My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
2
Nov
Exhibit A: the poster for Pirate Radio.
First, consider the original poster for The Boat That Rocked, when it was released in Britain with its original (superior) title.
This is a pretty clever poster. Obviously, it’s a reference to the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, but smartly combined with the walking-off-a-plank motif which both suggests the pirate nature of the radio station as well as a hint to how things are going to end (it is not a spoiler to say that, yes, eventually the British government did manage to get the pirate stations shut down). It’s simple. It doesn’t try to do too much, and as a result it’s still a bit enigmatic without being obscure.
But apparently that wasn’t enough!
Now, this isn’t, one supposes, a bad poster. Certainly there are worse. But come on: this is lame. You completely lose the Abbey Road reference by shuffling around the order of the four principal actors and then adding the young but mostly unimportant male viewpoint character and the female character who is in the movie for maybe seven minutes tops (because young audiences don’t care about boring old Bill Nighy and Philip Seymour Hoffman!). Hoffman and Rhys Ifans have their heads cocked towards the camera acknowledging the viewer for absolutely no reason. And just in case you didn’t see the trailer and in case the young pretty fellow and the pair of tits did not convince you that these are actually for reals cool people, I guess we’d better add a boat full of screaming fans! That way you, as the viewer, know that Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing somebody cool for once, rather than boring old Lester Bangs who listens to records at three in the morning, or a possibly-gay priest who feuds with Meryl Streep.
AND IT’S THE SIXTIES Y’ALL SO LET’S MENTION THE SOUNDTRACK!
Honestly. Sometimes I am amazed that Hollywood actually ever manages to make a great poster anymore.
EDIT TO ADD: I think what really turns me off about the second poster is its rank desperation. ‘Look at me,” it says, “I got pretty young people, just like you like! They’re even English! I tried to get Robert Pattinson, I know how you like Robert Pattinson, but he wasn’t available. And don’t you like this boat? Full of screaming teenagers! You like that, right? Whyyyyyy don’t you liiiiiiike meeee?“
2
Nov
Every year around Halloween, I rent a bunch of horror movies from the 70s and 80s and watch them over a couple of days. Typically, this includes at least one Friday the 13th movie, and this year was no exception.
It’s my favorite horror series, and I’m not always sure why. Largely nostalgia, I suppose; my mom was always pretty indulgent with letting me watch R-rated movies as a child, so I think by the time I was about 12 I had seen all the movies up to that date. It’s certainly not about quality; I like Friday the 13th more, but I have to admit that the original Halloween is a much better movie. I have to say that the music is quite good, especially in the early ones – the scratchy strings and of course, the ch-ch-ch ha-ha-ha (or, for you purists, ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma) “breathing” motif (but there again, Halloween’s legendary score has it beat).
So it’s got to be Jason Voorhees, then. Wielder of the machete, wearer of the goalie mask. No surprise; he’s the central figure and, let’s be fair, semi-protagonist of the franchise. But here’s the thing:
Jason makes no sense.
There’s no proper explanation for him. He was a deformed and possibly developmentally disabled child who apparently drowned in Crystal Lake, but it turns out he didn’t, or maybe he did and came back from the dead somehow. He’s not really a zombie, but he is undead; but even before he became truly supernatural when he was killed in Part IV and rose from the grave in Part VI, he was able to take crazy amounts of punishment. In Part VIII he gets hit with toxic waste and somehow reverts back to a little boy, which is ignored in Jason Goes To Hell, in which he’s a magical, body-hopping creature. Which, in turn, is ignored in Jason X where they talk about him having regenerative properties like Wolverine.
And fans wondered why the recent Friday the 13th remake/reboot didn’t do a Batman Begins/Casino Royale and delve into the character of Jason? Take a look at that previous paragraph and tell me how the hell you would do that. He’s not a character, he’s a big scary guy who walks around killing whoever he comes upon. Jason is a gimmick – and I say that as someone who loves Jason. A good gimmick is still a gimmick, and Jason as a horror icon owes everything – everything – to being a fantastic visual; there’s no reason in the story or thematically why he should be wearing a hockey mask, but it works to create a haunting image.
