(500) Days of Summer is quite simply the best film of the year so far.
It is absolutely perfect in any aspect I can think of: intelligent script, ingenious story construction, excellent acting, clever direction, you name it. After I saw it I was seriously tempted to get a ticket for the next immediate showing so that I could watch it again to study its structure. I’ve been sitting down for the last half hour trying to find faults in it and I just. Can’t. Do. It.
It’s more than just a postmodern take on Annie Hall,, and every reviewer saying it “takes the tropes of romantic comedy and satirizes them” needs to be taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot.
PS. Also contains the best last line to a movie since The Apartment.
PPS. No, I’m not kidding.
23
Jul
Got to see Green Lantern: First Flight yesterday, and… well, I kinda give it a thumbs in the middle.
continue reading "First Flight"
23
Jul
You really have to wonder about comic book writers sometimes and if they’re not just playing a gag on you. Such is the reaction I get when I look at The Gang. They look like a comic book writer got inspired on a trip to Bulk Barn. “Hey, what if we had no-name brand X supervillains?”
Hence, The Gang. You have Brains, with the red uniform, who is the Smart One. You have Kong, with the green uniform, who is the Strong One. You have Ms. Mesmer, in yellow, who is The One With The Gimmick. And you have Bulldozer, in blue, who is Also The Strong One. (Presumably they felt that Ms. Mesmer having a thing was almost too individual, so they doubled down and made Bulldozer a shorter version of Kong with a slightly different fighting style.) If The Gang were pills, they would all be generic aspirins.
No coincidence that they made their debut in The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, quite possibly one of the dullest comic books of all time. (Seriously, go track it down sometime. Then pawn off the books on somebody else. That is how dull they are; you have to witness it to understand it. They are the event horizon of dull.)
I want this entry to be longer, but The Gang is just so goddamned plain. It’s like talking about vanilla ice cream, and not good vanilla or French vanilla or vanilla mint; The Gang are the vanilla ice cream you get for $2.99 at the back of the freezer, the one you know probably gets made with artificial vanilla extract and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. It tastes like inoffensiveness.
Top comment: I’m surprised you didn’t notice that out of a group of criminals supposedly determined not to go to jail, the one named “Brains” is the only one not concealing her face. — 01d55
23
Jul
Your guest judges for episode 99 are Mia Michaels and Ellen Degeneres, for reasons which totally escape me. But at least Ellen can tell jokes that go somewhere. Take note, Nigel.
Group number: contemporary/hip-hop thingie. This was substandard by any yardstick. Yes, yes, they’re all proud of Travis, but this was so boring – dull, predictable group choreography that felt like recital-lite with brief moments of interest when individual dancers were allowed to show off their particular stunts. (Except for Evan, because he is short and all he does that the others don’t is jump high and be charming.) Standard (and wholly undeserved) judge blowjob for Travis. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Janette and Shorty: jazz and rumba. Janette blew me away in Sonya’s jazz piece, but I can’t help but feel Shorty was terribly hard done by as regards Sonya’s choreo; the piece, I think, focused a lot more on Janette doing these awesome things and Shorty, well, carrying her around so she could do the awesome things. Which he did fine, but. Mary Murphy comments that this piece is way outside of Shorty’s area; Shorty is specifically a jazz dancer and this was a jazz dance routine. Shut up, Mary. Mia comments that Shorty is too nice to dance in one of Sonya’s Tim Burton imitations, because Sonya is dark and writes poetry in coffee houses and stuff. Shut up, Mia.
The rumba… look, we know Shorty is a white boy, but making him dance a rumba to Kris Allen is just cruel. Tony and Melanie’s slow routines almost always bore the crap out of me and this was no exception. (Where the hell is Jason Gilkison or Jean-Marc? Or Dmitri or Pasha and Anya? Where did Louis Amstel go? When did Tony and Melanie become the Tabitha and Napoleon of ballroom?) Janette was predictably excellent as this and balanced out Shorty’s boringtude; I actually think he had the attitude but didn’t quite show up with the ability. Nigel says Shorty has “heavy eyebrows,” which… what?
Janette’s solo: Well, if you use up all your ballroom tricks in one solo, I guess you go for mock-contemporary. Which wasn’t bad, albeit technically not all there.
Shorty’s solo: The air he gets on his leaps just staggers me. At some point, maybe a choreographer will actually, like, use it.
Jeanine and Brandon: waltz and pop/jazz. Jeanine was better in the waltz than Brandon, who I think was pretty obviously uncomfortable with it. Her rise and fall was quite good; his was intermittent at best, sometimes there, sometimes not. The footwork was solid; nothing amazing, but no major mistakes. They had very good chemistry, though, and the lifts were predictably good. This was perfectly acceptable ballroom by the standard of top 8 on SYTYCD.
