Weeds
season one, disc one
Weeds is about Nancy, a suburban mom who sells pot. Her husband died suddenly not long before the series begins. She has two sons, one fourteen and the other around ten.
We aren't told what Nancy did before her husband died. I assume she didn't have a job outside the home, or else she'd still be doing it. We also don't know how she hooked up with her suppliers, although a later episode gives us a hint.
About her suppliers. They're a black family: Matron Heylia, her nephew Conrad, and a daughter Vaneeta. From the first episode, these characters bugged me because they're very much stock types, especially the mother. She's all sass and "mm-hmm" and threats to beat people's asses if they don't act right. This series is full of stock character types, but in most cases some individuality is added to them. Not for this family, though. The poor daughter barely gets a line in the six episodes that I saw. She's pregnant, but we don't know anything about the father, when she's due, whether it's a boy or a girl, etc. Conrad gets some development because he has a crush on Nancy, but that's it. It doesn't help that the only black people on the show are ones connected with drugs.
On those other stock types. One of the gags here is that the suburbs, and the people living in them, aren't as squeaky clean as they appear. Is this a revelation to anybody?! This theme has been beaten do death since the 50s, at least. We all know that we're all screwed up, no matter where we live or how we dress. Why some film-makers are still fascinated by this obvious fact is beyond me.
Still, the story of a pretty, fashionable mom dealing dope is rather novel. It's the teen sex, infedelity, snarky housefraus, and secretive homosexuality that are played out. I wish the story had started at an earlier point. It would have been interesting to see how she decided on this course, how she started working with her suppliers, how she built her customer base, etc.
The only character who's really interesting is Shane, Nancy's younger son. He appears to be the most hurt by his father's sudden death. The older son, Silas, doesn't show any signs of grief. But Shane is gets screwier every episode. One moment he's hunting a mountain lion with a BB gun, then he's writing gangsta rap (when he tells his principal not to worry because he's not really going to "cap any muthaf**kas", it provided one of the show's few real laughs), then he's recreating terrorist beheading videos. The kid who plays him is great in the role, too. His giant, unblinking eyes and matter-of-fact delivery of crazy lines is disturbing.
I'm not planning to rent the rest of this show, but I did watch the six half-hour episodes on the first disc. So I'd say it's so-so. Most of the show if done competently enough, but nothing is extraordinary, and it didn't have anything that really grabbed me.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Chasing Amy
Trivia: This is the 500th disc I've rented through Netflix, since April of 2004.
This is writer/director Kevin Smith's third movie, after Clerks and Mallrats. I'm conflicted about Smith's flicks. On the one hand, he has some major interests that I share, like comics, sci-fi, and slackerhood (more of a lifestyle choice than an interest, i guess). I also really like some of his dialog and humor. On the other hand, I don't share his interest in over-the-top sex jokes, and some of his dialog is too artificial.
I didn't enjoy Chasing Amy much. Part of that may be that I just don't like Ben Affleck, who plays the lead character, Holden, as an actor. But it's mainly two other things. One, it doesn't work as a romance for me. Two, too much of the dialog is labored and fakey.
Here's the gist of the story. Holden and Alyssa are comic book artists, on different comics. They meet at a convention and spend a friendly evening at a bar with other friends. Alyssa is pretty and funny, and Holden falls for her. Well, turns out Alyssa is a lesbian. They can still be friends, though, and they start spending a lot of friendly time together. Holden really falls for her now, and eventually declares his love. Alyssa freaks out, and they have a big argument in the rain. She runs off pissed, but hey, she runs back and kisses him. Turns out she loves him, too. Of course that's not the end of it, as they have plenty of issues to deal with, and a plot twist, but I don't want recap the whole thing.
There are some interesting ideas in there. Why do we love the people we love? The problem is that these ideas are worked out entirely in lengthy declarative statements from the characters. What's more, this dialog sounds like overly sincere livejournal posts, not people talking. The substance of what they're saying is intriguing enough, but if this is how it's going to be said, I'd much rather read it in text than listen to it being read aloud with a little bit of acting thrown in. It never engaged my emotions the way you want a romance to do, maybe because the language center of my brain was taking up all my personal bandwidth to process the dialog.
