28
Dec
28
Dec
By my count there were 299 pairs dances amongst the second seasons of the Canadian and Australian So You Think You Can Dance plus the fifth and sixth seasons of the American version. (I also saw a good chunk of So You Think You Can Dance Netherlands, but nothing from it was going to make any top-whatever list, frankly.) With the British version finally starting up in 2010, there will be four seasons of this show airing in English-speaking countries every year minimum until the whole shebang goes under, which hopefully is a long way away, even if Nigel Lythgoe is terminally irritating.
So here are the best twenty dances from this year’s four seasons of English-speaking SYTYCD.
But… before we begin, an honorable mention for my favourite routine of the year, which was Lamb and Timomatic’s cha-cha from week 2 of the Australian show. I can’t in good faith rank it amongst the best of the year, for a bunch of reasons: Timomatic’s Latin moves are inconsistent at best, the choreo is more a melange of cha-cha, samba and salsa than it is a straight cha-cha, and they bobble a few points (there’s a pretty obvious handhold search early on, for example). But I still really like this one more than any of the others despite technical issues, mostly because it’s got a clever, vivacious spirit to it that I appreciate.
Oh, and I might as well throw in Don’s dance-for-your-life solo from the Aussie winnowing week because who knows when I’ll have an excuse to post it.
All right! Onto the list proper.
continue reading "The Best of So You Think You Can Dance 2009"
26
Dec
I’ve seen this sentiment before, mostly recently expressed here:
Now, yes, it’s James Cameron. You’re not there for stellar dialogue, intricate storytelling, or nuance. And you’re not going to get it.
But this is exactly why Avatar disappoints so on this score: because James Cameron movies traditionally have all of those things. I mean, The Abyss is one of the most ambitious and intelligent science fiction/action movies ever, the Terminator films started a franchise precisely because they were intelligently realized works in addition to being exciting, and Aliens is the best hybrid sci-fi/war/action movie thingy that it could possibly be. Even a lighter work like True Lies is still a pretty clever and smart movie despite having a truly ludicrous premise. All of these films are well-written and, for action movies, willing to be at least somewhat contemplative when it doesn’t harm the pace of the film.
When did this “James Cameron makes dumb films” meme start? Was it Titanic? Because Titanic and Avatar are not endemic of his work: they’re outliers.
26
Dec
Fairly irritating editing from director who has done demonstrably better work in this area overcome by excellent performances and dialogue from principal cast; also, Kurrgan!
25
Dec
(I am busy openin’ presents and eatin’ turkey and so forth.)
23
Dec
…this fellow over at Boardgamegeek has a son who was born premature, and who has to undergo a fifth (!) surgery, and his insurance isn’t covering everything and he’s out of work. He’s already sold games, but a bunch of other people on BGG – including me – have listed games with proceeds going to him. So if you’ve got a BGG account – or are willing to set one up and like boardgames (and there’s also a pretty complete Nintendo Wii setup there as well which is currently going for relative peanuts) – you might want to consider bidding.
As an added bonus, if any of my readers wins one of my auctions, I’ll throw in a little something extra into the box.
EDIT TO ADD: As of right now, nobody has yet bid on this autographed/certified Eric Clapton vinyl album.
23
Dec
Christmas movies mostly suck. Miracle on 34th Street gives me hives. It’s A Wonderful Life is a depressing story told the wrong way. About half of the Christmas Carol adaptations completely miss the point (the exceptions: Muppet, Disney, Sim and the recent Zemeckis). Even a A Christmas Story gets more treacly and unbearable every year. (I will admit to a fondness for Love Actually, but what makes the film bearable are the bitter moments where things don’t work out. Plus Rowan Atkinson’s cameos.)
This is because Christmas is equal parts joyful and depressing. The good Christmas movies understand this, which is why most of the good Christmas movies are dark: black comedies about the human spirit’s capability for love even under the most degraded of circumstances, like Bad Santa, or hyperactive Dickens-on-crack stories like Scrooged, and Gremlins, which isn’t really a Christmas movie per se but come on, it’s Gremlins.
“I had this dream -”
“Do we have to do dreams?”
