The Light at the End of the Carpel Tunnel

Torchwood: Miracle Day - Trailer

2011-05-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Doctors' Wife Introduction Doctor Who

2011-05-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

Slaughterhouse 90210

2011-04-15T12:37:00.001-07:00

http://slaughterhouse90210.tumblr.com/

A site that juxtaposes snapshots from television shows with literary quotes. Love.

new site

2011-03-29T15:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.godeatgodworlds.com/

Dan Telfer: "The Best Dinosaur" 5-4-10 at Chicago Underground Comedy

2011-03-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

Go Here and Weep Joy Drops from Your Faceholes

2011-01-03T23:55:00.001-08:00

http://twitpic.com/3k3tdx/

The Superman Effect

2010-11-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

http://io9.com/5698008/is-zack-snyder-trying-to-avatar+ize-the-new-superman-movie

So -- I think we all know what this means. Zack Snyder has the hots for Matthew Goode.

Look at the evidence: Zack Snyder, for being not only a comic book fan but also a film director, is incredibly buff and into sporting activities, which is just not natural. Working out a lot...well, it's a symptom of a few things. I thought he was just one of those geeks that has issues about being a geek, so pretends he's into jock stuff (which would explain Watchmen), but now I'm not so sure.

He cast Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, who was supposed to be this sort of gentle vegan ultra liberal pacifist type until the last quarter of the story. The fact that Rorschach thinks he might be gay is supposed to be more telling of Rorschach and his assumptions about liberals than it is a character point for Ozymandias. Snyder portrayed him standing in front of Studio 54, speaking with a strange German lisp and Hitler hair in purple with nipples on his outfit. Not exactly subtle, Zack.

So anyway, that would all just be down to interpretation, but I have a long-standing theory that there is a direct correlation between whom a Superman fan casts for Supes and whom they would totally do if they were gay. First off, I plain ole have a hypothesis that all die hard Superman fans ("All-Star Superman" notwithstanding) are closeted homosexuals, latent homosexuals, or homophobic homosexuals. I have no explanation as to why, it is simply an observation that has yet to be proven wrong. Next, whomever they cast as Superman if one were to inquire, is whomever on which they have a homosexual crush. This conclusion comes from the fact that all logic seems to be out the window, and it will, 9 times out of 10, be an actor they talk about / watch the movies of as much as they talk about / read Superman.

Now I've cast Superman in different ways, some on this blog -- mostly as part of a larger idea, like my role call for Identity Crisis -- but there have been reasons, for the most part, that I choose whom I choose. Brendan Fraser, from around the time of the first Mummy, I just think has the goofiness and seriousness to pull of the two completely separate roles. Think Bedazzled Fraser for Clark, School Ties Fraser for Superman. But when I talk about it being Sean Maher now, even I have to admit that part of that is just because I think the man is pretty, wholesome, and has a strong jaw and black hair. Not exactly the best acting requisites. So, maybe if, to quote Norm MacDonald, "if I had to be gay, like, if they made it mandatory one day or something..."

I'm not a Superman fan, big or otherwise, but the none of us are entirely straight, ladies and gentleman, but merely degrees of both. I can dig Superman at times, is what I'm saying.

Well, Donner hired Reeves, which does not implicate him in the Superman Effect -- Reeves was perfect casting and just makes too much sense to tell us anything about Donner's preferences -- but Singer hired Routh. While I admire Brandon Routh's comedic timing in films since Superman Returns, his performance in that film was either coming off as a Reeves impersonation or, well, a little gay. Now, Snyder has been hired. All wrong in my opinion, perhaps because I think Superman and in fact, DC superheroes are homoerotic enough without having anyone with those tendencies that aren't already dealt with to helm them. Give me a straight guy or a guy who's completely out of the closet to do a Superman film or a Green Lantern film. Snyder, with his love of Frank Miller and the Spartans and huge muscles and Studio 54...that just leads to more nipples.

Either way, Snyder has been rumored to be casting Matthew Goode as Superman, which would seem to be too much to ignore -- he's hiring the actor who helped him make a sexually ambiguous character out and out gay to play the gayest superhero of them all, and he's probably gonna be using that whole Green Lantern skintight bodysuit, CG the costume on after technique. Come on, Zack. Sucker Punch isn't fooling anyone.

I am so glad I got through this whole post without mentioning Dr. Manhattan's massive blue dong. Shit.

DP/30 Sneak Peek: Darren Aronofsky on why he's making The Wolverine

2010-11-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

Hugs Tiem

2010-11-04T12:33:00.001-07:00

Disney's Wayward Daughters

2010-11-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Demi Lovato, star of Disney's Sonny with a Chance, just checked into rehab.

Miley Cyrus, pug-faced star of Hannah Montana and daughter of Billy Ray. Father issues self-explanatory. Now auctioning off clothing (taking pictures of herself undressed) and wearing Cher-style outfits on stage, in the attempt to sexualize herself. Still looks like someone bred Hilary Duff with a pug, which is already the unholy offspring of a pig and a dog.

Lindsay Lohan, star of Disney's The Parent Trap. Slowly transformed into coke whore and fame exhibitionist, in and out of rehab. Father dating girl Lindsay's age who dresses and styles herself after Lindsay, implying abuse or at least inappropriate paternal relationship, probably due to a lack of the father's presence until daughter's pubescence. Mother riding daughter's fame wave, enabling destructive behavior that continues fame wave, and stealing ice cream.

Britney Spears, star of Mickey Mouse Club. Drugged-up horrible mother, once married to an honorary Chalmation*, shaved head for short period of going fucknuts. IN AND OUT OF REHAB.

Christina Aguilera, starred in Mickey Mouse Club. Basically, a giant whore, although schizophrenically alternating between being a classy call girl and a tranny on Santa Monica Blvd. Had anal sex with Dimebag Darrel from Pantera, but hey, all that's consensual, and at least she hasn't been to rehab! BTW, if I google Britney, I get a thousand pics of Britney. If I google Christina, I get 700 pics of Christina and 300 pics of Britney. So really, I think we can all understand Christina's little sister complex, and why she acts out. Lucky for her, Britney went fucknuts and now she's the one looking to have actual staying power. Right now, she's coming out on top.

Strangely enough, Ryan Gosling -- successful and respected film actor. Justin Timberlake -- escaped the shackles of N*Sync to be a successful pop star and garner actual respect both as a performer and an actor. So what's up with Disney's little girls? There's something royally fucked in Denmark, and it has to do with either how Disney treats its girls or how it picks them. I'm going to go with a mix of the two.

Disney seems to be "saving" most of their little starlets from lower to lower-middle class families with no or severely fucked up father figures, then cleaning them up, putting wholesome little dresses on them, and tossing them aside once they're done with them, just like their fathers did. At Mickey Mouse Club in particular, there seems to be a general atmosphere of competition between the females, either fostered by or not discouraged by Disney. In addition, they were rehearsed for insane amounts of hours just to get onto the show, let alone once they were on. Their mothers, much like all beauty pageant mothers, pushing all of their own hopes and dreams into their daughters.

In desperate attempts to try to remain relevant, they continually use sexual tactics in a game of "Hot Seat"** with each other, all while on shit tons of cocaine so they can make it through that next show or film. Now this mostly falls on the parents, or parent as the case may be, but Disney is somewhat complicit -- they surely audition so many girls that in order to outdo the competition, one must have a psychotic mother and a daddy one is trying to win back by say, getting the attention of the entire world. But why are the guys fine? Is it that fathers pushing their sons eventually let go, not feeding on their child's spotlight? Or is it that it is still mothers pushing their sons, but a son can escape their mother more easily?

Or is something more sinister at work here? I can't help but come back to the sexualization of these Disney girls. JT and N*Sync were basically made into eunuchs. It was always insulting to me how they both used girls' pubescent intensity and simultaneously ignored it, as if girls don't get horny, they get crushes. All their songs were about love, while they pranced around with open white button-ups. Meanwhile, Britney and Christina get paraded around in midriffs as they sing songs that pretend to be double entendre, but in fact only make sense in a sexual context -- an old Madonna trick. But all that was post-Disney, wasn't it? I don't know. You cannot tell me that Hilary Duff and now Miley Cyrus were not being subtly sexualized during their runs on Disney. Hilary almost got into a whore-off with Lindsay, but Lindsay clearly had more daddy issues, and now it seems Hilary Duff might be the only girl to have escaped this cycle yet -- and she and her sister are no longer famous because of it.

Is it us? Is it Disney? Or is Disney just programming all of us, including their stars, that girls have to whore themselves out to get the all-desired reward: attention, attention that they never got. Maybe Hilary, Ryan, and JT just got enough love, were breast fed, and had both parents in their lives enough. Maybe they were just naturally talented enough to get in, and the rest of these girls got in because they were attractive and because they needed it so bad they made themselves hit that E over high C or put on that Catholic school girl outfit. I don't know. Just food for thought.

*A Chalmation is a person from Chalmette. Chalmette : New Jersey as New Orleans : New York.

**"Hot Seat" is a game in acting class where the two sides of the room compete to get the attention of the audience, by any means necessary. The audience is tasked to yell out, "Left!" or "Right!" when one side wins their attention over the other.

Holy shit.

2010-10-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Dean Pelton on Community has been reminding me of someone this whole time, and I just figured it out.

Even their voices.

Seriously?

2010-10-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I bought the New Moon soundtrack, 'cause hey! Death Cab, Muse, Thom Yorke, The Killers, OK Go? That overpowered even my intense hatred of the books and overwhelming boredom with 98% of each movie. But now this is getting ridiculous. Here's most of the band list for Twilight: Eclipse's soundtrack:

Muse

The Bravery

Florence & the Machine (whose song "I'm So Heavy" is pretty damn good)

The Black Keys

Dead Weather

Vampire Weekend

UNKLE

Band of Horses

Cee Lo Green.

Which means I'll be getting this one as well, but here's the thing. Something's been bothering me about these soundtracks for a while, and I've been assuming it was just because of the obvious. You know, we've come a long way from the days of The Crow where the soundtrack first surpassed but still enhanced the film. Now we're at the point where, pointedly, the Eclipse soundtrack eclipses Eclipse the movie by so far that it's actually enough to drive a person mad.

But that's not what's bothering me, even though it's very close. It's not so much an overall quality thing so much as it is a sentiment thing. If the soundtracks were filled with awesome bands or extremely popular acts of any other kind, I wouldn't be bothered at all. OK Go is actually the only band that can tip-toe on this line, but if Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, or any of countless other teen-focused or angst-ridden bands of the last decade contributed, I would still get the record, but be far less confused. My guilt level would be as appropriate as it would for having seen the first two films in the first place (the first with Rifftrax on, the second in exchange for getting a girl to watch Buffy, hoping she will convert or at least stick to True Blood). I would enjoy that soundtrack, but keep it to myself. There certainly wouldn't be a blog entry written about it.

No, what's bothering me about the artists they've chosen is that they seem to have gone out of their way to choose sincere musical artists for their soundtracks. Sincere and mature, of all things. The songs aren't just better than the movies or the books, they're richer, more enlightened, and more grown-up, more melancholy inside of 4 minutes than the source material could be with all five of its books completely rewritten. These books are the inane ramblings of a not particularly deep teenage girl coming from a very sheltered life, craving a man who will control and shelter her for the rest of eternity, and obsessively cling to her as much as all of her little sycophantic male friends still. The fantasy of the immature, feminine anima aspect of us all, but not one of a mature adult woman who is healthy, or of anyone without major issues. The music chosen to represent these movies is...well, it's too knowledgeable, too world-weary, and too honest.

The best kind of songs for something like this is not the songs from the people who brought us "Fake Plastic Trees" or "I Will Follow You into the Dark". The perfect Twilight soundtrack needs to be music that gives into fantasy, pretends love will last forever and can somehow defeat death, that ignores a hundred years in the field of psychology and pretends there is no such thing as the Electra complex, that tells us everything will be okay if you wait till you're married to have sex, and that the whiter someone is, the more special they are, and is naive enough to not realize that all of this is Mormon parable. Also, can we get a little age appropriate here, please? Most of the audience for these movies should not know who Thom Yorke, UNKLE, or Muse are, okay? There are bands they would recognize and would be more appropriate, however.

Here's the bands that would actually enhance the experience of Twilight:

1. Evanescence

2. Creed

3. Flyleaf

4. Paramour

5. My Chemical Romance

6. Fall Out Boy

7. Panic at the Disco

8. Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

9. Breaking Benjamin

10. Dashboard Confessional

11. Taylor Swift

12. The Jonas Brothers

13. Celine Dion

Because, make no mistake, this is The Crow being ratnerfucked by Titanic and making a weird, new Hybrid Suck Fetus of Awful for the new generation.

*PS: What are these kids called, anyway? Are they Generation Z? If so, that's retardant. I think Generation "I" would be more accurate. Ah, well.

(Ballad of the) Stupid Things (Fighting to Be) in Love

2010-09-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine a steady beat and an acoustic guitar, maybe keyboards. Pop, in the style of Death Cab / Broken Bells:

This is what you want if this is what you want

Don’t let it go

(That’s right)

If this is what you want then this is what you want

Stop letting go

Don’t you dare let go

Fell into your arms long before I knew my name

This what I waited for, this long with no detours

Touched the side of your face before I heard your voice

We’re living backwards now, it won’t be long before

We’re on all fours

Knew the color of your eyes before I saw at all

"Can we just talk a while?" And memorized your smile

Saw your face then relearned to speak

I age like Merlin now, Benjamin Button style

We’ll die infantile

This is what you want if this is what you want

Don’t let it go

If this is what you want then this is what you want

Stop letting go

Don’t you dare let go

You’ve got to hold a grip to all you love

Even if you love stupid things

You stupid thing

You’ve gotta love what goes through your grip

Even if it’s just a way of clinging tighter

We’re all lovers if we’re fighters

Oh I’ll love you like a fighter

You love her if you fight her

I love her like I fight her

I still love you, I’m a fighter

Felt the smell of your breath ‘fore I saw what you were saying

Can we just walk this hall? Till we forget it all?

Saw the touch of your mouth when I heard your name

This what I’m wanting for, this long and still indoors

This is what I want if this is what I want

I’m gonna let it go

Till it will not go

If this is what we want then this is what I want

Don’t let me go

Grab my hand, let’s go

My Top Twenty Genre Shows of All Time

2010-08-17T14:08:00.001-07:00

20. Red Dwarf: for the laughs.

19. Dollhouse: for the characters, for the loss, for the cynicism, for the pessimism, for the paranoia, for the desolation.

18. Farscape: for the characters, for the loss, for the story, for science as magic, for the laughs.

17. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: for the characters, for the loss.

16. Lost: for the characters, for the story, for the love.

15. Battlestar Galactica (2003): for the characters, for the story, for looking like you knew what you were doing.

14. Fringe: for science as magic.

13. The X-files: for the faith.

12. Carnivale: for the myth.

11. Millennium: for the faith.

10. Blake's 7: for the pessimism.

9. Star Trek: The Next Generation/DS9/Voyager

8. Babylon 5: for the story.

7. Star Trek: Original Series: for the idealism.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: for the laughs, for the loss and for the fight, the cynicism and the faith.

5. Trigun: for the laughs and the consequences.

4. The Prisoner: for the paranoia.

3. Firefly: for the laughs, the love, and the cynicism.

2. The Twilight Zone: for the twist.

1. Doctor Who (predominantly the 2000 revival)/Torchwood: for science as magic, for the laughs, for longevity, for the twist, for the optimism, for the pessimism, for the desolation, for the cynicism, for the faith, for the paranoia, for the love, and for the consequences.

(Also, on a completely unrelated note: White people have deluded themselves into thinking Dave Matthews Band is amazing but Hootie & the Blowfish was a fad they went through, thus proving they can easily accept a White man leading a band made up of minorities, but the inverse is just silly. Somehow, this explains Avatar, Fern Gully, Dune, Dances with Wolves, Dangerous Minds, Tarzan, Pathfinder, Davis' character on Treme, the reason White 60s protesters at Civil Rights protests are ironically annoying and superior, and the popularity of Rebirth Brass Band at Le Bon Temps among White college students. Good day.)

A Really Long Article About Inception You Won't Read

2010-08-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of ballyhoo surrounding Inception in the critical circles. Every week it seems there is a new article from a well-esteemed, extremely intelligent, professional film critic about why Christopher Nolan is not as good of a filmmaker as the public thinks he is, how his movies are cold and his action sequences are muddled and he sacrifices character for plot. Invariably, someone also mentions how Nolan's defenders have turned this into a discussion about the director himself rather than the film in question. I have only one problem with this, though it is a bit of an umbrella problem: none of that is true. Nolan's films delight moviegoers and film fans while simultaneously insulting a completely separate and alien audience: the well-esteemed, extremely intelligent, professional film critic, and they are the ones that have turned this into a discussion about Nolan rather than the film in question.

Inception I found neither cold nor sacrificing character. One could argue that Ellen Page's architect or any of the supporting cast were not developed, but no one criticizes Ocean's Eleven for not developing the Asian contortionist or Don Cheadle's cockney expert -- all we need know of these characters is what specialty they bring to the heist. Make no mistake, Inception is, at its heart, a heist movie in a science fiction casing, much like Blade Runner was a film noir in a sci-fi setting. For that matter, no one mentions how cold or lacking in character development Blade Runner is. Most of what genre fiction, film, and television is, is the manipulation of tropes, archetypes, and stereotypes. Characters are not so much ignored as much as shorthanded -- like the characters of the dream in Wizard of Oz, you have met these people before, in another life. This gives the very short format of the motion picture space to breath so that a genre piece, delineated by a markedly high level of brand new ideas and complex plot, can successfully explain its ideas and so you can successfully navigate its plot. Alien and Aliens, Predator, Blade Runner, and yes, Inception, do not have time to hide the fact that everyone in a movie is one of twelve different character types, anyway. The characters that matter in heist movies are the leads -- George Clooney, perhaps Andy Garcia. But even they are almost always pulling "one last job" -- using this trope in a completely different setting like the theft of dreams is entertaining in and of itself.

I also did not find the movie cold -- yes, we have seen these characters before, but critics tend to put too much importance on original character, not realizing there is no such thing. The adept science fiction auteur or author knows that in the end, we are all people. People with the same motivations and psychological issues in varying degrees or mixtures. We all want our fathers to love us, though they may not have made it obvious enough for us as children. We want our mothers to love us, but to let us grow. We want our friends to not betray us. Science fiction plays on the big fears and the big loves, the big decisions and their terrifying repercussions. Reality is suspect and thus plot becomes paramount. We need to relate to these characters and put ourselves into the situations, and it needs to happen fast enough that we're not in the theater for 6 hours like Dune. A novel has time to let you meet everyone before they become tropes once the action starts (this will happen, there can be no mistaking) and make them appear new. But in a movie, everything is Joseph Campbell. You must meet, care about, and relate to people within 2 hours. You must be introduced to revolutionary ideas, understand them, and digest the metaphor of them for actual life circumstances within that time. You must follow said characters into the labyrinth created by the ideas, care that they are there, and be hit with the same revelation. The impact of the emotional symbol at the heart of Inception's main heist is simple and straightforward, as it needs to be both in the world of the film and in real life. And it does to the audience what it does to Cillian Murphy.

I have seen the film twice. Things I thought were plot holes were things I, as a viewer, had missed. The plotting of the film is perfect. The characters are stock, but that is necessary. The dreamworlds are extremely ordered and left-brained, but once again, the movie's very idea makes this a necessity -- everything must be in place, is, in fact, constructed not by a painter or a writer but by an architect, not only so these invaders to a person's subconscious can successfully navigate it, but also so that the subconscious being stolen from does not realize he is dreaming. Cobb's invading nightmares are the primary threat to their jobs, and his past and character are delved into quite deeply. This is his character study, and like Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood, and The Godfather, no one but the lead really matters. For all we know, they are more constructs of Cobb's subconscious as he continually deludes himself in Limbo. Or, as one fan suggested, the team is actually being led by Ariadne (Page), and their real goal is to get at Cobb's secret.

Nolan has found a cinematic sweet spot. He has managed to achieve what every filmmaker or writer dreams of: he has figured out how to make a commercial movie that he does not have to dumb down. The ideas are strange, the plotting is complex, but he juggles it. He's made a movie about subject matter that the average action director can't understand, filled it with actors that are less A-list and more A-caliber, and made it so an audience enjoys it and comprehends its point. This seems to bother film critics. They do not seem to have nearly as much of a problem with intelligent action flicks or indie character pieces or standard science fiction fare, no problems with heist movies or sweeping psychological studies. Inception is all of these things, however, and it confuses and angers them. They pick at it for things that they would not criticize in a simpler movie. It has stimulated their intellectualism, and so they want it to fit into the mold of prior intellectual films. It is about dreams, but does not resemble Lynch or Gilliam! It is a heist, but it is extremely complicated! There is character, but not enough! It is cold, despite bringing the average audience to near tears during its climax.

Transformers is a completely commercial success that everyone knows is empty and worthless, and won't stand up to a second viewing, but it works in the theater for $9. No Country for Old Men is an artistic achievement that is profound and disturbing, but essentially boring after one viewing unless you are a student of the craft. Both were unsatisfying to me for strangely similar reasons:

1) at the climax of a giant robot movie, when the two main giant robots fight, Bay chose to cut to a human character I did not care about and cut back at the END OF THE GIANT ROBOT FIGHT.

2) at the climax of a neo western film, when everything converges on an OK Corral style shootout, the Cohens chose to skip over it to a character I barely cared about finding the remnants of that fight and give an emotional speech to end the film.

Both sacrificed audience satisfaction for self-indulgent story. In Bay's case, not actually understanding the appeal of his subject matter, he overemphasizes the importance of his human characters. In the Cohens' case, having seen gunfights before, they choose to make sure the audience knows the importance is on the emotional revelation of Tommy Lee Jones's character. Nolan would have done both, and juggled them successfully, and that can be confusing for someone like a critic who is used to seeing one or the other, over and over again.