I wasn't sure how to take some other elements of the movie. Later on, Holden finds out that Alyssa's past was more sexually adventurous than he suspected. We're given this information in a monolog (of course) that's clearly humorous, in an over-the-top gross-out kind of way, but then a few scenes later, it becomes a highly dramatic plot point. This is a hard transition for me to make, to laugh at something because it's so outrageous and unlikely at one moment, and then be distraught over its implications the next.
In comparing this movie to romantic comedies that I've enjoyed (a short list), to try and figure out why parts of this movie didn't work for me, I thought of The Apartment, which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and was directed by Billy Wilder. How do these relate in my mind? Well, the protagonists of The Apartment are, like those of Chasing Amy, very flawed and atypical as romantic ideals go. MacLaine's character, like Adam's, has an impressive amorous resume. The couple's romance is far from storybook fare. But it all works very well.
Where's the difference? Let me get my reviewer's snarky little insult out of the way first: Compared to Lemmon and MacLaine, Affleck and Adams are like two fourth graders performing in their church's Christmas play. (Imagine I made a similar quip degrading Smith's direction in comparison to Wilder's.)
There are lots of differences in storytelling, too. We aren't told any snickering gross-out stories about MacLaine's past. Instead, we're shown her current bad relationship in a way that both illustrates how unwise she has been and makes us feel sympathy for her at the same time. We know she's good at heart, worthy and of needful of love, not because dialog has told us so, but because we've seen it for ourselves in the progess of the story and the quality of the acting.
You should go out and rent The Apartment. It's a great movie. Or if you know me, come by and we'll watch it, b/c I've got it on DVD.
One last thing about Chasing Amy. I've heard lots of people say that Kevin Smith is a bad director because he doesn't use the camera well. This is something that I didn't notice in his other movies, so I made a point to look out for it in this one. (Normally, I'll notice outstandingly good shots and cinematography, but if it's bad, I guess I subconciously lump it into a movie's generally suckiness.) What I noticed were a lot of single-camera scenes. A scene tends to be shot from only one angle. Both camera and actors often stay in one place for an entire scene. Now, when two or more characters are simply talking to each other (most of this movie), there's no real need to move the camera around, but doing so once in a while would add something.
I also noticed that an awful lot of the locations and sets were drab and boring. If banality is part of the story--like in Clerks, where the plain convenience store worked to set the mood--that's fine, but here it just managed to give the proceedings a pale backdrop.
One thing I dug about the movie was that it featured the work of one of my favorite comics artists, Mike Allred, creator of Madman. When you see the stuff that Affleck's character has drawn, that's actually drawn by Mike Allred. (http://www.aaapop.com/main.php) Allred also has a cameo in the comics convention scene at the beginning. You should read some Madman comics. Or, you can read mine, but they don't leave my house. ;)
Trivia: This is the 500th disc I've rented through Netflix, since April of 2004.
This is writer/director Kevin Smith's third movie, after Clerks and Mallrats. I'm conflicted about Smith's flicks. On the one hand, he has some major interests that I share, like comics, sci-fi, and slackerhood (more of a lifestyle choice than an interest, i guess). I also really like some of his dialog and humor. On the other hand, I don't share his interest in over-the-top sex jokes, and some of his dialog is too artificial.
I didn't enjoy Chasing Amy much. Part of that may be that I just don't like Ben Affleck, who plays the lead character, Holden, as an actor. But it's mainly two other things. One, it doesn't work as a romance for me. Two, too much of the dialog is labored and fakey.
Here's the gist of the story. Holden and Alyssa are comic book artists, on different comics. They meet at a convention and spend a friendly evening at a bar with other friends. Alyssa is pretty and funny, and Holden falls for her. Well, turns out Alyssa is a lesbian. They can still be friends, though, and they start spending a lot of friendly time together. Holden really falls for her now, and eventually declares his love. Alyssa freaks out, and they have a big argument in the rain. She runs off pissed, but hey, she runs back and kisses him. Turns out she loves him, too. Of course that's not the end of it, as they have plenty of issues to deal with, and a plot twist, but I don't want recap the whole thing.
