I watched Moon a few nights ago, based on Buzz's rec:
This is very high on my list, and for many reasons, of all the sci-fi I have seen in this exercises, Moon brings the most classic material to the table. It's well acted and has a plot the keeps one entertained, it does suffer from a few gimmes, where the plot got thin or was handed out, but none of this really hurts the story. In the end it makes its statement as all good sci-fi does, and then flies out the airlock with a giggle. Go watch it already.
Seconded, for the most part. I didn't really feel like the plot went thin, but I do understand the criticism. I got into a fight with an English teacher once (a few times, actually), trying to say that sometimes something is what it is. Something maybe be just as simple as it is, or as obvious as it is, and that's okay. With this movie, I think that pushed the focus of the movie further onto Sam Rockwell's reaction to the plot.
This movie really was Sam Rockwell's, and he carried it brilliantly. He's one of my favorite working actors, but will never get the credit he's due, because his looks are so ... not A-list, and definitely not leading actor. He delivered on Moon, though, and he's done it before. If you haven't seen them, check out Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Choke. Box of Moonlight is another favorite of mine, from his earlier days (part of that mid-90s indie film explosion that was so awesome). Also, look for him in a tiny part next time you watch Ninja Turtles.
The movie really does reach into the scifi classics, too. The most obvious is a big slice of homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the form of the robot. The robot was, by the way, brilliantly written and acted by Kevin Spacey. It plays a delicate and subtle game around corporate asshole-ness, in the model of Alien and Rollerball, though... and the territory has been gone over so many times, I think they really played with it in a new and brilliant way. Very, very clever.
Yeah, go watch it already.
Male English Professor Syndrome (MEPS): A defense mechanism used by people to overcompensate for spending all their time doing stuff that doesn't actually matter, particularly academics working in the arts or humanities. Presents as an insistence to analyse art, literature and film to the exclusion of aesthetic appreciation, and an inflexible insistence that disagreements must be resolved through rational discourse. Early research suggests a cause in "method envy," in which study of fundamentally subjective subject matter leads to resentment and an attempt to emulate the hard sciences by making art, film, and literature equally boring and even more obnoxious. 80% of cases present in males.
She has a lot to say about how the entire thing is framed as what "audiences want," while characters like Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner are habitually rejected as one-off flukes. Though, interestingly, those characters fail the test too--that even though they are bad ass female characters, they don't have any female characters around them to interact with, essentially a definition of "token minority."
The first Alien movie really was its own thing, and I don't think this statement applies to it.
Interestingly, the script was written with a male lead in mind for the Ripley character (keeping very much in the pattern that was detailed in my previous post). They did something different though: the screenwriters were careful to write all the characters, including the lead, as being totally gender neutral. And why not? You've got professional spacemen who are going to work, they get into trouble, and they get eaten. Their interpersonal dynamics aren't a big factor, neither is who they are deep down... it is a movie about people responding to stress. And cultural factors aside, men and women don't actually respond to stress that differently.
Then they cast Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, and an interesting thing happen... there were (at least) two additions to the script, both of which ended up being cut. The first was a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas--I'm not sure if they ever even shot. The second was a bit of dialog between Ripley and Lambert (the other female character in a crew of seven)... where they ask each other if either has fucked Ash and how he's kinda weird. I am pretty sure both things were included with the intention of femininizing both characters, and I wonder how conscious they were in cutting it to come back to that original, gender-neutral script.
I don't want to get too much further into analysis of Ellen Ripley, though... there was a definite lack of other female characters in Aliens, and no other female characters in Alien 3. I admit, though--Vasquez was a great female character, and she breaks the Bechdel Test. No one is running out to give James Cameron any PHL awards of any kind, as far as I know, bet it for environmentalism in Avatar, pacifism in Abyss, nuclear proliferation in Terminator, feminism in Aliens (exception of me), or breaking the Nipples-in-a-PG-13-Movie Barrier.
But he might be due a couple.
Honestly, I would have preferred it if Vasquez had been male and they'd played up his sexual relationship with Drake even more. I don't really have any idea how the modern military works, or to what extent existing sexual tension is a problem, with same-sex soldiers serving together (or opposite-sex soldiers), carrying on overt or covert relationships. Though I suppose I could look it up if I wanted to (the Prime Minister of Britain said exactly that--"if the Americans are worried about repealing DADT, just look at us, we did it ten years ago"). The truth is, I look at the ancient Greeks and quickly decide that cocksuckers should be perfectly capable of slaughtering brown people in between White Parties. That, and I want more movies that make Dudes uncomfortable in the theater.