Not used to being confused, critics have attacked Inception and its creator for things that are not wrong with the film, criticizing it for not being things it was clearly not attempting to be. They seem to be under the impression that Nolan wanted to make The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, but is such a bad filmmaker that all he could drool out was Inception. In actuality, filmmakers like David Lynch try to make Dune and all they can muster is another David Lynch movie combined with a Dune audio book, because they cannot plot and cannot tell us who a character is without telling us every detail. They actually have no eye for what is important about one character or another, and dreams being portrayed dreamlike can be argued less imaginative than coming up with a story structure that makes solid, left-brained dreams that are being torn apart by invasions of right-brained chaos. (Many talk of Nolan's rigid structuring and obsession with identity, but I think all of his movies can be thought of as the left hemisphere's terror that the right brain will run rampant -- these are, after all, what Batman and the Joker represent as archetypes.)

Confused critics then point the finger at the filmmaker, doing multiple long articles with entire film studies, bringing up every Nolan film and picking them apart and talking of how he has degraded as a filmmaker or of how Insomnia is his best film. These critics have forgotten what it was like to enjoy movies, to love them, and to need a break from life to go see a movie. For them, film is work, and not the way food is work to a chef, but the way food is work to a restaurant critic. You must try everything, bad or good, even if you know it will be bad. Critics also did not participate in another of Nolan's successes: getting an audience to ignore a marketing campaign. No one wanted to be spoiled or overdosed, and so ignored everything but the two uninformative trailers. In this way, much like the original Matrix, audiences had no expectations and no preconceived notions of what the movie would be walking in and got to figure out the movie as it went, as intended. Film critics, on the other hand, were listening to each other, watching every advance trailer and clip, and building an opinion based on their lack of enthusiasm about the Batman movies (which they also do not get) and the over-marketing of this new film. They walked in thinking they knew what Inception was about, and found out they were wrong.

I have stated before my resentment of film criticism. In my opinion, there are either too many of them or too few. Each one of them sees nearly every film that comes out, whether they want to or not. I did not see White Chicks because I knew that I would not enjoy myself in the slightest, but these poor bastards have to sit through it anyway because it's their job and someone needs an article about it the next day. If the average audience had to sit through every movie that came out, they would all be film critics -- tired of things that are in most movies, and a little resentful of everyone in the business. But the facts are this, normal people see whatever seems interesting to them, and they want to sit in a dark room with people they know and people they don't and enjoy themselves. If you are not entertaining first, you are masturbating. I am not a fan of art for art's sake. I think it is self-aggrandizing bullshit. I understand making art, but art should be made to reach people. Nolan reached millions with his film, and planted an idea in their heads, which means he has successfully done what movies were set out to do in both an artistic and commercial standpoint.

Waking the Dragon

2010-07-22T16:10:00.001-07:00

So it's been a little bit since I had a real post. And it will be even longer than that.

Just to recap: the movie, "As Good as Dead or: I Was a Teenage Prom Queen!" has gotten into Dragon*Con's 2010 film festival. This is exciting news for several reasons, the chief of which is that this has been my goal from the film's inception.

Shortly before Katrina, I came up with the germ of the idea for this movie before a Brown show, back when it was still at True Brew Downtown. It was a simple idea: there are never pretty zombies. Not necessarily unscathed, just attractive. From there, a title and a quote immediately popped into my head: "Attack of the Killer Prom Queens" and "Is it still necrophilia if they can move?" Of that idea, two things survived into the final product, that of the latter bit of dialogue and the idea that geeks would be the only ones left to stop the zombies.

Ironically, I had not seen Shaun of the Dead yet, though I had seen Spaced--Pegg, Frost, and Wright's BBC series that led to Shaun and Hot Fuzz--Clerks, Pulp Fiction, and a shitton of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all of which informed the writing of the movie. After Katrina, recently dumped and finding myself living with a much earlier ex-girlfriend in Denver, with no job and nothing to do all day, I wrote until it was done.

The next year, I went to Dragon*Con for the first time. For those not in the know, Dragon*Con (which btw is a bitch to write with that asterisk every time, but I'm obviously OCD about words) is the largest mixed science fiction and fantasy convention in the country. San Diego ComicCon is the largest convention of any type, but technically is supposed to be about comic books (although it is now more a Hollywood event and a bit of a catch-all itself). Dragon*Con is intentionally a mix of comics, anime/manga, science fiction and fantasy television, movies, etc., and it has yet to be invaded by Hollywood producers. Most of the TV and movies promoted there are not popular or already cancelled/bombs in the eyes of the public. But for the attendees, these are fandoms that are very close to their hearts -- little clubs that are usually just them and a few friends, and combined with the little clubs of others, a sort of cross-country family occurs. You know you'll probably like somebody if they love the same stuff as you. You know you probably don't want to talk to someone who doesn't like Firefly. I knew at once that with a script like mine, if I ever made it, I wanted it played there, and played there specifically. A Manga/Anime con would get the anime joke and the video game jokes, but get most of the others through periphery. A comic book con would get most of the tone but miss a lot of references. A mixed con on this scale would have someone laughing at every point. And geeks get so little respect and attention, we love things that pander to us in the slightest way. My script went out of its way to not just bring up the things we love, but respect my characters. Just because they're weird does not mean they're inhuman. Just because they're caricatures does not mean they're stereotypes.

I ran into the right people, made the right friends, and with their help, we started making a movie I had never intended to make myself. I thought, "Maybe I could sell it. I'd still like it to go to Dragon*Con." Since I was 8 or 9, I had wanted to be a film director/writer, but I had let the director part lapse over the years, and had to find my eyes again over the course of the year or so we filmed it. We had no money and at times I went to sleep and dreamed about the film. It consumed my life. I've held very little real jobs during the process, and was a bit of a burden on my friends. But I always was that. Now I was doing something they believed in, something we all believed may be our ticket to the lives we want, or at least slightly cooler ones.

Now we're in the festival, and I couldn't be more excited. I sent off the DVD today, and I'm working on making the one that will be for sale, as well as a Blu-ray edition. Life is getting stranger and cooler by the second. I'm trying not to wait for the other shoe to drop and just enjoy the ride.

Willow's First Date

2010-07-20T00:23:00.000-07:00

Joss Whedon's Avengers

2010-07-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

In light of the recent complete debacle over Edward Norton's firing from the part of the Hulk, in order to wash the taste from my mouth, I've now decided to imagine a world where everyone awesome and not awesome alike is fired from Avengers because Marvel Entertainment, despite now being owned by Disney, continually gets cheaper and cheaper. In this new dimension, Joss is forced to hire mid-level, slightly recognizable actors, but not stars -- no, stars have egos to satiate and the power to get paid what they're worth. No, these actors should have followings but no power, and so will be ridiculously cheap. In other words, Joss's regular cast of actors.

1. Captain America/Steve Rogers: Nathan Fillion.

2. Iron Man/Tony Stark: David Boreanaz

3. The Incredible Hulk/Bruce Banner: Alexis Denisof

4. Henry Pym/Ant-man, Giant Man, Yellowjacket: Alan Tudyk

5. Donald Blake/Thor: Neil Patrick Harris/Bailey Chase

6. Wasp/Janet Van Dyne: Morena Baccarin

7. Vision: Tahmoh Penikett

8. The Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff: Amy Acker

9. Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff: James Marsters

10. Hawkeye/Clint Barton: Fran Kranz

11. Black Widow/Natalia Romanov: Christina Hendricks

8 Girls Who Cause a Lust in Me Bordering on Blind Rage

2010-06-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what genetic imperative drives what "type" of girl we're into, and how. I would suppose it has something to do with missing gene markers, things to correct defects, genetics we're missing that would strengthen our line. But why do some girls make me fall for them on first glance, while others simply make me so horny that looking at them makes me hump my furniture? Then, there's that perfect mix -- the girl who gets your emotions and your hormones running hot simultaneously, so that you're ready to kill motherfuckers to mate with them. Some are universal among males 18-dead, but this is about the level of blind lust and the armies I would slay.

So here are the ones that do it for me, to me, and need to make preemptive restraining orders:

8. Kristen Bell: I would stab a puppy right now for another season of Veronica Mars. I would still be watching Heroes if she was on it, and not care. I have nearly gone to see the reTARDed romantic comedies she's been doing. Luckily, my shame is stronger than my lust. For now.

7. Lily Allen: Since she lost the weight and started eating healthier, she's gotten so goddamn cute I want to hump a rainbow. True story.

6. Rose MacGowan: I know what you're thinking. I know she's batshit nuts. I don't know why I don't care, I just don't. Also, usually a cleft chin makes me think, "Tranny!" But I don't fucking care. Besides, before you judge me, think about Faruza Balk, who I've never gotten, personally, but most of you are obsessed with. Basically the same underlying principle.

5. Anna Kendrick: Jesus.

4. Christina Hendricks: If I have to explain this, go destroy your brain, because you are clinically dead yet still able to read this article, so you therefore must be a zombie.

3. Diora Baird: She's smarter than she looks, but I don't think I can actually make this assessment since deargodholyshitHOTWTFwhereamI?

2 & 1. Zooey Deschanel/Katy Perry: This pretty much counts as the same attraction. They are so the same type of girl physically I couldn't give them each their own number. Zooey gets all my intellectual juices flowing, from her indie rock to her cutsie ways, but mostly it's the eyes, the bangs, the voice. Her voice is like some sort of weird siren call. Whenever she talks I can't think straight. Katy is dumb as a bag of rock salt with bigger tits, but has the same eyes and hair and basic face construction. Basically, she's what the id-driven monkey somewhere deep inside me wants, and Zooey is the intellectualized version.

Huh.

2010-06-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

So, any of you out there that watch Buffy and read my ramblings may find me extremely thick for this, or you may be in my boat...

I only just realized, when someone else pointed it out on a message board, that at the end of "Chosen", the series finale, when the sign falls into the crater...that was Spike knocking down the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign for the last time. I got a chill that almost made me tear up when I realized it, and I should have caught that on the first watch.

That is all.

Favorite Albums of the Aughts

2010-05-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

1 Radiohead - Kid A
2 Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk
3 Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
4 Thursday - Full Collapse
5 Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
6 Arcade Fire - Funeral
7 Pj Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
8 Damien Rice - O
9 Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
10 Tool - Lateralus
11 Bright Eyes - Fevers & Mirrors
12 Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
13 Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero
14 Feist - Let It Die
15 Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.
16 The Mars Volta - Bedlam in Goliath
17 Glassjaw - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence
18 Deftones - White Pony
19 Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
20 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf

Egh

2010-05-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

Please ignore when I get drunk and post random song lyric/poetryish things. I only do it like once a year now. That is all.

Make Pretend

2010-05-20T19:49:00.001-07:00

It's time to bark it's time to fuck it's time to
make pretend
We've got the time we've got the gas now let's go
have a weekend

Remember when you took my virginity where'd you put it I've got a
formal to go to
Air beds squeak and bounce and toss you off, not much fun unless there's a
friend to hold onto

Chinatown's no fun without you
All those family portions with
Nothing but strangers to pass them to

It's time to sulk it's time to brood it's time to
make pretend
I've got no time I've got no car so guess
I'm staying in

I hold the hand of mannequins now I get odd looks
at the mall
Cuz you're not there where I wish you where
I wish you to be

This is how I forget you
Or at least how I planned to
But a dream of you still sits
typing on the laptop I wish I was in my brain

This is how I'll forget you
Make a painting of a fake you
Build a dream of you to hold
that's nicer, neater, sweeter and altogether more sane

Vieux Carre's no fun without you
All that sarcasm and
Nothing but strangers to give it to

It's time to pack it's time to move it's time to
make pretend
I booked a flight, made reservations
to stay in your head

And when I get there, I won't ever, ever leave
I'll paint a portrait of the real you
Use shades to cover up my orange naive
Use every color in the book but that rhapsody hue

Remember when I broke my pride where're the pieces you've got some
love to glue it to
Air beds squeak and bounce and toss you off, not much fun unless there's a
friend to hold onto

Holy god a Philip K. Dick movie that looks good.

2010-05-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Ignore Stephen Baldwin - Restore Joss Whedon

2010-05-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

I'm in tears because of this video. I think I might die.

No Accounting for Taste

2010-05-04T01:22:00.001-07:00

There are some bands or artists of which I will just never understand the appeal, or rather, the intense appeal or hold they seem to have over large groups of people.

I get the Beatles, to a point. Not as much as most Caucasians with parents over 45, mind you. I get the quantity of good songs, the high quality of each effort, and the variance in and blending of what had come before. That's why I like the White Stripes. But, much like the White Stripes, I can take them or leave them. I just don't feel passionately about any of the Beatles' songs except "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "A Day in the Life". The rest are so generic and childish (Paul's) or incomprehensible art for art's sake (John). While that does not preclude them from being capital 'G' Great, how can I call a band the Greatest Band to Ever Live if I would give up their entire catalogue, forever, if it meant I got to hear "Sympathy for the Devil" or "You Can't Always Get What You Want" one more time? I'm not even a Stones fan.

I've tried, continuously, to listen to and understand what was so good about Velvet Underground now for years. It just sounds like really high people lazily singing about the drugs they just got, and I'm sorry, not well. Plus, the production is shitty. Generally, the way white music drolled out and just laid there in the early '60s depresses me. Give me Motown any day. Ironically, I love Lou Reed's album Transformer. But that did come out in the '70s.

Joy Division. WTF? The music sounds like it could sound amazing. The vocals sound like they could be distinctive and cool. So why did they go into a sewer tunnel and lay down in piss, then hook up tin cans and string to record? Was that what "Goth" was? I don't fucking get it.

Maybe it's because of an association with racism and/or conservatism, but most country music and Southern rock just sound like Klan rallies to me. I like "Free Bird" and "Simple Man", but you can keep the rest of Skynyrd's catalogue.

Lady Gaga is like Christina Aguilera, only less edgy while pretending to be more edgy. The thing is, Gaga isn't doing anything we haven't seen before. It's like she read Shock Music for Dummies and cooked up some music video ideas, but the music is innocuous repetitive dance music with less to say than even her partner in crime, Beyonce. Christina did an album that took '40s style USO music and made it talk about guys with big dicks. She just released a video that looks like a mash-up of every Madonna video ever made, but where the video looks derivative, the song is surprising for a pop star: "Cause I'm doing things that I normally won't do / The old me's gone; I feel brand new / And if you don't like it, fuck you," all while she implies she's going to be willingly gang-banged. That is real shock. That's feminine sexuality actually, finally, completely, unrelentingly unrepressed instead of suckling at the 30 year-old teat of androgyny. You may not like Aguilera, but she's proud of liking to fuck. Gaga is just another repressed little girl who wants to surround herself with gay men because she's terrified of her own vagina.

Fuck That

2010-04-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

Stupid people call things made for smart people "pretentious."

JOSS WHEDON IS STILL MY MASTER

2010-01-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

Because he didn't create some weird prequel to Buffy the Vampire Slayer that's about her going to school in LA only Buffy is played by Mylie Cyrus or some shit and instead of just having Merrick as her Watcher, for some strange reason Merrick is already on the Watcher's Council and some dude named Tae Bo Francois is her Watcher for like ten seconds and then gets killed only Merrick still doesn't become her Watcher, and Pike is ten years older than Buffy and they run into an all-CG character named Uncle Tom Tom and he helps them get through the haunted forest and none of it makes any fucking sense and Angel's there stalking Buffy when she's like 14 which always was a little creepy and Twilighty and there's a young Willow already there which is just FUCKING INSANE and it seems like Joss HASN'T EVER SEEN HIS OWN SHOW. None of that happened. Mr. Lucas fucked up ROYALLY and everyone's still buying the toys.

All Joss did was work with Fox again, which is really Eliza's fault, anyway. How can he say no to her? And he still created one of the most challenging and scary pieces of cyberpunk since Philip K. Dick passed away, once the show was dead and he got to do whatever he wanted. Definitely the best on network television since The Prisoner or something. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a Saints fan, and 13-2 is a fucking awesome record. Joss has misstepped along the way, but always manages to blow me away at least a whole bunch before all was said and done. J.J. has entertained me a lot, but never really made me think. Lost is Damon Lindelof's baby.

Manhandled Marketing

2009-10-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

I also want to mention something else: It seems most of my favorite things that are doing badly, as well as many of the things I've loved in the past that bombed or what have you, did so because their marketing team advertised them as something completely different from what they were. Dollhouse is not a sexy show about hot chicks. It is Blade Runner meets Total Recall in the rain, fuck, and then find out they have the same father. Jennifer's Body is not Megan Fox becomes a sexy succubus who steals boys' hearts, literally, a-hyuck! It's Mean Girls only the head bitch kills and eats the boys you like instead of fucking them. Here's a list of things mishandled in their advertising campaigns:

Donnie Darko: This is all about the back of Donnie Darko's DVD case, the only thing I would have had to go on if it weren't for word of mouth and the fact that it was on in the Tower Records where I bought it. And I quote: "In the tradition of STIR OF ECHOES and FINAL DESTINATION...This 'excitingly original' (Entertainment Weekly) nail-biter will keep you on the edge of your seat until the mind-bending climax." Um...what?

Firefly: Many blame the show's night. You can blame the episode order being fucked with. Not airing the original pilot until last. Not airing two of the best episodes. Really, I blame idiotic marketing plus network interference. You can decide the original pilot isn't what you want to air, but come on -- after you've already advertised said pilot? Everyone tunes in, expecting the scenes in the commercials you ran, and then thinks they missed an episode? I nearly vomited I was so upset at myself, then it turned out Fox are just a bunch of dicks that eat mouths for breakfast so they can shit assholes. No, I don't know what that means, so don't ask. They would also make a similar mistake later, with Joss's Dollhouse. Why do they hate you, Joss?

Hudson Hawk: After the success of Die Hard, studios were looking to cash in on Bruce Willis's action cred. Unfortunately, his most recent foray was more Moonlighting meets AWESOME. This did not stop the ad people from trying to trick us into thinking it was a new action movie with Bruce being snarky. But when you lie, all you get is a lot of bad word of mouth. We walk in expecting shoot 'em up, and get Charlie Chaplin. I mean, come on.

Hudson Hawk Bruce Willis Danny Aiello Michael Lehmann | Movie Trailers

The Big Hit: Once again, Columbia/Tri-Star drops the ball, advertising a comedy that happens to have action in it as an action movie that happens to have comedy in it, trying to bank on John Woo's name being attached to the film. Draw the wrong crowd in, get the wrong reaction. Christ, these people are amateur:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Movie: Joss has been the victim of badvertising since day one, although this is more a pre-marketing decision. Really, any of his projects in anyone else's hands become broad, insensitive drivel. A bunch of Hollywood assholes with four available fingers and three real emotions in their range trying to tackle dry wit mixed with action and horror elements and feminist/humanist angles? Cripes, no wonder they can't ever get them to say the lines right.

Jennifer's Body: How Diablo Cody came up with the idea: "I was just sitting at home in Minnesota -- this was a couple years ago -- thinking, "What would actually scare me, what would frighten me?" And all I could think of were girls. Teenage boys are pretty harmless. Teenage women are terrifying. They can be really frightening, really ruthless, and irrational and evil. It's a territory that's been mined before in Heathers and Mean Girls; this is certainly not a new idea, but I just wanted to take it to another level." ...But they advertise it like any of the other stupid teen horror flicks they have on the docket, and amp up the Megan Fox angle, as well as Diablo's angle, but toning down the actual plot of the movie and aiming it at guys. Dumb, especially since girls make up 80% of the horror movie audience.

Zack & Miri Make a Porno: The main thing that got me into the theater when this movie came out wasn't the title, wasn't the premise, wasn't Seth Rogen, and wasn't Kevin Smith. It was that Kevin Smith was directing a movie starring Seth Rogen and it had this premise. Each of these things by themselves were starting to wear thin; I could have done with a break from them. All of it together meant a fresh new thing -- and the thought of some of my favorite comedic teams working together got me all tingly in my girly parts. But here's the trailer, let me know if you see anything missing:

Did you blink? Then you may have missed Kevin Smith's fucking name. Kevin Smith, one of like five celebrity independent filmmakers from the mid-nineties to now. Smith, who may not be a massive draw, but has a different audience from the Apatow movies. This was the time to crossover those audiences and make the biggest banking Smith film ever, while also excusing Rogen for doing a seventeenth movie that year, because hey, he couldn't turn down doing a Kevin Smith role. By trying to pass this off as another Apatow-related Rogen picture with an incidental Randal-from-Clerks cameo, anyone who wasn't keeping up with Smith wouldn't even notice his name at the end. So now, you're sitting in the theater saying, "Rogen again? Will these guys just slow down a sec? I mean I loved Virgin and Knocked Up, but that doesn't mean I want them showing up at my house uninvited and drinking my beer. Oh, hey, good to see Randal getting a job. WTF is Kevin Smith doing? Did he commit seppuku after Jersey Girl or what?"

Dollhouse: Once again, Joss is screwed. Once again, by Fox. Once again, the pilot advertised for a month is not the pilot aired. AND they tried to make a show about identity, slavery, prostitution, Marxism, acting, and the human soul into a show about fast cars, hot chicks, and money. You know, basically proving that Fox Network is the evil Rossum Corporation from the very same show. They also were making Joss Whedon write these fast car hot chick scripts, which is like making Michael Bay and Frank Miller do a movie about a strong woman who is neither a whore nor pretty by Hollywood standards and wears concealing clothing. Heads are bound to explode.

Dollhouse S2

2009-10-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Dollhouse season 2 has been amazing, in keeping with the tradition of Joss shows (at least, those that get a second season). The first three episodes have raised the bar for exploring fucked-up human behavior, self-identity, and political corruption. Needless to say, it is not long for this world. I haven't seen the DVR numbers, but its ratings took a nosedive on the second episode. Now, after the best episode of the season, we're getting a week hiatus before the next episode. Not going to work out as well as if we weren't having a break, but maybe we gained some viewership this week? Yeah, I'm pessimistic, as well.

I'm rewatching "Belle Chose", last night's episode, as I blog about it and write on the Whedonesque.com message board. I'm officially a fan after last night, instead of just a supporter. If Fox gets a whiff of that type of stuff, we won't be getting the entire 13 episodes of this season. They're not fans of fans. Watchers, supporters, viewers, sure. Fans -- Fox hates them. After all, fans are geeks and Fox is the captain of the football team -- its grades aren't that spectacular, but look how hot its chicks are. It advertises everything like it's a goddamn Michael Bay movie, even Fringe and Dollhouse. But the only things that are Michael Bay movies are Michael Bay movies.

