A Nerds-eye view of Venice, Italy day 3
Kind of a study in contrasts today. This is when the business part of my business trip starts. After a leisurely breakfast I was picked up by a raucous crowd of my fellow sales reps. You see, sales reps by nature have kind of over the top personalities. One on one that works great, and people love us and like buying from us (for the most part). However, get more than a few of us in the same room together and it is like standing in a wind tunnel, except instead of air the tunnel is blowing a storm of sales gripes, bad stories, and fart jokes.
After a short drive through some mundane countryside we ended up at a hotel that almost comical in it’s contrast from my time in Venice. It is termed a “business hotel” but could be more accurately described as a “correctional institute”. It is ultra modern, yet bare and oppressive like a medical correctional facility.
Actually, now that I think about it, the building looks and feels like one of those Umbrella research facilities pre T virus outbreak. Bare white corridors, sensing card keys, doors that would not have looked out of place as airlock portals, and everthing steel, white, grey, or beige. If it weren’t for the cute girls behind the desk I would be expected to be experimented on this morning. (Umbrella Corp logo image courtesy of the Zombie Movie T Shirt category)
The room itself is surreal, in that the first one the window or air conditioning didn’t work (this is a brand new building), the beds are tiny, only about 1/2 the light switches actually connect to anything, the shower seems specifically designed to spill water all over the floor, and the room has this power saving feature that requires you to leave your key in a slot by the door or 30 seconds later the power in the room goes off. This is all well and good until your roommate opts to leave the room while you are in the shower, leaving you dripping wet and stumbling around the room naked looking for your key (thanks, Frank).
The guy with the car had to go back to the airport to pick up more of our sales reps, and he dropped me and two others off in a small town to kill time. We had a good lunch (Italian food. Go figure). At that point we discovered that small Italian towns on a Sunday are pretty much deserted wastelands. We must have walked two miles (5 km) and saw maybe four people. None of the shops were open. We ended up sitting on a park bench only to find our friends were having lunch at the exact same restaurant we had eaten at.
After that it was an afternoon and evening of hanging out with my loud American friends. I have to say after three days in charming, quiet Venice being in this ultra-modern eyesore and surrounded by boisterous Americans really made me start to wish I was back in Venice. As I sit here typing I suddenly realize that in spite of all my bitching about stuff I have been really captivated by that town and the culture. I will be back in three days after a bunch of meetings. I won’t say these meetings will be bad, as they really are important to my business, but I think I will be happy to be back in the heart of the canals again.
Dave
A Nerds-eye view of Venice, Italy Day 2
Day 2 was interesting. I opted to expand my exploration to outside the city of Venice (really, how many canals can you look at in a week?) and visit the city of Paduva, about 50 minutes away via train.
The train ride was a positive experience in both directions, in that I got to talk to a hot girl in each direction. Going out was a girl from Mexico named Sandy and her sister. She was about 4’10” and cute a button. On the way back this gorgeous Italian girl who helped me find the train sat across from me. She works in Venice at a hotel. I would have loved to talk to her more but she really did not engage and according to my personal Two Minute Rule had to stop talking to her.
Anyway, the train was cool, although they do something weird with the seats in that the head rests come out at about my shoulder blade level, making them impossible f or me to sit in. I have to say I pity the tall women of this country. I saw a number of really tall girls but have yet to see an Italian man above 5’10”. For the most part they all seem to be weedy little hipster dudes until they hit about 40 when they turn into chubby short guys.
I am proud to say I chose Padova for the nerdiest of reasons; it is home of the only Games Workshop store in the area and likely the only place where I could get a feel for the local Warhammer scene. Your might recall from yesterdays post that I was looking for a store that had it’s pulse on the local scene to no avail.
I took a cab to the store and talked to the manager, a nice guy named Daniel. Turns out the local Warhammer tournament circuit is about as beardy and rules intensive as I have heard. Seems the winningest is a dwarf army with six war machines, an anvil, and two huge blocks of warriors with great weapons. Not only is it as exploitive as possible it is also painfully boring to play, so I guess the Italians don’t really care much for soft scores. I give my Daemon list about 50/50 to beat it depending on how the dice roll out, although there are others in my gaming group that could beat it handily.
I then wandered the city and got lunch. The first thing I notice is the graffiti, which had been moderately bad in Venice, was pretty much what they decorated the walls with here. While I saw a few pieces with a little more artistic effort than in Venice (some actually had three colors!) for the most part they were black spray paint and very political. The best one I saw was in English and said “It’s not easy making a name for yourself”. Not sure what that was about.
Padova appears to be where bad shops go when they die. I saw shop after shop selling knick knacks and crappy stuff that might have been popular in the US 3-10 years ago. As something of a t-shirt expert I paid particular attention to the t-shirts. They are almost all as hokey as possible, and generally printed with very poor printing techniques. Popular t-shirt themes include Super Mario Bros (Poison Mushroom courtesy of the Video Game T Shirts), the Smurfs, the Simpsons (Duff Beer especially), and for some reason Monster Energy Drink. In girls it all seems to be sayings. The most common one I saw was “You and I Are Meant to Be” which seems awfully optimistic in my bitter dating experience.