There are some interesting ideas in there. Why do we love the people we love? The problem is that these ideas are worked out entirely in lengthy declarative statements from the characters. What's more, this dialog sounds like overly sincere livejournal posts, not people talking. The substance of what they're saying is intriguing enough, but if this is how it's going to be said, I'd much rather read it in text than listen to it being read aloud with a little bit of acting thrown in. It never engaged my emotions the way you want a romance to do, maybe because the language center of my brain was taking up all my personal bandwidth to process the dialog.
I wasn't sure how to take some other elements of the movie. Later on, Holden finds out that Alyssa's past was more sexually adventurous than he suspected. We're given this information in a monolog (of course) that's clearly humorous, in an over-the-top gross-out kind of way, but then a few scenes later, it becomes a highly dramatic plot point. This is a hard transition for me to make, to laugh at something because it's so outrageous and unlikely at one moment, and then be distraught over its implications the next.
In comparing this movie to romantic comedies that I've enjoyed (a short list), to try and figure out why parts of this movie didn't work for me, I thought of The Apartment, which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and was directed by Billy Wilder. How do these relate in my mind? Well, the protagonists of The Apartment are, like those of Chasing Amy, very flawed and atypical as romantic ideals go. MacLaine's character, like Adam's, has an impressive amorous resume. The couple's romance is far from storybook fare. But it all works very well.
Where's the difference? Let me get my reviewer's snarky little insult out of the way first: Compared to Lemmon and MacLaine, Affleck and Adams are like two fourth graders performing in their church's Christmas play. (Imagine I made a similar quip degrading Smith's direction in comparison to Wilder's.)
There are lots of differences in storytelling, too. We aren't told any snickering gross-out stories about MacLaine's past. Instead, we're shown her current bad relationship in a way that both illustrates how unwise she has been and makes us feel sympathy for her at the same time. We know she's good at heart, worthy and of needful of love, not because dialog has told us so, but because we've seen it for ourselves in the progess of the story and the quality of the acting.
You should go out and rent The Apartment. It's a great movie. Or if you know me, come by and we'll watch it, b/c I've got it on DVD.
One last thing about Chasing Amy. I've heard lots of people say that Kevin Smith is a bad director because he doesn't use the camera well. This is something that I didn't notice in his other movies, so I made a point to look out for it in this one. (Normally, I'll notice outstandingly good shots and cinematography, but if it's bad, I guess I subconciously lump it into a movie's generally suckiness.) What I noticed were a lot of single-camera scenes. A scene tends to be shot from only one angle. Both camera and actors often stay in one place for an entire scene. Now, when two or more characters are simply talking to each other (most of this movie), there's no real need to move the camera around, but doing so once in a while would add something.
I also noticed that an awful lot of the locations and sets were drab and boring. If banality is part of the story--like in Clerks, where the plain convenience store worked to set the mood--that's fine, but here it just managed to give the proceedings a pale backdrop.
One thing I dug about the movie was that it featured the work of one of my favorite comics artists, Mike Allred, creator of Madman. When you see the stuff that Affleck's character has drawn, that's actually drawn by Mike Allred. (http://www.aaapop.com/main.php) Allred also has a cameo in the comics convention scene at the beginning. You should read some Madman comics. Or, you can read mine, but they don't leave my house. ;)
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Five Short Movie Reviews
Some disks I got from Netflix last week
Die, Monster, Die! / The Dunwich Horror
These flicks came on one double-sided disk. They came from the same production company, and they're both based on short stories by H.P. Lovecraft.
Die, Monster, Die! feels less Lovecraftian of the two. An American goes to Arkham, England (see? in the stories, it's Arkham, Massachusetts; strike one) to hook up with a pretty blond girl he met in college. When he gets to town and asks about her house, peole shun him. They refuse to give him a ride to the house, which is outside town, or even to rent him a bicycle. So much for quaint English hospitality. Well, they're all convinced that the pretty blonde girl's family is crazy and evil, so you can't blame them too much. Instead of asking, "Hey, howcome you folks go all wiggy when I ask about this house?" Mr. American just huffs a bit and walks to the house.
Of course, this girl's family really is crazy and evil. Or at least her dad is. He's got a meteorite that's highly radioactive. It makes plants grow huge, but it also makes people get sick and eventually turn into dust. Mr. American discovers this, rescues the girl, yadda yadda.
