Here's the surprise: it's easy to be vegan if a) you already don't eat milk or fish, b) you know how to cook and/or you get your lunches from work, and c) you are generally not subject to strong bouts of craving and binging. All of these are true for me.
If I had thought that being vegan meant eating raw lettuce, bare cooked grains and tofu, that's just not the case. True, I made a stir fried tofu, broccoli, and asparagus, but I have also eaten vegetarian sushi, lentil pie, humus and/or falafel meals, vegetarian patties, cholent, tehina and bread, and PB&J, as well as vegan pizza, apple pie, blueberry and banana soy smoothies, roasted potatoes and antipasti, and countless other delicious foods. Yes, sometimes when I smell sizzling meat I hanker for it a bit, but really not much, especially since I'm only doing this for a month. If anything, the hardest problem in my particular circumstance is that I'm not driven by any of the major reasons I've heard that people become vegan.
I don't have a problem killing animals for food; heck, we kill animals by the millions just plowing a field to grow grain, not to mention how many more we kill to harvest and pack it. I don't like the way we raise animals today, but for that I prefer to lobby for better regulations in the animal industry.
As for the environment, I think the animal industry could use better regulation there, too, but I think the damage done by the animal industry is dwarfed by the damage done by other industries. And it employs a lot of people.
As for health: animals are no more packed with hormones and chemicals than the fruits or vegetables we eat. And, since I never believe anything a label, corporation, or government tells me, I put no faith in the concepts of organic, free-range, environmentally friendly, or any other claims by any industry. I took a blood test on the first day of February: I discovered that my cholesterol, lipids, and glucose are high, and my vitamin D and B-12 are low. Being vegan isn't going to solve these issues. I need to take vegan-friendly supplements for omega-3, D, and B-12, and a vegan diet isn't necessarily any less fatty than a meat diet. I admit that there is a correlation between being a vegan and eating healthier, because vegans are the kind of people who are aware of and concerned with what they eat.
Positive and negative side-effects after two weeks? I admit that I feel a bit - just a bit - less tired in the morning. On the other hand, I now eat a higher quantity of food, so I feel as bloated as I felt before the diet started. Otherwise nothing; perhaps two weeks isn't enough time to tell.
Another surprise is the feeling of deja vu: being vegan in Israel is like being kosher in the US. In the US, kosher people only go to specific restaurants, they have to excuse themselves from the meals that other people eat or the dishes they serve, and they fastidiously check labels in the supermarket. Since coming to Israel, I go to nearly any restaurant (in the Jerusalem are, anyway), can eat at almost any friend's house, and can buy any product I want in the supermarket. Being vegan is exactly like being kosher was in the US.
It may be that I have avoided a heart attack because I decided to do a blood test because I decided to be a vegan for a month, and now I am addressing my high cholesterol and low vitamin D; but, if I avoid the heart attack, we'll never know.
I went to a game shabbaton this weekend Read about what I played here.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Far From the Madding Cow: Starting a One Month Vegan Challenge
I've decided to be vegan for the month of February. "Why?" you ask. That was clever of you to ask me just as I was writing this blog post. Good timing!
Well, I'll tell you:
I ran these reasons by a vegan friend - or ex-friend, I should say - and after yelling at me for half an hour, she put the knife down and told me I should feel great. Actually, she said I should feel pleasure. Actually, she said that I should feel a specific kind of pleasure that I self-administer. Or something like that. She managed to say it using only three words.
Veganism might be healthier in some regards, like for saturated fats. I just have to be careful about calcium, vitamin D, iron, vitamin B12, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. And my father had anemia. I don't have to worry about anemia as an omnivore; as a vegan, I may have to take some supplements. Anyway, it's only for 30 days, and I'm aware of the various foodstuffs that I should take to minimize any problems in these areas.
My biggest concern is the ninja cows that may be out to get me because of that genocide joke. I may have attracted the attention of the bovine cow-bal. They hunt down vegans in dark alleys and attack them with fresh fruit. One of my friends told me that that would be more funny than frightening, but I'm not a-moo-sed.
Well, I'll tell you:
- I hate domesticated animals. If the entire world became vegan for any length of time, all domesticated animal species would go extinct. Think about it: farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't make money off of them; and these animals are not going to wander off and survive in the wild. As one vegan site puts it, every vegan is responsible for consuming 100 less animals every year, which means that each vegan denies 100 animals the chance to be born every year. I want to do my part for barnyard genocide.