Anyway, all I want is a full season 2. I want My "Epitaph Two" episode. For fuck's sake, people, at least watch it on Hulu. TV is an over forty medium, now. Everyone else catches up, especially with Friday's shows, whenever the fuck they want on Hulu or wherever. And you have to be over 50 and fit a certain personality profile to have a Nielsen Box. Those are the people deciding what everyone likes on TV. Just dedicate Hulu numbers, so that they get so insanely large it becomes worth the networks' while to lend more credence to them.

Feel Our Pain!

2009-09-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

The girls are always getting on our case about the whole Olsen twins thing (of which I was never a part), and Hermione (who still has about a year of baking to do before she's my type), even Natalie Portman for some reason even though I'm the same age. I'm starting to worry about the whole Dakota Fanning thing. She's playing Cherie Curry and...well, I'm afraid. But I'm going to do something for you, ladies. I'm going to show you what it's like to feel dirty, old, and wrong. Here is Nicholas Hoult, in 2002's About a Boy:

And here is Nicolas Hoult today:

You're welcome, now leave me the fuck alone.

Identity Crisis Casting, pt. 2

2009-09-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

11. Bruce Wayne, Batman: Jon Hamm. Jon is playing Bruce Wayne right now, as we speak on AMC's Mad Men. Go on, I'll wait. He's so good he makes you re-think the whole Christian Bale thing, which takes a lot. But he's in his forties already, which makes him bad for the superhero movie, but perfect for his seniority in IC to make sense. He even looks like the goddamn Rags Morales drawings.

12. Carter Hall, Hawkman: Josh Holloway. Basically, Hawkman grunts a lot, is taller than most of the cast, and punches people, while claiming dominance over the gamma heroes that are left when the big guys are away. Sounds like Sawyer to me.

13. Tim Drake, Robin: Thomas Dekker. I loved The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Come on, they've got the same hair, people? Plus, (SPOILER ALERT) he knows how to play someone who's lost a dad.

14. Captain Boomerang: Chris Bauer. Hey! A villain. A lame one, yes, but still important. His lameness is exactly why he ends up being important, and his attempts at reconnecting with his lovechild he gave up for adoption 20 years ago is one of the very human storylines, and why I say IC is The Wire of comics. Chris himself was in the second season of The Wire, and his role on that, along with his look, are why I've chosen him.

15. Calculator: Steve Buscemi. Taking a hint from the Bat-crew's use of Oracle, this formerly lame villain begins selling strategical information and hiring out mercinary villains as a middle man. It's about Steve's usual type of role.

16. Diana Prince, Wonder Woman: Jennifer Connelly. Wonder Woman can't just be hot. She must be perfect. Beautiful in a way that defies logic, hair blacker than midnight, eyes bright by contrast, strong in will and moral certainty...with an amazing rack. Look, I'm not being sexist here, the fact is one of the ways she enters a scene in IC is with a caption reading, "I was impressed. He wasn't staring at her rack," to make clear the intimidation caused by the truth lasso. Anyway, Jennifer's it, man.

17. Hal Jordan, The Spectre: Nathan Fillion. Other than, at this point Hal had gone evil, then sacrificed himself, only to come back as an angel of vengeance all as part of his plan to be a Green Lantern again (which he eventually succeeded at), do I even have to explain this? The...casting, I mean.

18. Barry Allen, The Flash: Ryan Reynolds. Barry's dead, and so is relegated to flashbacks where he is only slightly older than Wally is now. I always liked Goyer's casting of Ryan as The Flash, which is why him being Hal Jordan kind of irritates me.

19. Dr. Light: Alan Tudyk. Before you ask, yes, it was hard not to put the entire cast of Firefly in here. Anyway, the most important villain of the story, but screw you I'm not going back to put him higher, Dr. Light is usually the minor heroes like Teen Titans' punching bag, but it is revealed he wasn't always so simple. Alan's role as (SPOILER ALERT) Alpha on Whedon's Dollhouse has shown that he can play real evil and truly silly, and switch at a moment's notice.

20. Slade Wilson, Deathstroke the Motherfucking Terminator: Christian Fucking Bale. The Batman of villains, Deathstroke has enhanced reflexes and strength, and uses 90% of his goddamn brain capacity. By the time you make a move, he's thought of the counter you're going to think of to his counter and what to do about the three guys you brought with you's counters to his moves against them after you're unconscious. Christian is my choice cuz, well, he's still the fucking Batman, but now he's the evil, one-eyed Batman who's one of the only villains to ever have his own title that outsold most of the primary hero titles.

21. Dick Grayson, Nightwing: James Marsden. This guy's great, and looks so much like a superhero. Why does he have to keep playing second fiddle to bad-asses? Let's wash the cyclops taste out of his mouth, and let him work out the aggression over never getting the girl in a superhero movie by letting him be that guy: Dick Grayson, successfully beating his way out of the shadow of the Robin mantle.
22. Arthur King, Merlyn: Jason Patric. Stupidest. Name. Ever. ...Anyway, this is basically evil Green Arrow, and is one of the primary antagonists, going with Meltzer's theme of realistically portraying the mortiest of characters in the DC basement.

23. Starfire: Diora Baird. And finally, my coup de grâce, and probably subconsciously the only reason I did this fucking list. Starfire is realllly hot. She's orange with solid green eyes and reddish hair. She's built like a brick shithouse, and she wears next to nothing, and it's all purple. She is an alien who's insulted by the word "trock." She is the only character who is only in two panels of the book I've bothered to cast. Diora Baird is one of those people that if I see a picture of her, my entire body raises 4 degrees and I begin breathing heavier. Seriously, I'll probably go see Stan Helsing simply to watch the ongoing joke of everyone finding excuses to touch her boobs. I mean, come on. Look at her!!

Identity Crisis Casting, pt. 1

2009-09-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

So, here it is. HBO miniseries event, "Identity Crisis", as cast by yours truly. It was rather easy to find normal sized pictures to use of the actors, but next to impossible to find headshots or any sort of shots of Rags Morales's depictions of said characters, for a side-by-side comparison, so this B & W pic of the version of the JLA from "Identity Crisis" will have to do. The primary characters of IC are what are usually the back-up characters, e.g. Batman and Superman are of mid-level importance to the story, and Wonder Woman is relegated to an almost mythical non-presence -- she only shows up to administer the truth lasso, and to pay her respects at the funeral. Hal Jordan (the original Green Lantern) is a ghost, and Barry Allen (the original Flash) is plain dead for this, so any of you not familiar with DC Comics characters past their most iconic and well-known will have NO idea who I'm referring to, and may want to skip this post entirely.

1. Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man: Jim Carrey. The soft-spoken, kindhearted husband to the primary victim of IC, Ralph has the ability to stretch his form and shape, which is used to heartbreaking effect when we see what grief does to someone who has no limits to their facial expression. With a limited amount of CGI, the serious Jim Carrey could pull this off easy.

2. Sue Dibny: Alyson Hannigan. Sue was one of the characters that was harder to cast. I couldn't think of many actresses who could evoke the type of immediate audience empathy needed. I needed someone who it would break my heart to see killed and burned, whether I knew the character or not, and who was within reasonable age proximity to Jim. The last part is why Zooey Deschanel did not immediately get the role.

3. Oliver Queen, The Green Arrow: Kiefer Sutherland. Well, just look at him. I'm sure Kiefer can grow his dad's mustache from Buffy. Plus, Jack Bauer plus arrows? Yes.

4. Ray Parker, The Atom: Edward Norton. Sort of the opposite of being the Hulk. The Atom can shrink himself down to literally the atomic and perhaps even subatomic level. So small, he can ride the electronic signals from one telephone to another. His relationship with his ex-wife is one of the better and more key situations in the book.

5. Jean Loring: Wynona Ryder. The Atom's ex-wife, with whom he begins to reconcile once she is targeted by whomever is attacking the League's loved ones. She looks the part, and has the range to pull off the ups and downs. Also, I'd like to see her playing off of Norton.

6. Zatanna: Rachel Weisz. Sexy and brunette fits a few profiles in the DCU, but age-wise Z needs to be younger than Ralph or Oliver, but still old enough to have been in the original conspiracy with them. Rachel has the right look and can be the seductive magician and the most unwitting yet important part of the conspiracy. Plus, I want to see her in fishnets and a top hat.

7. Wally West, The Flash: Joseph Gordon-Levitt. One of the younger members of the league, Wally took on the mantle of the Flash after Barry Allen's death. While smart, witty, and fun, Wally's real role in IC is the discovery of seven of the original member's conspiracy and subsequent joining of it, so this is mostly a dramatic role. After Brick and The Lookout, I think JGL has shown himself more than qualified.

8. Clark Kent, Superman: Brendan Fraser. While Brenden's been my choice for Superman for a long time, I wouldn't necessarily use him if I had the chance to reboot Superman right now, due to his age. That being said, his age would work in a cast where he is technically the oldest member. Although Superman doesn't age like regular humans, Fraser's held up well and needs to have authority in his voice. Plus, having been in both George of the Jungle and Gods & Monsters, it's safe to say he can pull off both Clark and Supes.

9. Kyle Rayner, The Green Lantern: Sean Maher. My actual current choice for Superman, Sean can play the All-American fashion model-looking replacement for Hal Jordan (who had gone through a lot at this point, but was not yet a Green Lantern again). Mostly, his role in IC is to be a little wet behind the ears and unaware of the underbelly of being in the League.

10. Dinah Lance, The Black Canary: Diane Kruger. Daughter of the original Black Canary with a very similar name, Dinah has the power of sonic screaming, much like the X-Men's Banshee. Her part in IC is basically to argue with the male leads about whether she can take care of herself when they get overprotective, and getting her ass handed to her by Deathstroke. (Everyone does, but this seems to be the only other think Canary does in the book.) After seeing her performance as the actress Von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds and Helen in Troy, it's obvious to me that Diane can play beautiful, deadly, strong, and independent. Plus I want to see her in fishnets and leather.

Identity Crisis

2009-09-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm very late in catching up, but I JUST read DC Comics' "Identity Crisis" last night. It was so good, I didn't get to sleep until 5:30am because I couldn't stop. The only complaint I have is that it and "Batman: The Long Halloween" seem to have almost the exact same climax. Both are amazing, realistic portrayals of a superhero world and I am extremely frustrated by them having similar conclusions to their mysteries. If I had to pick a contender, however, it would be Crisis. The artwork, the writing, every single panel earned every emotion with aplomb.

I also was amused by how very like The Wire it was, even down to the out-of-context quotes from the chapter preceding each chapter. Just replace the Baltimore PD with the Justice League.

Anyway, while reading it, it was so cinematic (even moreso than something like "Watchmen", which actually just feels cinematic but its purely comic) that I began seeing how I would film each part, and who I would cast. Well, at the end of the collection, it turns out the artist cast each part before he drew them. I wouldn't use any of his cast in real life; while they physically might match up, their ages don't line up for a realistic cast and most wouldn't actually be able to play the parts.

So, basically, I'm going to cast the Justice League. I will leave that for the next post due to the amount of work I will be putting into it (there will be pictures, oh yes) and the possible size of a post of that nature. It's bad enough without all this text from the explanation.

Fuck Off America

2009-09-04T01:08:00.000-07:00

I fucking hate you. You know who you are, you pig-headed, fascist, money-worshipping idiot. You are insecure in your opinions because you are intelligent enough to know that you haven't really thought them out before forming them. In fact, they were handed to you on a silver platter by authority figures who you choose to willingly believe in while willfully ignoring their obvious fallibility. But what do you do with what little knowledge you have accidentally gleaned (that your opinions may be worth less than the brain cells they're printed on)? Do you go out, seek more knowledge, facts, ideas? Do you cultivate an intellect, so as to adequately defend your stances? No, that would be too hard. Or, alternatively, that would threaten your opinion. You might run into contradictory information. You might find out you're wrong. Sky Bully-fucking-forbid. Well, I hope you accidentally stumbled here, bitch, and I hope you don't have your earmuffs on, cuz daddy's done bullshitting. Open up your brain hole for a steaming pile of organic thought, fuckers:

Gay marriage is not happening in a church. No Catholic, Jewish, Scientologist, Mormon, Muslim, or Buddhist dens of mass-opium are letting Tom marry Dick within their walls right now, and certainly not the ones of your religion, oh Twice Born Christian. All gay people are arguing for is the right to call their unions a "marriage" on legal documents, so that they get the same tax breaks you do. Exclamation point. No one's going to make you marry your best friend Jim, and gay marriages won't suddenly "count" in the Catholic Church, since we separated all that a long time ago. I understand, you guys didn't get the memo. It explains a lot about how you've been voting for presidents.

If we have socialized healthcare, the private hospitals will not be shut down and outlawed, dickhead. To be sure, some will go out of business, because we won't need so fucking many private ones when we've got government sponsored ones. Most likely though, all the doctors and staff and buildings will go to use, because the buildings for hospitals that aren't private will convert to federal ones. The only companies really suffering under this would be the insurance companies -- you know, the ones screwing over all of us except the politicians that tell you what you think. No, those politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) are being paid a lot of money to tell you, "like, socialized healthcare is bad, y'all." No one's unplugging your grandmother, shithead. They're more likely to do that to her no insurance ass at the hospitals we have now.

Obama is not Hitler, you back-birth. In fact, let's go on the record saying that no one is fucking Hitler except motherfucking Hitler, and he's fucking dead, so even he isn't. But you might be a Nazi. Here's how: Germany was riled into a fervor of anti-semitism and global imperialism only after being riled into a fervor of patriotism and anti-Poland rhetoric by a False Flag operation -- basically, Hitler attacked one of his own, German targets, and made it look like Poland did it, so he could anger the people and make them okay with anything he did. Namely, eventually, invading fucking Poland. Sound familiar? I am not saying 9/11 was False Flag (although I may have just implied it), but with or without it being staged (and it would be pretty fucking retarded to stage that attack to warrant us attacking Iraq, I mean, why not just fill the plain with Iraqis?) it was used to get us into a Patriotic, blind fury that was utilized to invade a country not responsible for the attack at all. Now go fuck yourself.

Welcome to Chapel Perilous, you pieces of shit. I hope we all die in a car fire.

Backlash

2009-09-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm going to call it right now: the Firefly backlash is about to begin. It's garnering way too much nostalgia and respect, as well as popularity among "normals" (non-science fiction enthusiasts, or as Harlan Ellison would refer to them: Sci-fi fans), without having enough of a run to warrant such respect. The straw breaking the camel's back, I fear, is a simple pole on i09.com pitting sci-fi "badasses" against one another, in which River has kicked everyone's ass. This might seem plausible at first, but the truth is she's beaten characters like The Doctor (Dr. Who), who lives infinitely and regenerates and has committed GENOCIDE when he needed, Buffy, Six from BSG, and was in the middle of beating the fucking BATMAN when last I checked. No one can beat Batman, people. No one 'cept Mrs. Batman.

Don't get me wrong here, I love Firefly and Serenity more than most. I mean, I watched it while it was ON THE AIR, for Chrissake. But The Doctor? River would be annihilated. The show was on for half a season. Is that tragic? Yes. Is it likely the show would have gotten even better? Given Joss's track record, a second season would have blown everyone away compared to the first, but given Joss's track record, the first season should have kind of blown in parts, so clearly Firefly wasn't following the paradigm. Just because it wasn't given a fair shake, however, is no reason for it to be making it higher on a list of best science fictions shows than The Twilight Zone. That's ridiculous. A Firefly marathon wouldn't even last half of Thanksgiving. That's gotta count for something.

I'm not saying the show isn't one of the best, most influential sci-fi shows ever made, with one of the most likable casts ever assembled. It is. But I think if we keep flooding these polls and message boards and viewer's choice thing-a-ma-bobs, putting it undeservedly over other things, we're asking for a backlash, one where we are hated and marginalized by our own people, the sci-fi community. And then, you know what Browncoats are? They're the new Trekkies. Do you want that? I certainly don't. So here's how it is: River can beat a cylon, and her Terminator twin, and even Buffy (though come on, she's also returned from the dead). But The Doctor? No. Batman? It should at least be a close poll if she's going to win, but everyone knows Batman can stop her. He stopped a Predator, for fuck's sake. Nathan Fillion is hot, but if he's up against Ryan Reynolds? Let's be objective here.

Firefly is more influential/better/cooler than Stargate or Supernatural or even Angel, and of course anything under those. But it is not more influential than The X-files, which means it falls below Twilight Zone, original Star Trek, ST: TNG, Babylon 5, and a slew of other shows, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ran for 7 fucking years and consistently was the best thing on television and is the reason we have crap like Smallville and Supernatural and awesomeness like Veronica Mars or Reaper.

To sum up, I'm fighting the backlash early. I love Juno and Diablo Cody, indie romances that don't end happily (Rocket Science, Adventureland, (500) Days of Summer), Death Cab for Cutie, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the Boston Red Sox. I'm tired of defending myself for liking things that everyone used to like, but pretends they always hated now that they've gotten too popular. It's asinine and it makes me feel sad. Don't overexpose a show that seven years ago got the shit end of the stick. I like it being a little cool to like it.

Also, WHITE PEOPLE -- quit it with the Beatles thing. I get it. You grew up with them, they have a lot of really good songs, and you're white, too. We all understand. But know that it is OKAY to not agree that something is the best of anything EVER. Plus, it takes a lot of trying for a Clash fan to like Beatles anything. They're doing it cuz they like you and don't want to intentionally exclude themselves. But we have to TRY. Opinions are okay, especially in music. Don't cause the Beatles Backlash. Thank you, that is all.

New Entries in the Glossary of Shame

2009-08-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Working at the Box Office at the House of Blues, a man came to the window one day and ordered thirty five tickets to a show for "Red Jumpsuit Apparatus." The band name he had scrawled on a napkin, and unless he hearts his I's, it was written down for him. Red Jumpsuit is an all ages bubblegum punk show, the type of band a forty year old man not only does not go to see themselves, it's the type of band they can't say the name to out loud. You know, the kind of band that a father intentionally mispronounces or continually gets wrong, because it would be more embarrassing for a grown man to get it right. He's at my window, muttering, "I need 35 tickets to see... Red... Jumper..."

"Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, sir? Coming right up!"

I finished for him in a moment of retail power -- I was both covering for his shame and acknowledging it between us.

Now the great thing about Box Office is that once I know what you want, the mic goes off, and we can talk about you to your face and you wouldn't know unless you're a lip reader or facial expression expert. This was a source of both joy and frustration for the person in the front window, because often it was the personal mission of the person working in the back to try to get the front person to crack up (seemingly for no reason to anyone outside in line). But anyway, one could turn around, mic off, and say anything one wanted, and no one would be the wiser.

I knew this man's situation; I'd seen it too many times. It was his daughter's birthday or something and he was buying tickets for ALL of her friends as well as her. The beaten down look in his eyes showed how he'd probably been resistant (it's important to note he probably would have been less resistant to her, say, wanting to see the Rolling Stones with him, even though those two tickets would cost twice as much as the 35 he was buying now), but was worn down by his daughter's tears and yelling, probably with Mom as the good cop in his ear with something like, "Why don't you just get the tickets for her this once?" Then, just to get the sound to stop, and so his wife was not yelling at him either, he comes, suit in disarray like a man in the latter half of a John Hughes film, to me.

It became my personal mission to figure out what to call a man who is pussywhipped by his own teenage daughter (in other words, cannot say "no" to her, but not because of sex, rather because she is his daughter and the sound of her whine and the sight of her tears is just unbearable). I posed the query to everyone, and got nothing, knowing instinctually that there was an obvious solution that I wasn't seeing. "There was a very easy, clear answer to this that would be hilarious," the humour gland in my brain told me (and yes, it's a humour gland, not a humor gland -- mine speaks The Queen's). Then -- while I was cashing out, everyone in the box office at once, the money taking my mind of the problem for the first time that day -- like lightning through a Tesla coil, it finally came to me, in all its splendid perfection: If your daughter has you at her beck with a well placed scream or the slam of a door, and call with tears used as wallet lubrication, you, sir, are Tiger Beat.

Hugo Award Winners

2009-08-18T22:48:00.001-07:00

As a kind of experiment to both broaden my horizons yet simultaneously focus them on one particular area of interest, I've decided to read all of the Hugo Award Winners for Best Science Fiction Novel. Not that these are the objective best, but that they are on the whole guaranteed quality and a not quite so arbitrary list to choose from. I have not decided on a time frame in which I will be doing this.

The basic theory is that not only will I be more well-read, but I will be generally a better writer for being better read, and a better science fiction writer in particular. Also, I plan on having a great deal of fun while doing so.

The awards have been going on since 1951 or so, though Asimov's Foundation books were retroactively awarded, which means there's about 60 books altogether on the list. Given my regular reading habits, I've read several of them already and to conserve time I'll save re-reading them for another time. To give you an idea what a task I'm undertaking, here's the list of winners, those I've already read in grey:

1951 - Robert A Heinlein - Farmer in the Sky

1953 - Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

1954 - Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451

1956 - Robert A. Heinlein - Double Star

1958 - Fritz Leiber - The Big Time

1959 - James Blish - A Case Of Conscience

1960 - Robert A Heinlein - Starship Troopers

1961 - Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz

1962 - Robert A Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

1963 - Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle

1964 - Clifford D Simak - Waystation

1966 - Frank Herbert - Dune

1966 - Roger Zelazny - This Immortal (expansion of '...and call me Conrad')

1966 - Special Award - Isaac Asimov - Foundation Trilogy

1967 - Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

1968 - Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light

1969 - John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar

1970 - Ursula K. Le Guin - [Ekumen 04] - The Left Hand of Darkness

1971 - Larry Niven - Ringworld

1972 - Philip Jose Farmer - RW1 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go

1973 - Isaac Asimov - The Gods Themselves

1974 - Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama

1975 - Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed

1976 - Joe Haldemann - The Forever War

1977 - Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

1978 - Frederik Pohl - Gateway

1979 - Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

1980 - Arthur C. Clarke - The Fountains of Paradise

1981 - Joan D. Vinge - Snow Queen

1982 - C J Cherryh - Downbelow Station

1983 - Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

1984 - David Brin - Startide Rising

1985 - William Gibson - Neuromancer

1986 - Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game

1987 - Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead

1988 - David Brin - The Uplift War

1989 - C J Cherryh - Cyteen

1990 - Dan Simmons - Hyperion

1991 - Lois McMaster Bujold - The Vor Game

1992 - Lois McMaster Bujold - Barrayar

1993 - Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

1993 - Vernor Vinge - A Fire upon the Deep

1994 - Kim Stanley Robinson - Green Mars

1995 - Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror Dance

1996 - Neil Stephenson - The Diamond Age

1997 - Kim Stanley Robinson - Blue Mars

1998 - Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

1999 - Connie Willis - To Say Nothing of the Dog

2000 - Vernor Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky

2001 - J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2002 - Neil Gaiman - American Gods

2003 - Robert Sawyer - Hominids

2004 - Lois McMaster Bujold - Paladin of Souls

2005 - Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

2006 - Robert Charles Wilson - Spin

2007 - Vernor Vinge - Rainbow's End

2008 - Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union

2009 - Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book

I will probably break up the list with a book from normal literature either every other book or every third book. Not really sure about the logistics yet, but I think I can accomplish all 51 of them in 2 or 3 years or so.