“I’m in this restaurant, and the waiter brings me my entree. It was a salad. It was Lloyd’s head on a plate of spinach with his penis sticking out of his ear. And I said, ‘I didn’t order this.’ And the waiter said, ‘Oh you must try it, it’s a delicacy. But don’t eat the penis, it’s just garnish.'”
“Lloyd, what do you think about the dream?”
“I think she should stop telling it at dinner parties to all our friends.”
But my favorite Christmas movie is far and away The Ref, because The Ref manages to be a very funny Christmas comedy without needing a super-ridiculous dose of silliness or lunacy beyond the everyday mundane madness of human life.
The plot is simple: Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey are married, and they hate each other. But they don’t just hate each other. That would be simplistic. They each hate what they’ve become – a suburbanite couple stuck in Fuckall, Smugachusetts, essentially living off his mother’s largesse – and they’re both depressed as all hell. And there’s nobody else to blame it on except themselves and each other, so naturally, as many couples do in these situations, they’ve opted for both. They’re miserable and planning a divorce.
This is when Denis Leary shows up. At this point in his career, Leary was already starting to transition away from his well-known “asshole” standup persona, most likely because it obviously bored the shit out of him. He goes on a couple of Learyesque rants through the picture because it’s expected, but he’s not playing Denis Leary – he’s inhabiting his character, a tired aging burglar who hates his life nearly as much as Spacey and Davis hate theirs.
“From now on, the only person who gets to yell is me. Why? Because I have a gun. People with guns get to do whatever they want. Married people without guns – for instance, you – do not get to yell. Why? NO GUNS! No guns, no yelling. See? Simple little equation.”
And so, a hostage situation – starting with the married couple, and extending to their son, home from military academy for the holidays – gradually becomes both an extended drier-than-brut-champagne farce as Leary pretends to be a couples counsellor at Davis and Spacey’s family Christmas celebration, and the trigger event for a series of long-overdue bouts of honesty. Ted Demme (who never made another movie as good as this one, although Beautiful Girls came close) builds up tension slowly until Davis and Spacey finally just blow both their stacks and explode at one another in a way you know they never have, and the genius of their respective performances is that you really get that these are two people who really love one another despite everything, and who’ve completely lost how to tell the other that.
But just summing it up like that makes the movie sound boring. And it’s not boring. It’s fucking hilarious. There is an evil dog and a drunk Santa and a useless sidekick and inept small-town deputies. There are more killer performances in this movie than many movies have cast members – not just Davis and Spacey and Leary (every one excellent), but also one of the great Glynis Johns’ last (and most memorable) roles, plus ever-reliables like Christine Baranski and J.K. Simmons. And, as a special bonus, you get to see a great pair of underappreciated character actors – Robert Ridgely, the king of smarm, and Raymond Barry, normally stuck in “military advisor” gigs – use their chops in what’s arguably the best scene of the entire movie.
“That’s not the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is either you’re good, or you’re punished and you burn in hell.”
Someone, I forget who, once said that family are the only people who can tear you down and build you up at the same time. This movie’s all about that. Which is why it’s a classic.
23
Dec
Paul O’Brien routinely discusses the vagaries of the British pop charts at his blogging environs (so you see that I am not the only theoretically-a-comics-blogger who indulges in other areas of pop culture some might consider lowbrow), but I thought his synopsis of Rage Against The Machine becoming this year’s Christmas single was especially well-written and a great article throughout.
22
Dec
I’ve tried many, many times to increase my juggling ability beyond “three balls for about forty seconds” and never been able to manage it.
22
Dec
FLAPJACKS: I hate these 3D glasses.
ME: Why?
FLAPJACKS: They make me look like Elvis Costello.
ME: I think that is actually what you wish happened when you had them on.
FLAPJACKS: I totally would if I had the hair and was also much cooler. Besides, you hate them too.
ME: Yeah, but I hate them because the 3D always sucks unless it’s a Pixar movie. The mix of in-focus and still-in-focus-but-not-in-focus is so distracting. In real life, there aren’t fancy staggered levels of sharpness that you see. In real life, things you’re not focusing on are slightly blurry. The movies had already managed to achieve that with regular old cameras. Why do we need to make everything look like a giant Viewmaster reel?