The pop/jazz (pazz? Jop?) was sensational. I was amazed that they performed it so well that the crowd (which, let us admit, can frequently be a bit dumb) was actually able to get engaged in a dance with almost no major lifts or “hey lookit” drama bits – and then threw in those parts right at the end anyway. This was just fucking great dancing – energetic, strong, exciting – and LaurieAnn Gibson can come back anytime she likes in my book. It didn’t hurt that Brandon and Jeanine are easily the two physically strongest dancers left; they looked like they could tear shit up, and then did. (Also: Kris Allen AND Jordin Sparks in one night? HELLO WE ARE NINETEEN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCING THIS SHOW.)
Jeanine’s solo: Just fucking great. That opening progression, with the movements paired to the stuttering piano notes? Holeeeeee shit. Jeanine is simply in a whole other league above the other girls left on this show.
Brandon’s solo: Not up to his usual standard for artistry, but insanely physical; I suspect he got a bit spooked by the Tasty Oreo contemporary piece immediately before and decided to go for stunts.
Melissa and Ade: cha cha and contemporary. Ade could probably be a pretty damn good Latin dancer with more training, but he does need more training; he’s got the natural feel for the Latin body waves but he doesn’t quite commit to them; I suspect his earlier rumba was benefited by its slow pace. Melissa made me feel like I was watching them dance this at half speed; she looked slow and cumbersome in the dance, and the routine itself had so many poses and stops that it demanded full commitment from Melissa and I just didn’t get that at all. This was extremely bad for top 8 and frankly probably would have gotten them eliminated earlier.
That having been said, I think they’re safe, because the contemporary was very good. I was prepared to loathe it because breast cancer is such an Obviously Special And Important Topic (and because, come on, Tasty Oreo), but Melissa and Ade danced it very, very well and really brought the emotions through, and I remembered that Tasty can really deliver when he leaves the Broadway area which he supposedly dominates. Don’t get me wrong; I think on terms of overall ability Melissa definitely deserves to go home before the other three, and I think Ade doesn’t necessarily deserve to make top 4 as others do. But I don’t see it happening when they made the judges cry and had the Very Important Message.
Ade’s solo: Rock solid.
Melissa’s solo: She always picks these awesome, distinctive pieces of music and then dithers around en-pointlessly and I’m really, really sick of it.
Kayla and Jason: Broadway and hip-hop. I know I mock Tasty Oreo’s Broadway on a routine basis, but this one was genuinely great: it was sultry and smooth and clever and charming, and actually felt like what “Broadway” should be, rather than just being a slightly modified jazz dance as per usual Tasty. If one needed any proof that it was Jason’s lack of chemistry that was holding him back, I think this week and last demonstrate that this was the case; with new partners he’s simply blossomed. Kayla was excellent and actually demonstrated real character for the first time in pretty much ever. Mary has a wooden steamwhistle. Shut up, Mary.
The hip-hop could have been great – that was pretty goddamned brilliant choreo from Shane Sparks, with a great concept. I can’t quite call it “great.” Maybe “good.” Jason and Kayla hit their moves cleanly enough that I can’t complain there, but the “heavy” character I wanted to see out of zombies dancing – that they were specifically instructed to include – just wasn’t there. Jason was stronger than Kayla was. Still, given how shit the hip-hop has mostly been this season, I have to admit that “okay” is a step up. But I would have preferred to see Philipchbeeb -or motherfucking TWITCH – rock this one.
Kayla’s solo: Much better than I am used to from her; actually worked very well with the music and wasn’t just a collection of stunts and tricks.
Jason’s solo: More frenetic than last week, but not as frenetic as previously and had a bit of a sense of build. Decent.
Should go home: Melissa and Shorty.
Will go home: Kayla and Shorty.
22
Jul
When I was ten I went to war.
Not war in the actual sense, of course. My war was with the kid down the street. His name was Derek, and he was a year younger than me. This might make me sound a bully, but believe me, this was anything other than the case. When Derek moved in, initially we tried to make friends. We both liked Hot Wheels. This was a firm basis for a friendship.
However, me taking offense at blackcurrant jelly on a PB&J at his house snowballed into blood feud in short order. (Derek’s family was of Eastern European descent and blackcurrant jelly was only beginning to really enter into the Canadian market.) As anybody knows, it only takes the slightest insult – and personally, I think choking at the unexpected mix of blackcurrant1 and peanut butter is definitely pretty damn slight – for children to form inviolate hatreds. After the Blackcurrant Incident, Derek hated my guts. I didn’t understand it, but one thing about kids hating you, when you’re a kid, is that it’s incredibly easy to reciprocate.