At that point, having exhausted the level of interest to be found in Bedazzled iPhone cases and heavily decorated miniature bird houses (not to mention feeling really old. Everyone there was like 19) I decided I was done with the Padova experience and was starting to look for a cab ride back to the train station. It was then I stumbled upon something that put a big smile on my face and kept me in town for another four hours.
Yes, an old fashioned swap meet, Italian style. The difference that I could see between an American and Italian swap meet is the Italian ones do not really feature piles of rusted tools and stolen bike parts (it also seemed like I was less likely to get stabbed by the local crazy homeless man). For the most part it is brand new merchandise sold at a low low price in a tent by the Italian equivalent of white trash. I saw booth after booth of shoes, followed by booth after booth of clothing. T-shirts of an even hokeyer nature and printed with even worse printing techniques were on display. Socks, underwear, pants, jeans, and jackets were in abundance. I saw a few booths selling tools (new, for the most part) and a few selling cheap toys. There was a huge section that only sold fresh flowers and plants. Very cool.
The swap meet made a huge circle around a park, and after a while I opted to cut through the park to see what was up there. It was pretty much a giant teenage water balloon fight going on. Lots of kids with frisbees and bottles of water to throw on each other. There was a cop in the middle of the park who just sat there on the hood of his car.
I wandered over to the saddest amusement park I have ever seen (and I’ve been to Bibleland). One min-Ferris wheel, some dilapidated bumper cars, and a booth selling hot dogs and cotton candy. For all that it seemed popular. To each his own.
Eventually I made my way back to the train station (via a surpisingly attractive female cab driver. Very MILFy, and she was wearing high heels with her toenails done up with glitter polish) and got my heart broken by the hotel girl on the train ride home. I made it back to Venice without incident and there met up with a business associate for dinner (technically this is a work trip). He has been to Venice many times and took me to see a lot of the stuff I should have seen my first day here but was too lazy to research. Very cool stuff, and we rode on a boat bus (not sure what they call it) down the Grand Canal. We also ate a little local hole in the wall that was way better than any of the places the tourists hang out at.
Then bed. More tomorrow, although now I have to start seriously working so my posts may get a little dryer. Feel free to comment here if you have been to Venice and want to contribute. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and send me any off topic questions or suggestions to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review
Pretty much exactly what you would expect.
I have some time to kill in my hotel in Venice waiting for a business associate to join me for dinner and thought I would dash this off. 
I saw this movie Sunday and quite enjoyed it in the same way you would enjoy ordering your same coffee drink at Starbucks: pretty much exactly what you expect with no surprises either positive or negative.
(Drink coffee image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirts category)
I have learned that as a reviewer you have to treat independent films with kid gloves. Not only are they the beloved underdog of the movie community they are also particularly sensitive children. If I say the latest George Lucas film is a steaming pile of excrement I am but one voice in a sea of lost souls wailing for justice (and even if Lucas did read my review would he really give a crap?). On the other hand if I say something that sounds even slightly like a less than gold star about an independent film than I am destroying some poor struggling sods dream and I guarantee he or she will have read it.
Fortunately I don’t need to don the kid gloves for this one. While not exactly the deepest or most complex story around, it is nigh flawless in it’s execution and induces exactly the warm feelings it intended. The story is not terribly complex but it is definitely different, and the cast is extremely talented and delivers some great performances.
It is the story of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the retired individuals who opt to live there. This is another story that devolves into a half dozen sub plots interweaved together. However, unlike other movies that do it badly (cough cough New Years Eve cough cough) the stories here are interesting, complex, and resound well with the talents of the individual actors. They also interact together, with each actor playing a part in the resolution of another’s sub plot.
Anyway, there is the retired high court judge who is coming out of the closet (Tom Wilkinson-Batman Begins, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shakespeare in Love), the recently widowed woman who was left destitute by her husbands debts (Judi Dench-Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, As Time Goes By), the retired couple who are left broke when their daughters start up doesn’t take off (Bill Nighy-Hot Fuzz, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1, Pirate of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest and Penelope Wilton-Shaun of the Dead, Match Point, Pride & Prejudice), the cougar looking for a sugar daddy (Celia Imrie-Highlander, the Phantom Menace, Bridget Jones’s Diary), the old rogue looking for love (Ronald Pickup-Prince of Persia Sands of Time, the Mission, Lolita) and the racist old woman (Maggie Smith-Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, Hook, A Room With A View). They all arrive at the hotel only to discover it is not quite as clean and well kept as the advertisements implied. It is run by a young Indian named Sonny (Dev Patel-Slumdog Millionaire, the Last Airbender, Skins) who is desperate to make the hotel succeed to prove himself to his disapproving mother. He is also trying to get her approval to marry his super hot girlfriend (Tena Desae-Yeh Faasley, Sahi Dhandhe Galat Bandi).