I didn't like how they focused on a scientific explanation for the weirdness.
The Dunwich Horror feels more like Lovecraft stories I've read. No meteorites or scientific explanations here. It's all otherworldly elder horrors seeking to wreck their malific vengeance on mankind.
Specifically, it's Al from Quantum Leap who's trying to sacrifice Sandra Dee in a ritual that will bring the Old Ones back to Earth so they can kill everybody. Why Al wants this isn't clear, but you can tell he's crazy from that freakazoid stare he has going on for the entire movie.
Apparently Sandra Dee is a little freaky herself, because she's turned on by Al's unsettling stare. So much so that she lets herself get clumsily manipulated into spending the weekend at Al's old house on the outskirts of Dunwich, MA. Al continues to casually brainwash her over the weekend, to the point that she sort of sleepwalks out to this weird alter setup and politely lies on it to become a vessel for the Old Ones. Why do the sweet girls always fall for the bad boys?
Well, luckily for Sandra, an old professor back at Arkham University gets wise to what's going on. Luckily for mankind, he just happens to know the magic words that will counter Al's evil incantations and block the return of the darned Old Ones. He didn't give any indication before the climactic scene that he knew that stuff, but it turns out he did. You'd think, if he knew that much, he'd be more careful with the unholy Necronomicon and not leave it displayed in the middle of the college library where any old unbalanced occultist can steal it.
Crank
This movie stars that guy from The Transporter. It's not as good as The Transporter.
Mr. Transporter plays an assassin in this one. Some rivals inject him with a drug that will kill him in an hour. So, he calls his sleazy doctor, Dwight Yoakum. Dwight tells him that it's "some Chinese shit" and it really will kill him in an hour unless he keeps his adrenaline way up. Dwight is flying back from overseas, and he'll try to do a blood transfer or something when he gets into town.
So, Mr. Transporter spends the whole movie running around like a madman. He does crazy stunts, he does cocaine, he steals synthetic adrenaline, he has sex with Amy Smart in public, all to keep up his adrenaline and keep the poison at bay.
Here's the problem. All that crazy stuff, one insane thing after another, cut together with highly hectic editing, just wears on you after awhile. It's not fun to watch. It's too much.
Idiocracy
This is Mike Judge's second live action movie. Judge is the guy who brought us Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, and King of the Hill. Idiocracy isn't as good as any of those.
There's potential in there, but it never comes to be. Here's the best illustration of that. In one scene, the narrator of the film describes how the English language has devolved along with every other part of society. He says that it has become a mixture of hillbilly, hip hop, advertising, etc. It's a very evocative description, but we never get to hear people actually speaking that way. What we get instead is more like David Letterman's "Dumb Guy" schtick. People say things like "I like money" and "you sound queer." There could have been some good laughs from mixing together the elements mentioned in the narrator's description, but there aren't.
I can't help thinking that Judge didn't go deep enough into his premise. He just stays at the surface. Everyone is dumb, and sort of zombie-like. It could have been funnier if the dumb people thought they were actually smart, as is the case with so many truly dangerously dumb people. Five hundred years into the future might be a bit too far, too. Obviously a premise like this is designed to comment on today's society, not extrapolate what might really happen in the future. Setting this story a hundred, or even fifty years into the future, where the crassness and stupidity of modern society has simply overwhelmed the better parts, rather than grossly outbreeding them, could have kept the social commentary closer to home.
Insecticidal
I thought this would be a fun B movie with giant bugs. It wasn't. It had some giant bugs, but it wasn't fun. I really only watched about fifteen minutes of it.
Some disks I got from Netflix last week
Die, Monster, Die! / The Dunwich Horror
These flicks came on one double-sided disk. They came from the same production company, and they're both based on short stories by H.P. Lovecraft.
Die, Monster, Die! feels less Lovecraftian of the two. An American goes to Arkham, England (see? in the stories, it's Arkham, Massachusetts; strike one) to hook up with a pretty blond girl he met in college. When he gets to town and asks about her house, peole shun him. They refuse to give him a ride to the house, which is outside town, or even to rent him a bicycle. So much for quaint English hospitality. Well, they're all convinced that the pretty blonde girl's family is crazy and evil, so you can't blame them too much. Instead of asking, "Hey, howcome you folks go all wiggy when I ask about this house?" Mr. American just huffs a bit and walks to the house.