It really only took one-half a heaved brick for my confusion to curdle into hatred. (Well, it was a whole brick, but it was only half a throw.) And because wars inevitably escalate, friends got dragged into it. However, friends-of-warring-friends have varying degrees of interest. In my case, my friends were willing to cooperate in missions of espionage when they came over to play (tipping over of bikes, careful theft of basketballs, that sort of thing), but they weren’t emotionally invested beyond wanting to support me in my Ahab-like quest as much as they were able, which was not a lot. They didn’t live down the street from Derek, after all. They weren’t Queequeg and didn’t need to bring along their own coffins.
Derek, on the other hand, had friends who were invested. He befriended another Chris and Jason. Other Chris and Jason hated me. Not personally, you understand; I was a mouthy kid even then but hadn’t yet mastered the art of personally offending people for life.2 Other Chris and Jason hated me impersonally, the way they hated anybody in my year at school, because Other Chris and Jason had been in my year until they were left back just before Derek moved to Toronto in the summer. When Derek met them, they were given a cause. It wouldn’t last forever, of course. Just long enough.
(Incidentally, I feel it worthy mentioning that Other Chris and Jason’s experience is one of the reasons I’ve always felt that leaving back poor students is counterproductive. Yes, it sucks that students who don’t entirely understand what they’ve been taught get advanced regardless, but Other Chris and Jason got to feel marginalized at the age of nine. So far as I know neither one had any education past high school; I believe one of them didn’t even finish. They weren’t dullards. They just got told, right off the bat, exactly how much society thought of them. I don’t see how it helped. I particularly don’t buy the “leaving them back helped all the other students” argument, because if they were disruptive in class it was just a matter of transferring the problem to a new bunch of kids. And they weren’t particularly disruptive before they were left back.)
Other Chris and Jason, combined with Derek, formed a terrifying unit. Jason was athletic, Other Chris had a particularly criminal sense of inventiveness, and Derek was, even at that early age, a master of covering ass. An example of this happened when I was riding home on my bike, around the corner where Derek lived. I was still at the “ride on the sidewalk” age, so it was easy for Other Chris to run out into the sidewalk suddenly. I hit the brakes (coaster bike, push the pedals in reverse), which gave Jason, hiding in the bushes across the street, the chance to run across it and jam a broomhandle into my spokes. This led to about five minutes of shoving me around while I sat on my bike saddle (I wasn’t going to relinquish my bike), which was exactly the amount of time available before Derek’s mom arrived home from work. Really, you have to admire the precision.
Another time, down at the park, the traditional “water pistols filled with Kool-Aid” attack went awry for Derek and his crew. Water pistols filled with Kool-Aid are a great weapon when you’re a kid: you get your target in trouble if he’s wearing anything the Kool-Aid will stain (and he probably is), the sugar attracts mosquitoes and other bugs, and of course there’s the soaking factor combined with a little unpleasant stickiness. Unfortunately, my friends and I knew the woods behind the park better than Derek did (and Other Chris and Jason didn’t live near the park so they didn’t know it at all), so it was easy to run, jump the creek right next to the log we knew was almost entirely rotted out, get our feet wet and continue. When Team Derek gave chase, they naturally tried to run across the log, which snapped. In retrospect, it’s probably lucky they didn’t break anything.
I wish this story ended with a dramatic flourish, but it doesn’t. Kids lose interest in things over time, and kid-wars are no exception; eventually Jason and Other Chris found better things to do with their time as they got over being left back as best they could, and my friends had never had much interest to begin with, exhortations of “I got your back” aside. Derek and I eventually just learned that giving one another dirty looks was a lot easier than carrying out “missions” to spray each others’ pet cats with water pistols.3
It’s part of growing up: with luck, you realize when bullshit is bullshit.
Top comments:
The above was, of course, translated from the original near-incomprehensible Donald Duckese by a team of crack cryptographers. — Keogh
Don’t you mean quack cryptographers? — Tornado Ninja Fan
20
Jul
My weekly TV column is now up at Torontoist.
(And yes, I know now that The Bachelorette finishes next week, not this week. My defense is that I do not care.)
20
Jul
It has been a while since I posted on this here blog so I figure it is time that I discuss a subject of critical importance! And that subject today will be the flags of New Zealand.
New Zealand is a pretty awesome country! I mean, think of all it has going for it. Like, they made Lord of the Rings there. And the Maori warrior totally almost beat the Shaolin monk on Deadliest Warrior, which is like, I dunno, coming within a point of beating whatever college team is big this year in basketball. (Is it Kansas? Duke? The one with the bulldog? Let’s say it’s the one with the bulldog.) And their national sports teams dominate in cricket and rugby and other sports I don’t know anything about, which means that sooner or later they will play a for-reals sport and win at that too. Clearly New Zealand is a country on the rise.
