Movie review: True Grit
So another Tuesday night, and regular readers will know that is $5 movie night at the local Regal Theater. True Grit looked like the only movie I was interested in, as I had heard good things about it. This was pure self indulgence, in that I think I need to see something really bad in order to produce a truly funny review for you, my cherished reader. That’s why next week I think I will see the Season of the Witch. The suck is just oozing off the trailers for that one.
That being said, I expected this movie to be pretty good, and was not disappointed. I actually read the book as a kid and liked it. I don’t have a great love of Western stories like I do kung fu, zombie, or science fiction, but I have an appreciation of it. I also saw the original with John Wayne but don’t remember it much.
The story is of a young girl from Arkansas who’s father is killed by a hired hand. She travels to the town of his death to avenge his death. She hires a grizzly marshal named Rooster Cogburn who is a drunk with one eye. Along the way they run into a Texas Ranger also after their man with the solitary name of Leboeuf. The girl is super stubborn, which turns out to be her defining trait. Horses get ridden, whiskey gets drunk, and guys with bad teeth get shot.
I enjoyed this movie a lot. Watching Jeff Bridges play a grizzled drunken lout actually really helped wash his recent performance in Tron Legacy out of my mind a bit. I think this is the first movie I have seen him in wherein he does not play the Dude, although he can’t seem to get away from movies that involve substance abuse. Let’s get into the stars and black holes.
Stars first. The story is good and as far as I can remember follows the book closely. Two stars. All the characters are both believable and pretty cool, especially Rooster, and the acting was good. One star. Everyone is armed. One star. They managed to avoid crowbaring in a romance story to appeal to the 15 year old girls. One star. None of the stars are particularly good looking, apparently believing that a good story and good acting negates the need for eye candy. One star. In a big F you to current American culture and our mediocre school system the language is very formal and authentic, not “modernized” for the morons. One star. The story and character motivations are clear and understood. One star. It’s a cowboy story. One star. The action is both cool and and frequent without being forced. One star. They did not try to hide any of the old West racism (the one black guy was a servant, the one Native American with a line was more or less abused). One star. Total: eleven stars.
Now black holes. The girl’s stubbornness gets old after a while. One black hole. They do that movie thing where they keep talking about how ugly she is when she is kind of cute in a young Melissa Gilbert-Laura Ingalls sort of way. One black hole. The characterization of the head of the outlaw gang the villain joined up with, Lucky Ned Pepper, seems to drift from outlaw rogue poet to psychotic dirtbag. One black hole. For all the opportunity out in the open for really amazing shooting and cinematography, the photography seemed kind of up close and less than panographic. Honestly, bad cowboys-verses-ninjas movie the Warriors Way did better. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
Net total: six stars. A very good score. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone. However, given the week photography I don’t know if there is a massive motivation to see it on a big screen. If you are OK waiting for it to come out on DvD just NetFlix it. I would put it in my top ten Western films along with Tombstone and Unforgiven, but honestly I don’t know if I have watched enough cowboy movies to really make that kind of assessment. If any of you have suggestions on movies I should see to help me round out my Western experience I am open to them (or, if you want, find some movies that sound Western but are actually really horribly bad as a joke on me, I would do it. Should be good for a laugh) I’ll try to track them down.
By the way, I warn you now that tonight is Bad Movie Night at my friend Brian’s house and he is planning on showing both Highlander 2: The Quickening AND the original 500 Years Ago on Planet Zeist. I have seen the first and regretted it but if the second is as bad as it sounds I might have to do one of my bile enhanced bad reviews tomorrow.
Still working on the Solomon Grundy/Deadpool question. For today I would ask who would win: Dwight Shrute from the Office versus Dr. Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters (Shrute Farms image courtesy of the TV show t shirts category).
Movie Review: Despicable Me
Sorry I haven’t been blogging this week, but it has been a lot of holiday cheer and food coma. I have been at my mothers house, who barely has electricity, much less any form of interlink connection. Normally this isn’t a problem, as I can head down to Borders and (ab)use their free WiFi. However, they have been crazy busy and were also closed early on the 24th and all day on the 25th (damn them for wanting to have a life and family. Don’t they know I need to get online and bitch about my dating life?) so I have been more or less stuck watching Law and Order reruns (my mom’s favorite show). I also spent a whole day at my sisters eating too much and watching my brother-in-law try to teach my mom how to use her new digital camera (I would be the one to do it, but he apparently has more tolerance for explaining where the power button is over and over. Also, I know I will be getting her “What does it mean when it does this?” calls for the next 23 months, so I am saving my energy).