But I watched His Name Was Jason, a fairly fluffy documentary about the film series, and most of the cast and crew involved tried to offer up some kind of justification for Jason. It’s to be expected – this was made by fans, for fans, so they had to say something that sounded deep and worthy other than “because he looks cool.”
So most of what they say revolved around the idea of Jason getting revenge for being tormented as a child for being different and being left to drown by inattentive camp counselors; someone on the DVD said he was both the killer and the victim. But I really don’t have any sympathy for this brutal killing machine. And yes, a lot of the people he kills in the movies “have it coming” in the logic of the film – there’s the mean jock, the trampy brunette, the annoying stoner, and so on – but in the real world, I should hope nobody looks upon those things as being punishable by death.
And yet, I think we’re on the right track there. Because these are kids who, to borrow a phrase from Philip K Dick, were punished too much for what they did. Much has been made about the conservative tone of these movies in which sex and drugs = death, but it’s not like there isn’t some real-world precedent for that. If you have unprotected sex, there are possible repercussions – unwanted pregnancy or disease, and if there’s disease, then possibly death. If you smoke, you run the risk of developing health problems and, again, possibly death. You drink too much, there’s health problems there too, or you could run your car into a tree.
Basically, the world can punish you for wanting to have a little fun.
Someone else in the DVD described the “teens go into the woods without adult supervision” plotline as “ritualized,” and that’s dead-on, because it is a ritual. You might ask why people keep going to Crystal Lake if there’s a chance you could get your head split in half with a machete. But then people do all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph when there’s also a chance that bad things will happen as a result. Always have, always will, and I’m certainly in no position to judge anyone. Sometimes you get away with it. Sometimes you don’t. It’s random and senseless and unfair and brutal.
And that’s why Jason is the perfect vehicle for this metaphor, and why I think these movies resonate with people, whether consciously or unconsciously. Because a complex character would muddy it up too much. Jason is Fate, Jason is Consequence, and those things do not really operate with any rhyme or reason. Why does Jason wear a hockey mask? Why does he keep coming back from the dead? Why do bad things happen to good people? Sometimes they just do.
And that’s what Friday the 13th really means, Charlie Brown.
31
Oct
Hola, amigos! It is once again that time of the week where I, El Tyrano Magnifico, the greatest of all luchador lawyers, will read and examine your pleas and questions with the detail demanded of a true champion. Much as the time I fought El Hijo del Santo in a Five-Way Mexican Dance of Death, remembering each of his three primary weaknesses and planning my attack, so shall I carefully consider each of your questions. That is the eternal pledge of El Tyrano Magnifico!
Jaime Muniz, who it says in the letter is nine years old, writes to ask:
Dear El Tyrano Magnifico: I was wrestling at school and one of my classmates had me in a rattlesnake leglock. I was slapping the ground to give myself the will and the strength to reach the bottom rope, but the referee said that I had tapped out and thus lost the match, even when I had clearly not submitted! Is this not improper?
Dear Jaime: Sadly, you have no recourse. Ever since Shamrock v. Hart was dismissed for appeal in 1998, it has been a matter of settled international law that slapping a mat, floor, ground, or any other horizontal surface qualifies as a submission, even if the words “I give up” are not uttered. In future, you may wish to consider slapping a wall or human face instead in order to deal with the grueling pain of a rattlesnake leglock. If these are not available, consider filing an injunction with your local judge.
Now, Arina Ortega writes:
Dear El Tyrano Magnifico: My papa works very long hours at the butcher’s, but lately he complains that he is not getting paid for the extra hours he must work. Surely there is some recourse for us? I am very hungry and would like to eat something other than pinto beans, which give me abdominal pressures.
Dear Arina: Your papa is deserving of overtime, but if he has signed a contract forced upon him by the rudo butcher shop manager, he may have unfortunately ceded his right to overtime payment. But all is not lost! If your papa – or a designated counsel working on his behalf – can force the butcher shop manager into a sleeper hold, when the manager passes out from lack of blood to the brain, he will be deemed to have agreed to a rewriting of the terms of the contract! For maximum legal security, I recommend putting the butcher shop manager in a sleeper hold while he is in a police station, local notary’s office or steel cage.