I read something fun tonight, talking about the role of women characters in movies and television. The Bechdel Test is a handy way to evaluate the gender-suck of a movie, composed of three parts:
1) there are at least two named female characters, who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man.
It is ironic... reflecting this test against 30 Rock, which as been incorrectly described as the most liberal show on television. Yes, the main character is a successful career woman. At the same time, her knuckle-dragging conservative boss is always right, she constantly fails to balance her career against aspirations for family and children, and whenever she tries to make her workplace more healthy or less racist/sexist, she crumbles and decides she still needs the crutches of her feminine status and professional entitlement.
How does the show add up with the Bechdel Test? There is only one character on the show (as a regular) besides Liz Lemon who is female, and their conversations are usually about managing Jenna's crippling psychological issues or... men. I think there is an argument to be made that all this conservative victory and content on the show is presented effectively as satire, but still... there is a remarkable conformity along these lines.
Another fun fact about the 30 Rock: Rachel Dratch was originally cast as the star of the Girlie Show (supplanted by Tracy Jordan and feeling sucky and vulnerable). NBC balked, deciding that they needed a hotter female lead, so Rachel Dratch dropped to a series of cameos in season one, and disappeared after that. The new Jenna was awkward in early episodes, but the soon hit their stride with her playing a two-dimensional hot chick obsessed with her age, appearance, and exerting her own sexuality as a weapon.
The blog post where I found is a female screenwriter talking about all of the direction she received as a film student, from teachers telling her that the only way to get movies made was to write scripts that bring white males to the forefront and drop females into virtual-prop supporting roles. She has a lot to say about how the entire thing is framed as what "audiences want," while characters like Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner are habitually rejected as one-off flukes. Though, interestingly, those characters fail the test too--that even though they are bad ass female characters, they don't have any female characters around them to interact with, essentially a definition of "token minority."
I'm reminded of a favorite scene from Farscape, a show I've always kind of thought as scifi's ultimate chick show. There is a new character, Jool, on the show, learning the ropes, figuring out how to use a pulse rifle and stuff. Chiana is going to leave her guarding the shuttle on the diseased spaceship infested with cannibal hippies, and they have a conversation about violence. Chiana punches Jool in the nose, Jool cries for a moment, and then punches Chiana back. Chiana says, "See? Violence. You'll get the hang of it."
Do you really believe in the argument put forward by all those coked out white guys to excuse so thoroughly dismissing female characters from normalized roles on the screen, that audiences just aren't interested in it? I simply don't... Farscape had a massive fanbase, and the show ran out of money because its audience growth couldn't keep up with the growth of the show's budget. Why didn't they keep the budget more conservative and keep the show on the air? Why is there a formulaic chick flick released once a month for peanuts, but so few dramas or gritty gangster indie flicks based around female characters?
Or any other damn thing... my point isn't even about women in film. It is about how consistently frustrated so many people I know are by Hollywood. The system just isn't set up to give people what they want.
I got caught up in the last season of Lost. And... honestly, I feel insulted by this last episode. So many dramatic reveals, none of which hadn't been anticipated. Spoilers:
Claire's "special friend" is the smoke monster. Duh. Because the smoke monster has been impersonating dead people, and Claire walked into the jungle with her dead father.
Claire doesn't know what happened to her baby, and thinks the Others have him. Didn't see it coming, and yet, duh. The smoke monster is a liar.
Jacob has been watching Jack, and the rest of the Losties and many others, since childhood. Duh. He's been interacting with them, delivering nudges, since donkey's years, suggesting omniscience (if not omnipotence). Surprise: Jacob uses a lighthouse mirror as a sort of scrying pool--virgin entrails are a lot more fun.
Jacob doesn't think the people in the Temple are safe from the smoke monster. Duh. We already saw the smoke monster kill a guy protected by magic dust; plus, smokey's got a posse (Claire, now Sawyer, maybe others).
More people from the Island took day jobs in the parallel reality. Duh. The Ben reveal was a bit of a surprise, and yet--the Island mysteriously sunk, and apparently there were survivors.
Parallel Jack is a dick. Duh. Regular Jack is a dick.
But, apparently, last night's episode seems to have blown some minds. Are you glad you aren't watching this? You're fortunately, and a better man than me.
One last thing... I've been pissy about this show because it always seemed to be that the end would be kinda capricious and basically out of left field. At least the evidence is mounting that the conclusion is going to be telegraphed like the Staypuft Marshmellow Man trying to land a right hook on Godzilla.
My money: Hurley gets a throne, Jack and Sawyer sacrifice themselves in a joint act of nobility, smokey dies (or gets his wish in an ironic sort of way), and Kate and some mess of other (very few) survivors get to go home, having learned a valuable lesson. What the Island is will be left just enough of a mystery that no one gets to have been right.