Holy EFFING SHIT

2009-08-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

Variety reports that a judge on Wednesday ruled that the family of superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, has "successfully recaptured" rights to additional works, including the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic-books. The trade explains:

The ruling is based on the court's finding that these were not "works-made-for-hire" under the Copyright Act.

This means the Siegels -- repped by Marc Toberoff of Toberoff & Associates -- now control depictions of Superman's origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.

The article again mentioned that the studio and DC will have to start production by 2011 if they want to make a new "Superman" or "Justice League" movie.

This is the best, yet weirdest feeling news I've read all day. You're telling me Superman's origins are off-limits now? Can they mention Krypton anymore? I hope they fucking lose it entirely and someone else starts making superman comics. But I also like Superman's interactions with Batman, etc. so I don't. I don't know, I'm just glad creative won a goddamn battle against a corporate giant today.

John Hughes

2009-08-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

Didn't realize just how many movies I loved had been written by Hughes till I checked out his imdb page just now. There are the very closely associated ones -- Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller, Weird Science. There's the mistaken identity ones -- Say Anything and Fast Times at Ridgemont High are Cameron Crowe. But here's a rundown of the best of the rest, so you can get a scope of what we've lost here.

Mr. Mom

Vacation

European Vacation

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles

She's Having a Baby

The Great Outdoors

Uncle Buck

Christmas Vacation

Home Alone

Dutch

I mean, Jesus Christ, man.

Where the Wild Things Are, trailer #2

2009-08-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christmas, there is no way this movie could possibly live up to its first two trailers. I just wept from sheer joy.

I still don't know if this movie is for kids (seeing as I know several kids who would wet themselves from these trailers alone) so much as grown people who want to, nee need to remember being a kid.

But then again, adults tend to overestimate what would scare a child, and children tend to love the thrill and respect awarded to them by something willing to scare them. Just like the original book.

(500) Days of Summer

2009-08-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

Over the course of my life, there have been movies and songs that seemed to be made just for my generation, or just for people in similar situations as me -- Fight Club was perfect for a 19 year-old male with mother issues, Rushmore seemed made for boys who spent their adolescence in a restrictive all-male high school who prized creativity over grades. The band Tool spoke to all my interests in science fiction, philosophy, the occult. You know, deep shit.

But there are some things that transcend mere love as it is defined for music or film or a book or play. Sometimes it's not about liking the thing, or knowing what it is talking about. Sometimes something just speaks directly to you, and you get the distinct impression that very few of the people around you are going through the same experience. Though they are laughing at the right places and tearing up at the right places, they are still sitting in a theater or listening to the radio. You are in the movie, you are in the song. It's like you and a friend both met a very attractive girl at the same time; both of you were turned on, but one of you is a different person for having met her.

All of this is to say, I'm the type of person who has tasted the love of a good book (Stranger in a Strange Land), I have heard songs from 20 years prior that let me know that I was not alone in being alone (How Soon Is Now?), and I have been forever altered by connections made with television characters (My So-called Life).

Three movies have taken me inside them and sweat a level of cold comfort from my body, leaving me altered but thankful for it. The first was The Breakfast Club. I'd seen parts of it a thousand times, but the first time I watched that movie from beginning to end, I was just the right age to do so, and in just enough of a teenage depression to be severely helped by it.

The second was American Beauty. I remember every last bit of that experience. I remember that when I saw it, it was more about the two teenagers than it has been since. I was in my first relationship, and I was a bit of a morbid lunatic -- but I was more confident than I've ever been since. Irina did that to me, still does. Her belief in me is so pure it can bolster me from shut-in to prophet, and I'm glad for the occasional fix of it. The plastic bag sequence and the ending narration reacquainted me with a deep-seeded joy of life of which I never fully let go.

The third is (500) Days of Summer. Most people who either saw it with me or have heard me talk about it since think I'm being a tad bit melodramatic about it, or maybe that I just need to shut the fuck up. I'm sure they're right. I walked out comparing it to Requiem for a Dream, in that I had been traumatized. This was a joke, but not entirely hyperbolic. I didn't know if I'd ever want to watch it again. As the days go by and my appetite to see the film again increases, I've realized I was wrong. I will be watching this film quite a lot.

The film basically condenses the past 4 or so post-Katrina years of my life, and the pseudo relationship of which I've been a part, into a 2 hour indie tour de force. Sure, it took out the distance, obviously doesn't mention a preceding hurricane, and the relationship doesn't advance in a series of installments when the two main characters happen to be in the same city, but like I said. Condensed. Tack onto that my man crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt that started with Brick and was solidified by a squee when he was in two seconds of a shot in Brothers Bloom, and the fact that I think I fall in love with Zooey Deschanel differently for every part I've experienced her play, from Elf to Trillian to Weeds to Tin Man.

The movie continually tells you what the movie is, yet it still punches you in the gut when it is what you've been told it is. Much like Tom, we are holding out the hope that we are being lied to, and are crushed by the truth. For me, it was a strange, unwelcome but needed wake-up call.

I am also thankful for finally having my type portrayed on screen at all. Not all men are sex-crazed commitment-phobes, and not all women are needy, insecure relationship-aholics. In my experience, nothing but the exact inverse of that has been true, and it was nice to finally have that portrayed in a film. Certainly, Say Anything had it's Cusack, but Ione Skye was anything but a fun-loving gentleman's woman like Summer. This version is intensely more accurate. There's always someone who's more into it than the other. True love, perhaps, is when everything's even.

Marc Webb, formerly a music video director, does a phenomenal job here. His background shows in spades, from the remarkable soundtrack (which kills me all over again because of how linked the music is to specific emotions in the film), to a musical set piece that is the highlight of the movie. He also uses color, or specifically avoids color, to force us into Tom's position a bit -- the palette for the entire movie is neutral, except when Summer is present, and the amazing blue of Zooey Deschanel's eyes subtly surround us.

If you have the time or inclination, I highly recommend the film, and if you love the film, I highly recommend visiting the website, where if you look you can find a Marc Webb-directed video for Zooey's band, She & Him, featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a recasting of a scene from Sid & Nancy featuring Zooey as Sid and Joseph as Nancy (a reference to a line in 500 Days).

Trying something out.

2009-08-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Just found this site called Issuu, checking out how the embed feature works.

Don't want to bother everyone with the music on it, so hopefully it wouldn't just stay on in a reader.

Open publication - Free publishing - More webcomic

Cover Songs

2009-07-30T13:33:00.001-07:00

1. "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. This is in the top three Leonard Cohen songs as performed by the man himself. Most of his work, like Dylan's, lends itself to covering due to the weakness of Cohen's voice and the stripped down or synth sounds of his music. This one works, and moreover, Jeff Fucking Buckley covered it better than anyone else can possibly try. Between Leonard's deep, old voice with accompanying chorus and Jeff's solitary falsetto, you cannot get any closer to God. Rufus Wainwright did a good job, but could only remind me of Buckley's approach. Even Cohen has now said to stop it. So just fucking stop.

2. "Love Song" by The Cure. Every fucking Goth/Industrial band covers this as an attempt at capitalizing on the "hard cover of an 80s ballad" shit that Manson popularized with "Sweet Dreams" in the 90s, while disguising it as an homage to their roots. It's annoying and shows a lack of actual knowledge of the music of the time, because if you owned Disintegration, you'd know it's one of the weak songs on the album in relation to the rest. It's just too fucking easy, been done too many times, and the first rendition is not only very good, it's absolutley perfect. Covering it in "your style" implies a complete misunderstanding of the song in the first place. The song only works as The Cure did it. Leave it the fuck alone. Also, once 311 covers it, it's officially aborted.

3. "How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths. You know what? I've enjoyed most of the covers of this. Now stop. This is another case of the original being very good, but I believe that Love Spit Love actually reenvisioned the song in a way that gave it a veracity and intensity that was missing in the original, thus giving an alternate experience. It's like "Hallelujah" in that between the original and the cover, there's no need for any more versions. Yet it also is covered by every Goth band that doesn't do "Love Song" as its homage to Goth/attempt to sell shitty records. In the case of Snake River Conspiracy, they did both "Love Song" and "How Soon Is Now?" How little confidence did they have in their actual recordings?

4. "All the Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople (via David Bowie). The song was written by Bowie to give Mott the Hoople a little boost. It ended up being their only hit. Years later, Bowie released his own rendition of the song he wrote (which is less known but in my opinion, better). Then it was covered for the Clueless soundtrack. A few years back, the punk band The Fuck-ups covered it. That one is my favorite. The covers aren't annoyingly plentiful at this point, and I like every version. Now stop. This is one I don't want to get to the point where the song is ruined for me. Four versions is enough, people.

5. "All Along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan. This is a tough one. Not only have I absolutely LOVED every single rendition of this song, but each version has been a completely different experience. But there's just too many. Stop before you ruin it.

KEEP COVERING

1. Anything by Joy Divison. They sound SO much better covered, and it gives me a perspective on how great a band they actually were, hearing the songs with real production on them AT ALL. I mean, what were they doing, standing on one side of a sewer drainage pipe and putting the mic at the other end? I've heard thousands of different recordings from the time period by much smaller bands that sound infinitely better. Are you telling me that reverb and Goth production advanced only after Ian Curtis killed himself?

2. Rap Songs in the style of other genres. I will never get tired of that.

2009-07-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Is it weird... I actually think the next season of Heroes looks... good?

Here's the ComicCon preview:

And a fight scene:

I Blame You All

2009-07-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Pilot for Ron Moore's (co-creator of the good BSG) Virtuality was more brilliant than I anticipated or, indeed, could have known from the two commercials Fox aired to "promote" the movie-style event that they graciously put into their Friday night slot, which is, of course, the slot with the most chance of getting viewed by the most amount of people. God I hate them.

Also, Lost has officially pre-blown my mind with its trailer for season 6 and all the con videos. WTF? Did they actually change time or are Damon and Carlton hardcore fucking with us leading into the last season? Gaaaaaah!

A Few Reactions to Some News

2009-07-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Those assholes finally did it. They're getting me to watch Smallville again. Not only is Zod going to be showing up in the flesh, and played by an actor I love, Callum Blue (the English guy from Dead Like Me), but there's a rumor that Tom Welling will finally be donning the goddamn suit next season, and they've been talking to Michael Rosenbaum's agent, so we may in fact be getting Lex back as well. If they do all these things it means they think it's the last season, but if they do all these things, who gives a shit? I might be in it for the long haul again. Fuckers.

I have got to start watching more Eureka. The show's frikkin golden everytime I watch it. It's one of those USA/Syfy level series (i.e. Monk, Psych, Burn Notice) that's like a warm Winnie the Pooh blanket. Maybe it's not that awesome for the freezing nights or the hot summer ones, but it's perfect for a cool autumn evening when you're curled up, enjoying a cocoa because you've got a chest cold. Comfort food.

WTF is Stargate doing? When I look at the new trailers for SG: Universe, I don't know what to think. The cinematography is more kinetic, more epic, darker. The series itself seems more dangerous and realistic. All in all, it's the first Stargate I've been truly interested in -- but they're just stealing a bunch of the Battlestar tropes and shoving them into a Stargate show. We know the show won't be serialized that way, and even if they kill a bunch of people right off, it kind of has to stop there -- they've got a limited number of cast members. In essence this will be old school SG cosplaying as Battlestar. I think I'll be calling it BSG-1.

If Megan Fox keeps doing weird, low-budget horror movies now that she's rode the corporate Bay train into stardom, I might end up liking her. Jennifer's Body, which as far as I can tell from early previews is going to be awesome as long as you don't have some weird, knee-jerk reaction to Diablo Cody dialogue. I actually am the exact opposite of that, and to be honest, we all know it belonged in this type of movie to begin with. Reitman directed it in a more indie hipster way and made Juno what it was, but Diablo was always trying to do the Kevin Smith/John Hughes thing. Then Jonah Hex, which is apparently a Spaghetti Western with monsters shot with the kinetic insanity of a Sam Raimi film. Fuck yeah! So, if this is Fox's actual taste in films, and she keeps cursing in every fucking interview she does while also showing the proper amount of jaded when talking about Transformers, I will become a fan. Fuck you all for judging me.

Top Ten Albums by Women

2009-07-21T23:37:00.001-07:00

My favorite female/predominantly female-composed albums of all time:

1. PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

2. Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk

3. esthero - breath from another

4. Xray Spex - Germfree Adolescents

5. Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

6. Hole - Live through This

7. Ani DiFranco - Dilate

8. Alanis Morissette - Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

9. Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstacy

10. elastica - elastica

Futurama

2009-07-20T11:30:00.001-07:00

Futurama is returning to Fox, only without Billy West (Fry, Dr. Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan, Professor Farnsworth, Scruffy, Nixon, among many others), Katey Segal (Leela), or John DiMaggio (Bender).

Can you say "boycott"?

Review of Dollhouse: The Original Series

2009-07-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

Joss Whedon's most recent foray into network television, Dollhouse, has been as plagued as any of his prior efforts with reshoots, network interference, rumors of cancellation, and endless debates about the message being sent by its premise since before day one. I won't rehash the premise of the series nor any of the old news that have been its numerous issues here, seeing as if you don't know them already, you definitely aren't interested in reading the rest of this. One thing I will say is: everything you've heard is most likely true.

After watching the original pilot of Dollhouse, I can't help but be reminded of not only Firefly, and how interference from Fox led to its ultimate demise, but also of Angel, with which this show has much more in common.

Firefly's episodes were run out of order, some of its best episodes were never aired, and its pilot wasn't run until it had already been cancelled. Instead we were left with a first impression that, while it was a decent, fun show, was essentially procedural -- that each week, the crew of the Serenity would go on a different old Westy heist in space, and somehow elude the attentions of the authorities, the Alliance. All semblance of real human issues had been stripped from the premise for our introduction and we were left with nothing but Joss and friends' wit and clever delivery for us to like it. In that way, Firefly is Joss's best show, in that the show overall still holds up under such circumstances, and when taken in its original form can be viewed as originally intended. Dollhouse and Angel were not so lucky.

The original pilot for Angel was an extremely bleak, Noir look into the underbelly of L.A., its demonic mythology a mature, disturbingly realistic metaphor for Hollywood and the town on which it feeds. Its network, the WB (now CW), did not understand it, and the pilot and thus the entire show was altered before it was shot -- still dark and somewhat edgy, still more mature than the teen vampire show from which it had been spawned, it was not nearly as ballsy and more importantly, this divergence from Joss and David Greenwalt's original vision can be pointed at for Angel's first season seeming to flounder in places. Rewrites done at a certain speed, with some bit of the heart missing from an original concept as writers subconsciously know they are being told to write less challenging material, leads to less original, more formulaic and even stolen plots.

Dollhouse's story is almost identical, except that where it diverges, it converges with Firefly's tale. The pilot was shot, but never aired, while bits from it were sprinkled through the rest of the episodes. The new first episode gave a faulty, procedural first impression, and lacked most of the emotional depth required to sell the show's complicated premise to us, and its last episode, one of its most emotionally reverberative and politically charged, was not aired in the US.

"Echo"

I won't spoil much of the pilot for you (and it is possible to be spoiled, this episode surprised me in several ways, particularly with the information I had about the rewritten continuity from watching the other episodes). I will, however, divulge some vague information about what is different about this original introduction.

Adelle sells the Dollhouse directly to us, by way of selling a customer whose POV is the camera's. We learn more about what an active is and how engagements work in this sequence, and more clearly, than in the first 5 episodes of the aired version. This is intercut with Echo on three separate engagements that show the criminal (a realistic drug deal, not an art vault heist), romantic (a true love engagement as our first impression, as opposed to bondage and motorcycles), and most importantly, humanitarian (Echo saves a young girl from prostitution, ironically allowing us to femininely root for a doll early on) shades to what the Dollhouse does. And boy does she sell it. I wanted a doll after listening to her, though I don't think I would actually purchase one. It comes off like the epitome of capitalism at work, and you find your own mind dancing in the grays.

Topher sells himself. He is still jaded and a tad despicable, but the jaded becomes the more important aspect of his personality. Basically, he argues his point, something we don't realize he has in the on-air episodes, and does so well: We are all programmed, and the actives are getting the better shake at the end of the day. He seems to actually be the most realistic of the characters, no matter how much you hate the point of view -- to deny the truth in his words is to, in a way, accept your own programming rather than become self-aware.

Dr. Saunders and Victor get introduced in much more subtle, creepy ways that are just plain handled better.

Paul meets Echo right the fuck off, and isn't a moron nor a lovesick puppy about it. He's as paranoid as he should be, and maybe a little more angry about all the shit he's putting up with than you'd expect. This is probably because his fruitless search has already been going on for some time before the pilot, which wasn't made as real in the regular continuity.

There is no trigger phrase ("treatment") in the pilot. Whether they were going to add that later after what happens in this episode, I don't know, but given the circumstances, I think it's a good idea if only as a comfort zone for the handlers.

The show is already as it became when it got stronger -- less about the engagement and more about the house itself. If we already had this information going into a couple of engagment episodes, we could have relaxed and enjoyed the ride -- we know the show is deep, but let us see some silliness for a few eps while we get to know everybody's softer side. Without a proper introduction to the story's themes, we are left wondering "Is this it? Is this going to be all?"

The Dollhouse itself seems smarter, and though you know it's at least a little sinister, it's in more of a regular Corporate America sort of way -- the actives are getting paid, the house is getting paid, the customer gets what they want. Boyd questions the morality, Saunders worries about their health and development, Topher tells them why both are bad or at the very least fruitless ideas. The actives are volunteers, you're an employee, and the actives aren't supposed to "get better", they're supposed to stay right where they are. Stop making waves.

All in all, the metaphors for our society are more present, the point of view of each of them stated clearly -- we are all dolls, and each of the employees of the house represent a way of viewing our predicament. This episode definitely does a great job of placing us firmly in the place of the dolls, Echo in particular, so that it wouldn't have mattered how little personality each possesed. They are us.

"Epitaph One"

As far as the unaired final episode goes, well... I'm not sure I even wanted to see this. Talk about spoilers! The entire episode is one massive Dollhouse spoiler for what is to come. Certainly it can stand in as the last episode of the entire series, and is reminiscent of Babylon 5's "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" an episode also made to serve as either a season finale or series finale, which skips forward through time in segments, finally showing us the impact of the station and its inhabitants on people living 1,000,000 years later. Dollhouse's equivalent, as the name might suggest, is far less optimistic, yet is possessed of similar issues.

The episode is positively brilliant, but is it blowing the proverbial wad of the series? (I'm still looking for the proverb about the blown wad; I know it's in there, somewhere.) "Deconstruction"'s forecast, though not concerning most of the main cast, took some of the suspense from the final season, and certainly from the series finale, which did a similar futuretelling only with nothing but the main cast. It did introduce new suspense, however, and the theorizing of how point A gets to point Z, something "Epitaph One" does with its mere name. Will we be getting an "Epitaph" at the end of each season, possibly continuing the exploits of our little band of revolutionaries, should the show continue? I certainly hope so.

That being said, I trust Joss to a certain extent to deliver the goods despite his showing what appear to be all his cards -- he did it consistently with the last half of the Dollhouse season. Every time I thought something had happened too quickly and that it would be hard to top, Joss soon topped it with something I felt similarly about, until I finally relaxed and realized it was less that Joss was rushing his story and more like he was getting all the obvious plots and twists out of the way, so we could stop wondering who's the last Cylon and just enjoy the show, something Ron Moore perhaps should have done (Of course, I chalk most of my problems with BSG's ending from it being 4 seasons instead of the perfection of a 5 season arc, which Lost was going for but has been forced to over-extend, and Joss has mentioned he has plans for with Dollhouse).

Overall, these two episodes were everything I wanted out of them, and that is as depressing as it is hopeful. I can't shake the feeling that there may be more to their not airing than meets the eye -- these two episodes are the most clearly anti-corporate, paranoid, and downright meaningful of the show thus far. These are the two episodes that ask the truly difficult questions and do not try to answer them for us, doing what true science fiction is meant to do, above all else: make us think. Is that exactly what Fox doesn't like its audience doing?

The Next Star Trek Film

2009-07-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

The next Star Trek movie should have Khan in it. Purists fight this idea, saying Wrath of Khan cannot be topped, but that's silly. The movie is 27 years old; it's not The Godfather, it can be topped and it is slightly dated. Like Superman II, it is a classic that should not be remade no matter how dated or silly some of it is in hindsight, but that does not mean it cannot be revisited.

In this new timeline, we are far enough back that the original "Starseed" episode where we meet Khan would be the thing getting remade. Certainly we can agree that that can be topped in terms of scope, special effects, sheer budget?

In this universe, Wrath of Khan, and its events, would most likely never occur. This is upsetting, but yet one more reason to introduce Khan into the new timeline -- I'd just like Khan and this Kirk to meet at all. I don't like the idea that Khan is just never discovered and never awakens. I feel like he needs to be. The second of the new movies is the perfect opportunity, if for nothing other than the symmetry of it all, but also because everyone knows the second movie should be about the villain, and they just don't make villains like they used to.