The stories move and develop. The gay judge is looking for his lost Indian boyfriend. The destitute widow takes a job at the girlfriends telemarketing company. The couple are torn between the husbands new found love of India and the wife’s need to move back to England. The cougar is looking for a husband, and the old rogue for a hookup. The disapproving mother (Lillete Dubey-Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, Kal Ho Naa Ho) threatens to pull the whole deal apart while the racist learns to love other cultures.
The stars. Acting was top notch, particularly Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Two stars. The story was well done. Two stars. A nice insight into living in India, at least from the perspective of a retired white person. One star. A feel good movie that successfully makes you feel good. One star. Tena Desae was extremely easy on the eyes. One star. A PG-13 film that felt and worked as a PG-13 film. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. Pacing at parts definitely dragged, and by the end of the film you start to feel the 124 minutes. One black hole. If I were a less kind person I could say that the endings all felt a little too pat, but I will pass on that. Other than that, taken in the context of what this film was supposed to be I can’t think of anything else. One black hole.
A grand total of seven stars. Should you see it? If you are my mother absolutely. If watching retired people find love and meaning in their life works for you then yes. However, if you find it difficult to connect with older actors and/or just want something resembling action or a bigger conflict than a couple fighting with each other than maybe pass. You have to want to see a feel good movie to enjoy this one. Bathroom break? Nothing really springs to mind. Maybe the part where the judge plays cricket with the local Indian boys. Not a whole lot happening there. Judi Dench wandering the city could probably be missed too if necessary.
Thanks for reading. I am having a blast here in Italy but if I find the time will try to get my review for Snow White and the Huntsman up. The one bad thing about this trip is I am missing Prometheus and will have to wait until I get back to review it. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or review feel free to leave them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to me at [email protected]. Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
Dave
A Nerds-eye view of Venice Italy: day 1
My first full day in this mysterious land named Venice and I must say I am of mixed feelings. On the one hand the city is shockingly cool and fun with all kinds of cool things going on. On the other hand this day was a good reminder of why I never go on vacation: vacations tend to suck when you go on them by yourself.
Venice is a city of lovers, and every time I turn around I am running into another pair of the bastards making kissy face in front of me. Each couple I meet is another pound of cement in my foundation as the loneliest and bitterest person on the planet.
All that being said, there is a lot to see here. I am kind of a task oriented guy (another reason vacations have always seemed kind of frivolous to me. Even the stuff I do for fun I tend to have a purpose for. When I played WOW I was the biggest achievement whore you ever met. Green Linen shirt image, by the way, courtesy of the Video Game T Shirt category) and have set my vacation around a serious of tasks (some might call them quests). The first was finding an ATM, which are not as pervasive as they might be back home. I found one and, after taking 10 minutes figuring out how to have it use English, had 200 Euros in my pocket.
About that time I discovered something important about Venice: it is freaking hot here. I sweated my ass off most of the day. It also rains periodically, but honestly that was kind of a welcome relief from the heat.
The Quest for the ATM accomplished, I decided to simply wander around until I was totally lost, which I did. I hate touristy areas and vowed to check out more of the residential and off Grand Canal stuff. It was pretty cool, to be honest. The architecture is an amazing mix of retro-70’s with retro-14th century. Incidentally, I am completely convinced that Venice would be the perfect place to have a zombie apocalypse video game. It seems to be completely comprised by narrow, creepy corridors, foot bridges, murky canals, and small plazas.
I accomplished the Quest for Getting Lost with ease, and with the help of two very nice South Africans named Lisa and Fiona managed to get unlost. The next quest I set for myself was the checking out of the local Warhammer scene. In the world of Warhammer Italy has a reputation for bringing the beardiest lists and pushing the rules boundaries as hard as possible, and I want to see it for myself.
This would prove the most daunting quest so far. I found three shops that carry Warhammer merchandise, but for the most part do not have tables and just feature a few items on a shelf. Back home these kinds of shops annoy the crap out of me, as they are selling the products but doing nothing to support the hobby. However, here it seems like there just isn’t enough space. One girl at a shop told me she has been trying to organize tournaments but really can’t find the space.
I also discovered the we Americans have been getting ripped off by Games Workshop for years. Even adjusting for the Euro prices here are 20-25% less than we have been spending back home. Another reason (of about 2,300) to hate Games Workshop.
Anyway, I was pretty wiped and ended the evening eating really bad pizza alone in my room and feeling sorry for myself for being alone. However, today is a bright new day and I am excited to get out there. I found out there is a GW store that is a 40 minute train ride from here and plan to check it out. I will let you know how it goes.
Dave
The Nerds-eye view of Venice, Italy-day 0
It is a sad and embarrassing part of my life that I have never really been out of the United States (unless Tijuana or the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls count). This is not from a lack of interest; quite the contrary. However, when you grow up dirt poor and have to pay your own way through college the opportunities to travel are few and far between, and by the time you graduate and get a job the habit of never going anywhere gets pretty well ingrained in you. Sure, it always sounds like a great idea, but there is always something else that has a higher priority in your life.
So, I come to Venice, Italy. My day job saw fit to have us do our annual sales meeting here and I have opted to extend my stay by a week in order to explore and appreciate this strange and alien culture.