- To be self-righteous. When I was a child living in America, I use to say, around Christmas time, "Who needs fancy presents and lights and holiday joy? I'm Jewish, so there! I'll just sit here next to this little candle and watch The Charlie Brown Christmas Special on TV. Pass me a latke." Ah, I miss that self-righteous feeling! I don't get to have that in Israel being around all of these Jews. Being vegan should do the trick.
- In a similar vein, I actively look for opportunities to be masochistic. I expect to be told I'm being stupid, that what I'm doing makes isn't natural, and that I'll ruin my health. And "Wouldn't I like to eat this? Doesn't it smell great? Come on, one hamburger won't kill you." And how I can do what I want, but the normal people will be over here enjoying real food. Because I don't get enough of that simply keeping kosher in Israel.
- Being vegan, as everyone knows, totally grants one superpowers and stuff.
- Because I want to meet more women, and they live on Vega. Or maybe Venus. Well, chicks dig guys who have, like, conviction? and are, like, compassionate, or whatever.
- February is only 28 days, right? Because if it were even one day more, I don't think I could do it. Thank god for February being only 28 days!
I ran these reasons by a vegan friend - or ex-friend, I should say - and after yelling at me for half an hour, she put the knife down and told me I should feel great. Actually, she said I should feel pleasure. Actually, she said that I should feel a specific kind of pleasure that I self-administer. Or something like that. She managed to say it using only three words.
Veganism might be healthier in some regards, like for saturated fats. I just have to be careful about calcium, vitamin D, iron, vitamin B12, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. And my father had anemia. I don't have to worry about anemia as an omnivore; as a vegan, I may have to take some supplements. Anyway, it's only for 30 days, and I'm aware of the various foodstuffs that I should take to minimize any problems in these areas.
My biggest concern is the ninja cows that may be out to get me because of that genocide joke. I may have attracted the attention of the bovine cow-bal. They hunt down vegans in dark alleys and attack them with fresh fruit. One of my friends told me that that would be more funny than frightening, but I'm not a-moo-sed.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Moriarty or Mutants: I Review the Marvel and DC TV Show Pilots, plus Shannara, Humans, and Six Movies
TV
But first, more about Supergirl - In my initial review, I said that the dialog was horrible, the action sequences senseless, and the premise that having a girl superhero movie be more about relationships than kicking ass was insulting to women. I wasn't going to watch any more, but then I did. It continues to intrigue me, a little, despite what it still does wrong. Actually it really only does a few things right.
Melissa Benoit is cute and clumsy in the right ways as Supergirl; she acts well, instead of wooden and/or eccentric like the rest of the cast. Laura Benenti and Peter Facinelli play characters who may or may not be bad guys, which is nice. These two make the show rise above the usual Moriarty or Mutants that is the staple of comic book derived TV shows. Supergirl is some of both, although it's mostly Mutants.
In this show, unlike shows with male protagonists, the superhero requires a team of others to help her, can't manage her abilities without training, must learn that powers are not the solution to everything, and has to wear a short skirt. Instead of being bothered by these points, my reaction is: well done. The other shows should really be more like this one (I'm not talking about the short skirt, although I don't really mind it, since her legs are not the central shot when she is on screen). Supergirl is more vulnerable and not always able to come up with a solution, which makes it more than just a bunch of punching and kicking, snarling villains, and threats and intrigue all managed by a lone hero karate chopper who never gets hurt.
Short skirt aside, I enjoy women protagonists more than male ones, except when they are invulnerable karate choppers (I'm looking at you Black Widow).
Other Marvel and D.C. Shows ...
Since I realize that pilot episodes are usually the worst, I really need to see more episodes of the rest of these shows to make proper judgements. But here they are, anyway. These are listed in the order that I viewed them.
Daredevil - Not entirely bad, but also not too good. You know the basic story: he's blind, he's a lawyer, he whacks people with a stick. A Moriarty. None of the characters were interesting. Brooding and dreary.
The Flash - A Mutants show that predates Supergirl and is a bit similar, with a male protagonist who runs really fast after a weird explosion but who needs a team to help him learn his powers. Many others were also caught in the explosion. I think the problem here is that I didn't find any of the characters appealing. It's a knock off, much smaller version of X-Men. Again, none of the characters were interesting. In the last scene of the pilot, it has the tired cliche of the supposed friend who turns out to be something else by turning his head and looking malevolently at the camera. Boring.