So, the original setup for "Starseed" happens, and Kirk and the Enterprise find Khan's ship and awaken he and his people. Only this isn't the original series' Kirk or Spock. This is Kirk raised by a grief-wracked mother and an alcoholic uncle. This is the Spock that watched his mother die, then watched his planet implode. They aren't going to leave Khan to rot on some planet, they're going to pop a cap in his ass if he gets unruly. Odds are, the revelations of "Starseed" would go to a darker, more agressive place perfect for a solid 2 hour action epic that would be rife with history our characters aren't aware of -- thus recapturing some of the magic the recent movie has. There's a backstory even though this is an origin. On top of that, since the time travel business in the first film has freed us up for anything to happen, who says that Khan even ends up being the villain of Wrath of Khan anymore? What if there is a much larger threat that he has to work with Kirk to face? Imagine the weight in the meer implication of that -- the odd beauty and closure it brings as we watch a relationship go in a completely different direction because small things go differently. Would destiny make them enemies in the end anyway? Or could Khan actually change his ways through a respect he finds for Kirk that he couldn't have in the original episode?

Now, I don't want them to just redo the Search for Spock or some shit for the third film, nor continue to take cues from the old movies or TV plots -- that would just be stupid. But Khan seems like one of the most important pieces of the puzzle that absolutley needs to be adressed if you are rebooting a story. Just because Vader was perfect in the original Star Wars doesn't mean that if you are re-doing Star Wars you should just leave him out entirely. That would be ill-advised, to say the least.

The last bit of argument against re-introducing Khan into the new Trek is much more understandable and actually had me stumped for a long bit -- how do you even pretend to replace Ricardo Montalban as Khan? How can you top that performance, even if paying it homage? For that matter, how can you even find an actor of the caliber or look to play Khan? This alone nearly dashed my dreams of a Khan-based sequel, because I had to admit that nothing but a complete unknown was springing to mind as a solution. I proferred this question to Desmond, and he immediately came out with a name, as if descending from the clouds on wings made of macaroni and cheese. Beautiful, cheesy wings. And that name was Nestor Carbonell.

Nestor looks like young Ricardo Montalban, but more importantly looks like the type of racelessly beautiful man that would be genetically engineered to be a sort of more forward-thinking, inclusive version of "master race." He has shown himself to be a formidable character actor, lending a subtle gravitas to Richard Alpert on Lost, a terrifyingly nice assassin Pasquale Acosta in Smokin' Aces, and funny as hell in The Tick live action series as Batmanuel. Even his previous roles support his casting -- he has played mysteriously perfect, terrifying, and vaguely Hispanic. He would basically be playing Richard Alpert with the sophisticated deadliness of Pasquale Acosta, and Batmanuel's accent. And I haven't even brought up yet that Nestor plays Alpert on Lost, which is produced by J. J. Abrams, meaning this should be a completely natural and forgone conclusion for all involved. I'm putting this out there so that if it hasn't occurred to them yet, it does soon. The idea of him with the ponytail tied back as the slick, confident, young, chillingly sane Khan from "Starseed" is what brought me to complete confidence that Khan should at least play a major role in the next Trek film.

Transvestites: More than Meets the Eye!

2009-07-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

Many people think that Michael Bay has a small penis. While most likely true, this cannot explain him in whole. No one has the kind of elevator button/inny penis that would be necessary to compensate by being Michael Fucking Bay.

For a while I theorized that he was gay. But once again, while probably true, and certainly explains the military obsession and the flames on Prime, even both of them in unison do not explain Michael Fucking Bay.

No, it all became clear while watching a scene from Bay's most recent foray into accidental, postmodern metahorror masquerading as action/science fiction, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Sam Witwicky, the unfortunately pathetic version of the geek stereotype without any of the winning compensatory qualities (like book smarts, quirkiness, or hobbies, you know, traits), leaves his home for college. He continues a long distance "relationship" with his "girlfriend" made of Megan Fox. Megan Fox plays an unfortunately Voltron-like combination of male fantasies that do not go together, do not agree, and make her an unattractive mutant. Once at college, he is stalked and pounced on by another superhot Baybot. But here is where Bay's fears finally pop to the surface.

The Baybot straddles Sam, holding him down, when an extremely phallic metal tail protrudes from her posterior and attempts to violate Sam. It doesn't matter how Sam gets out of this. What matters is how Michael Bay has been and will continue to deal with the issues developed from being raped by a she-male in college.

And, of course, having a small penis and being gay (you see, he knew she had a penis subconsciously). That is all.

Also, Rocket Science is absolutely hilarious. I've had it on my computer for months, and just got around to having the patience to watch it. Mostly because I do not like watching movies alone at home. So far, my favorite part is the string and piano versions of Violent Femmes songs that the couple keep doing for musical therapy.

Let the Right One in is also still on the list, just sitting there, being something I'd rather watch with someone else.

There's not going to be anyone else for awhile. I just wouldn't feel right about it, being such a technical loser right now.

Technical loser, in that I have no job, no money, I live with my mother and I don't drive. I am working on several things that any woman in her right mind should talk me out of and force me to get a real job and grow up. But fuck that. I'm just not going to have a girlfriend until I'm someplace where I deserve one. And that may be a little bit.

Church = Satan, Get OUT OF MY FACE

2009-07-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

You walk around, worshiping Jesus Christ with your crucifix around your neck and an edited Bible under your arm, going to church on Easter not realizing how big of a joke the devil has pulled on you.

"Jesus Christ" is Latin, the language of the Romans, the people who killed Joshua of Nazareth 2000 years ago. Easter is a pagan goddess of fertility, hence the rabbits and eggs. Christmas was chosen to overlap and coincide with the pagan solstice festivals. Christ means anointed one, not messiah. Solomon and David were also anointed ones. It means you are to be or are a king, nothing more. Joshua was not killed by the Jews. He was killed by Judas (actually, Judah or Yehuda) and the Romans. Hence, he was killed by one of the first 12 Christians, and the people who run the Church.

Your religion is the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan deciding which of Martin Luther King's teachings you should pay attention to, and making you wear a pendant around your neck of his half-blown off head.

Rome's way was to steal things from the nations and cultures it conquered, so that people still felt a part of the new society. The new post-Messianic Judaism was a threat to Roman power, so it abandoned its stolen Greek idols in favor of the symbols of Joshua's followers. They then whittled down the gospels to a manageable 4 that agreed with their new agenda, and edited those down to avoid different interpretations.

The practice of adapting and stealing traits to the societies it devours was passed along to its missionaries as Rome slowly stopped being a literal empire and evolved into an empire of the mind, as it continues to enslave most of the modern world in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, and its Unholy Roman Emperor, the Pope, the newest being a former member of the Hitler Youth program.

If you're going to worship the Invisible Sky Bully in any of Its forms, and you intend on being a follower of Joshua, go be a Messianic Jew, and while you're at it, read the Gnostic gospels like the Gospel of Mary the Magdalene or, hell, Joshua's first hand account. Anything else is the worst kind of blasphemy--the kind that pretends it's the true worship, and relies on your laziness to keep up its charade. Like "patriotism" that takes away freedoms while screaming of liberty.

Three Quotes to Chew

2009-06-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

"Listen to this voice closely. Who is speaking? Whose voice is this speaking in your head and reminding you that freedom is free? I love you. Good luck. Always loved you. Will love you. Goodbye: Remember to breathe. You are only being born. Prepare for download."

--Barbelith

"Don't believe nothing you hear. Trust what you know. Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in. And when the Archons come and it all turns inside out with scary miracles, it's only all the things you left outside when you were building your little house called 'Me,' ey?"

--Jack Frost

"There's no difference between fate and free will. Here I am; put here, come here. No difference. Same thing. Nothing ends that isn't something else starting. So which side are you on? Do you know yet? I've said my bit and it's your go now...so while you're thinking about it, think about this... My mate Elfayed told me sometihng when I was little and wanking about twenty times a day: 'We made Gods and jailers because we felt small and ashamed and alone,' he said. 'We let them try us and judge us and, like sheep to the slaughter, we allowed ourselves to be...sentenced. See! Now! OUR SENTENCE IS UP."

--Jack Frost

--All Grant Morrison, All from The Invisibles, a graphic novel about the never-ending battle between What Is and What Wants Not to Be

Holy Jesus Thank God

2009-06-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, the only writers in the Whedon camp who I consider miserable, have left Dollhouse. As an example of their writing, let us take a look at what they're responsible for:

1. Women's Murder Club on ABC

2. of Angel - the episode where Fred kills her teacher after finding a book that means he could have sent her to Pylea, when we already had a flashback of her reading the book herself and accidentally going there; the werewolf meat episode, thus introducing the awful character Nina in S5; in S4 the super-stupid, snarky not-nearly-evil-enough-Angelus stuff; pretty much all of that evil Cordelia and the Beast Charmed-style bullshit happened after they came on and the worst ones were written by them; all this is compounded when you realize that TWO people are writing this horseshit together.

3. on Dollhouse - admittedly, Echoes wasn't that bad. It's the one where Echo goes to the university campus and everyone's drugged up. Very funny, but there are still weird weaknesses and continuity problems with that episode, and Grey Hour (the one with the bank heist gone wrong) have that reminded me of the worst of Angel, where characters make assumptions that turn out to be right based on like no information, or characters just do things based on nothing. I hate these chicks.

Well, they are gone, and the makers of REAPER are in. I could not be happier about this development. Reaper is an extremely good show, which will no longer be airing, which was produced by Kevin Smith and very much in a Whedon/Smith vein. Looking forward to these guys' all-Topher episode.

If I Was Hitting the Reset Button

2009-06-08T19:09:00.001-07:00

io9 recently brought up the subject of rebooting Star Wars, which is not going to happen for a very long time, but it was a slow news day. Looking at a picture of young, still vibrant Carrie Fisher, I was suddenly inspired to recast the whole picture. Here's my cast.

Luke Skywalker:

Kieran Culkin. He's kind of lost the charming boyish look he had back when Igby and Altar Boys came out, and is slowly turning into Robert DeNiro, eerily enough, but I'd still go with him -- he's a hell of an actor and still basically in the right age group. Barring that, there's always Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Princess Leia:

Jewel Staite. Kind of off-casting what with the similarities between Serenity and the Millenium Falcon, but Jewel is the right age and looks an awful lot like that picture up there. Plus, she's adorable and could totally do it.

Han Solo.

Nathan Fillion. as if you didn't know I was going to pick him.

Obi-wan "Ben" Kenobi:

David Fucking Bowie. Who better to hand Luke his father's lightsaber than someone who has played Pilate, Tesla, and Jareth, and who brings so much history with him into the role? Being a Jedi should be a little more like being a rock star. Plus, my version of Ben has him being a rakish bad ass when he was younger.

Darth Vader:

Pretty much the same combination of James Earl Jones and a big fucking body.

The Emperor:

Anthony Stewart Head. I know, a lot of Whedon here, but it's actually ASH's rendition of the insane side of Nathan in Repo! that makes me pick him here.

The Wire, Season One

2009-06-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

Brilliant show. Absolutely the most realistic show I've ever watched, to the point I thought there might be no resolution and that nothing would change by the end, because that's life. But in the end, there was still an arc and resolution of a sort that made me quite happy. It's by far the Battlestar or Lost of reality based dramas. Which is where my problem comes in.

There are no robots. There's no time travel. No monsters. And I cannot stress this enough -- NO ONE IS A ROBOT. I kept waiting for it. I had theories; I took notes. They were all fucking people. I couldn't believe it. How am I supposed to watch a show where no one is a mysterious, immortal creature who's been subtly manipulating everything for thousands of years?

Anyway, looking forward to Treme.

han solo, p.i.

2009-06-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

Updates, Whining, the Usual -- but different!

2009-06-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

Spent the last week or so since having the sex being in a strange new state of being. I am more confident, more sexually relaxed (which apparently includes spontaneous outbursts of sexual humor--I think I had forgotten that part), yet also more lazy and more selfish without being self-centered. Allow me to explicate.

I have spent the past week 1) watching seasons 1 & 2 of Veronica Mars, 2) restarting and finishing season 1 of The Wire, 3) Occasionally watching my True Blood DVDs, 4) even more occasionally writing random things. I am feeling the job itch as well as the sex itch more than I have in years, yet am content to do nothing to scratch them, apparently. Basically, it's like being stoned.

Speaking of what I'm writing, they are as follows: fleshing out Paved Paradise, my Alice in Wonderland/Peter Pan/Wizard of Oz/Pop culture thing *formerly titled Underland*; writing a commercial for BSI Comics called BSI: Miami where I have a lot of fun mocking the Carusobot and his Sunglasses of Justice; trying and failing to finish the script for MegaCrusher; but mostly, a rewrite of The Divine Apathy.

I am rewriting that book because I have decided to give up on the original as far as getting it actually published. It's a very beautiful train wreck that taught me how to write in many ways, but I just don't see it ever being in a book store. Rather than do what I usually do, where I go through the book and tinker with it and try to bring it up to my current standards, I am almost abandoning it altogether and starting from scratch, writing the story I would write now and leaving everything else as a sacrifice to my Muse. I have two excuses for even bothering. The first is that I really like the subject matter and the message of that book, and I'd like it to be out there and I'd like to have something to do with that message being out there. I still haven't read or seen anything approaching the way I was going about it. The second is that I've recently been flooded with ideas of what I would do differently now, ideas that pertain only to that book and how much better it would be if it contained this or that or went left instead of right here or there. The ideas are good, what was holding them back was the original material.

Cecil has gone from being a simple detective who stumbles onto Jacob and his band of revolutionaries to an extremely lonely, somewhat pathetic man with no past and no connection to the world he lives in, who keeps ghosts as his only company. These ghosts are slowly introducing him to art and music, which do not exist in this future.

Jacob is no longer a clone of a fictional scientist from the near future, leading a rebel faction. He is now Coil, a Gibsonian cyberpunk courier cloned with genes culled from samples of Nikola Tesla. In fact, everyone in the future is a clone of someone from history considered "great." If any of my reader has a suggestion as to other superawesome historical people to turn into cyberpunk characters, please leave a comment.

Zillah is no longer just one of the revolutionaries, she is now taking the place of the head of the technopirates as Air -- a clone of Amelia Earhart. Her sidekick or Chewie is Topper, a great big fooker who is made of Abe Lincoln genes. The catch is that other than the physical, are they these people? I am going to offer that they are because

Penance, Purgatory to you, is losing souls rapidly, coinciding with the cloning. The Great Machine which is being used to make the clones is a prehistoric device, and its CPU is my lead female, an android created by the machine as its robot messiah. Astor. Formerly Astorel in the prior book, she was an android created by the angels. This is much better.

Anyway, maybe I'm sinking into my little fantasy worlds to avoid dealing with how Alison not being here is fucking with me and the only other girl I like (who I like a fuckton) is the #1 crush of a good friend of mine as well. Maybe I don't want to think about how the only thing truly good that's happened to me could basically be a pity fuck or worse, something that mattered and potentially damaged a valuable relationship. Maybe I want to pretend I'm a good writer and somehow that's going to free me from my bondage if I'm just patient. Maybe I'm right.

Oh, score for the movie should be done inside a month, and we're going to do the ADR at Derek's probably, usually after 5pm starting soon. He's got a mic and a Mac and a drive. Just hope it's the right kind.

All in all though, I think I'm happy. There was a darkness behind all my thoughts that's lifted, and I'm a little awkward right now from the lack of it, but I'm getting better. Or, from the looks of this post, a little crazier.

WTF

2009-05-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

So I just started Veronica Mars season 3, and the CW has changed possibly one of the best opening theme songs ever into the musical equivalent of waterboarding. The original song is the Dandy Warhols' "We Used to Be Friends", which works so well for this series it's unreal. Not to mention a good song by a pretty good band all on its own. They exchanged it for a super-Vegan remix, one that chemically castrates the original for rocking its ex-girlfriend too hard. It's awkward, plain not good, and no longer fits the show. This is the slightly pretensious, almost punk rock if it weren't so well produced show. This is not the metrosexual makeover show. It's not even satisfying anymore when it cuts from the teaser to the opening credits. Anti-climactic in the extreme.

Five Women I Am Allowed to Do

2009-05-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

I was going to do a list of girls who, theoretically, if I was in a relationship, I could theoretically have intercourse with if I theoretically met them and theoretically the opportunity presented itself, with no hypothetical repercussions. Then, I just decided to have a list of chicks from Joss Whedon shows that are the hottest to me personally, because that is almost the exact same list. Of course, most of them are married, but let's not stomp all over my hypothetical dreams, in theory, shall we?

5. Jewel Staite

4. Miracle Laurie

3. Felicia Day

2. Christina Hendricks

1. Amy Acker

Suffering by Design, part 2

2009-04-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

In college, at the cusp of me dealing with a growing social anxiety, an inability to connect to the opposite sex, and a desperate need to be important before I died, I met a group of people that would change my life, just as the second group of people I had called friends had let me down, continuously putting themselves before each other and me, and not really being that interested in true friendship (at least with me). They were the friend equivalent of a relationship of convenience or necessity, rather than true emotion. That was as much my fault as theirs. When you don't know who you are, you don't know who or what you want, because who is this "you" asshole?

Anyway, because I had started smoking by now (a byproduct of being a Beta in high school to an extremely charismatic personality who has since fallen out of the gods' favor), I ended up hanging out with an entirely new group of people at college. Not only was college a wake-up call in terms of personal freedom scholastically, but I was suddenly able to choose friends. Eventually, I met Darren, and I'd never clicked like that with a person outside of my family. He introduced me to Jamie and Laura, and suddenly, I had a real family of people with whom I felt true kinship. This is probably why I am alive today. Though I've gone through much bullshit since knowing them, I feel like most of it was the remnant of my prior experiences, and not something being done to me. Except for the whole Greg thing.

I'm a dramatic person, and I have a tendency towards hyperbole in certain situations. I also feel more than most. I inherited a certain empathic ability from my father, and I can tell what other people are feeling. Sometimes this works to my detriment. I pick up on emotions not directed at me, and I want, nee need them to be directed at me so badly I cannot tell there is something else going on. This helped lead to me being in situation after situation where someone ended up with a friend of mine instead of me. I was positioning myself between two people. I can exaggerate motivations; I have been known to misinterpret signs and miss them altogether by the opposite mistake (I assume feelings are not directed at me, now). All this being said, Greg tried to destroy me.

The primary argument against this was always that Greg wasn't capable of such machinations; I, of course, being perceived smarter than I perceive myself, was capable. This made it impossible to fight back when Greg tried to destroy me. See the thing is, liars like that kid don't need machinations. They need a stupid face and the cowardice to tell you they did something that they didn't, and the cowardice and lack of moral fiber to point at someone else when caught in a previous lie. I was right. Period. Greg could not be trusted; he hated me from high school 'cause I made fun of his fucking juice box. I didn't even disapprove. I just thought it was funny that he brought ecto-coolers to school when we were sixteen fucking years old. And he hated me for it. What a douchebag.

Let's get this straight: You can't take a joke, you can't be trusted. To quote Christopher Titus, every dude has the douchebag test. New guy walks up wearing a stupid shirt. You say, "What's up with that shirt?" There are two types of responses. If new guy says something like, "I'll keep wearing this shirt as long as you keep wearing those shoes," he is now your new best friend. If he says something like, "This is my favorite shirt," with an emo face, he is a douchebag. When you interpret good natured ribbing as personal attacks, then everyone is out to get you in your little warped world, which means you are justified in doing whatever you need to to any of them to save yourself. They all hate you anyway, right? So fuck them, worry about you. The only problem is, most people, particularly guys, mock each other as a sign of affection. When that sign is rejected, it denotes a prior disposition toward not liking the person doing the mocking. Yes, I am guilty of thinking like this in freshman year of high school. Then I realized people were just trying to be my friend, and guys can't go, "Nice shoes," they have to say, "that's the dumbest hat ever."

Anyway, Greg was a douchebag, I liked Mikey way better, so at the very least he served a purpose by introducing me to him. I decided to betray Greg after Greg betrayed Mikey, because fuck Greg, Mike was better in every conceivable way. I'd never even seen Mike mad before the night Greg started all this shit. Not only was he betraying Mike, he also was fucking over two girls who I liked more than his ass, too, even if one was only marginally. Fuck that dude. So I told the girls. I do not feel bad about it. I hate a motherfucker who has more than one chick without deserving the first one. He did it twice, and both times I felt like Cassandra talking to a fucking wall. Yeah, I wanted to fuck Kathleen. She was fucking hot. What of it, every guy wanted to and any of them who denied it were lying. I didn't, and it took away my credibility. I love that shit. But there's no accounting for people's need to believe in someone's bullshit because of how said bullshit reinforces a positive view of themselves. Just look at any religious figure or politician.

Either way, I learned my lesson. A comfortable lie is more acceptable than the obvious but inconvenient truth. I don't really care, and I'm not changing how I go about things. I'll just wait for everyone else to catch up.

The point is, that despite all the crap I went through for three or four summers, I was stronger through all of it because of the people I had in my life. True love hurts, and I truly love the people whom I consider my true friends. Although now I have this weird mental checklist. Some people are on it, they know who they are, and others aren't. Not because they aren't good friends or because I don't like them. They just aren't family.

Speaking of true love, I'm in it. It is an inconvenient love, it has hurt me more than anything in recent memory. I went through a period of mourning that I cannot begin to describe other than to say that it was extremely self-destructive and lonely, and once again I am only probably alive because of the people I went home to every evening. I will never be able to repay them even a tenth of what they've done for me.

Anyway, Alison's in New York. I think we're both finally meeting in the middle, so to speak. I tend to start off too intense, panicking at the prospect of loss. It took me way longer than usual, but I figured out how I felt about Ali waaaay too late, when we were already in two different states. Then, I was ready to move to New York to make it possible to be with her. Anything I had to do. This is a little much devotion and willingness for a normal person, especially someone with more experience (which can be as much a disadvantage as an advantage; I cling to my idealism about love despite it having done nothing but stand me up since the beginning). Either way, as I've cooled off Ali's warmed up. It's not that the emotions have changed; we've felt the same since the beginning. The being I am, if I'm willing to outright say that then it's 99% likely to be true. If there's any doubt about someone liking me remotely, I will find it and enlarge it. I have no doubts about this. No, the emotions haven't changed, they've just slowly been tested, confirmed as real, and come to grips with. I've calmed as I've gained confidence in my feelings and realized that I don't need her right now, before she's taken away. She's realized her feelings for me and vice versa aren't overnight sensations, and is more and more okay with endulging them.