I am saying like this because I have always dreamed to traveling to strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; and to boldly go where no man (in my family) has ever gone before. Therefore I am going to treat this experience like the proverbial Lewis and Clark of space; I have come across a new and exciting planet, and am reporting my findings to you, my beloved readers, here.
First off I am happy to report this alien world seems to have at atmosphere with sufficient oxygen to support human life, and while there is a slight musty scent to it (not dissimilar to any Earth city set on the ocean) it is generally pleasant and lacking in any alien toxins or pathogens detrimental to human life. Gravity seems to be about 1.0 Earth normal, and the sun shines with a pleasant light that not only doesn’t want to kill me any more than our own Sol but seems to interact with the local flora in a manner similar to Terran photosynthesis.
I am calling this post Day 0 because most of my experience thus far has been related to the travel I have done to get here. After following all the correct signs and instructions on BART I still managed to take the wrong train (BART, like almost everything in San Francisco, is a pale imitation of something in New York City). However, I anticipated this and padded my schedule to make up for the inevitable screw up.
I boarded my flight on Airberlin and am happy to report that the flight, while painfully cramped, was extremely well run and modern. The entertainment screens were recently upgraded and had an excellent touch interface (assuming you are smart enough to figure out what the instructions were in German), the diabetic meal I ordered was one of the best I have had on an aircraft, and the Germans (and most other foreign airlines that I have observed) do not feel a fear of being sued for discrimination and therefore do not hesitate to hire hot young women to be flight attendants. I also love the big Airbuses, and had not a single experience of turbulence. I can definitively give a thumbs up for Airberlin.
I spent the flight next to a pleasant German woman who said her name was something that sounded a lot like Cigarette. I’m sure there is a German name that just sounds like that (any of my German readers please be sure to correct me on this) who was flying home to see her family. She lives in San Francisco and had the amazing decency to make small talk while we were eating our two meals and otherwise shut up and let me sleep or watch Lethal Weapon on the TV. Also on my plane was my new best friend who’s name I can’t remember, but I was destined to keep on running into him for the next twelve hours.
We arrived in Dusseldorf, the German city with the coolest name ever. If ever a city were to go for a nerd name, it would have to be Dusseldorf. It was here and later in Venice that I learned that the architecture of airports is pan-cultural. They all have a lot of glass and steel, a bunch of duty free shops (although the German ones seemed most interested in selling mass quantities of cigarettes. I saw a display pile of Marlborough that must have been eight feet tall), a lot of horribly misleading signs and dead ends, exits that seem to want to funnel you back through security, and some “chairs” that seem designed to give chiropractors more business. After learning that a meal that costs 8.00 is really like $11 after you convert from Euros to dollars and that German chocolate really is better than American (sorry, Girardelli) I boarded my plane for Venice.
Another relatively pleasant flight wherein I slept most of the way (with hot flight attendants) I arrived. I spent 120 Euros on a water taxi (I’m pretty sure I got ripped off there. The price on the sign was 110, but as soon as he saw my passport it went up 10) but as we rolled into Venice I decided it was worth every penny (or whatever they call 1/100ths of a Euro). The slow ride through Venice was shockingly like going through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland; glances through windows at partial scenes of people cooking, hanging laundry, setting up rock bands, or just sitting there drinking coffee and wine (no pirates chasing wenches in circles that I could see). This would later contrast with my walking through Venice experience.
I can say that the story I was told about Italians being super friendly seems to have not manifested itself. The four individuals I met so far-water taxi company dude, water taxi driver, hotel clerk, and waiter later that night-couldn’t have been more perfunctory and uninterested if I had been a large sack of American laundry they were transporting or serving food to. The taxi driver started talking once I started asking him questions, but my experience with taxi drivers in the Bay Area and even more in NYC is most times you can’t get those guys to shut up. Maybe I have an unfriendly appearance (I would actually not discount that possibility) or maybe it’s because everyone who tells me how friendly the Italians are seems to be a hot girl and the old adage “Life is easier for hot chicks” holds true in Italy as anywhere else.
Anyway, walking around Venice at night is less like Pirates of the Caribbean and more like making your way through Raccoon City from Resident Evil (Raccoon City image courtesy of the Video Game T Shirt category). You walk down a creepy, narrow alley respondent with graffiti (point in America’s favor-our graffiti is much more creative and well executed), dark side passages, and weird no purpose stairways only to turn a corner and find an open restaurant or bar (as opposed to Raccoon City, where it would usually be an open gun shop or abandoned hospital).
The hotel room is tiny, but space efficient in a way you never see in even the cheapest American hotels and generally very pleasant. The bed is very stiff and hard, but I like a hard mattress so it works for me. The WiFi was excellent as evidenced by this blog post. Overall very pleasant and interesting.
I managed to lose all my Venice maps and phrase books in the month prior to packing, but this will just enhance the exploratory nature of my time here. I have procured a map from the hotel this morning and will be setting out shortly from breakfast. First task: find an ATM. Look for more on my trip tomorrow. Also, if I find time I have two movies I saw that I have to review. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Goodbye Ray Bradbury
This one really sucks to do. Ray Bradbury, author of the Martian Chronicles, died Tuesday after a long illness.