Godzilla toys with Staypuft for a while, then lights him up with atomic fire. It is a five minute fight that might last ten if Godzilla is hung over and Staypuft gets an assist from Zuul.
Daria is finally coming to DVD. I know you've all been waiting with baited breath.
Honestly, I find myself surprised at not giving even a tiny little shit about this. It was a fun show, back in the day, but I failed to roll over any of those feelings as relevant to who I am now.
Top YouTube results for "Daria" include the following:
[first clip deleted for being intolerably dumb]
Wow, underwhelming.
Side thought: Despite my relative maturity level, this show still presents cartoons I'd like to bone.
I had a friend in high school who was a massive fan of Daria. And also a retard*.
Seriously, a teacher once tried to get me to help him with his vocab worksheet so she could go do something else (I said no). And once I dumbfounded him by explaining that the Matrix isn't profound because I can bend a spoon with my finger, and that I can move objects with my mind by way of my hand. "That isn't how it works!" "No, look, it is. Three-dee House of Beef. Wha-woo, wha-woo." Seriously. No, and he was also retarded*, like he drooled and was in special ed and shit. And was obsessed with a movie I never caught the name of where Buddy Holly fought zombies with a katana (which, honestly, sounded cool).
Maybe that killed Daria for me.
Or maybe it was always an example of MTV's steady decline from horse-puckey into bullshit, excused at the time as the inevitable consequence of their fluke successes, of which Liquid Television, Aeon Flux, and Beavis and Butthead are unfortunately represented as precedents.
Sidebar: if They made an animation anthology, as a feature movie like Heavy Metal, every year or every other year (like James Bond!), I'd be a slave to that. And what a wonderful forum for all that good shit like what came from Liquid Television... and Heavy Metal... and to turn all that Heavy Metal and 2000AD content into cartoons. Seriously, guy... that's a movie ticket and a full-price DVD purchase from me and a half-million other dweebs, guaranteed into perpetuity.
I don't know... maybe Daria was okay. Hmm. Things to think about.
*The proprietors of Restless Natives will give Sarah Palin a quarter for every utterance of "retard" under their byline the moment she sucks a black cock.
But Democrats seem to be setting their sights a little lower this time around.
One woman at the Bennet fundraiser held a sign with the number '51' on it -- as if to say, the party that had a 60-vote lock on the Senate several weeks ago, will now feel fortunate to hold onto a bare majority.
--Scott Horsley, NPR Douchebag
First, Bennet is a Democratic incumbent in the US Senate. What NPR Douchebag seems to think is a protestor (I guess?) is a person holding up a sign that points out that Democrats control the Senate with 51-votes. "A bare majority." As in, a majority, like the US Constitution says is what you need to get shit passed in the US Senate. As in, the major criticism of Democrats and their failure to pass anything coming from the Left and the Democratic base.
But, no. NPR guys instead sees a sign that--somewhat obscurely--substantiates the "Obama losing Colorado" narrative in his story. Here's another fun trick these guys use:
As a presidential candidate, Obama won Colorado by 9 points. But his approval rating in the state now is lower than his national average.
"Lower than his national average"? Why not tell us his approval rating? Because it is still a net positive nationally, and presumably is still a net positive in Colorado. Meanwhile, contrasting this non-statistic with a 9-point lead sounds like Obama is in deep trouble. Lazy reporting or a reporter with an agenda--take your pick.
What's funny, though, is the reaction of the blogger who brought this to my attention:
All I know is I ended up on the bathroom floor with half the shower curtain wrapped around me, a bar of soap embedded in the ceiling, and a cat looking down at me with an expression that read, "You just had to listen to NPR. When will you learn?"
I recently spent ten hours a week in my car commuting to work (daily for a year), so I drank my fill of NPR. It is shit. Shallow reporting. Trite conclusions that aren't substantiated by the facts. And very, very self-satisfied. I would literally find myself screaming at the radio on at least a monthly basis, and this was with increasingly rare listening.
The best example is a story they were doing on an upcoming Census in Lebanon, and how because the Constitution of that country guarantees specific executive offices and legislative majorities based on sectarian demographics (the largest group--Maronite Christians--always get to be president, for example), this could result in the collapse of the only Democracy where Christians and Muslims share power in the Middle East. Things they did not mention:
The French wrote this Constitution.
They wrote the constitution after drawing a border for Lebanon (which, historically, should have been a part of Palestine or, more properly, Syria) after the original Census in the 1930s, guaranteeing a proportion of 11 Christians for every 10 Muslims.
