtrot and contemporary. The foxtrot was so angry it almost felt like a rhumba, which is odd, but Jess and Kieran danced it just about perfectly for all of that: the lifts appeared just effortless despite their obvious level of difficulty and the entire piece felt organic and unchoreographed. Other than a bit of a bobble on the unison in their opening promenade, this was dead-on.
Australian Dance Theatre! I love ADT, they’re so fucking awesome. This was actually a bit more relaxed as ADT pieces go, but it was just good. Not the best ADT outing on SYTYCD – it didn’t have that sense of power that ADT routines usually have, and there were some lines that were not quite there – but it was okay.
Carly and Philippe: contemporary and jazz. I didn’t like the contemporary. This isn’t a commentary on the skill of the dancing, which was quite good (and Philippe’s emerging skill as a contemporary dancer is really impressive). It’s not a commentary on the choreography either, because I can’t say that the choreo was bad. It just wasn’t for me. It happens.
The Ken-and-Barbie jazz was funny and clever and danced just fantastically well. The final big lift was a bit clumsy, but I don’t care because I enjoyed all the rest of it so much (especially Philippe’s hilarious “Ken face”). Definitely one of the highlights of the entire season for me.
Ivy and Robbie: Broadway and hip-hop. Man, when ninety percent of your Broadway intake on SYTYCD normally consists of Tasty Oreo rehashes you forget how enthralling it can be when it’s choreographed and danced really well, and this was danced and choreographed really well. Jason’s comment that Robbie came across young strikes me as unfair, because “Cabaret” needs a vampish, powerful girl and a hesitant male lead.
The hip-hop was cute (although I HATED the opening with the bathrobes, but everything post-bathrobes was fine). Robbie’s mostly in the same category as Jessie and Nick in that when he’s partnered with a better hip-hop dancer his flaws (mostly his freezes; he tends to stay right on the beat rather than rushing it) are minimized; however, unlike Jessie and Nick, he was paired with Ivy, who’s proven herself to be much more credible at hip-hop than the average contemporary dancer. This was decent.
Should go home: Jess and Nick.
Will go home: Jess and Nick.
31
Mar
Hey, you read World War Hulk, right? Wasn’t it cool when the Hulk called out Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic and Dr. Strange?
But here’s the thing. Tony Stark is an international celebrity and Important Person in the eyes of the public. Mr. Fantastic is similarly one of the most famous people in the world and also Very Important. Neither of them can go anywhere as themselves without being mobbed by onlookers who want an autograph or a lay or occasionally to kill them. In the Marvel Universe, Thor and Captain Marvel are both the centrepieces of cultish sects that worship them. And then there’s Dr. Strange, who has awesome magical power that at times has actually been divinely inspired for reals.
But Dr. Strange doesn’t have his own cult. He doesn’t make the cover of Time or People or even The National Enquirer. His name’s not unknown – heck, he was a famous surgeon once, now he’s mostly retired, does consulting work on surgical techniques and their integration with Eastern medicine – but he’s not famous. He walks around downtown New York all the time. Unbothered. He actually runs errands sometimes. (Mostly Wong does it, but Stephen likes to get out for a walk every now and then.)
How does he do that, when he participates in Big Superhero Shit every so often? How is it that, after being called out by the Hulk on worldwide television, nobody afterwards said or thought “huh, maybe this Dr. Strange guy is somebody I should pay attention to?” How does he keep going back to obscurity?
The answer’s pretty simple: it’s because the Doc wants it that way. Magic’s good for a lot of things, after all, and one of them is hiding. Not even “hiding in plain sight” hiding: no stage magic for Stephen Strange (who, if we’re being honest, can never remember which is the turn and which is the pledge and which is the prestige, and still doesn’t quite understand how the linking rings work). This was one of the first bargains Strange made during his magical career (he figured out how badly he needed it in the first two weeks after the followers started camping outside his door). Ikonn, the master of illusion and disguise, was more than willing to give it to him for a favour.
Strange paid that favour (he doesn’t talk about it nowadays) and has had the power ever since. It just makes him forgettable. You’d just gloss over him, or mentions of him. When the Hulk was screaming on national television, people were so goggled by him screaming for the heads of Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic that they just didn’t realize he also said “and Dr. Strange.”
It’s not universal. People who are determined to know of him can get around it easily enough, but Strange doesn’t worry about them. (At least two-thirds of them are people he should meet anyway, he figures.) People who are used to a weirder life than average – like much of the super-community – tend to ignore the effect of it as well, and although that has drawbacks, for the most part it tends to be a bit of a bonus.