But their flags all suck!
Okay so this is the flag that New Zealand uses right now. You will note that they still use the Union Jack, which is dumb. Look, New Zealand (and Australia too, you should pay attention – what is it with the southern hemisphere?) – you’re not actually British any more. This is to the good! You can create your own traditions! Or, if you want to follow the Canadian example, you can borrow them from elsewhere and then pretend they are yours.
Look at the rest of the Commonwealth. None of us still use the Union Jack. Not even the failed former British colonies in Africa use it! It’s like, you know those commercials for the “pull-up” diapers for toddlers who still poop themselves but want the dignity of putting on their own diapers? (Do they even have those in New Zealand? Maybe you just use a sheep.) That’s what the Union Jack is when you’re not British and it’s on your flag.
continue reading "I have opinions too you know"
19
Jul
LIKED
– Harry Potter and the Sixth Movie is decent. It’s not in the league of Star Trek or Up for summer quality, but it’s entertaining and well-made on all levels, which has been a fucking rarity in the land of the summer blockbuster this year. You have to really admire how the movies manage to take everything of quality out of the increasingly mediocre progression of books and ignore all the extra flotsam. (For example, Dobby has not shown up once since the second movie, which just goes to show you that the producers understand that Dobby is horrible in all ways.) This time around, Emma Watson really steps up her acting a notch, and Tom Felton makes Draco compelling and sad, which the book never really managed to do.
– Also finally got around to seeing Adventureland and was terribly impressed by it. It turns out Kristen Stewart can actually act when she is not in a shitty movie about sparkle vampires, and Ryan Reynolds’ turn as the park handyman/fading rocker is magnetic in the sort of way that Brad Pitt was in Thelma and Louise. And Jesse Eisenberg is like Michael Cera if Michael Cera wasn’t sometimes horribly annoying in a sort of “I need to punch you in the face” way.
– After a couple of marathon sessions I can safely say that Small World is definitely my frontrunner for “best board game of the year.” It’s quick (about an hour per session when people know the rules), strategic without being boring, has that random element that makes games interesting without being overly luck-based, and best of all it’s the sort of game that’s inherently funny. “A-ha! The Bivouacking Sorcerers strike with great vengeance upon your Dragon Master Halflings!”
DIDN’T LIKE
– Yeah, Blackest Night sure sucked.
Someone emailed me about this municipal tax change in Los Angeles, wherein “creators” are going to be taxed at the rate of “occupations and professions” rather than “wholesale and retail.” (WARNING: link contains lengthy comments section dominated by possibly-retarded Texan who turns the entire thread into a debate about whether or not Barack Obama is a secret Marxist and why Texas would be fine and dandy were it to secede.)
Thanks to Creators Syndicate and other such groups flexing their muscles, back in the 1990s creators were classified as “wholesale and retail” business, which has a lower tax rate. In Los Angeles, this matters, because a lot of creative muscle resides in the city. Anyway, Creators Syndicate is predictably throwing a hissy and threatening to leave. I particularly liked how Rick Newcombe, in his Wall Street Journal moanfest, complains that the city is “ignoring its own ruling” and that “the city is not bound by past rulings – only taxpayers are.”
Well, yes, of course that’s the case; any ruling on a tax situation in Los Angeles is going to be issued by the city clerk. Is the city clerk a judge? No. Are they a neutral party? No. The city clerk is an employee of the city of Los Angeles, and can reverse a previous ruling pretty much at whim because they’re only really expressing the tax preferences of the city. Sometimes those tax preferences will be “well, fuck it, we don’t want to get into a fight with Creators Syndicate right now.” Sometimes they won’t be.
And let’s be honest: classifying the job of creator as “wholesale and retail” is the most obvious kind of tax dodge in the first place, the sort of ruling that reeks of back-room gladhanding and favour-trading. Creators don’t sell their products on a wholesale or retail basis; they’re either working on a contracted basis or independently generating product that will be sold “wholesale or retail” only very rarely. The professions are more akin to what “creator” is; this reversal is merely a return to sensible tax policy, which is of course why people are screaming bloody murder.
16
Jul
…that over the course of Blackest Night, two things happen.
1.) A whole ton of DC characters are horribly and brutally murdered by zombies.
2.) A whole ton of DC characters who become zombies are miraculously revived so we can return to the status quo.
This is because Blackest Night is, I suspect, the apotheosis of Geoff Johns’ writing career. He gets to kill everybody and then bring them all back in the same miniseries!
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