Anyway, I spent yesterday with my best friend and his kids and we went to see the movie Despicable Me, a cartoon story about yet another evil super villain becoming a good guy thanks to some good hearted females. Sounds suspiciously like the story from Megamind, which came out about the same time. It’s weird how different studios come up with the same idea for a movie about the same time. However, I have worked in trend merchandise for the last eight and noticed that things seem to get popular all over the country almost simultaneously, so I guess it could be considered another example of convergent evolution. In other words, the time is right for a evil super villain to turn good, so different studios come up with the same concept at the same time. Also, this movie came out a couple weeks before Megamind.
Anyway, the story is about the less than lovable Gru, a pointy nosed super villain who is in danger of being supplanted by a younger, more energetic super villain named Vortex. He has his most dastardly plan to date foiled by Vortex and comes up with a plan to get it back on track that involves using three orphan little girls as a distraction. The girls are from the least humane orphanage ever, run by a woman graduate of the Cruella de Ville School of Social Interaction (this joke is particularly funny to me as I recently had it pointed out that a certain sister of a friend of mine whom I despise with the burning passion of 10,000 suns bears a shocking resemblance to Cruella in both appearance and demeanor) and forces the girls to sell cookies and tells them they will never get adopted. He passes what must be the most cursory background check of all time and gets the girls. Cutesy hi jinx ensue, Gru falls in love with the girls and being a single parent, and ends up a good guy (sort of).
Overall pretty entertaining, if more kid friendly than Megamind. My only real issue was in the treatment of the little girl characters. Gru had a ton of cool development stuff, including a number of flashbacks to a traumatized childhood where his mother constantly told him he sucked and would never amount to anything. However, while the girls were all supposed to be distinct personalities (one the sassy troublemaker, another the brainy mystery solver, the third the super cute comic relief) but there is no attempt at developing their characters whatsoever. Also, while Gru’s motivations are all pretty clear, you can’t figure out why the head of the orphanage does anything other than evil-for-evil’s-sake.
Let’s do the stars and black holes. Stars first. It’s a cartoon. One star. It stars a super villain. One star. Two words: shrink ray. One star. Two more words: freeze ray. One star. Gru is well developed and cool. One star. His comic relief minions were actually really funny and cool, not super annoying. One star. He makes the girls beds out of recycled WWI style bombs. One star. It’s overall fun to watch. One star. Total: eight stars.
Now the black holes. The story was a little too kid friendly. One black hole. The girl’s characters were really under developed. One BH. Vector, the competing super villain, was an annoying Bill Gates spoof who bugged me at every turn. One BH. The girls were involved in some kind of ballet recital and wore pink tutus. One black hole. The 3D effects were kind of weak and added nothing to the movie except my usual 3D headache. One black hole. Total: 5 black holes.
Net total, three stars. Good movie, entertaining, but not great. I saw it for 2 bucks and was glad for that. I’d say take your kids and be glad it’s a movie they will like that you can get a few laughs out of.
For the who win question, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter versus Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m going to have to go with Buffy. Sure, Abe is taller with better reach and upper body strength, but Buffy is way more into cardio. Also, she is a Slayer. In truth, I’d like to see a Marvel like episode where they fight each other for a while and then team up to kill the bigger evil. (Buffy image courtesy of the TV show t-shirts category)
For today post, the question is Pee Wee Herman versus Sgt. Shultz from Hogan’s Heroes.
Nerd rant: Rudolph the Red Nosed Raindeer-a story of exploitation and degradation.
So I was in my local drug store last night and they were playing the usual suspects for the holiday music scene. I don’t have a lot of problems with Xmas carols per se, but after a week of hearing the same 25 songs we heard over and over again last year they tend to start feeling like sandpaper in my inner ear canal. However, there is one song that always bugs me from the first time I hear it and that is Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Here’s the thing. In a way to further alienate myself from 99% of the rest of my high school instead of taking Spanish or French (or, for that matter, a language remotely useful anywhere in the world) I joined about 14 other introverts in taking Latin. The Latin teacher was a sadistic bastard who disliked me intensely and loved nothing more than to watch me and the rest of the class twist in the wind (to this day I still can’t figure out why I stayed with him for three years. Glutton for punishment, I guess).