I know I have said before of other authors that they had an impact on my life, but Ray Bradbury was probably the start of my inevitably (and enjoyable) journey to nerddom. I read the Martian Chronicles in grade school and I can say they opened my eyes to the possibility of something other than this drab, mundane, and more or less meaningless world we humans infest.
The idea of being able to go to another world and colonize it captured my imagination like nothing else. Of course, Bradbury was a genius when it came to creating poetic, otherworldly landscapes with words, so it was easy to see what he saw.
Even more importantly, however, is the fact that in addition to being a welcome escape in my childhood he inspired a generation of authors who took me to other worlds on a daily basis. Ask any author of that generation worth his or her salt who their early inspirations were and most of them will list Bradbury. He was truly a pioneering and wonderous author. I will truly miss him.
I didn’t really have any good Martian images so I just grabbed this Mars Attacks! shirt from the Movie T Shirt collection. I’m pretty sure this movie would not have come to be had Bradbury not been around.
Dave
Moonrise Kingdom Review
Whimsically weird and delightful.
Wow that felt kind of pretentious and d-baggy to write. However, I can’t honestly think of a better way to describe this film. A story of young love as told in an innocent and surreal script set in 1965. And while it wouldn’t be one of my reviews without finding something in it for me to nit pick about, overall a very successful movie in my opinion.
Before I go any further I would also like to applaud director Wes Anderson for setting a film in the 60’s and not have the damned thing overrun by hippies. The whole “peace and love” movement culminating in the Summer of Love has so dominated the American perception of the 60’s that it is easy to forget that there were any number of cool cultural things going on that didn’t involve long hair and not bathing (I don’t really have a lot of images that are hippy related, but I did find this anti-hipster image from the Cheap T Shirt category that I think is really funny and actively support).
I would also like to mention that the camera work bordered on brilliant, and the editing really contributed to the flow and development of the movies (special props to Robert D. Yoeman for his camera work and Andrew Weisblum on the editing). Furthermore, the soundtrack was really well done (more props out to Alexadre Desplat). It is refreshing to see a movie that seems to have all the elements of the film working together in balance rather than dominating a couple and letting the rest follow along or rot on the vine.
The story is of young Sam (Jared Gilman-first movie credit) and Suzy (Kara Hayward-also first credit). Sam is a Khaki Scout deserter and Suzy his pen pal love interest. They meet up and run across a small New England island. They both have their emotional issues; Sam is an orphan with an eclectic perception of the world and Suzy is a troubled pre-teen with distant and uninvolved parents. (the cool thing about their issues, by the way, is that they are delivered in a very subtle manner over the passage of time rather than spoon fed to us an a plate). They met the year before at a church play. Sam is in his full Scout uniform while Suzy is dressed like a 60’s flight attendant, all in pink.
Sam is pursued by Scoutmaster Ward (Ed Norton-Fight Club, the Incredible Hulk, American History X) and the rest of his troop, all of whom despise him. This being the 60’s, Ward is constantly smoking and the boys in his troop are armed to the teeth. Suzy’s absence is noted by her parents Laura (Frances McDormand-Almost Famous, Burn After Reading, Tranformers Dark of the Moon) and Walt (the great Bill Murray-Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation, Ghostbusters). Each party contacts the local law enforcer Capt. Sharp (the also great Bruce Willis-Die Hard, the Sixth Sense, the Fifth Element) who starts running around the island looking for the kids. Meanwhile the two make their way across the island with the aid of Sam’s wilderness skills and Suzy’s girlish preparedness. The have been writing each other for a year and connect further through her love of fantasy novels involving unicorns and magic.
Eventually they are caught, and things are looking grim for orphan Sam. The story, which up until that point had progressed in a very linear manner fragments and the pacing ramps up considerably. Young love hijinks ensues. A storm strikes. No one turns out to be really bad, just sometimes uncaring.
The stars. Really cute, entrancing story. One star. Really well told and overall very good. Two stars. Brilliant camera and editing work. One star. Soundtrack was really good too (you know it has to be exceptional for me to even notice it). One star. Great performances from young Jared and Kara. I am sure we will see them in other things soon. One star. An amazing cast of great actors who all performed brilliantly. Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, and Ed Norton, all playing outside of their standard roles. Two stars. A nice call back to the non-hippy 60’s when kids were allowed to run around unsupervised and actually injure themselves. The Khaki Scout running around and attacking each other was pretty much exactly what being in the Boy Scouts in the 70’s was like. One star. The humor, while for the most part tongue in cheek, was brilliant and laugh worthy. Pretty much every shot had some kind of sight gag or cultural reference. One star. Dialog was extremely good. One star. Total: eleven stars.
The black holes. Not a lot, really. I found the sexualization of 12 year old Suzy and some of the scenes with Sam to be kind of off putting. Too much makeup, and a second base scene involving kids was something I found creepy and disturbing. I know it was supposed to remain an innocent love, but I found that one scene really drained a lot of the innocence away. One black hole. Normally in a movie of this nature I would find the pacing slow, but I think in this case it was 100% appropriate for the telling of the story. Total: one black hole.