We still avoid relationship-like talk. That's like a death kiss when you're nowhere near each other. There must be the illusion of escape. But we work "I love you," into every conversation like the words will stop existing if we don't say them every five minutes. And last time we did that annoyingly cute thing where neither of us would hang up. I'm in so much trouble, and I love it. Anyway, we're both working on ways to see each other.

It seems sad or weird, but the whole reason I did this movie was to be successful enough at something I'm good at so that I could move up there or at least travel there regularly. A normal job won't cut it. I need to earn this by being me. Does any of this make any sense?

Designed by Suffering, part 1

2009-04-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I acted as a child. Now that I am an adult, I am a total fucking asshole.

-- Some Asshole

I was born at some hospital in New Orleans when I was very young. Growing up Brown in a time after the utter decay of Louisiana Creole culture, I never really identified with anyone. I went to a predominantly Black, Catholic elementary school called Epiphany. I say, "predominantly," in that I went there. Everyone else was either Black or convinced they were even though they were in actuality, like me, Creole. When my father grew up here, there were balls for us, entire cultural celebrations. Ironically, with the repeal of segregation laws came the destruction of the mixed culture that comes with the word Creole. By the time I got to high school, I was telling people I was Samoan so I didn't have to do a grocery list of races when they asked the extremely rude-sounding but well-meaning question, "What are you?"

I spent my childhood trying to find a cultural identity, fighting the label of Black simply because somewhere in my blood a hundred years ago some slaves were raped. Mostly because I don't see how that makes me any different from anyone else in this country, and in particular this state. Everyone here is a little Indian, a little Spanish, a little French, a little Italian, and a little Black. But if you come out anything darker than apricot, you need to find a label.

In hindsight, I always had a bit of an anxiety problem. I was a sensitive child who was terrified of authority and who followed directions implicitly. It meant I learned very easily but was quickly being crushed by the smallest of actions or reactions by my parents. My father, also a sensitive man, did the least damage to my recalling, but probably did a lot to me by being so goddamned sensitive. I had to take care of him a couple of times when he fell on hard times and my mother was still calling for the child support check. He also, of course, let my mother take custody of me to spare me the legal battle, which he has regretted ever since. My mother is the product of her household -- a ball of neurosis and narcissism that doesn't necessarily lend itself to parenting. Everything I did was a personal attack on her, and she and her family have a tendency to overreact at the slightest hint of rebellion. They hated my father and insulted him in front of me, which only damaged my ego and made me identify more with him than them. My mother, however, was a tollerable, if slightly disfunctional person, and loves me. My grandmother was who raised me, though, as my mother desperately combed through a series of assholes looking for my new father or for her real one. My grandmother was not a nice woman, and squashed my individuality until I had to destroy my mental connection with that entire side of the family in order to sustain my sanity. Now, I could seperate myself from such attacks, but as a child I was not so strong willed.

I cried myself to sleep for an entire week once, convinced I was going to hell because I was a horrible person, which only now I realize was because I was judging myself against perfection. I always have been.

I was related a story from when I was an infant by my father, from before he and my mother were divorced. Mom was giving me a bath, and I crapped in the tub. She freaked out as Dominicks are wont to do, screaming and running from the bathroom, and I started crying. My father had to come in and finish giving me a bath, and admonished my mother for the possible damage she'd done to me. It was, unfortunately, too late.

From as long as I can remember to when I was around 13 and my free will began to surface, I could not go to the bathroom properly. Only in hindsight did I realize that all that time, I was literally holding everything in, doing irrevocable damage to my intestinal track. At the time, it was an involuntary reflex from a child who learned to be terrified of what he had done as a baby, like how if you act scared of a dog in front of your baby it will take that fear from you and turn it into a phobia. I was put on medication after medication, and received more enemas and even a barium colonic on one occasion from ages 4-12, no one ever putting together that I was the one keeping my shit in for up to a week at a time. By 12, my metabolism was fucked and I had stopped playing or doing physical activities because I had to worry about shitting my pants. All of this distraction also lead to me being afraid of doing other things, and my mother did not make me learn these things because she had been dealing with so much terror for me that she leaned towards coddling. Thus, I was fat from ages 13-23 and I do not know how to drive, ride a bike, or swim. In many ways, I am still dealing with the ramifications of a shit I took when I was an infant. I do not tell people this story, ever. I am doing it now in the hopes that it will lift some of the burden from me. You see, I hold everything in, even now, and I am tired of it.

The same type of terror that gripped me about going to the bathroom, the same demon that shakes me to my core and paralyzes me behind the wheel of an automobile, is the same fear that grips me about the opposite sex. I see a cute girl and suddenly, I can't move. The world fades away and the fear is all there is. Just a heartbeat and the tears I hold back like everything else. I can't even form words. Maybe, if I hadn't gone to an all-boy high school, I'd have gotten used to them earlier and developed a sexual identity, but I think it would have been pretty much the same as everything else -- no identity. That same paralyzing terror would have been present, but perhaps I would have had more immediate obsessions. As it stood, that did not happen until college.

I went to Jesuit for high school. This time, all-male and predominantly White, although still Catholic and crippling. I realigned my identity with people who talked more like I did, liked the same music as me, had similar ideals. They were not a lot like me, but they had to do. I was fat and brown and I didn't meet a single girl while I was there. Just as my hormones were pumping full tilt, I was denied even a casual contact with females, and the impossibility of their being interested in me anyway was very real. I did not look like the guys on TV who the girls liked. I was not Jared Leto, though I wanted a girl like Claire Danes very badly. The internet ended up being my first outlet into the social world, and I met my first girlfriend there. I have only physically hung out with Irina once, but she is still one of the best friends I've ever had, and I consider that a real experience. She was certainly realer than my other obsessions back then, which all took the form of women and girls on TV or in movies. (Side note, I was selected for Natalie Portman's Fanatic, but then they never ended up doing it.) High school was a horribly depressing time in my life, but there are a few things I learned there that helped me save myself -- rebellion, and the surrogate family that friends can be.

I was medicated, yet again, this time with Prozac, which turned a very depressed teen into a sucidal one. Then Effexor, where I missed a day and literally could hear my own eyes moving. I started college, hanging out with my cousin's friends now that most of my high school group had moved on to different pastures. Eventually, a combination of my own sensitivity and my inability to actually talk to girls, and my perception of myself as a quasimodo-like creature put me into several situations with no good ending in sight. My abandonment issues made me fall for girls who would fuck anything but me, including my friends, which caused me to lose it on one particular occasion and end up in Charity's mental ward. I didn't want anyone to have to pay a bill for my weird, vain freakout.

But college was a game changer for me. More on that in part 2.

The Hazards of Love

2009-04-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

Had a six hour phone conversation with Alison last night/this morning, ended around 8am. I have never heard of two people more in love with each other and their own solitude at the same time than us. Of course, we're also both not admitting what's going on because of the distance. It's like if we pretend we're not going to be together ever, than we can still talk to one another on the phone even though she's in New York and I'm here, and it doesn't mean as much. We can just miss each other, whereas if we were in a relationship this would somehow be unacceptable. It's like The Matrix -- the illusion of freedom is sometimes all that's necessary. We pretend we're each okay with the other dating other people. Then we go out with other people, and it feels like nothing. Then we call each other.

Silly monkeys.

So, in other words, I'm still planning on going to New York eventually. Possibly for a visit soon, possibly to stay later. Some of the timing kind of depends on the movies and the books and the other amazing doodads on which I'm constantly working. If I can just get one of them to work out just enough to get my foot through the door, then maybe I can make something happen. Do a spell for me, guys.

19 minutes well spent

2009-04-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

The National...

2009-04-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

...is my new favorite band. I think I'm going to write an entire John Hughes/Cameron Crowe style movie set to their music.

Sorry this took so long, Jamie, but I had to look up everything on that mix using lyrics, and as you can imagine that's near to impossible with The National and Sun Kil Moon, but I'm in love with them both now.

Did Whedon Know Everyone Would Be Watching Online?

2009-04-17T11:34:00.001-07:00

Watch an episode of Dollhouse. Each one begins and ends with a series of tiny video squares rushing towards and away from the screen, respectively. Watch any video on Hulu. It begins with a slightly less intense, slightly slower and more comforting version of the exact same effect. Now, in a less obvious place, mouse over the Hulu video and take a look at your clickable options. Notice the shape of the "share" link -- the five small circles connected to a center point by lines, arranged in a sort of upside down star pattern. Now look at where the Actives sleep in Dollhouse. Familiar?

Never mind that they both are vaguely reminiscent of inverted pentagrams, universally recognized as a symbol of the devil (although regular pentagrams are protection sygils). Did Joss Whedon subconsciously design his show with Hulu symbolism? Eliza was in the second major ad for the site, in their delightful ad campaign made up primarily of stars from shows that are going to do well online (30 Rock and Dollhouse do not have good ratings, but do excellently in "time-adjusted viewing", and Family Guy was brought back on the air due to DVD sales, something they should have waited for when it came to Firefly). Or, did he plant subconscious connectors between his show and Hulu? Does he want us to watch it online this time? He's mentioned that the networks are watching those numbers now, and Eliza says that may save the show.

Truly, if you're going to put anything on Fridays, the Nielson ratings, which only actually correlate to 112,000 or so people in the entirety of the US (and its the type of people who get Nielson boxes), are essentially useless. Online, DVR, and DVD sales are much better tabulators, and they count every customer, as opposed to Nielson guesswork.

I suppose it comes down to, is Joss simply in the online mindset now, as he's hinted whenever asked about new projects, or is it all a plot to take over the world, as Hulu suggests?

New Year's Bleed

2009-04-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

Doing New Year's Bleed for the next week with Matt. Slasher film about a killer who crashes a New Year's Eve party and kills everybody. I wrote the script based on Matt's plot and notes, and am playing the character of Hugh (a stand-in name for Hugo, because everyone in it is named after a Lost character).

We've already finished Day 1 which was the dialogue-heavy stuff. We just started on all the killing scenes, so it should get more fun as everything progresses.

Good as Dead should be finished rendering, but I can't get to it until I go back home. Since I'm staying at Matt's for the duration of NYB I don't know if I'll get to it until Sunday.

Gravity's Rainbow is really hard to read.

Updates

2009-04-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

Recovering from a couple of rather bad reviews of the excerpt of my book from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, I'm all better now and feeling a little more kinship with Joss and all the Dollhouse blowback right now.

I just want to say that I don't feel as though I'm blindly following my leader into a bad show, I think I generally love everything he does, and that a bad Whedon show is just generally still more to my taste than a really good episode of The Sopranos. It's just the type of shit I like, so am I being more forgiving because it's Joss? Probably, but I think what's most important is I probably wouldn't have started watching in the first place if not for Joss. The show itself is still better than Smallville, Stargate (any of them), Supernatural, Prison Break, Lie to Me, House MD, or any of the other random crap or formulaic procedurals I watch or have sat through because my friends like it. I forgive a lot of those shows, too, either because I like the premise or I like the characters and I want to watch them every week, or simply because it's a social bonding element. That's certainly what Supernatural and Stargate were for me; I've never enjoyed those shows on any other level (barring a couple of episodes here or there). Dollhouse is not something where I particularly like the characters (although that's growing exponentially each week), but the premise is extremely intriguing to me and rife with metaphor, be it the obvious feminism and prostitution, or the more subtle Marxist and celebrity angles (which I believe are more the actual focus of the show). It also happens to be run by someone who I want to support.

The movie (now titled Good as Dead) is coming very close to being completed, video-wise. I've been rendering the video, which basically means turning it all into one big file after adding the video effects, of which there were many, though none of them necessarily special. I don't have any money for fancy CG, I just used Adobe After Effects and a filter called Magic Bullet to age the footage and make it look like film, which is infinitely preferable to a film geek over the sterile, cold look of digital.

Ted from my kickball team and the band Sick Like Sinatra is doing the score. I'll probably have a disc for him to work with in a couple of days. Rendering takes a really long fucking time.

I'm going to schedule ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) for about two weeks from now. That includes voiceover work, off-camera dialogue, and stuff that needs to be re-recorded because of background noise or shitty mic work.

If anyone knows people that record music for fun or are in a band that they think they can convince to allow me to use their music royalty-free, please direct them to me. So far the soundtrack is going to include Jonathan Coulton, Brad Sucks, Lux, Sick Like Sinatra, The Round Pegs, and Jamie Mathews (that's right, Jamie, I found a place for one of your songs, right now it's the mix of Play Along you don't like cuz it's all that I have on my computer, although if you have a fav get me an mp3, I can use almost anything acoustic and sung by a girl). I still need a punk song and a really crazy song, preferably sung by girls, something metal-y about an asshole, and anything really.

Okay, so that's it for now. Keep you updated as things finish.

My Favorite Movies I Haven't Seen Yet

2009-03-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

10. Pandorum: I'm a sucker for future/space horror. The Alien series is one of the best movie series ever, including the last two, and Predator. I refuse to see an AVP until they set it in space and give it half the attention of the individual series. Pandorum has that cool guy who played Angel, one of the bright spots in the otherwise suckfest that was X-3, and looks to be about the level of an Event Horizon, which means it'll be a cult hit some people hate. I'm okay with that.

9. Alien Trespass: With the plot of a 50s B-movie, and using only the effects available at the time (apart from color and digital film), and directed by one of the better X-files directors. I believe that Buffy and Clerks were the first stages of a new postmodern movement only now coming to a head with Grindhouse, and I think this is going to be a welcomed reminder of sci-fi and movie roots. We need to recapture the fun.

8. Lesbian Vampire Killers: That being said, the whole Grindhouse, B-movie satire thing (of which I am a part) is going to wear pretty thin if everyone starts doing it. I think this one may be coming in just under the gun. It's not the most original of set-ups. In fact, it's Shaun of the Dead with vampires, down to the British leads, one skinny one fat. But it looks pretty funny, and I love the balls of the title.

7. Inglourious Basterds: I want to have been quoted as saying that there are very few things no one has any qualms about watching die horribly, and they are as follows: Nazis, zombies, and pedophiles. But Hollywood has been killing Nazis uncontested for so long, that we're starting to make sympathetic Nazi characters just because of how cliche the evil Nazi has become. Tarantino found a better way to overcome the cliche, and make killing Nazis fresh again. Remake a movie about a death squad made entirely of Jewish Americans, Tarantino style. There's something comforting in the complete lack of moral ambiguity I have about that.

6. Observe & Report: Paul Blart farted in my mouth and asked me how the lasagna was. I went to that movie because there was absolutely nothing else that did not require me to contemplate how deep it was at the theater at the time, the reason I feel that pile of dead babies did so well. I just really needed a laugh without tears, and there was no Rogen, no Ferrell, no one else to save me. What a mistake. I could have stayed home and watched the real Die Hard. Observe & Report, as opposed to the less funny and less action-packed Die Hard rip-off and kid's movie cop-out, looks like a completely inappropriate, comedically melodramatic Taxi Driver take on the mall cop, with Seth fucking Rogen. I'm so in. Of course, I'd watch this if it looked reasonably bad just to wash the Blart out of my mouth.

5. Gigantic: Zooey Deschanel, and that guy from Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood, finally not being someone I want to punch in the face. Just looks like one of those movies I'll really like. Plus, after #2 I'll probably be going to see anything with Zooey in it for a very long time.

4. Star Trek: I've now come to the conclusion that J.J. Abrams could make a man eating steak for three hours not only interesting, but at some point the steak would turn out to be something other than beef and I'd pee my pants. The Star Trek franchise totally fizzled out, beginning in humble Firefly cult territory, expanding with the ridiculously awesome Next Generation, and then getting lost in its own mythology and world-building and forgetting the point of the fucking show was to allegoricize the present human situation. In other words, they started making stuff for the cult following instead of for anyone, and its characters turned into featureless Stepford soldiers. This rendition brings back the original, flawed, real (if characatured) crew, which will inject some much-needed empathy. Abrams & Co. have said they're bringing the optimism back to sci-fi, which is fine, but I think the real point is are we going to learn a lesson about us, now? Either way, the franchise deserved to burn out rather than fade away, and Abrams looks to deliver that.

3. Terminator: Salvation: It's official -- Christian Bale could film himself masturbating to a mirror and it would make a hundred million dollars. But this isn't the same as Will Smith or Tom Cruise or superstars of the past. This man is the first downright golden ticket leading man who also happens to be a character actor (i.e., actual actor). The man disappears into his roles, and refuses to do crap. In this new age of Alpha Geeks, actual talent is being rewarded. Bale, in my mind, is single-handedly responsible for anything awesome about Terminator: Salvation. He brought on Jonah Nolan to rewrite the script, and you can bet your ass he's telling McG where "Chris would put the camera." Need proof? Watch a fucking Smash Mouth video, then watch Dark Knight, then watch the fucking trailer for this movie. Bale's rant was not the rant of an actor, it was the rant of a director at the moron fucking up a scene. If McG starts doing real movies from here on out, he has Christian to thank.

2. (500) Days of Summer: Since seeing Brick, I've had a man crush on Joseph Gordon Levitt. The kid went legit, no doubts about it. He is my new Kieran Culkin (who's hopefully making a comeback this year -- five movies in production! woo!), and I will watch him in any little indy film he's in. As far as Zooey Deschanel is concerned, I've never seen an actress more able to make me continuously and repeatedly fall in love with her, despite her very good portrayal of different characters. Even as the loon she played on Weeds, I understood why someone would continue to see her when she was a clear danger to one's health. Even her music makes me love her, and her marriage to the guy from Death Cab is one of those, "Man I really wanna hate that guy, but if anyone deserves someone awesome it's someone who can write 'I Will Follow You into the Dark.' I mean, fuck, I fall in love with her again as I'm watching the teaser. Well, Zooey's type of glowing personality is exactly what's needed in a movie about loving someone and not letting go, even after they've told you to get lost. Did I mention how close this situation is to home for me, even now? Plus, musical number with a cartoon bird in it.

1. Where the Wild Things Are

The Muppet Factor: Why George Lucas Was Never a Genius

2009-03-20T14:14:00.001-07:00

I just read an article (admittedly, from 2001) by some idiot talking about why Return of the Jedi sucked. He's not an idiot for saying that, some people are entitled to their opinions, and I have always thought that Jedi was the weakest of the three. My contention is with one of his reasons being that "they're just a bunch of Muppets!", then following it up with the previous two movies never crossing the line into "(shudder) Muppet", then pussing out and qualifying his statements with a condescending "Don't get me wrong, I like Muppets -- just not in the Star Wars universe."

To which I reply, "Oh really, asshole?"

First of all, do not confuse an Ewok or a Jawa with a Muppet. Those are actors in costumes. While their makeup is clearly designed to resemble the Muppet design, much like Farscape (which I will be bringing up again, probably a lot), the actors control their mouths and their performances, which basically come down to flailing and throwing your arms into the air. The point is, there is no puppeteering involved, and therefore they are no more Muppets than the stormtroopers are.

That being said, the Ewoks, Jawas, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3PO, the stormtroopers, even Darth Vader all have things in common with the actual Muppets in the film, among them Yoda and Jabba the Hutt. As I said before, all the physical design resembles Muppetry (probably in order to blend with the actual muppets), much like Farscape, which gives a feeling of strangeness to everything, making aliens seem truly alien. There's also a tactile layer to them -- Muppets can be touched, felt, heard by the other actors, and we can feel that while watching it. But even the characters of Star Wars themselves are more Muppet than anything else -- think about R2 and Chewbacca, then think about the Swedish Chef and Mahna Mahna. Yoda acts like a Muppet and looks like a Muppet in order to throw Luke and us off from the fact that he is the Master Jedi Luke is searching for. The Tuscan Raiders, Jawas and even the Ewoks to a certain extent are the "doo-dooo do-do-do" creatures from the Mahna Mahna song, or even Dozers from Fraggle Rock. I don't really need to go into Jabba and his little shoulder rat, do I? Even the humans are archetypes that feel at home amongst a Muppet Space Opera, the way Doc felt right talking to a Muppet dog, and something magical and childlike happens in even adult people's imagination when that certain part of it is engaged.

This is what I call the Muppet Factor. These things add a layer of both magic and realism that only Jim Henson has ever been able to provide -- The Muppet movies always had an absurdist, alien feeling to them while felt interacted with real people, but all it did was reinforce the reality of the Muppet rather than take you out of the story. Their puppeteers are the best in the business, and all you'll ever hear from guest stars on "Sesame Street" is that eventually, you forget to talk to the puppeteer and just talk to Elmo. Muppets have also melded the serious with the absurd all the time. Just look at the almost completely straight take in A Muppet Christmas Carol, which in many ways is more faithful to the novel than any other adaptation (except for Gonzo and Rizzo).

CG characters are not the same. There is nothing to which an actor can react, and nothing reacting to the actor. There is no third dimension being captured, just a third dimension being mimicked. No matter how good a voice actor is, how good an animation studio is, they cannot approach the magic that Muppets have always brought to the screen. If you are wondering if I'm right, and are having trouble imagining what Star Wars would have been like without Muppets so you can accurately judge, you don't have to, they were already made. It's called Episodes I-III. If you're wondering about another experiment, like Muppets in space without the silly kid humor and without George Lucas, go watch The Dark Crystal, or every episode of Farscape. Now tell me which one is better.

The fact is, that once George Lucas abandoned the Muppets, which was right after producing Labyrinth, his last good installment into film history, he stopped being good, and Star Wars became about as epic, magical, and effective as Wing Commander.

Okay, so maybe it isn't fair to blame it all on his loss of the Muppets, but you get my meaning. Was Lucas ever truly responsible for the awesomeness? Spielberg was directing the Jones movies, and Spielberg's lost his way recently, but it's still Lucas's insistence on making all of his film series into sci-fi when they were ALL fantasy to begin with, and his abandonment of Henson Company that have made these movies suck. So don't view things through some critical eye until you're calling out the stuff that's in all three as a reason for why Jedi sucked. Jedi sucked because little walking marketing ploys were shoved into a movie that should have ended huge, not tiny, and because Lucas didn't have any plot left, so he reused A New Hope's. The first half, which is actually the ending of Empire, is still rather awesome.