Anyway, one of the ways Mr. Balak would torture us was every holiday he would take Christmas carols and make us translate them into Latin. Then he would make us stand up in class and sing them for the rest of the class (if you have a fear of public speaking, try singing a holiday song in front of your class in a foreign language. Burn the fear out of you quickly and painfully). It was pretty bad, although in retrospect not as bad as translating and singing fast food jingles in Latin. Remember “Two all beef paddies, special sauce lettuce cheese”? I do.
Whoever was highest on Mr. Balaks excrement list got Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was a real pain, as you had to find translations for words like reindeer. Also adjectives like shiny really don’t translate well. In fine tradition I spent most of my three years in the top three of his e-list, so I got saddled with it one year. Needless to say, I spent about a week examining it carefully and am intimately familiar with it. I have spent way too much of my life thinking about it, and over the years I have come to realize how much it sucks.
Think about it. Rudolph is born with a genetic abnormality and his peers mercilessly tease and abuse him for it. He is excluded from participating in their normal day-to-day activities and Santa, the man who should be his protector and advocate, blatantly ignores the incredibly ugly situation and, in fact, enables the abuse with his tacit, unspoken approval of Rudolph’s mistreatment. Then, when his work schedule is jeopardized by inclement weather, decides that, rather than attaching some headlights or maybe adding some kind of instruments to his aircraft (both of which would have cost him money), he will exploit Rudolphs abnormality to his own benefit. At that point the rest of the reindeer “accept” him.
My god! When you think about it, this is like teasing and abusing a man born with no arms or legs. Then, when there is a huge leak in the local damn, using him to plug the hole with his body. Then you buy him a pizza to thank him. Really, could this be any worse?
Anyway, this thought gets on my mind every year, and I’m glad to finally have a venue to talk about it.
So in answer to the yesterday’s who-would-win is, of course, R2D2. Tweekie just doesn’t possess the motor skills (hah) or upper body strength to actually damage R2D2, and Dr. Theopolis is really just another ablative layer between Tweekie and the great scrapyard in the sky. R2 would just arc weld them into a bronze puddle. Also, R2 can fly.
Today’s question is vehicular in nature: the helicopter from Blue Thunder versus the helicopter from Airwolf (Airwolf image courtesy of the TV show t shirt category).
P.S. The first line of Rudolph in Latin is Rudolpho, rheno rubear. Now you know.
Interview with Firefly veteran Danny Nero part 2
Today I am continuing my interview with Danny Nero, who has worked on Firefly as well as any number of other cool TV and film projects. The photo on the left is Danny’s face coming through the wall in the Angel Episode “Rm w/A Vu”. Very cool.
D: Joss has a huge nerd following. I count myself as one of those. What is it about his style that so accurately taps into the nerd psyche? Is he a nerd himself, or does he just have an incredible insight into the sub-culture? I know he is active on a lot of the forums. Does he follow the trends and have an idea what is hot, or does his understanding of the group allow him to force the next hot thing to happen?
Danny: I don’t think I ever heard Joss refer to himself as a nerd but can’t imagine that he wouldn’t! He is so in tune with popular culture and what stories people like to see.
D: Do you find him approachable at work? For example, if you had an idea for the show you thought worthwhile would you be able to suggest it to him or one of the actors, or is that not really an option?
Danny: He’s always been very approachable but you really have to find a moment when he’s not conferring with writers, producers, and actors! I don’t remember ever making a suggestion to Joss but I know he’s consider it if it was valid. There was an episode of “Angel” that was a flashback to the early fifties where I did make a suggestion about the authenticity of something (a prop telephone) and director Tim Minear overheard me. I was immediately sorry because he made the prop people find another phone and that made their job more difficult and there are only a few phone freaks like me out there that would know the difference!
D: You worked on Firefly and also on the movie Serenity. Did you see a difference in production values between the TV show and the movie? Was the movie better funded and therefore had bells and whistles the TV show never had?