A grand total of 10 stars. Absolutely you should see this movie if you like anything that is not dominated by explosions. It is really fun. Also this is a brilliant date movie. I think any girl would be turned on by having seen this film, so take a girl to a theater. Bathroom break? While none of the scenes in this film are truly necessary for the progression of the story the are almost all worth watching. I think your best bet would be the one with the Bishop parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) are lying in bed staring at the ceiling talking. No great camera work and not a lot that contributes to the whole of the story.
Thanks as always for reading. I also saw the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel yesterday and will try to write it up tonight. I am seeing Snow White and the Huntsman tonight so look for that one tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Feel free to post comments on this film here, or if you have questions, suggestions, or comments on other topics feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Farewell Richard Dawson
I woke to the unfortunate news of the passing of Richard Dawson, the King of the Family Feud. It may see odd to those of you who have gotten to know me and my likes or dislikes over the last couple years that I would comment on this, but there are a couple reasons for it hitting home. First of all, watching Family Feud as a kid was one of the few things we actually did as a family that did not actively involve feuding. Something about the way the show ran and the structure of the questions really appealed to my dad, and he like having my sister, mom, and me around to show off how smart he was with the questions. I won’t say watching it was something we all looked forward to, but when it was on we could all pass a pleasant evening together.
The second reason, of course, stems from his playing one of the greatest unsung movie villains of all time, Damon Killian of the Running Man. Go back and watch it again and you will see how civilly sinister he really could play it. A big part of the success of his roll (in my mind, at least) was the brutal contrast from the heart warming good guy he was on Family Feud. Kind of like if Gandhi took a role as a serial killer. (Nobel Peace Prize image courtesy of he Funny T Shirt category)
Anyway, I’m very sorry he’s gone. He lived to be 79, and had a recurring role on Hogan’s Heroes when he was younger. I will miss him.
Dave
Chernobyl Diaries Review
Dear diary, Last night I ate dinner off a roach coach, met a beautiful girl with amazing eyes, and almost wetted myself watching a scary but by-the-numbers horror movie.
This is another review where I will be in disagreement with most of the other reviewers out there. Most of them can’t seem to find a score low enough to give this film, but as a horror movie I can honestly say I spent most of the movie honestly scared. Sure, it was a pretty rote rendition of a traditional horror movie, and there were any number of problems I will happily dump on in a few lines, but if you use how frightened you get as your horror movie barometer than I can honestly say this one succeeded pretty well.
The Chernobly image, from Hot Tube Time Machine, comes to us courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category.
One of the main issues I had, however, was the fact that the director couldn’t decide if he was doing a found footage film or a classic film. The camera had all the gremlins that plague found footage: jittery, nausea inducing movement; horrible out of focus shots; bad lighting; stunted story and character development; and an editor that seems to feel he is paying for cuts out of his own pocket. However, it had none of the benefits of the found footage genre: a sense that you are in the scene operating the camera; the occasional fourth wall breaking mirror or camera passing shot that makes things seem more real; or the understanding that when the final scene cuts out it’s because the the camera man just got impaled on a length of rebar, not because they just ran out of things to shoot. (If you want to see what I am talking about in all these watch Trollhunter, a great Norwegian film (By the way, just as an aside a movie is not automatically good just because it comes from Norway. I recently saw Norwegian Ninja and I’ve never seen a movie that looked more like dog vomit before))
SPOILER ALERT: I will be throwing in some spoilers here so if you hate them maybe skip ahead to the summary paragraph. One of the other big issues I had with this movie is the kids in it are being stalked, hunted, and chased by…something? Mutants? Animals? Aliens? Crazy humans? Supernatural creatures? C.H.U.D.s? It seems the producers didn’t want to have to pay for special effects, makeup, or extras with a face so they more or less skipped the whole “actually have something after the protagonists” phase. Even the reveal at the end of the film is both vague and underwhelming. What’s sad is the movie did an admirable job of ramping up the terror level through vague unease, dangerous but explainable attacks, through to full blown pee pee pants scary. However, in this horror movie formula at some point towards the end of the second act they are supposed to reveal the actual face of the horror. In this film they more or less exhausted the incredibly long list of excuses a film could use to never have a clear camera shot or flashlight shone into the enemies face.
The story plays out a lot like a survival horror video game, and in this case that game would be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Cherobyl (I think maybe one of the reasons I like this film is I have always been partial to survival horror games over true horror). Six of the stupidest tourists in the history of tourism sign up for a totally legitimate Russian tour guide to take them on a tour of Pripyat, the radioactive town abandoned after Cherobyl melted down (where does one go in the Ukraine to get a tour guide permit to take tourists through radioactive wastes? I must say I’m impressed with the Ukrainian Tourism Board). They are turned away by guards but take a back country road that should have had signs marked “This Way to Your Impending Doom” all over it. They get to Pripyat (to be fair to this movie, it was shot on location and the scenery was really damned cool) and walk around taking pictures. They get almost bowled over by a bear and opt out, only to find that someone has cut all their wires in the van. At that point they have to spend the night in the van. They get attacked by what look like wild dogs. One gets injured and at that point the survival begins. The tour guide gets eaten by something so they have to split up to find help. Things go from bad to worse when they get chased by dogs, attacked by water somethings, and then by humanish somethings. The somthings pick them off one by one in typical horror movie fashion.