Political power was locked in, with no new Census either required by the Constitution or conducted since then.
Since Lebanese independence in the 1940s, birth rates and immigration (not including Palestinian refugees, who have never been allowed to join Lebanon) have resulted in vastly more Muslims than Christians in modern Lebanon.
When this fact, combined with increasing demands for a new Census or a new power-sharing agreement, reached a crescendo in the 1970s, an ultra-nationalist Maronite coalition fired the opening shots in a Civil War which lasted from 1975 to 1990.
The current peace exists only because the central government, which continues to be lead by a Maronite president but with a power-sharing legislature, has been effectively stripped of all power and functions. Lebanon is now run by regional citizen groups.
Like Hezzbollah, who the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. After the recent Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon, Hezzbollah was far more effective as a first responder and in the subsequent reconstruction than the Lebanese government.
It isn't a Democracy if the Maronites always get to pick the president, no matter what the outcome of the election, or if the representation of the legislature is locked according to sectarian demographics that haven't been accurate for fifty years.
There basically isn't a single thing about the story I heard that has the slightest bit of baring on what is going on in Lebanon (the government doesn't govern--no one cares), what has happened in Lebanon (power sharing???), or in any way informs the listener.
I was just happy to find out I'm not the only one who screams at the radio when NPR does shit that is stupid. And fucking smug. God damnit, I would love to wipe that horrible little smirk of their face.
On the other hand, KPFA is awesome, which frees me from the shackles of NPR for drive time news, world music, cultural and granola shit on the radio. They stream online and lots of their shows are available via podcast. Their day-in-news summaries are pretty straight-news (no agenda), but bullshit free, which is nice. Their investigative reporting and book talks and stuff depress me, so I take it in small doses; all of it is good. Their Saturday morning Gospel show, from 6-9am, is superb.
NPR is like the George Lucas of journalism, "I made Star Wars, love me." You haven't made a single contribution to human society since 1977, you worthless hack, and your rare successful projects in the interim are flukes that have been entirely owed to other people, none of whom have received their due credit. (Case in point: Lawrence Kasdan, you assclown, for his scripts on Empire, Return of the Jedi, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, not a single one of which you wrote, directed, or produced.) Take a seat in the back, turn creative control over to better men, and pray we let you off the hook for the prequels and special editions, you cankerous rat-semen pustule.
Looks like we're getting a new Moby Dick movie starring Danny Glover as the fun loving Captain Ahab, and Moby Dick will be played by a white DRAGON. Yeah, a fucking dragon. Even if this turns out to be total trash, I'm gonna love it. I have always loved the book and the old Gregory Peck movie, and to move it to a fantasy setting is really exciting. Watching the video it would seem that they aren't straying to far from the source as far as mood and characters. I'm sure there are some people that will bitch to no end about the choice to make Moby Dick a dragon, but that seems like a pretty easy jump and one that doesn't have to effect the story, really, at all. Cross your fingers this in hopes that this doesn't suck.
But that is very clearly the monster from Blink, so that's a positive.
I've spent some time here talking about how they seem to be pushing The Doctor into something ... different. The way they put it in Waters of Mars, the penultimate episode of the fifth not-a-season, was "Time Lord Victorious" as opposed to "Time Lord Survivor." It is darker and more powerful... which, of course, always makes me happy.
Basically: the rules exist because bad shit happens when you break them (intentionally or not). But you can control the damage by breaking other rules. If you really can see the whole of creation, and especially if you are the solitary actor on your level of power and awareness, you can use the power of time like a god. Remember Rose at the end of season one? "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself." The Doctor seems to be heading in that direction.
I really like it. And I have no way of telling from that trailer or anything else I've seen or heard, but I hope he continues to move in that direction.
Over on Gizmodo there seems to be a lot of anti-Google sentiment as of late. I know Buzz was a buzz kill, and was riddled bad ideas, like assuming that everyone in my address book is someone I want to know how I'm doing. Bad choices, no doubt, but are they bad enough to make people jump ship?
One post at Gizmodo even goes as far as to offer up alternatives to commonly used Google services, though after reading it I think a lot of it is bullshit. I have use many of the services mentioned and found that they couldn't live up to things as simple and effective as Gmail. BUT, as Google adds more services it's becoming harder to opt out of them, because of a classic Microsoft trick, you know the one, embedding Internet Explorer into Windows. Well, Google is playing the same game, Buzz is part of Gmail, and even though I "shut it off", Buzz is still a regular visitor when I log into Reader and Gmail.
I guess the question I have is, at what point do/should we jump the Google ship?