FLAPJACKS: Because it is new and special and therefore better than old and regular!
ME: Sadly accurate. I mean – whoa.
FLAPJACKS: Whoa.
ME: Whoa.
FLAPJACKS. Whoa.
ME: Whoa.
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: Holy fuck WHOA!
FLAPJACKS: Okay all of that was pretty awesome with the chasing and the flying and the monsters and such.
ME: It almost made me forget that one of the characters actually said “we’re not in Kansas any more.”
FLAPJACKS: Wait, somebody actually said that in this movie?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: I guess I was too busy being pleased to see that Vasquez actually survived the end of Aliens somehow.
ME: That’s not Vasquez. That’s Michelle Rodriguez being… somebody. I think her character might have a name.
FLAPJACKS: Whatever. She’s Vasquez.
ME: Why do so many of the Nav’i speak fluent English? I mean, did Sigourney Weaver teach everybody English?
FLAPJACKS: Only the important ones. And they taught her Nav’i. Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if they totally lied about the meaning of a word to her? And the humans who spoke Nav’i would say things like “honored chief, we have come to bring you tidings of great penis.”
ME: I think that movie would have to star Rob Schneider. James Cameron does not roll like that.
FLAPJACKS: This is true.
ME: Also, it is totally disturbing how all life on this planet basically communicates by rubbing tentacle-genitals against one another.
FLAPJACKS: No, see, the entire planet evolved as a system of something or another. It’s a systemic system of systems. It’s like how we have eyes and dogs have eyes and cats have eyes. All of these things have eyes. And also tentacle-genitals.
ME: Yes, but – whoa.
FLAPJACKS: Whoa.
ME: Whoa!
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: You know, I have to admit – the Nav’i look totally natural.
FLAPJACKS: There is no uncanny valley.
ME: You only know that concept because of that one episode of 30 Rock.
FLAPJACKS: So?
ME: I’m just sick of critics who learned a new phrase thanks to Tina Fey and want to show off.
FLAPJACKS: Speaking of that episode of 30 Rock, I’m pretty sure I didn’t need to see the blue aliens doing it.
ME: Oh, quit whining. You barely saw anything.
FLAPJACKS: But now it’s in my head.
ME: Okay, the scientists are totally going about this the wrong way with Giovanni Ribisi, Businessman. They should have been all “this entire planet is a gigantic biological computer more advanced than anything we’ve ever imagined. Think about how much that would be worth.”
FLAPJACKS: Wouldn’t work. Giovanni Ribisi, Businessman, is all about the quarterly profit report. I know this because he said “it’s all about the quarterly profit report” at the start of the movie. He is an Exxon-type guy and you are presenting a Google-type business plan. Ne’er shall the two meet, because despite what people might say about Google, Google is never going to hire mercenaries to kill aliens.
ME: They might hire mercenaries to spy on aliens.
FLAPJACKS: Well, that’s Google for you.
ME: The evil mercenary guy just sucks. “Wow, that’s an amazing giant tree. Time to blow it up, I guess.” How am I supposed to hate somebody this lame?
FLAPJACKS: Well, he did kill Sigourney Weaver.
ME: Until this movie came out, I thought Sigourney Weaver was dead. And then it turned out that it was just her career that was dead. If James Cameron can bring her back from Hollywood death, she will be back again in Avatar 2: Avatarz In The Hood.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, but whoa!
ME: WHOA!
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: What the shit whoa!
FLAPJACKS: MOTHERFUCKING WHOA!
ME: Aw, Michelle Rodriguez died.
FLAPJACKS: Vasquez isn’t dead until I see a body.
ME: See, I’m of two minds about this turn of events. On the one hand, the idea of Nature Itself rising up to fight the evil mercenaries and their warbots is incredibly dorky. But on the other hand, it looks completely fucking awesome.
FLAPJACKS: So why didn’t you like Transformers 2?