The stars. The location shots were pretty cool, until they decided the best things to shoot were barren concrete tunnels. One star. Aside from the dumb decision to actually take the tour, none of the protagonists acted in what I would consider a really stupid manner. They more or less did what I would have done. One star. The girls were all pretty hot, especially the brunette (Devin Kelly-Refrigerator, the Chicago Code, Anchors). One star. While the whole film was rote and by the book, I was honestly frightened at times and felt my pulse quicken often. Two stars. I kind of liked Uri the tour guide (Dimitri Diatchenko-Get Smart, G.I. Jane, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes. Jumpy camera for no reason. One black hole. Stilted, flat performances all around. One black hole. Never revealing anything beyond vague hints about the bad guys. One black hole. The very stupid decision to take the tour in the first place (honestly, Mr. and Mrs Howell made a better vacation plan),and a very laissez faire attitude regarding the dangers of radiation and rad buildup. One black hole. Rated R but it honestly felt like it could have been PG-13 except for the language. Add more violence or nudity IMO. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of one star. Weird. I thought it would net out a little better than that. Once I get into the analysis I can sometimes be surprised. Worth seeing? If there is nothing else playing or MIB3 is sold out sure. Your blood will be moving. I’d day it’s on par with MIB, to be honest, but that’s because I found MIB to be painfully stupid. Date movie? Not really. I don’t think it’s jump out at you scary enough to get your date in your lap. I think is is a great one for watching while folding your laundry at home. Bathroom break? I can’t say there is any one scene really integral to the plot, so almost anywhere will do. However, try the scene where they are walking back to the van after the bear attacks or the scene where they split off and the kids are trying to avoid some dogs.
Thanks for reading. I have about 800 things to do today so will get going. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or email me with questions or comments to [email protected]. If you saw this film and want to make a comment feel free to do so here. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Men in Black 3 Review
If someone has a functioning neuralizer please use it to erase the last 103 minutes from my memory.
I quick survey of other reviewers has revealed that about 70% of them think this film is a rollicking roller coaster through the magical land of comedy and the other 30% regret all the dinosaurs who had to die in order to make the film this movie was shot on. I, unfortunately, am in the 30% for one major reason: this movie is freaking stupid.
It always amazes me when a movie with the budget of a small countries GNP ($350 million) to have the very best in very expensive actors and special effects can’t seem to find $50 to hire a decent story writer. Will Smith has done some stupid movies in his career (Independence Day, Wild, Wild West, I am Legend) but this one really breaks new ground. The stupidity oozes from every pore and orifice, causing other weeping sores and lesions to develop that also ooze stupidity. It’s like of some stupid scientists were doing stupid research into the fundamental nature of stupidity and working on the Unified Field Theory of Stupidity only to discover a new stupid element (Stupidium), which they injected into their brains before writing a movie script.
All that being said, I cannot say this movie was really bad per se. The humor was strong, the special effects both puppets and CGI were good, and a lot of the supporting actors did a decent job. However the catch phrase “stupidly entertaining” is one that I feel is bandied around too much these days. Is it that difficult or bad to be “intelligently entertaining”? I actually consider this trend towards stupid movie scripts to be less about the writers being stupid or incompetent (although that is a possibility) and more about the absolute contempt that Hollywood currently has for the intellectual ability of the American movie audience, and as a member of that audience I am (and most of you should be) a little incensed. They are clearly writing stories for eight year olds and foreign markets and leaving those of us with a couple brain cells to die on the vine. (the Brawndo image, incidentally, is from Idiocracy and I think appropriate given that the mental decline of the human race is only being accelerated by movies of this stripe. The image comes courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
The violence and sex was deeply embedded in the PG-13 trench, with a lot of aliens exploding into kid friendly piles of goo rather than traumatizing alien corpses. The guy they got to play young Agent K (Josh Brolin-the Goonies, Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, No Country for Old Men) was amazing. He obviously studied not only the character but the Tommy Lee Jones mannerisms and gestures. In fact, he was much more Agent K in my mind by the end of the movie than Tommy Lee Jones, who seemed kind of tired through most of this (and really had limited screen time). The villain Boris the Animal (think Bug from the first MIB mixed with Lobo) was entertaining and disgusting. However, a big part of the appeal of the first film (we won’t talk about MIB2 in this review) was the aliens and how they could easily appear anywhere. Any human or animal on the street could potentially be another cool, weird alien. In this film they more or less ignored that all together and actually kept the aliens to a minimum. Instead they had a lot of humans (Andy Warhol, for example, could have been a really funny alien but instead is an undercover MIB agent. By the way, as a fan of Andy Warhol who sees him as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century I was kind of put off by his portrayal here) and human looking aliens. There was the obligatory walk through the MIB lobby with a ton of them and the inevitable disgusting fight scene against a giant slobbery fish, but other than that even the aliens that were part of the story always looked mostly human. I feel dirty for saying this as I normally hate this sort of thing, but this movie really could have used a small alien comic relief sidekick.