Of course, this girl's family really is crazy and evil. Or at least her dad is. He's got a meteorite that's highly radioactive. It makes plants grow huge, but it also makes people get sick and eventually turn into dust. Mr. American discovers this, rescues the girl, yadda yadda.
I didn't like how they focused on a scientific explanation for the weirdness.
The Dunwich Horror feels more like Lovecraft stories I've read. No meteorites or scientific explanations here. It's all otherworldly elder horrors seeking to wreck their malific vengeance on mankind.
Specifically, it's Al from Quantum Leap who's trying to sacrifice Sandra Dee in a ritual that will bring the Old Ones back to Earth so they can kill everybody. Why Al wants this isn't clear, but you can tell he's crazy from that freakazoid stare he has going on for the entire movie.
Apparently Sandra Dee is a little freaky herself, because she's turned on by Al's unsettling stare. So much so that she lets herself get clumsily manipulated into spending the weekend at Al's old house on the outskirts of Dunwich, MA. Al continues to casually brainwash her over the weekend, to the point that she sort of sleepwalks out to this weird alter setup and politely lies on it to become a vessel for the Old Ones. Why do the sweet girls always fall for the bad boys?
Well, luckily for Sandra, an old professor back at Arkham University gets wise to what's going on. Luckily for mankind, he just happens to know the magic words that will counter Al's evil incantations and block the return of the darned Old Ones. He didn't give any indication before the climactic scene that he knew that stuff, but it turns out he did. You'd think, if he knew that much, he'd be more careful with the unholy Necronomicon and not leave it displayed in the middle of the college library where any old unbalanced occultist can steal it.
Crank
This movie stars that guy from The Transporter. It's not as good as The Transporter.
Mr. Transporter plays an assassin in this one. Some rivals inject him with a drug that will kill him in an hour. So, he calls his sleazy doctor, Dwight Yoakum. Dwight tells him that it's "some Chinese shit" and it really will kill him in an hour unless he keeps his adrenaline way up. Dwight is flying back from overseas, and he'll try to do a blood transfer or something when he gets into town.
So, Mr. Transporter spends the whole movie running around like a madman. He does crazy stunts, he does cocaine, he steals synthetic adrenaline, he has sex with Amy Smart in public, all to keep up his adrenaline and keep the poison at bay.
Here's the problem. All that crazy stuff, one insane thing after another, cut together with highly hectic editing, just wears on you after awhile. It's not fun to watch. It's too much.
Idiocracy
This is Mike Judge's second live action movie. Judge is the guy who brought us Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, and King of the Hill. Idiocracy isn't as good as any of those.
There's potential in there, but it never comes to be. Here's the best illustration of that. In one scene, the narrator of the film describes how the English language has devolved along with every other part of society. He says that it has become a mixture of hillbilly, hip hop, advertising, etc. It's a very evocative description, but we never get to hear people actually speaking that way. What we get instead is more like David Letterman's "Dumb Guy" schtick. People say things like "I like money" and "you sound queer." There could have been some good laughs from mixing together the elements mentioned in the narrator's description, but there aren't.
I can't help thinking that Judge didn't go deep enough into his premise. He just stays at the surface. Everyone is dumb, and sort of zombie-like. It could have been funnier if the dumb people thought they were actually smart, as is the case with so many truly dangerously dumb people. Five hundred years into the future might be a bit too far, too. Obviously a premise like this is designed to comment on today's society, not extrapolate what might really happen in the future. Setting this story a hundred, or even fifty years into the future, where the crassness and stupidity of modern society has simply overwhelmed the better parts, rather than grossly outbreeding them, could have kept the social commentary closer to home.
Insecticidal
I thought this would be a fun B movie with giant bugs. It wasn't. It had some giant bugs, but it wasn't fun. I really only watched about fifteen minutes of it.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
I wish that people would stop using the word noir. Nobody (including moi) who isn't a native speaker of French can say it right. It's not noo-ar or nuh-war. It's more like nwa, and unless you started parlez-ing le francais when you were l'enfant, you're more than likely saying it wrong, and it's annoying.