Danny: Yes there was a big difference between working on Firefly and Serenity! You’d think the feature budget would make the TV one look puny but not so much! The Serenity cargo bay was actually bigger on Firefly on the Fox lot. It was pretty close to the same size for the floor area but not as many levels high. The exterior of Serenity was also larger on the Fox lot than the one built at Universal for the feature but I doubt anyone would notice that on film. There was the luxury of time to spend on great lighting setups and camera movement that was frequently a compromise on Firefly. I wonder what your readers have to say about the “look” of the 2 shows. They were shot by two different DP’s or Directors of Photography and each guy has a different way of lighting and use of lenses and even film stock. I haven’t compared them but I imagine others have.
D: On the set did you interact with the actors much?
Danny: As for the actors on Firefly, you really couldn’t ask for a nicer bunch! The work days can be very long and it’s no fun being trapped with a bad group from any department! I have been so fortunate to have worked with such great people over the years! I think Joss does a great job choosing actors that are so talented and fun to be around!
Nathan is just a born comic and supplied countless laughs. Alan is very funny as well and if you’ve seen outtakes (and who hasn’t!) you get a sense that there was plenty of laughter to go around! Jewel has the brightest smile, she does 
light up most of a soundstage! Gina is the best hugger! Her husband Lawrence Fishbourne visited the set once in awhile and I remember watching Gina perform on a monitor next to him and when they cut, I had to tell him what a lucky man he is. He agreed! It was great to be reunited with Summer from our experience on Angel together.
(Angel Investigations image courtesy of the TV show t-shirts category)
They are a wonderful bunch alright and I was lucky enough to stand-in for Nathan later on the Fox series “Drive” that sadly lasted only 6 episodes. I am so glad for his success on “Castle” even if I was already committed to doing another show.
Adam I’ve run into on “Chuck” a couple of times and he’s been very supportive. He took me into his dressing room several months ago and showed me the finer points of Twitter!
I last saw Morena at a mutual friends Christmas Eve party with her short hair for “V”. We had a good time comparing career choices.
The rest of the cast has been elusive but there is always a chance I’ll run into them on Grey’s! My next series after Firefly was “Alias” and I stood-in for Victor Garber and Greg Grunberg, both great guys that had me working for them on many other shows and pilots.
Bitterly disappointed by the end of Farscape
I am going to take a break from my dating advice to rant a little. A while ago I bought the entire Farscape series on DvD and have been watching it while repainting all my Skaven. I finally got to the end of season 4, which ended in the most obnoxiously contrived cliffhanger ever, only to find that the fifth disk in the box set does not contain any more episodes but just some more of the usual extra drivel that they always saddle complete sets with (interviews, etc).
I have been enjoying the series immensely (enough, in fact, to order this Farscape Logo shirt and put it up in the TV show t shirts category). I love the fact that they did not try to make every alien out of a human in a rubber suit, and the story is actually pretty intriguing. But then, it ended horrible and according the the internet, was cancelled.
I have found that there was a four part miniseries funded by some European fans that is supposed to wrap it up, but I am really annoyed at the fact that my “complete” box set in not really complete. Also, what kind of morons at Sci Fi channel opted to cancel it??? I thought this was idiotic behavior normally reserved by the Fox Network. Honestly, you would think a channel that produced a movie call Mansquito (yes, half man, half mosquito) would be desperate enough for quality content to keep something like this on.
Oh well. At least it released the characters to show up on SG1, so not a complete loss. Still, really, really annoying.
WonderCon is a huge success
WonderCon exceeded all my goals. We hit the break even point halfway through the first day. The booth was packed constantly, and we gave away over 1000 cards. I worked my butt off, but loved it. Winter was amazing, and the show itself was awesome.
This Lannister t shirt from our Game of Thrones t shirts category was one of our best sellers. We also sold a ton of Hangover, Big Bang Theory, and Conan shirts (What is Best in Life?), as well as a bunch of other things. The new baby creepers were a huge hit. I guess lots of nerds are having babies. I will be posting them soon.
Of course, now I have about a week of trying to reset my inventory, as well as reordering. It will be two weeks before I’m back to normal I think. Still, totally worth it, not to mention a ton of fun. I will definitely to it again next year and if you attend I hope you will stop by and say hi. I loved talking to all the customers.
Dave