Also, dear Arina, you may qualify for pro bono legal representation by El Tyrano Magnifico, or perhaps by one of the Tyranitos, my assistants here at the firm of Magnifico, Gomez and El Terror. Contact me immediately and we shall set up an appointment! Now who is the next letter from…?
Dear El Tyrano Magnifico: Fool! While you address the questions of simpering children in your pathetic mailbag, I have stolen your precious Legal Society Championship Belt! I wear it now and it glistens around my midsection! HA HA HA! Do you hear my laughter, El Tyrano Magnifico? I laugh at your respect for law and order! HA HA HA! Your gleaming belt is nothing more than a trophy of my success!
Sincerely, Vampiro Ultimate X
My fists quake with rage! Damn your eyes, Vampiro Ultimate X! Your misdeeds have gone unpunished for far too long, even as you have exceeded the villainy of Vampiro Ultimate IX and Vampiro Ultimate VIII, and indeed all the previous Vampiro Ultimates with the possible exception of IV! And now you steal the Legal Society Championship Belt? Without ever having passed a bar exam? Without ever having had proper schooling? The duty of a luchador lawyer is to serve as counsel to the utmost degree, Vampiro Ultimate X, and that is something you cannot understand for you do not know the secret martial paths of the courtroom!
This time is for me to read mail from all my little amigos who seek legal knowledge, Vampiro Ultimate X, and you have trespassed upon sacred ground, at least metaphorically! For this there can be no forgiveness! I challenge you to a barbed wire match, Vampiro Ultimate X! In the deadly tangle of barbed wire, I shall call forth many witnesses, who will testify as to your inadequacy when I place you in my patented1 Hyper Dragon Armbar! You will cry for mercy, Vampiro Ultimate X, but no mercy will be forthcoming so long as no one believes you are reasonably deserving of mercy! That is the promise of El Tyrano Magnifico!
29
Oct
Serious question: does anybody actually like Major Force?
I mean, yes, I get he’s a villain, but everybody has their favorite villains. Mine is Lex Luthor. Lots of people love the Joker or Dr. Doom. And there’s always going to be one or two holdouts for the lesser lights, somebody who really loves the Gambler or the Ratcatcher or Big Wheel. That’s natural. But does anybody really love Major Force? Or even like him?
It’s not a problem with his concept, which is actually pretty clever. Since the experiment that turned Nathaniel Adam into Captain Atom also flung him twenty years into the future, the people conducting it had no idea that they hadn’t killed him – so they tried again, but this time they used a psychotic murderer on the basis that if they killed him, nobody would care. (Of course, the question of “well, what if they had succeeded” is one that is casually walked around. I have always favoured “they wanted data on the huge explosion, but needed someone expendable to trigger the huge explosion, and so…”) And then a little while after Captain Atom pops into the future, hello, it’s Major Force! Perfectly good start to a story, right? And Wade Eiling (who was never, ever interesting until he became The General, which is just so comics it is perfect) makes him a government agent, and…
…that’s when it goes downhill. Because Major Force is just kind of boring: he’s a self-interested thug with a tendency to get violent who is basically indestructible. He has never done anything interesting ever. “A ha,” you say, “but he killed Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend!” And my answer is “big deal,” because A) all of Kyle’s girlfriends die sooner or later and B) her death wasn’t about her, it was about Kyle, and Major Force could have been absolutely anybody and it wouldn’t have mattered. Similarly, he killed Guy Gardner’s mother for some reason I forget and again, nobody cares. Nobody cares about anything Major Force does, because he doesn’t have any personality worth mentioning: he just does things other people tell him to do. Why does he do these things? “Because.” Commenting on Major Force as a character is like commenting on the character of the gun that killed Batman’s parents. “Well, he has this trigger. And if you pull the trigger… people might die!”
And the worst thing is that he just keeps showing up. Every time DC wants to have the government be sorta-malevolent (which is like seven times a year now), up pops Major Force like a bad pimple. He just showed up in the godawful Captain Atom backup story in one of the Superman books that doesn’t currently have Superman in it, because the very moment that Captain Atom found out that the government was behind him being in a fantasy world – hey! Major Force! I think if you say “government” five times fast in the DC Universe, Major Force just kind of shows up. Like Candyman. Except he sucks.