Veronica Mars & Violence
Last night I watched a re-run of Veronica Mars, the great show staring Kristen Bell. Each season of VM (it's on the 3rd now) has a central mystery. The first season, it was Who Killed Veronica's Best Friend? The second season, it was Who Made The School Bus Run Off The Road And Kill Those Kids? [One of those kids was one of Veronica's good friends, too. So you might not want to get too close to Veronica if you're a girl. If, however, you're a petulant rich kid bad boy, you'll get a far better fate than you deserve.] This season, the central mystery seems to be Who's The Serial Rapist On Campus? I say "seems" because I haven't been watching. Yeah, I wait for the DVDs. It's better that way.
This bothers me a bit. It's not really possible to just sit back and enjoy the intrigue and drama when the macguffin of the story is rape. The first season's murder involved movie stars, terminally ill inmates, wise-beyond-their-years teeenages, and other elements that took the story into the realm of soap opera. It was dramatic, and you felt for the characters, but it was fantasy. The second season was similar. Someone rigging a bus to run off a mountain highway in order to get revenge for a childhood trauma is, again, the stuff of soap opera. Now, when I say "soap opera", I'm not trying to belittle the show. I love the show. I'm saying it's a step beyond realistic.
Now in this third season, the topic is rape. There are certainly soap operatic elements, with multiple conspiracies, and vendettas and scandals. However, rape on a college campus is just too realistic to be part of an entertaining show. It really happens on a lot of college campuses, and it really does get covered up, and the perpetrators really do go unpunished far too much of the time. That all makes it very difficult for me to enter that entertainment mode, where the horrible things happening to people on screen make up part of a fun story. For example, war in a John Wayne flick is thrilling. War in a documentary about Iraq is depressing.
There's a similar thing that happened in comics a couple years back. DC comics ran a story called 'Identity Crisis'. One of the major plotpoints in this story was the rape of a superhero's wife. The inclusion of that element was far too much. Violence in superhero comics is crazy, it's unrealistic. Rape is too real. It's too cruel and too real for entertainment value. I've known young women who just assumed that at some point they'd be raped, and there really wasn't anything you could do about it, because statistics show that a large portion of the female population is sexually assaulted. No one is walking around fearing that they're going to get killed by Joker Gas, or ripped to shreds by Sabertooth. See the difference?
Now whenever I see that particular villain in a comic, I don't think, "Oh, there's the notorious Dr. Light! What nefarious scheme is he up to now?" Instead I think, "Why isn't that bastard dead?" And I have less repsect for the heroes who let him continue to walk the Earth. And it infuriates me that subsequent stories have made it clear that the heroes are supposed feel bad for altering this villain's mind so that he was less of a threat. That's just absurd. They should feel bad that he's still drawing breath. But that's a rant for another time, perhaps.
Last night I watched a re-run of Veronica Mars, the great show staring Kristen Bell. Each season of VM (it's on the 3rd now) has a central mystery. The first season, it was Who Killed Veronica's Best Friend? The second season, it was Who Made The School Bus Run Off The Road And Kill Those Kids? [One of those kids was one of Veronica's good friends, too. So you might not want to get too close to Veronica if you're a girl. If, however, you're a petulant rich kid bad boy, you'll get a far better fate than you deserve.] This season, the central mystery seems to be Who's The Serial Rapist On Campus? I say "seems" because I haven't been watching. Yeah, I wait for the DVDs. It's better that way.
This bothers me a bit. It's not really possible to just sit back and enjoy the intrigue and drama when the macguffin of the story is rape. The first season's murder involved movie stars, terminally ill inmates, wise-beyond-their-years teeenages, and other elements that took the story into the realm of soap opera. It was dramatic, and you felt for the characters, but it was fantasy. The second season was similar. Someone rigging a bus to run off a mountain highway in order to get revenge for a childhood trauma is, again, the stuff of soap opera. Now, when I say "soap opera", I'm not trying to belittle the show. I love the show. I'm saying it's a step beyond realistic.