Agent Carter - As I have a preference for female protagonists who have time to do more than kick things, I liked this one more than most. It's the continuing story of Agent Carter from Captain America and her occasional run-ins with Papa Stark and other riff-raff. I nearly considered watching additional episodes, but I was thoroughly disgusted when, in the last scene of the pilot, it had the tired cliche of the supposed friend who turns out to be something else by turning his head and looking malevolently at the camera. Please stop presenting people whose eyes glow red when no one is looking, or who secretly keep tabs on the main character by pretending to be their friend. It's bad writing and bad filming. I HATE these silly "cliffhangers" of pilot episodes; it's a totally unnecessary trope.
The acting was good but the plot was forgettable, as Marvel plots are. Only Carter has any character, although not much; on the other hand, there is hope that some of the other characters may become more interesting, given the chance. But I will probably not watch another episode unless I am bored.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - A totally forgettable Mutants show, going by the pilot. It has a group of misfit powers. My friend says that the show became something else entirely after the fifth episode, and it's one of his favorites. He says I should watch more.
Legend of Tomorrow - Very clunky pilot episode, with too many introductions and cliche characters and intrigue - which is to be expected when you introduce ten main superpower characters in 45 minutes. Good production values for the most part, except for when it wasn't (such as the opening scene). Some of the characters could become interesting, like the ones that have lived and died for 4000 years, but it's more likely that we're never going to really explore their psychology, like how they deal with living a long time while their friends die. Instead I expect to just see the occasional run-in with a past familiar face. It's a big fat Moriarty.
Unnhhhhh ..... maybe I'll watch a second episode.
Jessica Jones - Not bad, again because it's not all about butt kicking; and its no accident that this is because the protagonist is female. However, it suffers from a severe Moriarty problem. Jessica is a private eye who also happens to be a retired power, but whose path once crossed, and will now cross again, a guy who controls people's minds in nasty ways. Krysten Ritter is a fine actress, but the characters had shallow development (in the pilot, at least). Again, I may watch another episode if I am truly bored.
Arrow - I finally watched the original D.C. show and I see what the fuss is about. This show is neither Moriarty nor Mutants; Arrow's hit list of targets is a little like Mutants, but the list isn't endless and they don't have mutant powers. The story is original - well, actually, it's basically a take on Bat-Man. He returns from a shipwreck where his father died and so did the girl he was banging (his girlfriend's sister). His relationships, such as to his ex girlfriend and best friend, are well done. Some of it didn't make any sense - how did he learn all that technology when he was out of commission for so many years (and you know that computers don't work like that, right?) and it's unbelievable that he can be shot at at point blank range by dozens of machine guns and never hit by a bullet - but I gave it a pass because of the interesting plot. I will probably watch more episodes.
iZombie - This is another well done story, and rather unique. Basically, zombies exist but are not well known; being a zombie is something you can hide from your friends and family, so long as you get to work in a morgue and eat brains. And it gives you ex-machina crime-solving abilities. That means that, in future episodes, Ms brain-eater is going to get just the right flashes at just the right times, which is awfully convenient. And oh yeah: zombie may be a curable illness. I gross out easily, so I didn't like the gory parts, but the "fades from comic panel to real life action sequences" are fun and stylish. If I was into crime-dramas at all, I might watch more of this, but I'm not.
Gotham - A solid, well-acted police/detective serial. Follows the story of James Gordon's early days on the police and the boy Bruce Wayne, sprinkling in early looks at half a dozen future criminals in the meantime. Lots of mob and crooked policemen. It's Mutants, with some Moriarty thrown in. If I liked crime/detective shows with lots of violence, I would probably watch more episodes, but I don't.
Other Shows ...
The Shannara Chronicles - This is a PG fantasy series, loosely based on the Elfstones of Shannara (the second book in the series). The acting is wooden or eccentric. The plot turns a good and powerful story into a series of cute meets and irrelevant action sequences. A magic tree that holds back hordes of demons is dying; one elf has to take a seed and bathe it in some mountain fire to make a new tree. I stuck around for the first three episodes, but I got bored by the plot distractions, like arranged marriages, deaf leaders, and people running away from responsibility. These aren't inherently bad ideas, but they are done without grace. The scenes engender no empathy, nor do they create any emotional connection to the characters. The funny scenes aren't funny. The tense scenes aren't tense.
Manu Bennett as Allanon is perhaps the best thing going for the show. Possibly Ivana Baquero's or Poppy Drayto's elf women characters will become something interesting eventually. Austin Butler's Wil Ohmsford is a complete blank, so I have no hope for his character becoming anything at all.
Humans - A foreboding take on human-looking androids, as depicted by the movies A.I. and Ex Machina. Here you buy them as companions or servants, but they are obviously going to be sexually and physically abused. An interesting question would be whether this can exacerbate, or help sublimate, abusive behavior against real people, but I don't know if the series gets (got) into that question.