People talk about Golden Age Wonder Woman panels being disturbing, but really, those are nothing. This just makes me feel unclean.
(from Dixie Dugan #2)
28
Oct
Your guest judge is an empty chair with “Paula Abdul” on it. The new stage sucks. There’s no voting this week. HOW MANY MORE WAYS CAN THEY FIND TO BE WRONG?
Channing and Philip: jive. This was mediocre leaning towards bad, particularly in the case of Philip, who frankly should be better at jive: he was sucking wind at the end, his extensions were frankly crap (which given his tap background is really just… weird) and he looked nervous. Channing was actually much better than she got credit for being; her extensions were solid and she had much better performance quality than Philip. That having been said, the responsibility for nearly fucking up their big trick lies on both of them. For a first show, this was below average but not necessarily kiss of death. The judges actually make good comments, which blows me the fuck away.
Ashleigh and Jakob: Broadway. Tasty Oreo puts together a Broadway routine that isn’t grating? Hooray for small miracles. Honestly, this was probably one of the best Broadways Tasty has ever choreo’d (which is often damning with faint praise, but not this time). Jakob was astounding in this: his transitions were just seamless and his movement just goddamn sublime. Ashleigh was okay, which for working out of genre on week one is actually not that bad. This was reasonably good!
Arianna and Peter: hip-hop. That was one of the worst hip-hop performances on this show ever: an interesting core idea, executed about as badly as I have ever seen Napoleon and Tabitha (or pretty much anybody else) ever choreo a routine. (“Hey, I got an idea! Let’s have them stand over hunched for a few seconds and just flail!” “Awesome! You know what else would be good? Lots of dead time!” “We’re killing this shit!”) Arianna was off-beat frequently: Peter was much sharper (and had the harder part to perform), but given what crap he had to work with it’s hard to praise him even so.
Russell and Noelle Melanie LaPatin: foxtrot. And here is episode seven of the “Russell can do anything and make it look amazing” show, this week managing to do what Pasha couldn’t do in season three: dance with Melanie and make it look natural and real. (Okay, so it helps that this was a refined, charming routine that worked a lot better than the wild salsa they choreo’d for Pasha.) But in all seriousness, Russell was goddamned amazing – maybe not technically brilliant but certainly possessed of fantastic performance quality – and my only quibble is Nigel saying that Fred Astaire couldn’t or wouldn’t do krump, which is bull: Astaire (and Gene Kelly) lived for new types of dance, and were known in their seventies to go out on the street and cheer on breakdancers. If krump had been around in their prime, they would have krumped. I’ll bring this back to Russell now by saying that his effortlessness in this reminded me well of Astaire and Kelly, and he’s definitely a frontrunner at this point.
Bianca and Viktor: contemporary. Something about Travis’ choreo still doesn’t quite work for me: to me this felt a bit derivative, taking chunks out of Mia Michaels’ playbook (which, admittedly, is still stealing from the best). The judges fell over themselves to praise Viktor’s embrace of the character, which is weird to me because I thought he was almost soulless in his performance, dancing like a very technically brilliant robot, and that Bianca was the one really driving the connection and emotion of the piece home. But the dancing was strong and I can’t complain about it, really.
Karen and Kevin: cha cha. Karen’s performance quality was predictably very solid; Kevin’s was surprisingly disappointing. Adam Shankman calling the end lift “a little slow” is perhaps a bit of an understatement, as I stepped away from the screen to watch Titanic and read War and Peace and then came back and it was still going. Kevin’s legwork was practically nonexistent (lots of just “standing and letting Karen do things” moments); he started out reasonably well and then just went downhill, and he tried to make up for it with “Latin face” and didn’t really manage it. Bleh. (Also, “Push It” as sung by the cast of Glee? No.)
Ellenore and Ryan: jazz. Thankfully someone took Sonya aside and told her “look, stop trying to make people be sexy, and just do dances based on your last D&D campaign like we pay you to do,” and she did. And this is fine, because she is great at that. This was really cool; Ryan and Ellenore have a good partnership here, and both danced it quite well. The tricks were all pulled off quite well (although they were more predictable than Mary thought, but then again Mary is easily surprised). I quite liked this.