Now in this third season, the topic is rape. There are certainly soap operatic elements, with multiple conspiracies, and vendettas and scandals. However, rape on a college campus is just too realistic to be part of an entertaining show. It really happens on a lot of college campuses, and it really does get covered up, and the perpetrators really do go unpunished far too much of the time. That all makes it very difficult for me to enter that entertainment mode, where the horrible things happening to people on screen make up part of a fun story. For example, war in a John Wayne flick is thrilling. War in a documentary about Iraq is depressing.
There's a similar thing that happened in comics a couple years back. DC comics ran a story called 'Identity Crisis'. One of the major plotpoints in this story was the rape of a superhero's wife. The inclusion of that element was far too much. Violence in superhero comics is crazy, it's unrealistic. Rape is too real. It's too cruel and too real for entertainment value. I've known young women who just assumed that at some point they'd be raped, and there really wasn't anything you could do about it, because statistics show that a large portion of the female population is sexually assaulted. No one is walking around fearing that they're going to get killed by Joker Gas, or ripped to shreds by Sabertooth. See the difference?
Now whenever I see that particular villain in a comic, I don't think, "Oh, there's the notorious Dr. Light! What nefarious scheme is he up to now?" Instead I think, "Why isn't that bastard dead?" And I have less repsect for the heroes who let him continue to walk the Earth. And it infuriates me that subsequent stories have made it clear that the heroes are supposed feel bad for altering this villain's mind so that he was less of a threat. That's just absurd. They should feel bad that he's still drawing breath. But that's a rant for another time, perhaps.
Monday, January 08, 2007
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The West | |
| The South | |
| Boston | |
| The Inland North | |
| North Central | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Northeast | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
I guess that's pretty close. I did grow up in the Mid South, not far from Missouri or southern Illinois. The quiz isn't that extensive, though. Most people who know me probably don't think that I have NO accent. I have a decent amount of Southern talk in me.
Top of the Pods used a top ten list I sent them a while back (18 months about) on their show, "top ten monsters". Here's the link to the mp3.
http://libsyn.com/media/topofthepods/TOTP20070102_Top_Ten_Monsters.mp3
http://libsyn.com/media/topofthepods/TOTP20070102_Top_Ten_Monsters.mp3
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Alright. I hope to get a fair amount of stuff written this afternoon. This blog thing got off track when, at Christmas, I had to make an unscheduled interstate trip, and while there, caught some kind of bug that has kept my sinuses packed with snot and me feeling really bad. Sinus problems are weird. They seem to impair the ability to think properly, or at all. I'm still not completely recovered, but I'm close.
I'm going to the grocery store, then I'll talk about some comics and movies and stuff.
[Later...]
Why did I go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon? It was really crowded. I have a little bit of what--agoraphobia? That's literally "fear of the marketplace", but it's not the market that I'm scared of, it's a crowded market. Walmart on Saturday afternoon is a nightmare for me. Whatever. Sometimes I want to move to some remote place with square miles of forrest between me and the next human being. Not that I don't like people. I do. Well, I like the ones I know. The others I am often wary of, particularly in numbers.
Checkmate 9
This is getting good! I love the bickering between Sasha and Sarge Steel.
You know that the Thinker is going to gry to take over Checkmate's computer systems. The question is what measures has Mister Terrific taken to counter this? It should be a good battle when it goes down.
Josephine is becoming a fuller character. Check out how, in the strip club, when that guy tries to grab her ass, she casually throws him off his stool. Then, in the Oblivion Bar, she's freaked out by that purple guy eyeing her. That's both funny and illustratitive of how strange and threatening--to normal folks--the Oblivion Bar is. Great story telling from the penciller there, too.
That was a a pretty wild plan to get Lucas back into the Kobra cell. It's the sort of plan tha tcould only happen in a superheroic espionage book.
Now, will Burke tell Kobra what he's seen, or use the info to blackmail Checkmate? Did Detective Chimp sense him? And shame on the DEO and Checkmate for not having some kind of detector around to spot him!
I'm going to the grocery store, then I'll talk about some comics and movies and stuff.
[Later...]
Why did I go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon? It was really crowded. I have a little bit of what--agoraphobia? That's literally "fear of the marketplace", but it's not the market that I'm scared of, it's a crowded market. Walmart on Saturday afternoon is a nightmare for me. Whatever. Sometimes I want to move to some remote place with square miles of forrest between me and the next human being. Not that I don't like people. I do. Well, I like the ones I know. The others I am often wary of, particularly in numbers.