(It used to be that supervillains drinking at the Bar With No Name would convince one of the newbie supervillains to attack the Sanctum Sanctorum so they could have a bit of a laugh at the noob’s expense. This happened a few times until the Doc figured out what was going on, and then he paid an entirely polite and well-mannered visit to the Bar. It doesn’t happen any more.)
Until one day, when something Stephen is reading about recombinant DNA therapy piques his intellectual curiosity, and hasn’t it been a while since Hank came over for tea? So he phones up Hank McCoy…
…and Hank has no idea who he is at first. It takes three minutes of conversation (Hank’s gregarious, after all, and has been known to talk the ear off of people who dialed the wrong number) for Strange to remind Hank that they have been friends for years.
It starts getting worse from there. After a little while, the Avengers are looking at him funny when he comes over. Then they start acting like he’s a civilian. Then Nick Fury – an obsessive secret keeper if ever there was one – doesn’t know who he is any more. Night Nurse starts hedging on his name from time to time. Wong, thankfully, can fall back on “Master,” although it’s clear in his tone that he’s not quite sure all the time why he’s using the honorific.
Something’s gone wrong. But what? And how does he fix it? Because when Stephen Strange looks in the mirror, now, he’s starting to wonder if he recognizes the man staring back at him…
30
Mar
SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.
BIGWIG: Shareholders these days are worried about investments in star vehicles that are unproven commodities. Therefore, I have decided that all of our projects for the next six months will come from one-word trademarked items with significant visibility. One, begin development on “Cable,” “Hilton,” and “Steakums.”
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: You know, “Popeye” is only one word and it’s a visibility.
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I think you mean “trademark.”
FIRST: No, I mean “Popeye.” Who would go to see Trademark: The Movie?
BIGWIG: Adventurous idea, One. Three, shop Trademark: The Movie around to indie directors. Maybe Spike Jonze can do something that ironic hipsters will enjoy.
THIRD: Am I shopping anything else around? “Alka-Seltzer,” perhaps?
BIGWIG: That is technically two words, as is “Pepto-Bismol.” However, see what you can do with “Xantac.”
FIRST: Oooooh ooooh make it a robot! With laser vision! I’ll trade you “Steakums” for it!
BIGWIG: No trades. Three, you will also get “Oz.” I recommend combining the HBO prison drama with the Baum books. That way, we get two audiences at once.
THIRD: That’s… actually interesting.
BIGWIG: You’re welcome. Now, you’re going to help Two out on his assignment.
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Oh, come on. Is this is because of what happened with Anne Hathaway?
BIGWIG: This is exactly because of what happened with Anne Hathaway.
FIRST: I hear she still walks with a limp.
SECOND: It wasn’t my fault she crashed that Porsche into that other Porsche that the drug dealer was driving at us at full speed because I convinced him that baking soda was cocaine.
BIGWIG: Nonetheless. Two, you have “Pledge,” “Tweety,” and “Marmaduke.”
SECOND: Okay, I get that Pledge is clearly a movie about sorority hazing involving floor wax, and Tweety is a sex comedy involving Twitter in some fashion, like maybe Kate Hudson is a girl who’s afraid of commitment and loves shoe shopping, so she breaks up with guys via Twitter while she goes shoe shopping, but then she falls in love with a hunky programmer who works for Twitter –
THREE: There are hunky programmers?
SECOND: We can get Dane Cook to play one.
THREE: Of course.
SECOND: But what the hell am I supposed to do with “Marmaduke”? Nobody loves Marmaduke if they’re under the age of eighty. I mean, I like some questionable things, sure, but even I don’t like Marmaduke.
FIRST: I don’t like it either.
SECOND: There you go! See? The guy who wrote most of Anthony Anderson’s dialogue in Kangaroo Jack is too intellectual for Marmaduke. This one is impossible, boss. I say we give it to Uwe Boll and back away slowly.
BIGWIG: We spent a lot of money acquiring the rights to make Marmaduke. Stop whining and come up with a multimillion-dollar film franchise. What do I pay you for again?
SECOND: …can we have Marmaduke have sex with a lady?
BIGWIG: No.
SECOND: Okay, I’m out of ideas.
THIRD: Wow, you didn’t even mention whores once.
SECOND: I know!