Lucas was always the weak point, it's only now we can accurately see that.

Conspiracy Theory Rock

2009-03-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

This aired on SNL in 98 but was removed from subsequent reruns because Lorne Michaels wanted to continue working at 30 Rock.

HOLY EFFING CHRIST ON CHRISTMAS

2009-03-11T21:44:00.001-07:00

Motherfucking principle photography is done on the movie. Time to write a short story and win a keg of Guiness.

The film, sometimes known over the past year as Prompocalypse! or I Was a Teen-age Prom Queen!!, will henceforth be known as Good as Dead. The other titles will remain parentheticals, as in (or: Promageddon), and as side jokes, but the new title is a marketing decision. Not only do I just plain like it for it's simple and direct nature, movies with Dead in the title, apart from Better Off Dead, are zombie films, e.g. zombie fans will know it's a zombie movie. Plus, it reminds me of Better Off Dead, which I would also like the fans of to come to the movie. Prompocalypse required fake spelling lessons and I Was a Teenage Prom Queen required explanation to people who are not into the "I Was a Teen-age" genre. The new title is memorable and makes sense. I wanted the "as"in "As Good as Dead," but there is another movie coming out with that title.

We still have a couple of pick-up shots--mostly zombie inserts, a hand here, a hand there. Desmond will also be working on comic book art that I will be splicing in with the rest of the footage. Coupled with my new film decay software, everything is getting increasingly awesome. More updates as I finish doing shit.

I Want One

2009-03-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

So I saw the video of this kid walking around doing this stuff before, but the nice Ukrainian lady explaining everything and what sort of applications it has makes it much better.

Transcendent Man Trailer

2009-03-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

WATCHMEN Review, sort of

2009-03-06T16:56:00.001-08:00

I don't think I need to do a review of this, you can go find one anywhere. They'll mostly be a damning of the movie in the nicest way possible -- the movie is carefully wrought, but misses the mark. In short, Watchmen was unfilmable, after all. I can't say I disagree with them. I saw the film last night, and with such high hopes and a little too much knowledge of the source material, I was hesitant to form an opinion.

All in all, I feel positively about the film. If a Watchmen movie is impossible to make, then one made trying as hard as it fucking can to be faithful means now no one else can come along and truly fuck it up, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style. The opening credits sequence is brilliant. Rorschach and Dan (Nite Owl II) sounded exactly as I imagined their voices, to the point that watching Jackie Earl Haley and Patrick Wilson work felt like re-reading the book. Billy Crudup does his job well. Both Silk Spectres fell flat for me. Ozymandias ruined the movie.

Let me modify that. Matthew Goode is a perfectly fine actor, but he is all wrong for the part, and his take on the part makes me think both he and Snyder do not get the character, and not getting that character is tantamount to not getting the entire story. Although, really, that can be said about every character, and to go into what's right and wrong about all of them, I'd be spoiling, and the movie should be seen. But I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't read the book, which should be your first impression if you ever plan on reading it. The ending is watered down and lacks punch, and without an ending that punches you in the gut and says, "Everything you believe in you made up so you wouldn't kill yourself," then the lead up seems like a waste of time.

You'd really have to have one thing that no one was going to have in order to do a good Watchmen movie: Alan Moore's help. In some ways, I'd like to blame him for the film's failure in the ways it failed.

Snyder seems like a geeky jock who has his hands in too many clubs and activities to be truly good at any of them. Are you making a tribute to Watchmen, or are you doing an action movie? Because how funny and graphic you're being in the beginning stuff... I mean, it seemed cartoonish and the point of Watchmen is the exact opposite. Rorschach should not be the amusingly psychotic comic relief. He should be scary. I should not say, "Ooooh," when he breaks someone's bones or tosses hot oil on them. I should be terrified. The Comedian's actions should repulse me, but more repulsive should be my relating to him. The soundtrack, while well-chosen, was overbearing and comedic. The mystery is handled like a teenage girl handles a secret.

Really, I liked the movie a lot. But fuck. I wanted so much more. I wanted it to do for the superhero movie what Watchmen did for the superhero comic. Dark Knight certainly lived up to The Dark Knight Returns. So I'm disappointed. That is all.

Why You Are Not a Rockstar

2009-03-05T11:35:00.000-08:00

After reading the nostalgia-tastic list of 12 terrible celebrity bands over at ScreenJunkies, I got to pondering that age-old question again: Why do celebrities make such shitty music? When combined with some thoughts I had over the course of making the movie, I came up with an answer that's so simple it's avoided detection over the years.

Rock stars quite often make the jump to acting, some with success, some with failure. Usually a good toe-test is their presence in a music video - do we believe the emotion of their song while they lip synch on a soundstage nonsensically holding a pig's hoof and licking an old radio mic? Well, that took some acting, my friend. More importantly, did they seem believable in a concept video, something where they were not necessarily singing but actually acting out something either directly related to their song, or even completely abstract? Either way, one reason for actors' music suckage seems clear: from the early 80s to the late 90s, acting actually became a prerequisite to being a successful musician. If you didn't have video presence, you weren't a star. With the decay of MTV, this is less relevant, but musicians are still clinging to the music video for now. Even without the advent of the music video, stage presence is and has always been the invisible selling point of all music. If your shows suck, it doesn't matter how good your album was, everyone will lose interest - just ask Third Eye Blind. Going a bit further, rockers like David Bowie incorporated things like actual theatrics, costuming, and character creation into their shows and media presence. It's no wonder he could successfully transfer that magic into playing characters like Pontius Pilate and Nikola Tesla.*

Which makes my second point obvious: being a rockstar is just plain harder than acting. To be a successful actor merely takes presence, the right look, and memorizations skills. You're basically a smarter model. Sure, there is a craft, and some people elevate it, but that's not necessary to be successful or a superstar, in fact, just the opposite. Someone who is a star is usually pretty, and an adequate actor with a lot of presence or looks - Tom Cruise is at best believable, but does not become someone else. Jack Nicholson plays Jack Nicholson in every movie (most of which have him playing someone named Jack). No matter how believable, likable, or amazing they are, they are recognizable, which means they're not really doing their jobs. But that is how people start to go see your movies for you, instead of for the movie. That's how you become a star.

A rockstar, by contrast, has all of those responsibilities, because truly ugly people rarely become popular musicians, and even if they could would not get record deals anyway. Whole bands have been replaced so that an attractive lead singer can be signed. On top of looks, presence, and memorization skills, rockstars must master a truly technical craft. Once again, there are actors who treat acting as a craft, but they are either not stars or are Johnny Depp and Robert Downey, Jr., and even they are still only acting. A rockstar must act, and must at least sing as well, and possibly play an instrument and write good lyrics. The lyric part is usually the deal-breaker, seeing as most celebs cannot write a decent one to save their lives. They are not going through anything resembling a visceral, genuine life. At best, their lyrics are genuine but from an unrelatably positive place, like Christian Rock. Their lives just aren't that bad. At worst, they are hamfisted attempts at mimicking their favorite band's type of lyric, without truly understanding the emotions involved, because they no longer have to go through them, the way we do. I know, I know, rockstars are rich, too. But they are also seriously fucked up, because being a musician is a fucked up business. Acting is fucked up in ways to which only other actors can relate.

And then there is the fact that music is a personal, intimate journey whereby the musician/singer is rewarded for being genuine and real and flawed - that truly great music is solace, but that acting and celebritism is escapism, it is about disengenuity, about hiding your flaws from the public, or they will crucify you. It is easier for an honest person to act than it is for a liar to expose themselves.

But all this is conjecture based on outside perspective. The truth is that my movie has helped me answer this question. While in the pre-stages of making my film, as different people read the script, I was surprised at some of the questions raised. My movie is about geeks as heroes, in one of the only situations where their geekiness comes in handy - a full scale zombie assault. I've always liked fringe characters (don't we all), and I like making them my protagonists as an attempt at re-enfranchising them and showing them respect that they deserve but rarely are afforded. Geeks, punks, freaks, and the homeless need lovin' too. It amazed me how many people who related to the main character defended him as "not being a geek", when this was clearly the case. Certainly, he was not as hopeless or out of touch with reality as some of the secondaries, but he was in no way above or beyond them.

In the original script, there were a few scenes dealing with the main characters being in a Weezer-style band together. Many people who think they are not nerdy would ask me after reading it, "Do you really think these guys would be in a band?" My answer was invariably, "Yes." I knew while writing it that it would be surprising to see that, but I know plenty of geeks in rock bands, and in fact the better bands I've known were composed entirely of geeks. I wrote it into the movie because I'd never seen it portrayed and I felt it was one more reality that was being conveniently ignored so that so-called "cool" people could continue thinking there was nothing cool about us. Everyone wants to play music and be a rockstar. I wanted to show these kids drinking and getting high and playing music so that everyone could see that geeks are people too, but no one bothers to find out.

While pondering this, it finally occurred to me: Actors can't be rockstars, because rockstars are all geeks. Celebrity actors are the popular crowd - the pretty ones who've always been pretty who got into modeling and then went on to act. The jocks, the cheerleaders, the student council leaders. Theater nerds are the ones who turn out to be "character actors," you know, those actors who actually act. But more importantly, rockstars were in band and chorus. They were the geekiest of the geeks. If they were not marching with their susiphones or being the uncool types of sopranos, then they were the weird kids in leather and trench coats in the corner using the math centers of their brains to master that Jimmy Page solo on the live version of "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" or thinking "Only Trent knows how I feel."

Actors cannot be rockstars, no matter how badly they want to, for the same reason a jock cannot tell a truly funny joke - they simply have the wrong lives. They will never understand the pain involved, because they were the source of that pain. They are the sought after, but unattainable fantasy. They are the hallway tormenter. (This is also why girls need to have gone through some serious shit, be a lesbian, or have been ugly or fat at any point to write a good love song that actually talks about the object of their affection instead of themselves. Pretty girls are usually the cause of true emotional torment, not the receiver. If you think I'm being sexist, I want you to do a little exercise: think of your favorite love song written by a girl. Rule out lesbians, because those poor gals actually know what loving a girl is like, and remember, "Me & Bobby McGee" was written by a man. Think about the lyrics. Do you get a single image of the guy in question or an event involving said man which would force you to think of a guy in the least? 10 times out of 9, you have none, because the girl spends the entire "love song" talking about what she would do for them, how great she is, or how she fucked it up already.)

Exception, if slightly: Jared and Shannon Leto's band 30 Seconds to Mars is actually getting stigmatized despite being a pretty good band worthy of attention. People actually don't want to like their music because they know Jared's in it. I know this because I heard their first album over a Blockbuster Music speaker and inquired what it was. When I was told, having known the name of Leto's band, I was shocked. I had actually been enjoying it. Their second effort was slightly more mainstream and less for the prog rock inclined, but still in no way as unlistenable as 30 Odd Foot of Grunts or Dogstar.

*What an awesome character resume, btw: Pilate, Tesla, Jareth the Goblin King, Lord Royal Highness in SpongeBob, Andy Warhol, the demon Baal, and a Martian.

Dollhouse

2009-03-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

There have been many reviews of Dollhouse floating around the net lately, most of them negative, so I thought I'd chime in with my usual fair and balanced defense. Some issues that have been raised are how this show contradicts Joss's feminism, the weakness of the engagement parts of the storyline, the lack of the regular Whedon family feeling, whether we're rooting for anyone on the show, Eliza's weakness in the lead, and the sustainability of the premise.

First of all, I'll say this: for me, each show has been exponentially better than the last. The first episode, while enjoyable to me as a fan of Whedon, Dushku, and Penikett, respectively, was a little Fox-y for my taste, particularly in the opening couple of minutes. After that, though, I began to warm to the concept and let the story unfold. Each progressive episode has been remarkably better than the last in my opinion.

With regards to the show's science ficitonizing of a super prostitution ring and how that contradicts his feminism: First of all, once again, Americans only care about sex. They're not just prostitutes, they're everything anyone can ever hire out a freelancer for, including assassin. But killing people just isn't offensive. Secondly, it's called a "show", not a "tell." Just because a program shows us something, doesn't mean its creator agrees with it (with the exception of Michael Bay, who is pretty WYSIWYG). Joss is intent on exploring these uncomfortable ideas of free will and subjugation and human trafficking and slavery and brainwashing, not condoning them. The point of good science fiction (particularly sci-fi not bogged down by details of fake science) is to explore the human condition through the use of tropes and devices that deceive us into thinking we're being lied to, when in actuality we're being shown the truth better than any non-fiction can.

With regards to whether or not anyone would use the Dollhouse: firstly, it should be obvious that given the tech, this would happen. Perhaps not in this particular fashion, but it would happen. Secondly, the allure of true emotion, of being loved, protected, or having a loved one saved due to honest emotion as opposed to alterior motive is not just alluring, but it would be particularly alluring to the rich and/or famous, who may have many things, but have usually lost touch with just that. Who knows who your friends are when the mere act of knowing you is seen as a commodity? One night of someone truly caring about you is worth all the money in the world.

The engagements have not been interesting plots in the least, and if the show merely delivered the setup of these, the show would be a failure as a Whedon show. It would be Supernatural or Stargate, shows that never deviate from their setups and never surprise. Those shows are security blankets. Joss is supposed to be ripping those from us, and that's what his shows do by giving us setups we know and then turning them on their ear. Buffy and Angel used horror tropes to lull us into thinking we knew where it was going, so that not following that diagram surprises us more than a surprise in a more realistic world would. Dollhouse is a little closer to reality, but still offers rather dull engagements that we've seen on shows like Quantum Leap and The Incredible Hulk for years. It is Echo's going "off-script," almost literally, that makes the show interesting. The show's premise allows for very meta readings, in that Dolls are also metaphors for actors themselves, and engagements are metaphors for episodes. Using standard episode plots is part of how you trick the audience into knowing how things will play out, so that the show surprises us when Echo surprises her handlers.

Right now, after three episodes, the show does not contain the usual familial feeling of Whedon's previous casts. I feel about this the way I feel about experimental albums: if you want to listen to the old album, go listen to it. New territory must be explored. The Dollhouse itself is a morally gray place, filled with people doing things we don't like, where Whedon has made the most relatable character, Topher, also the most remorseless and possibly sociopathic. Everyone is detached from one another: Topher watching brainwaves, talking to Boyd on a bluetooth, Boyd in a van, watching Echo from afar, their boss in her office with the client, and Echo connecting, but only until the end of the night. The only morally accessible characters are the actives themselves, because as nice as Boyd and Dr. Saunders are, they work at the Dollhouse. Why? Some people have argued the actives are not relatable either, but I argue that while they aren't exactly the normal character, the access point is a protective instinct that kicks in when one starts to see the actives as what they are: infants, innocent and helpless until we imprint upon them the tools they need to protect themselves. We know nothing of babies or who they'll be, but that is why we can love them unconditionally and protect them with our lives. As I said on another forum, Echo's burdgeoning personality and rebellious acts of friendship with Sierra make me think of orphans hiding alliances from the adults, and of Shawshank Redemption's escape plan. There's something triumphant and heroic in their retention of soul, and I think it actually would have worked better with no glimpse of Echo's prior life. Making her a normal person with motivations for getting into the program takes the baby face off of Echo and tells me stuff I'm not even interested in yet.

As far as Dushku's acting, yes I think her doll-state is a bit cringey, but at the same time I don't think it's because it's bad, but just that it's full retard. It's hard to watch adults act like children, and the Dollhouse premise calls attention to acting -- it seems to call for the best character actors ever. Yet that would actually be the death of the show. While being interesting to watch, someone completely disappearing into their roles would be the opposite of character growth. We need to recognize Echo in every part she plays, so that we know who we're caring about. It's why character actors are never stars. Really good acting means no one knows what movies you've been in. Adequate acting thinly masking a charismatic personality makes you a star.

That being said, I think the premise, as it stands, isn't sustainable. Something must go wrong on every mission in order for the show to be exciting if the procedural nature stands. The thing is, I don't think we'll be seeing it much longer. The implications of the speed with which Echo is becoming self-aware imply that engagements are going to start taking a back seat to Dollhouse-related hijinx, which are definitely the strong part of the show so far. The first 5 episodes were requested by Fox to be stand-alone, so the pilot has basically be stretched out over 5 eps. After those, Ballard meets Echo for the first time and the game is changed. Not to mention that Alpha is basically a Deus ex Machina coming to make the show better. If Fox is the Dollhouse, who want regular, procedural engagements that don't deviate from the established pattern, then Alpha is Joss's creative impulses come to play stabby stabby with the plot, while forshadowing Echo's inevitable "composite event", at which point I feel the show will stop being Quantum Leap and CSI and turn into Incredible Hulk or Kung Fu, with Echo running from the Dollhouse and possibly Ballard, or being helped by Ballard, and using her various talents to help people along the way.

Either way, I could watch Tahmoh Penikett and Amy Acker eat spaghetti for an hour, so I'm there till episode 6, which not only features Patton Oswalt but is apparently where things get back to where Joss intended them.

Top 25 Directors List

2009-02-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

So I had this inkling to do a list of my favorite living directors, then, lo and behold, Entertainment Weekly squeezed out its steaming pile of monkey dung "Top 25 Active Directors list", at the top of which was, woo, Steven Spielberg. Pajiba talks about that being a safe list, but fuck that. At least they decided the number of my list. Here's my Top 25.

1. Martin Scorcese

2. Paul Thomas Anderson

3. Danny Boyle

4. Richard Linklater

5. Quentin Tarantino

6. David Fincher (ignoring Benjamin Button, which is to Fincher what Titanic is to Cameron)

7. Steven Soderbergh

8. Spike Jonze

9. The Coen Brothers

10. Chan-wook Park. Korean director of the Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance), which if you haven't seen, do so immediately.

11. Wes Anderson

12. Clint Eastwood

13. Darren Aronofsky. I never want to watch any of his films again, but fuck they were good.

14. Sam Mendes

15. Ridley Scott

16. James Cameron

17. Christopher Nolan

18. Sam Raimi

19. Guillermo del Toro

20. Joss Whedon. Yes, he's only got one film under his belt, but he's the best television director working right now. "The Body," "Hush," "Once More, with Feeling," "Dr. Horrible," and "Serenity" deserve some fucking recognition, in addition to Serenity the film.

21. Edgar Wright

22. David O. Russell

23. Guy Ritchie: Sure, he excels at doing the same movie over and over again, but he still suprises you. Revolver, for instance, came out of nowhere.

24. Peter Jackson

25. Henry Selick: the actual director of both James & the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Coraline was amazing as well.

But, more importantly, here are my Top 25 Why Are They Still Active? Directors:

1. Steven Spielberg: Stop forcing happy endings onto every fucking film. I get it when its E.T., but Minority Report? A.I.? I'm surprised he didn't stick his dick in Eyes Wide Shut and have Tom and Nicole go live on a farm together at the end.

2. George Lucas: Just stop. George Lucas either hates Star Wars and its fans, and who could blame him at this point? Have you ever met really die hard Star Wars people? Have you been to a con? Well, I have. They give me the creeps, and its all rather pathetic. I say this, and I'm a geek and a Star Wars fan. On the other hand, if I was responsible for Star Wars, I'd feel some sort of responsibility for its fans. Lives have been wasted. If only there was some way to release the poor bastards from its spell. Maybe I can make some really shitty prequels...

3. Tim Burton: What a cockstain. Plastering his name all over Nightmare Before Christmas gave way more cred to his name than it deserved. Remember, Henry Selick directed that. Sweeney Todd was great, but fuck it. The majority of what Tim has done for the past 15 years is fuck up Batman, fuck up Planet of the Apes, fuck up Charlie & the Chocolate Factory even though he should have aced it, try to ruin Superman with Nicholas Cage, rip off Kevin Smith and insult the reading of comic books while making most of his money on comic book and sci-fi properties, oh yeah and be a winy goth fucktard. Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, and Scissorhands were awesome, but not awesome enough for you to get to be a dickhead.

4. Michael Bay: is gay. Closeted homosexuality is the only explanation for the kind of posturing done by Bay using his films. I used to think it was a small penis, but now I think that's just part of it. I think he has a tiny dick and that dick only gets hard when he thinks about Jerry Bruckheimer peeing on him.

5. Uwe Bole: I wish somebody would kill you.

6. Brett Ratner: is doing Youngblood, and it then occurred to me that Brett Ratner is the Rob Liefeld of directors.

7. Paul W.S. Anderson: If only for sucking and having the name of a good director.

8. Andy Tennant: is one of those invisible, studio directors. You know, the guy they call up when they don't want any style imposed on the project, because its really a vehicle for the actors. Sweet Home Alabama. Ever After. Fools Rush In. It Takes Two. Well, some of his stuff is okay. That doesn't make the rest of it okay. Most of the guys who direct stuff like Maid in Manhattan or New in Town are foreign directors with no Hollywood clout or TV directors who are used to directing things that have nothing to do with them. Tennant is the latter, and while they usually get off with a pass, the guy who did Maid in Manhattan did Joy Luck Club. (Did you know that?) Well Tennant's been involved with some decent TV, but he gets no credit for it. I'm making an example of him. STOP MAKING THESE CRAPPY CELEBRITY VEHICLE ROMANTIC COMEDIES.

I can't even do 25 of these. I may or may not finish this later. Right now, this list is depressing and angering me, and I have to get ready for Endymion.

Dollhouse

2009-02-14T11:51:00.001-08:00

The first episode of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse aired last night. Reviews for the pilot have been mixed, accompanied by an all-too-public production process. Normally, we wouldn't have known that the original pilot was scrapped and that this was a second attempt, but it's the information age. When Firefly first aired I thought I was going insane and had missed the pilot they'd been advertising for weeks, because all of it had already happened. Though I got all the information in "Train Job" that I would have watched in "Serenity", it wasn't the same. I was built up for a movie, and didn't get one.

Anyway, that being said, I think the mixed reviews helped lower my expectations down to nil just in time to watch the show without all these Whedon expectations in my head, good and bad.

Quick capsule review: I thoroughly enjoyed the episode. Would I like to see the original, noiry pilot? Of course, but not until I've seen the entire first season of this show, which has a lot of potential.