Brandon and Pauline: smooth waltz. I really think the judges overcritiqued this if anything, because Brandon and Pauline had great chemistry, good lines and reasonably good rise and fall. For a day and a half’s worth of practice I think they did just fine; there have been many, many waltzes on this show that were worse than this. Many, many waltzes, and they got blowjobs from the judges all the same.
Katherine and Legacy: hip-hop. I love Dave Scott’s choreo – he’s original and fresh and does indeed have a clever sense of humour. That having been said, this wasn’t my favourite of his pieces. It wasn’t a bad piece by any means, and I thought Legacy and Katherine did a good job with it – not nearly as hard-hitting as it could have been (and dare I say the lack of hip-hop judging on this show is distressing – three judges with no hip-hop training telling us how good or bad a piece of hip-hop is? Yeeesh), but good enough and certainly better than most of season five’s hip-hop. There’s just been, you know. Better.
Mollee and Nathan: disco. Ugh. The first twenty seconds or so of this were actually really great, and I was thinking, hey, maybe Doriana Sanchez hasn’t laid yet another egg. And in fairness, I don’t think I can blame her entirely for this mess, which they did not pull off no matter how much the judges want them to succeed (and if there’s another couple getting more obvious judge-jobs than these two, I dunno who they are). After that first twenty seconds, they screwed up a lift, then came out of the lift sloppy with bad footwork, then did another lift poorly, then more bad footwork… ugh. What a goddamn mess.
And then the judges nominate Arianna, Pauline, Brandon, and Russell for some reason that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. And of course it’s Brandon going home because duh. And Arianna, whatever.
27
Oct
I don’t generally go posting pictures of myself on this blog, but I am making an exception in this case because Karen gives good photo.
27
Oct
27
Oct
ME: What now?
FLAPJACKS: Did you see this? Some crazy guy put together a replica of a vintage first class airplane cabin in his garage.
ME: Because he’s crazy?
FLAPJACKS: You just spent actual money on old board games from the 1960s like, last week.
ME: You can play those.
FLAPJACKS: And he can play with his fake plane. I bet he roleplays out scenes from Mad Men. Like, he pretends he’s the steward who gets Don Draper an Old Fashioned while Don Draper picks up the woman in the seat next to him, and then he waves goodbye as they leave the plane to go have sex in a hotel.
ME: He doesn’t want to be Don Draper?
FLAPJACKS: I think you overestimate the ambition of this guy. He didn’t recreate a mini Playboy Mansion. He recreated an airplane cabin.
ME: What would you have recreated?
FLAPJACKS: You know that bit in the James Bond movie where the villain tries to shoot a laser at James Bond’s crotch? That.
ME: Would you play pretend that you are James Bond or Goldfinger?
FLAPJACKS: It wasn’t Goldfinger. It was Jaws.
ME: It wasn’t Jaws. Jaws fought Roger Moore. Sean Connery was the Bond who nearly got crotch-lasered.
FLAPJACKS: Look, I know it was Jaws. I distinctly remembering him speaking in his English accent that he expected Mr. Bond to die.
ME: Jaws wasn’t English! He was a guy with a mouth full of metal! He wouldn’t have spoken in crisp English tones. He would have mumbled something vaguely metallic.
FLAPJACKS: I bet if you check Wikipedia, you will see that I have already loaded up the page on your computer and it will say that it was Jaws.
(pause)
ME: This is a Post-It, with “Jaws” written on it in your handwriting, stuck on my computer monitor and covering up the picture of Goldfinger menacing James Bond.
FLAPJACKS: I couldn’t figure out how to edit Wikipedia properly.
ME: So will you concede that Jaws did not menace James Bond with the laser?
FLAPJACKS: No.
ME: I actually own Goldfinger on DVD.
FLAPJACKS: You could have counterfeited that.
ME: With the young Sean Connery ten years before I was born.
FLAPJACKS: Or a very good imitator!
ME: …anyway, so that’s what you want to be? The guy torturing James Bond, be it Jaws – who it wasn’t – or someone else?
FLAPJACKS: Heck no.