I know I have been considering switching to Wordpress to host my blog, though, I have NEVER liked Blogger, so that opinion is bias. But it does offer a lot of nifty features that I would like to have in Blogger, and I always assumed that they were missing because of the streamline Google approach. Though as time has passed that streamline Google approach seems more and more like laziness or lack of interest.
The two hardest services for me to leave would be Gmail and Reader, but if Buzz continues to make choices for me and share my info with everybody in my address book I don't see much of a choice but to leave.
So that's all me, my bitching, but I'm not alone in this distrust of Google. Here, a blogger, Harriet Jacobs, posts on Gizmodo a story about Buzz that is a pretty scary proposition.
Here is what she had to say:
"I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother. There's a BIG drop-off between them and my other "most frequent" contacts. You know who my third most frequent contact is. My abusive ex-husband.
Which is why it's SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to my Reader, including all the comments I've made on Reader items, usually shared with my boyfriend, who I had NO REASON to hide my current location or workplace from, and never did.
My other most frequent contacts? Other friends of Flint's.
Oh, also, people who email my ANONYMOUS blog account, which gets forwarded to my personal account. They are frequent contacts as well. Most of them, they are nice people. Some of them are probably nice but a little unbalanced and scary. A minority of them - but the minority that emails me the most, thus becoming FREQUENT - are psychotic men who think I deserve to be raped because I keep a blog about how I do not deserve to be raped, and this apparently causes the Hulk rage.
I can't block these people, because I never made a Google profile or Buzz profile, due to privacy concerns (apparently and resoundingly founded!). Which doesn't matter anyway, because every time I do block them, they are following me again in an hour. I'm hoping that they, like me, do not realize and are not intentionally following me, but that's the optimistic half of the glass. My pessimistic half is of the abyss, and it is staring back at you with a redolent stink-eye.
Oh, yes, I suppose I could opt out of Buzz - which I did when it was introduced, though that apparently has no effect on whether or not I am now using Buzz - but as soon as I did that, all sorts of new people were following me on my Reader! People I couldn't block, because I am not on Buzz!
Fuck you, Google. My privacy concerns are not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety, and I will now have to spend the next few days maintaining that safety by continually knocking down followers as they pop up. A few days is how long I expect it will take before you either knock this shit off, or I delete every Google account I have ever had and use Bing out of fucking spite.
Fuck you, Google. You have destroyed over ten years of my goodwill and adoration, just so you could try and out-MySpace MySpace."
Okay, she's pissed, I get it, but using Bing under any circumstances is a bad idea.
And then there's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." sentiment from CNBC.
And as much as that idea of using judgment and not doing bad things is true, that doesn't change the fact that some people NEED privacy, like Harriet and her abusive ex-husband. How about a gay person that needs to talk about it but isn't ready to tell everyone? What about kids' Gamils, sure their parents need access, but by that same token they need to be able to be blocked from crazy fuckers. I could go on for awhile asking these questions, but that's not the point of this. The point is to what end? When do we jump ship and find something a little more private? Or when do we give up privacy all together for the sake the internet?
One more little note and I'm done, this came from the comments to Harriet's post on Gizmodo:
" The issue I find is that my child got on Buzz. Now I can read the chats that he had with his friends. He is just 10 years old. I found out his private thoughts that he had only shared with his friends. Then I realized I can read and learn about what his friends are talking about or thinking about. Then I realized, if I were a sick person, I could follow in public or in hiding other children. If one of the other parent’s happened to be a sick individual, my son could be stalked too. It is a matter of time before my daughter gets on. One might say parents need to supervise or limit the children’s use of internet. I had to give my son a talk about privacy today and showed him what I saw. This is not about adults making their own decisions. It is about children who don’t know what they are doing being protected as well. I bet kids don’t read contracts or fine print. Most adults don’t. Automating is fine to a certain point, but exposing what was once a private conversation with a few of your friends is wrong… and I feel it is not right that I can read what young boys and girls are doing… and they don’t even know me and they don’t know I am able to read or watch them anytime I wish." - bryn.higgins
I had hopes of doing a second Warhammer Weekly round-up, but then I remembered GW only really announces new things once a month, so I have nothing to post in regards to that.
In other news Heavy Rain comes out this week and I picked up a Indigo Prophecy, which was Quantic Dream's first run at a more story based game, needless to say when your competition is Halo 2 you're not going to do well, and IP didn't do well at all but the few people I know that did play it loved it, So I am going to give it a shot before I drown myself in Heavy Rain. I will report back upon completion of IP.
Entertainment as a whole seems to be a little slow lately, bummer. On the bright side it's given me plenty of time to do other stupid things.