Anyway, the story. A few spoilers incoming, so if you really feel you will lose something from the story by know ahead of time what will happen skip ahead, but take it from me you probably won’t. I have seen scripts chock full of plot holes, but never on this scale. It’s like the first few massive plot holes started breeding smaller plot holes, who also started breeding with each other resulting in a massive six generation clan of inbred gaping plot holes. Boris the Animal is some kind of alien sociopathic killer from a now extinct race of aliens (did I mention that they borrowed heavily from Lobo on this one?) who has a crawfish living in his palm and can shoot spikes at people. He escapes from a prison on the moon staffed by the stupidest humans in the universe with the help of a super hot girl (don’t worry, this is the one and only time you will see anything remotely attractive and female in the entirety of the film) and his personal mud bug. He gets back to Earth, steals a time machine, and goes back in time to kill K (Tommy Lee Jones). He appears to succeed and K disappears from the time line, except for some reason J (Will Smith) can remember him (this was the first truly massive plot hole. There were any number of small to medium “practice” plot holes (how is it no one questions a human girl with a big cake visiting an alien in a prison that no humans are even supposed to know about, why would any prison on the moon have a armory 10 feet from the prisoners complete with weapons capable of blowing a massive hole to the vacuum, how does Boris the Animal talk when standing outside on the moon’s surface with no atmosphere, etc.) but this was the first one (of several) that felt like I was having a brain aneurism). J’s constant craving of chocolate milk was recognized by O (anyone feel like they were pandering a little when they gave the only thing resembling a love interest the code letter O?) as a sign of temporal displacement (at this point the plot hole generator switched from a garden hose to a fire hose in the face. She even said that this had only happened once in history but they knew enough to know what chocolate milk means? In comparison to the others this one was golf ball sized, however). At that point the now not extinct race of Boris begins a full scale invasion. J has to go back in time by jumping off a building.
It could be said that the plot was relatively coherent up until this point. Time travel as a plot device is weak and confusing even in competent hands. When fed into the MIB grinder it gets spat out so fast and in so many directions the audience had better be wearing eye protection. How is it J gets shot by the alien spike thing, jumps off a giant gantry, and goes back in time ten seconds but is somehow not shot even though he remembers getting shot? Why when you travel back in time to 1969 you have to first visit the dinosaur times first? If the first time J travels back in time he goes to the same position he started in and effectively doubles himself, but the second time he jumps back into the exact same position he was in to start with and there is only one of him? The list goes on and on.
However, the time travel does do one good thing. It allows us to meet young K, who was really well done by Josh Broslin and my favorite character in the movie. K and J team up after some “who are you” hijinks and work to track down Boris and young Boris. They meet up with an alien who can see the future but do nothing to affect it, making him the most worthless expository sidekick in cinema history. They have to put up a shield in space and do so by attaching it to the moon landing rocket. Stuff gets blown up. Aliens do alien stuff. An ending is pulled from so far up the writers ass if he were the last person in a human centipede he would have actually pulled it from the person three bodies ahead of him.
The stars. There were a lot of really funny moments. Two stars. Young K was really well done. One star. Will Smith, in spite of his bad choices in movie scripts (and being the Fresh Prince of Bel Air) is entertaining. One star. Boris was a pretty cool villain. One star. Good special effects. One star. In spite of everything, I honestly can’t say it wasn’t fun or entertaining. Two stars. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. Really, really, really stupid story. Two black holes. I am running out of funny analogies for how massively huge plot holes can be in a movie, but the ones in this film could have eclipsed the sun. Two black holes. While I find him entertaining, there is only so much “Will Smith is the coolest guy in the world and everyone else is a dork on the screen” I can take. One black hole. The future telling alien was so hippy dippy I wanted to reach into the screen and slap him every time he opened his pie hole. One black hole. The ending was so dumb, contrived, and out of no where it could have been a supporting character Agent D (I actually heard they started filming this thing without a completed script and it make sense). One black hole. Total: seven black holes.
A grand total of one star. Meh. Better than MIB2 in my opinion. Worth seeing? Maybe. If you are a Will Smith fan or just have nothing to do at all on an evening it beats staring at a wall. Don’t see it just because you are a massive Tommy Lee Jones fan, as he is hardly in it (unless you like the idea of a great Tommy Lee Jones impersonator). Date movie? Sure, why not? Unless she is familiar with sci fi and the paradoxes of time travel most of this stuff won’t bother her. No hot girls to feel in competition with. All the guys keep their suits on so no losing a lot in comparison. Bathroom break? Most likely the entire scene with Andy Warhol. Once the joke that he is an MIB agent is made there isn’t much left but they keep beating it into the ground. You won’t miss much.
Thanks for reading. I will try to see something tomorrow afternoon. Probably Chernobyl Diaries. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments about this movie or review feel free to post them here. If you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