ME: Because despite the vast amount of money they spent to make that movie, Michael Bay is completely incapable of shooting a decent single shot, let alone a scene, or editing together a scene that looks coherent, or anything at all really. Even Michael Bay’s explosions are crappy, and given that all he really has a rep for is explosions, that’s just sad.
FLAPJACKS: That’s not true. He also has a reputation for bizarre editing decisions!
ME: This movie, on the other hand, is made by James Cameron, and even if the story frequently gets formulaic, illogical, or just plain stupid, it will look goddamned shitballs amazing, because James Cameron knows how to direct an action sequence like nobody’s business. Nobody else in Hollywood period can direct a scene with six billion things fighting six billion other things in it without it looking busy and incoherent and essentially impossible to watch: they’re directing the scene for DVD playback so nerds can jerk off to the one Jedi in the bottom of frame four million and twenty-three. James Cameron, on the other hand, says “twelve billion guys having a giant war? Hmmm.” And then he thinks about it for five years and then figures out how to make it look completely awesome and entirely involving all at once.
FLAPJACKS: All that thinking about making it look awesome probably came at the expense of making the story be, like, good.
ME: Yeah, but who cares when it looks this great? Because – oh come on, why does the giant robot have a knife? What the fuck, James Cameron? The giant robot should not have its own machete in a pop-out scabbard!
FLAPJACKS: Maybe the war robot was designed by Boy Scouts. Or the Swiss. Or Swiss Boy Scouts.
ME: And the movie ends with Sam Worthington failing to disguise his Aussie accent yet again as he turns into a Nav’i all permanent-like. I smell sequel.
FLAPJACKS: Hopefully written by Not James Cameron. Also, not by Michael Bay. We can’t set our standards too low here.
ME: Good thinking, but if you’re not more careful with your qualifications it’ll end up getting written by Paul Haggis. “Nav’i and humans are both racist!”
FLAPJACKS: Or it’ll get written by Akiva Goldsman and it’ll end with a tattoo on some extraneous character’s back being a sign from God – sorry, the planet – that dying to make a point is what has to happen here, or something like that.
ME: Or it’ll get written by Joss Whedon and there will be a secret order of female Nav’i who hunt vampires.
FLAPJACKS: I would probably go see that one.
21
Dec
Just a quick comparison for those of you who may have Christmas and New Years Eve parties to go to in the days to come, during which a conversation about popular music may come up:
IF YOU NAME-DROP ELVIS COSTELLO…
…you will get the respect of the average person, because most people have heard of Elvis Costello, but aren’t familiar with more than a handful of songs. Since Costello is almost universally praised by critics, though, you will earn instant cred.
However, should you encounter another Elvis Costello fan, you will likely make a bitter enemy, as the rest of the evening will be spent trying to top each other about who has listened to the most obscure, non-mainstream EC recording (theoretically, the guy who has a copy of the opera that he wrote in 2004 wins, but I am not sure that anyone has ever actually bought that CD).
BUT IF YOU NAME DROP XTC…
…you will get no cred at all from the average person, because unlike Costello, most people are too unfamiliar with XTC for the reference to mean anything. No one knows any of their songs, although they may have read that a bunch of bands that came out with CDs in the past decade are supposed to have been influenced by them.
However, should you encounter another XTC fan, you two will become new best friends, because XTC fans are always so psyched to meet someone else who’s even heard of them. A person can go from zero to awesome instantaneously with the revelation of XTC fandom, and if two XTC fans of the opposite sex meet at a party, they are obligated at some point in the evening to make out with each other. At least.
SO WEIGH YOUR OPTIONS AND CHOOSE WISELY.
21
Dec
Blah blah TV column Torontoist.
21
Dec
I feel this needs no further elaboration.
21
Dec
21
Dec
…is “never forget people’s capacity to be petty and jealous.”
Seriously, Russell losing is probably the biggest bullshit finish on this show since the hatefest thrown at Stephenie in the Guatamala season. Bigger, frankly. Bigger than people getting whiny over Boston Rob at the All-Stars finale.
(Seriously, why the fuck do I have to listen to Natalie explain her “strategy” to win? Whatever.)
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