ME: So you want to be James Bond. That’s pretty common.
FLAPJACKS: That’s far too common for the likes of me.
ME: …who have you inserted into this scenario who was not there previously? And before you start, don’t say “myself as a secret agent.”
FLAPJACKS: Of course not. That would be lame.
ME: So who is it?
FLAPJACKS: Funny you should say that.
ME: What do you – oh god, you want to set up this scenario so you can play Doctor Who rescuing James Bond.
FLAPJACKS: Yes! And then they go off on adventures together.
ME: That’s awful.
FLAPJACKS: I take it that you don’t want to play James Bond in this.
ME: Excuse me. If I was going to take part in this horrible exercise – which of course I never would – you had better damn believe that I would be Doctor Who. He has a time-traveling police box. All James Bond has is a watch with spy doohickeys, all of which can be disabled by Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver.
FLAPJACKS: But I found this tuxedo in your size and everything.
ME: No.
FLAPJACKS: What if I told you that this offer also comes with a 1961 Aston Martin?
ME: Does it?
FLAPJACKS: Not really?
ME: Still a no, then.
27
Oct
THREE EXAMPLES OF SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE‘S BRILLIANT “FIX WHAT ISN”T BROKEN” STRATEGY
1.) The new stage, which is large, impersonal, with a dark background so the dancers tend to fade into the background if not lit exactly right (and it’s hard to light constantly moving people exactly right) and difficult for the cameramen to shoot well, and lacks the balcony/stairwell that so many choreographers have used to good effect
2.) Switching the format so the top 20 and top 18 eliminations aren’t done by phone-in vote, but instead solely by the judges, which of course forces one to ask as to why they had anything but a top 16 in the first place
3.) Begging Paula Abdul to come on the show because god knows I need to see a washed-up drunken “celebrity” on my teevee
Is there a master plan here? Because seriously, I don’t see it.
26
Oct
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
26
Oct
25
Oct
A pretty strong effort from Terry Pratchett this go-around, in part because he’s mostly left his usual formula behind in a way. Which is appropriate for what’s an interesting combination of sports novel and nontraditional hero’s journey, while still part of Pratchett’s overall continuing Discworld metastory of a fantasy-world Industrial Revolution.
Unseen Academicals has no obvious villain – sure, there’s a thuggish football goon, but he’s barely a factor for most of the story. What it is instead is philosophical – of course, all of Pratchett’s books have their philosophical moments, but Academicals is very much a meditation on what creates the mentality of crowds – what’s attractive and good about it as well as what’s repellent and bad. In this book, Vetinari is doing nothing less than attempting to change crowd psychology, if only a little bit, and what’s really clever on both his part and Pratchett’s is that he acknowledges, for the first time in the entire series, that’s he’s really taking a risk. (The book also delivers, for a brief, tantalizing moment, a small insight into what actually drives Vetinari. If that alone doesn’t make you go out and get it, then you don’t read Pratchett yet.)
On a simpler level, Pratchett’s delivering a welcome mix of known quantities and new faces. Mustrum Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons are significant POV characters for a good chunk of the book (although they’re not the main characters); Ridcully in particular comes off really well, because he’s still funny good old Ridcully who gets peeved due to a rival university popping up – but Pratchett really makes it clear in this book that Ridcully is the Boss Wizard for a number of very good reasons, both external and internal, and it’s really just cool to see Ridcully get a couple of totally badass character moments.
The new faces this go-around would be, I expect, more of the William De Worde “one novel and then into background” sort rather than a continuing protagonist like Vimes or Moist von Lipwig. To give any details about Nutt and Glenda would spoil the read, so I won’t bother: I’ll just say that the former introduces a notably missing element to the Discworld’s fantasy panoply and the latter is another of Pratchett’s favored (and entirely deserving to be so) big tough girl heroes.
And, of course, this is a book about football. Because here Pratchett is having the characters of the Discworld explicitly invent football (rather than the traditional organic formation he usually goes with), it allows him to speak through his characters about why football is great, why the rules are the rules and why it’s more than just a game but a visceral experience. And he does it with good gags.
Highly recommended. It’s not as good as Nation is, but it’s a very good Discworld novel indeed. Solid A.
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