Negatives: The opening scene, with Eliza signing up for the procedure. Firstly, this is something I don't even want to hear about until season 2. Lost, Battlestar, Fringe...the mysterious should be our new way of handling this type of story, and shame on Fox for making Joss show us one of his cards so early. Also, this is one of the most heavily expositional scenes in the entire episode, with poor Eliza having to essentially speak without an internal monologue so that we pick up on details we don't need yet. "I just wanted to make a difference, like she said," being particularly cringe-worthy. The scene following this also has a couple of cringey moments, because it's so... Fox-y. Motorcycle race leading into a nightclub, where Eliza does the Faith dance within the first ten minutes? Sounds like something that would make Fox execs sigh in relief, make Michael Bay horny, and make me worry.

Positives: Then, as soon as the meat of the show starts, everything gets really going. Topher's first lines and his conversation with Echo's handler made me sigh with relief. Amy Acker made me squee(and she is sooo an active that's useless to them on the outside, now, cuz of her scars). I'm pretty sure I could watch Tahmoh Penikett read a book on how to install Rosetta Stone. Sierra, played by Dichen Lachman, not only sold her two short scenes, but had the coolest arc ever made in a total of one minute's screentime. The fact that the memories aren't just being generated, but in fact are culled from the memories of the dead, and mixed and matched by Topher, implies Joss hasn't just seen The Matrix a thousand times, but also its superior (IMO) predecessor, Dark City. It also allows for neat things like Echo recognizing people from her fake pasts, like last night. The metaphors become resplendently evident without anyone having to say them to you. Not only are these people being programmed and used like whores and hitmen, but does the body have responsibility for what its programming makes it do? Free will vs. Destiny. Are these people, in essence, being killed every time Echo is wiped? What is the soul but a collective of memories? Then, there's the poignancy of Echo providing closure to the lives of people who could not do it themselves. Her burgeoning awareness starts falling down the ladder of awesome things I wanna watch unfold before me.

Also, I've stated on another forum that many people seem to be dissing Eliza's acting chops because she's not vanishing into these personalities, but I think they're missing the point. First, Eliza's a good actress, but she's a leading lady not a character actress. Second, that's what the show needs. Joss and Fox's main concern when trying to sell a show where the main character is a different person every episode is that no one will care about or get attached to said character. As fascinating as it would be to watch a character actor slip in and out of personalities like bodysuits, would I care what happened to that character? Not really. Eliza's job here is to provide a "Eliza Dushku if she were a _______" style performance, so that we have a basic Echo to cling to, even if she has different histories and pasts. Basically, Eliza's soul should be intact so that we give a fuck. The more minor characters (like Sierra) can change more thoroughly, so we can be fascinated by that, but Echo needs to be a little the same each time. Plus, that's kind of the character's arc -- her surfacing identity.

All this would have been better without any setup of Eliza's "real" personality, but whatever. The episode started a little shaky but quickly found its feet, reminding me of one of my favorite Whedon episodes, "City of", the pilot to Angel. If it's any indication, then we can look forward to an excellent first season that at worst will be trying to find its identity a bit--but how appropriate is that?

Lost

2009-02-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

This site is absolute rubbish. It brings up interesting, plausible explanations for the button in the hatch and possibly Richard's immortality, but it's attempts to explain the root mystery of Lost are nonsense. Although, I admit, if I hadn't already figured the show out, I might find it somewhat more intriguing.

Because I do not believe in spoiling people without them expressly asking me to, I will not tell you what the island is or why the things that happen there happen there. I will simply say that my theory is very simple, no one is dead, it is not Purgatory, etc. and that part of the problem with every other theory anyone has ever expounded to me is that people keep trying to pin the show down so that it has one definitive answer. Given the way this show operates, I believe that is ridiculous, and if you think about it for a moment, you'll probably agree.

My theory is as solid as Darwinian theory. You may think I'm full of shit, but it's completely solid and not only is it based on solid evidence in the show, but it also explains everything that has happened on the show, though not simply. There are a confluence of events and conditions on the show dealing with events which have taken place over millennia, and possibly even millions of years. Lost will slowly take us through, answer by answer, back to the beginning of the show, where the last reveal in the last episode will show us where the Lostees have been. I can't say for certain that's the exact plan of reveal, but I'd say as a storyteller that would be the most dramatic.

I do not have explanations for every mystery, but I can say confidently that all the mysteries arise from the events that have taken place on the island due to where and what it is, and once you figure out that, if you are knowledgeable of such things, you could figure out a reasonable and plausible cause/effect situation for each mystery.

The time travel is a red herring. It, like Richard's immortality, the magnetic anomalies, the monster, the four-toed statue, the "ghosts", and/or beings manifesting as the dead, and/or the ressurrected dead, are symptoms of the truth of the island, not the key to unlocking it. Yes, if any of these things were explained to you in full, everything would become obvious. But focussing on one of these things will not lead you to the truth, just as what Starbuck is may answer everything, but you cannot figure out what Starbuck is without looking at all of the unanswered questions at once, and figuring out what is going on with Everything.

I don't know why I felt the need to say all this, especially if I'm not going to come out and say my theory. I do not want to say it because unlike the man who made that site, I do not need some sort of prior credit for finding the answer so that when I'm right I'll have proof. I'd rather not spoil a show that still has a year to go. That being said, I still felt the need to point out the flaw in this person's and others' approach to the Lost question. It's not about one of the mysteries, it's about all of them.

Fuck Paul Blart with that Dildo from Seven

2009-02-09T21:57:00.001-08:00

Where Paul Blart did a half-assed, version of Die Hard, re-cut to make it family friendly at the end (admittedly, a good decision as it continues to make money), Rogen proves he's worth his draw by going fucking TAXI DRIVER on this shit. Amazing.

random stuff

2009-02-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

The Breakthrough Novel Award contest entry period is over. I got in with about 50,750 words with the title "Paved Paradise," although that was just to avoid any legality whatsoever. The world is still called Underland the entire time. The story could definitely use some fleshing out, stuff could be set up earlier or brought up a lot more while we're in the other scenes. It has a lot of room to be a massive book with loads of description and lots of time passing, Clive Barker long, but right now it's about as short as you can be while still being a novel. But from what I hear, editors like wiggle room for their suggestions. I think this is the first one of my books to have a clear market, as well. Even if I don't win, I'm likely to start sending it off to publishers right after.

I am inching closer to having a finished product with regards to the movie. Still need sound cleaned up, still need a score, but I've done some of the shooting I needed, the last couple of shots should be easy, and I've got an inventive solution to the last missing bits.

Christina Aguilera should learn something from how amazing "Falling in Love Again" sounds. She won't, however, because who's going to buy The Spirit soundtrack, or accidentally download the song trying to get something else like I did?

I have watched the trailer for (500) Days of Summer about eleventy billion times. My life is one of a young bisexual girl who hangs out at coffee shops discussing the interpersonal lives of Saddle Creek artists.

Another vampire show will be premiering, this one on WB, from the Gossip Girl guy and one of the Smallville producers, based on yet another trashy teen vampire book series. The collective horrible may just add up to amazing. Here's crossing the fingers.

Battlestar is taking too long to get to its ending. I think overall SciFi was right about holding the rubber band on the episodes -- when you look at their ratings, they've gotten a spike -- but was it worth it? The eps suffer from the waiting, in the long run. Expectations were ridiculously high, some of the surprises died due to too much conjecture, and the pacing is off (I keep waiting for every episode to be the last of the series, and when I get a regular episode I'm more bored than if I was experiencing this more as a middle of the season episode). I think it's going to come off a lot better on DVD, watching this season Razor through the End in one chunk instead of spread all around like this.

Heroes wasn't god awful. More on that as it develops.

Movie Criticism

2009-02-07T23:59:00.001-08:00

Through no fault of their own, movie critics have a shelf life and eventually become horribly gnarled little cynics who are useless, because they hate movies. They can't enjoy enjoyable films, they can only enjoy the most startlingly original works or the weirdest shit they can find...why? It's really quite simple: Movie Critic should not be a job. One shouldn't take something one likes and O.D. on it, and then tell people your opinions about the normal experience of said thing. Reading a movie critic's opinion of a movie is like force-feeding a fat man mountains of every type and quality level of food for YEARS, and then asking him how his hamburger is. It's awful. Of course it's awful. You know how many hamburgers he's eaten? You know how many ways there are to make hamburger? Like 5. He's eaten like a million burgers, and eventually, they all just suck. Eventually, the only thing you can stand is "different" -- the monkey brain patte in a light trouffle oil on a bed of llama cheese grits will be amazing, if only because it's not a hamburger or pizza or a bag of chips.

In other words, when you have to sit through every movie, movies are work, and you're basically pissed when you have to watch a movie, and you're waiting through all of them for one that doesn't make you wish movies had never been invented. So why would I ask you if a movie is good or not? Of course you hate it, you've seen every movie remotely resembling it in style for the past eighteen years. It's like asking a porn star if he's enjoying the hand job.

I'm a normal person. I still go to the movies because I feel like going to the movies, and I pay my money (I don't get paid) to enjoy myself, and so I want to enjoy a movie when I walk in. I do some of the work for them -- I suspend disbelief, I don't walk in skeptical, I don't walk in like I'm working, I don't look for things to hate. I can tell you that Paul Blart is not worth seeing, but I can also say that I enjoyed the fuck out of Repo, because I wanted to see that movie. Movies don't anger me. I don't see a reason to put down shittons of films that aren't made for people like you, or the people who read your criticisms, when you could be screaming from your makeshift internet mountaintop about how amazing a film you liked was.

I don't wanna know how shitty a movie is. I want to know how good one is.

You wanna know how good a movie is? Don't ask somebody who's been critiquing for 20 years. Ask the guy who just saw his first movie after 20 years in jail.

Actual Updates (for absolutely no one)

2009-02-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

I am about 7,000 words from a 1st draft of Underland or Westerworld or whatever it's going to be called. Considering I began it sometime late October, to be at 43,000 words right now is nothing to sneeze at. Rewriting will possibly be more of a chore, but maybe not -- as I told Alex recently, those of us who have the rare blessing of being instinctively good at a subject (English, for example) tend to do better under deadline and with little time. We seem to revise the good out of things any other way.

I already finished a 1st draft of the screenplay to New Year's Bleed, a slasher comedy to be directed by my friend/producer Matt Garvin. It was a little short but I think it will end up filling out more time than it seems.

Teen Age Waste Land is still in a revisionary period as I re-order the chapters and decide what to do with the vast lump of it I relatively despise.

All of a sudden this blog looks like shit, cuz, I dunno, blogger farted and now the background is above the words and nothing works right on it. I had nothing to do with this, it must have been something done to Blogger during the night.

Palace 20 has added an IMAX theater, which means Watchmen will be screening in IMAX and I couldn't be more fucking excited if I were on fire.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D was fucking awesome. Once again, don't go if you didn't go slack-jawed at the idea of a totally 80s style slasher in 3-D, because you will come back with very obvious comments about how the movie "sucked" and the acting was "horrendous" or the plot was "ghostly" in that it was see-through and at times you weren't sure it was there. Of course all those things are true. If, knowing all that, and that it's in 3-D, you still didn't want to go see it, then the movie just isn't for you. In fact, if you heard the tagline, "Nothing says 'date movie' like a 3-D ride to hell!" and didn't both know what kind of movie you were in for and squee with excitement, then your thumb is nowhere near the pulse of the Western zeitgeist right now. You have approximately three years (if that) before you are calling the new music "the kids" are listening to "just noise."

Heroes

2009-01-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

So, Heroes is getting a quasi-reboot thanks to Mark Verhei-can'tspellhislastname from the Battlestar writing staff around the 2nd ep of the "Fugitives" arc, and original creator Bryan Fuller returning toward the end, the latter being the only reason I'm hopeful, but that late in, it may already be cancelled.

Heroes is a show that began to mirror comics so much that it gained all of their pitfalls rapidly and has gotten lost in a haze of X-men storylines that miss the point of the original metaphor. As fun as crossovers like X-Cutioner's Song were in the late 80s and early 90s at the height of my comic mania, that was, to be honest, because I didn't know any better (much like how kids growing up during the Creed and Nickelback Clearchannel Wasteland don't know that music isn't supposed to sound this generic until they get exposed to older stuff). The truth is that those stories were fun action romps, but the original point of X-men was that of the opressed minority, and the expanded Claremont stuff that made X-men what they are made it not just about minorities, but the far more universal theme of being an outcast at all. The stories remain relevant and poignant when they keep this in mind. Heroes lost its way when it stopped being a character piece and became a superhero show, which is not what it is. The soap operatic interfamilial drama, the ridiculous plot twists and interconnectivity without the meaning behind it of a show like Lost -- and worst of all, without any semblance of a plan, like Lost.

Verheiden or what have you coming on in ep 2 does not help in my opinion because the last thing Heroes needs is the Battlestar treatment. Already, Galactica is becoming an somewhat outdated metaphor that should have been allowed to complete when it was supposed to -- before the election. The last thing we need now is an extremely dark, cynical Heroes where everyone is on the run, dying, and turning on one another. Those were extremely relevant in the Bush days, but now, not so much. Not to be overly optimistic about the Obama reign -- I don't actually believe its own hype. There's only so much he'll be allowed to change, but it's actually the idea that my fellow countrymen elected him that makes the world more hopeful anyway. And that is what Heroes provided -- it was the anti-Battlestar in season 1. Everything was about hope and sacrifice in both shows, but Hiro defines Heroes. There was an idealism, the one thing Battlestar has never been. If Battlestar was the guy pointing out why Bush sucked, Heroes was the guy telling us why Obama ruled. (Lost is, of course, the guy voting for Ron Paul in their heart but refusing to actually participate in elections between "puppets.")

The return of Fuller does not make my hope spring eternal either, first and foremost because his return happens so late in the season that it will most likely remind Angel fans of the last ep of the dreadful season 4, that revived hope in the show but came a little too late to save a season that probably got the show cancelled prematurely despite an excellent season 5. I also don't think it works because just like Verheiden, he'll be coming in on the tail end of an arc that I think is an inherently bad idea anyway. The "Fugitives" storyline is already another X-men ripoff not true to the show's central conceits, one that at best will result in the Battlestarring of Heroes, which is I'm assuming why you hire Verheiden to come in.

This all started with outside forces. Networks rarely understand what they're buying, and quickly make show creators turn what they made into something they get, because network execs are basically marketing people -- creative to a degree, but they see everything in terms of demographics, which is a nice way of saying you put everyone into broad stereotypes regarding TV habits, and then make shows for those stereotypes. Heroes was supposed to be Magnolia with superpowers, and the original pilot conveys that feeling. The reshot pilot didn't quite get there, but season 1 still had elements. Then they were cancelled, so they ended the show, planning a spinoff with Hiro. Then internet ratings came in, and they were uncancelled, but rather than the original idea to start over every season with new characters, the network told them to keep their cast, because audiences would lose interest if the cast changed. So now the discovery aspect of the show and the regular people aspect can never be reclaimed, and the Lost-like bizarre sense of destiny and interconnectivity was basically ruined before it even aired.

This is also true of everything Joss Whedon has ever created for TV, but the difference is Joss is a genius at execution and at giving the network what they want and still doing it in an awesome, creatively viable way. The guys at Heroes, when forced to deviate from their core idea, couldn't figure out how to make a new track to the same destination, and so the show meanders aimlessly into the caverns of repetitive arcs that don't understand their characters, won't let them grow or change, and don't understand why nothing's working anymore. This is probably because those left after Fuller's departure wrote the show through instinct and didn't know what made it good in the first place.

But what really makes it like a comic book is that it turns all of its "fans" into comic book fans. We literally hate the show now, yet we've invested so much time and energy into it, we keep watching, if only to complain about it.

What Was I Thinking?

2009-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, I saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop. "Why? Dear Lord in heaven, why?" you may be screaming at the monitor right now, and I cannot tell you I have a decent answer. What I can say is that despite there being a plethora of movies I know to be excellent that I haven't seen in the theater right now (Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Dark Knight IMAX), I just haven't been in the mood to think. I don't want to watch people talk, or get emotional revelations. I just wanted to fucking laugh for an hour and a half at something slightly retarded. Basically, I wanted to sit in a dark room and be entertained, and I wanted a movie to do it. Well, guess what? Paul Blart was the least offensive choice of movies that weren't Oscar-contenders or indie foreign think-flicks.

Don't get me wrong here; I usually eat up thinking men's movies and foreign films and anything Danny Boyle makes with a spoon. But not this month. I'm just not feeling it. I wanted something by an Apatow alum, I'd have even settled for Will Ferrell. Nothing. Thanks, assholes.

Well, it was worse than I expected, and that's saying a lot since I knew it was going to be god awful. It was so bad, it made Strange Wilderness with Steve Zahn (which appeared to have its budget taken away halfway into filming) look like This Is Spinal Tap. The lines were so expositional, I thought at some point someone may actually say, "Is this the part where Paul gets angry and suddenly finds inner strength because you threatened his one true love he met this afternoon?" I think some of this can be atributed to the producers reshooting most of the movie for family audiences. The lines sounded like stuff actors come up with on the spot.

Anyway, I ended up watching RockNRolla at my house afterwards. I got action, comedic stupidity, a complex although extremely easy to follow plot, and British accents. Everything's fine, now. Bring on Slumdog!

The Friday Challenge

2009-01-25T22:04:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking about participating in The Friday Challenge, so every once in a blue moon, there may be a short story on this blog. Just ignore it if you aren't amazingly bored.

I Wonder What This Type of Knowledge Does to Someone Like Me

2009-01-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

It's not everyday you find out your mother wanted you to be her second abortion.

Repo! the Genetic Opera

2009-01-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

There's a review I read awhile back that was reposted for the DVD market recently that upsets me to no end that I must address.

It amazes me how blind to themselves critics can be, although, when I think about it, I suppose that's the main reason they aren't simply writers. One has to be painfully honest, particulary to oneself about oneself. Critics do not appear self-aware, so much as self-deceitful, which only produces art that doesn't know why it isn't worthwhile, like Hitler's dog. It looks like a dog, so he's good at drawing. But who wants to see a drawing of a dog, Adolf?

Repo is not a good movie. It is not Slumdog Millionaire, it is not There Will Be Blood, it's not even 28 Days Later or Boogie Nights. It's an awesome movie, like Rocky Horror Picture Show or Big Trouble in Little China or Hudson Hawk or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's not meant for mass consumption; it's meant for one specific audience to find and love the shit out of it, and I hope that it does.

I say critics aren't self-aware, because they like to bring up Rocky Horror in their scathing reviews of Repo, saying it doesn't even match up to the cult classic way of Rocky Horror, which is like saying "Repo doesn't have a specific audience that a general audience knows about." Repo has an audience, it just isn't 30-something blog critics. It's actually pretty obvious from the trailer, the soundtrack, the title, the cast, and the subject matter, all of which were available before entering the theater. This is for people who like wearing black. This is for people who like Buffy, specifically Once More, with Feeling. This is for people who love Jesus Christ Superstar even though they aren't Christian. This is for Rocky Horror fans.

Rocky Horror Picture Show was a disaster when released. Critics panned it and people who walked in expecting something broad received something specific and walked out. Now that it's a cult classic, critics, particularly younger ones, have it as a part of their movie-going background noise. Rocky has accumulated respect over the years, so now it isn't horrible, because we were raised on it. But all those things can be said of Repo. I honestly believe there will be a generation brought up that will recognize Repo's orginality and postmodernism accurately. Cults are built over time, and if you don't like the movie, then you're not part of the club. That's all I wanted you to get when you write a review. But people who aren't allowed into clubs tend to get a little snippy when they talk about said club, even if it was a bunch of people they wouldn't hang out with usually. I get that. Also, I get how no one wants to like a movie with the Hilton in it, and if you walk in with prejudice, it is very, very easy to hate this movie. But if you let it in, you will be loved by it.

Cult is just that -- it doesn't find you, you find it. But in return, you don't have to get it. It gets you, it got you before you walked in, and is giving you what you want. Repo does that -- it gives people who love WTF casting, musicals, Industrial music, and humorous horror movies with tons of fake blood exactly what they've been waiting for. And some who only like a couple of those things.

There have been many bad reviews, and you don't need me to tell you that any critic who says the words, "Worst movie ever made," doesn't deserve his job, simply because it implies he did not see Plan 9 from Outer Space or Ishtar, or possibly thinks those movies were good and not in that awesome way. Plus, he actually thinks there's a "worst movie ever made."

Here's what I don't understand, and what is actually the patently stupid part of the review I was telling you about. Paraphrasing: Repo touts itself as daring and original, but all of its parts, all of them (he then lists "rock opera (Tommy), horror musical (Sweeney Todd), gory slashfest (Dead Alive), killer surgeons (Dr. Giggles), even dystopian future (Blade Runner)" as examples) have been done before. Of course they have, jackass. But they haven't been done together, asshole. I dare you to name a gorefest dystopian slasher metal opera with killer surgeons. Go on, I'll wait.

You do understand that ideas don't just come from thin air, right? Tell me you understand this. You do get that "originality" comes from combining pre-existing ideas, tropes, archetypes, plot elements, in ways that we haven't seen before. Let's go into a couple of these examples, shall we? dystopian future (1984), rebelling robots who may be developing human traits (any robot movie ever), film noir (Maltese Falcon). Does this mean that Blade Runner had been done before? No. No one had done a dystopian future noir with all the tropes of a Bogart movie (including the voice over which, despite Scott's objections, reinforces the detective story by simply existing) and all of the tropes of a robot movie. Original. Samurai movies and space movies and movies about farmkids getting into adventures and The Odyssey and Lord of the Rings had all been done, but Star Wars was original because it was something we'd never seen before -- all of those things put together.

I'm not saying Repo! the Genetic Opera is Star Wars. I'm saying it's original. Too original to be easily digestible by anyone except the very specific audience it's meant for, and too much a labor of love to be pissed on by people who don't even understand where stories come from, much less how to tell them. Repo isn't going to change your world, but if you're someone who saw the trailer or heard the title or the cast and said, "I have to see that movie!", it will make you feel like you're not alone in your little, unchanged world. And in that way, your world will have changed, and in a more profoundly postmodern, "someone understands" sort of way than seeing another arthouse movie skip over its climax so that critics applaud the emperor's new clothes.