FIRST: I have an idea!
(A pause.)
BIGWIG: Yes…?
FIRST: Let’s have Marmaduke talk! That’s what brings this movie into the 21st century! He can be all “I’m a dog, and I’m talking.”
BIGWIG: Does he talk to humans, or to animals, or to the audience, or what?
FIRST: I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.
THIRD: Didn’t Look Who’s Talking Now bomb?
FIRST: I don’t know what that is!
BIGWIG: You forget, Three, that nowadays we have computers. We can use computers to make the dogs’ mouths move so it looks like they are actually talking. Children love this.
THREE: They don’t find it kind of creepy?
BIGWIG: Children love this.
THREE: I see.
FIRST: So Marmaduke can talk about dog stuff. Like, how much he likes pooping, and how much he likes eating, and then pooping, and sleeping, and pooping…
SECOND: Wait wait wait. Isn’t Marmaduke, in the cartoons, really huge? And he does all this stuff because he’s so big?
BIGWIG: Yes. So?
SECOND: In real life Great Danes don’t quite get as big as Marmaduke is in the cartoon.
THIRD: My god, are you actually making a cogent observation?
SECOND: I dated a professional dog breeder a while back.
THIRD: You dated a woman? More than once?
SECOND: Okay, it wasn’t a breeder, it was a Kardashian. But she really, really loved dogs. She wouldn’t shut up about dogs. Or maybe it was hats. Same thing, really.
BIGWIG: This is a fine point, Two, but again. We will fix that with computers.
THREE: We’ll make the dog larger with computers?
BIGWIG: Of course not. We’ll just have him do all the Marmaduke things and be a normal-sized Great Dane, and anything that’s especially physical, we just do it without the dog and CGI in a dog in post. Honestly, Three. Do I need to explain computers to you now?
FIRST: Also maybe we could have all the dogs dance in a dance routine with computers!
SECOND: Wait, wait – maybe dog society can be just like high school! People love it when shit is like high school!
THIRD: I guess we could throw in a talking cat. If we have talking dogs, we can have a cat as well. Some people like cats better than dogs.
BIGWIG: Gentlemen, this is what I call development. Who can we get to star?
THIRD: I think William H. Macy owes me a favour.
FIRST: Will he let us kick him in the nuts?
THIRD: I’m just going to assume you meant in the movie.
FIRST: Of course I meant in the movie. I’m not stupid, you know.
BIGWIG: We all know that, One.
FIRST: So, how many times will we kick him in the nuts? Fifteen, or twenty? I say twenty. It’s funnier that way! Just imagine him getting kicked again and again and again!
THREE: I think his limit per movie is two.
FIRST: Aw. What if he gets headbutted in the nuts by a dog instead?
THREE: Still two.
BIGWIG: We’ll make it work. Still, we need somebody famous to be the voice of Marmaduke. Who can we get?
THREE: Jon Stewart?
BIGWIG: Too self-conscious.
SECOND: Leonardo DiCaprio?
BIGWIG: Threatened to set us on fire if we contacted him ever again.
FIRST: Vince Vaughn! Vince Vaughn! He can say “poop” in so many different ways!
BIGWIG: Not bad, but he doesn’t owe us any favours. Wait a second. Two, can you contact Owen Wilson?
SECOND: Great thinking, boss! I’ve still got those incriminating pictures from the set of Marley and Me! We’ll get him to –
THIRD: Why don’t we just pay him instead? It’s not like he has standards.
BIGWIG: Because we want to save money. Offer him half his going rate plus the negatives, Two.
SECOND: Will do.
BIGWIG: Well, it looks like this has come together. Good work, everybody.
FIRST: My turn! My turn! So, I’m thinking Steakums can be like Transformers, except that instead of being robots, they’re made of ground meat product…
29
Mar
So apparently a format that was easy to understand and follow and which made a show quite popular isn’t good enough any more, so the SYTYCD Powers That Be are fucking around with the show’s format again, presumably because season six was such a huge success and all.
Hopefully the Canadian and Australian versions of the show will continue their track record of ignoring this stupid bullshit.
29
Mar
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist. A while back someone asked me to weigh in on Hiccups and Dan For Mayor, and I am doing so this week.
29
Mar
Many heroes would have trouble, were they attacked by a giant vicious attack rabbit.
However, Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog has a plan for moments exactly such as these. This is the beginning of plan #3,851. The ending of this plan has been censored by the appropriate authorities.
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