Checkmate 9
This is getting good! I love the bickering between Sasha and Sarge Steel.
You know that the Thinker is going to gry to take over Checkmate's computer systems. The question is what measures has Mister Terrific taken to counter this? It should be a good battle when it goes down.
Josephine is becoming a fuller character. Check out how, in the strip club, when that guy tries to grab her ass, she casually throws him off his stool. Then, in the Oblivion Bar, she's freaked out by that purple guy eyeing her. That's both funny and illustratitive of how strange and threatening--to normal folks--the Oblivion Bar is. Great story telling from the penciller there, too.
That was a a pretty wild plan to get Lucas back into the Kobra cell. It's the sort of plan tha tcould only happen in a superheroic espionage book.
Now, will Burke tell Kobra what he's seen, or use the info to blackmail Checkmate? Did Detective Chimp sense him? And shame on the DEO and Checkmate for not having some kind of detector around to spot him!
Alright. I hope to get a fair amount of stuff written this afternoon. This blog thing got off track when, at Christmas, I had to make an unscheduled interstate trip, and while there, caught some kind of bug that has kept my sinuses packed with snot and me feeling really bad. Sinus problems are weird. They seem to impair the ability to think properly, or at all. I'm still not completely recovered, but I'm close.
I'm going to the grocery store, then I'll talk about some comics and movies and stuff.
[Later...]
Why did I go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon? It was really crowded. I have a little bit of what--agoraphobia? That's literally "fear of the marketplace", but it's not the market that I'm scared of, it's a crowded market. Walmart on Saturday afternoon is a nightmare for me. Whatever. Sometimes I want to move to some remote place with square miles of forrest between me and the next human being. Not that I don't like people. I do. Well, I like the ones I know. The others I am often wary of, particularly in numbers.
Checkmate 9
This is getting good! I love the bickering between Sasha and Sarge Steel.
You know that the Thinker is going to gry to take over Checkmate's computer systems. The question is what measures has Mister Terrific taken to counter this? It should be a good battle when it goes down.
Josephine is becoming a fuller character. Check out how, in the strip club, when that guy tries to grab her ass, she casually throws him off his stool. Then, in the Oblivion Bar, she's freaked out by that purple guy eyeing her. That's both funny and illustratitive of how strange and threatening--to normal folks--the Oblivion Bar is. Great story telling from the penciller there, too.
That was a a pretty wild plan to get Lucas back into the Kobra cell. It's the sort of plan tha tcould only happen in a superheroic espionage book.
Now, will Burke tell Kobra what he's seen, or use the info to blackmail Checkmate? Did Detective Chimp sense him? And shame on the DEO and Checkmate for not having some kind of detector around to spot him!
I'm going to the grocery store, then I'll talk about some comics and movies and stuff.
[Later...]
Why did I go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon? It was really crowded. I have a little bit of what--agoraphobia? That's literally "fear of the marketplace", but it's not the market that I'm scared of, it's a crowded market. Walmart on Saturday afternoon is a nightmare for me. Whatever. Sometimes I want to move to some remote place with square miles of forrest between me and the next human being. Not that I don't like people. I do. Well, I like the ones I know. The others I am often wary of, particularly in numbers.
Checkmate 9
This is getting good! I love the bickering between Sasha and Sarge Steel.
You know that the Thinker is going to gry to take over Checkmate's computer systems. The question is what measures has Mister Terrific taken to counter this? It should be a good battle when it goes down.
Josephine is becoming a fuller character. Check out how, in the strip club, when that guy tries to grab her ass, she casually throws him off his stool. Then, in the Oblivion Bar, she's freaked out by that purple guy eyeing her. That's both funny and illustratitive of how strange and threatening--to normal folks--the Oblivion Bar is. Great story telling from the penciller there, too.
That was a a pretty wild plan to get Lucas back into the Kobra cell. It's the sort of plan tha tcould only happen in a superheroic espionage book.
Now, will Burke tell Kobra what he's seen, or use the info to blackmail Checkmate? Did Detective Chimp sense him? And shame on the DEO and Checkmate for not having some kind of detector around to spot him!
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