Instead, the story is about displacement and other kinds of social dynamics, and (having read the series synopsis) eventually the same issue explored by movies like Ex Machina and Blade Runner: whether or not androids can really be sentient, and thus granted equal rights like humans.
It's not bad, but it also didn't quite grab me. I think the human characters were just not that interesting in the pilot. It might get better after the pilot, when the characters become more familiar. I might try a few more episodes.
Movies
Suffragette - This movie is not, unfortunately, the story of the Suffragette movement. Instead, it is a series of scenes depicting the suffering undergone by some of the suffragettes. To have been the story of the movement, it would have had to have shown how the suffragettes' activities gradually came to win over the hearts and minds of the people. None of that is shown.
The movie is just a repetition of women plotting, protesting, or breaking windows, followed by the women being ignored, beaten, arrested, abused, or otherwise mistreated. That's it. Details of the unfair situation of, and the abuse and sacrifices made by, the main character, played by Carey Mulligan, are shown. I found it hard to tell the other women apart, since they had no differences in character, other than being a bit louder or weaker. The one man shown to be slightly supportive - a husband - is given almost no role and no voice. And then someone dies and the movie ends. Great cinematography, but kind of a waste for such an important topic.
Steve Jobs - Three half-hour scenes in the life of Steve Jobs, all right before product launches. For what it is, it's okay. Jobs is shown as a prick, as usual. I don't know that it adds anything to what we know about Jobs from what we already know from the previous movies. We learn a bit more about product launches, and a bit more about what it was like to be Jobs' daughter.
My main problem here was that Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Jobs, so it was hard to believe him in the role. Another problem was Jeff Daniels as John Scully; Daniels acts exactly like his character from Sorkins' The Newsroom, and the pacing and camera shots, and even some of the dialog, is lifted straight out of Sorkins' TV shows, so the movie seemed like another episode of The Newsroom. Don't talk to me like I'm other people!
The Peanuts Movie - An aberration upon humanity. I can't step away from the fact that I've seen all of the original Peanuts movies and many of the shows, and read the comics; perhaps I would see this a bit differently as a newcomer. I recognized many of the one-liners, characters, and even short set-up scenes from previous Peanuts media, but the majority of the movie was slapstick: characters getting smashed or hit, falling down, bonked on the head, jumping into a bush, screaming, or otherwise, in fast sequence after sequence. The original material barely surfaces for a few seconds before another pratfall or smack in the face. Maybe a little kid who enjoys seeing people get hit or hurt will enjoy the movie. Otherwise, it is blasphemous. There is a reason that many cartoonists don't want other people continuing their work after they're dead.
The Little Prince - An odd, but not too odd, animated movie that tells the story of The Little Prince in the first half of the movie, while simultaneously telling the story of a girl and her mother who move into a new house. The mother has the girl's entire future planned out to a ridiculous degree; the girl makes friends with her neighbor, who turns out to be the aviator of the eponymous story. The second half of the movie sees the old man going to the hospital and the girl's search for The Little Prince who is now an adult and has forgotten all of the lessons of the book.
It doesn't take a genius to know what will happen next, but kids will enjoy it, and hopefully their interest in reading the book will be aroused. Watchable as an adult.
Big Eyes - A nifty movie about Margaret and Walter Keane (Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz). In the early 1960s, Walter painted many kitchy paintings featuring kids who had big eyes. These became very popular, and Walter hobnobbed with the media, celebrities, and the art world until Margaret suddenly left him, and shortly afterwards claimed to have been the actual artist. This was demonstrated as undeniably true in a famous courtroom battle, although Walter continued to claim to be the real artist until his death. It's a movie about a woman who supports a Big Lie by her husband; I would think it would be hard to relate to by today's women. None of the women I know could or would do such a thing for so long, but maybe there are still many who would. I felt that the moment of her first willingness to go along with the lie wasn't presented sufficiently, but that may be simply because I am a man. Anyway, the rest of the movie is interesting, moves well, is acted, scripted, and directed well, and is worth watching on a small screen.
Joy - A small story starring Jennifer Lawrence as the real-life Joy Mangano, a woman from a dysfunctional, poor extended family of leeches who invented the miracle mop and marketed it on television. It's pretty grim for most of its running, even though you know it has to turn out well somehow, eventually. J-Law is fine, as usual, and the rest of the cast and directing is, too. Something is missing from the story, however. Either they told the wrong parts of the story, or the story isn't that interesting. It tries to make up for this by presenting all the weird characters that surrounded Joy, but the movie spends too much time on those characters, who are not interesting stories. It's ok for watching on an airplane ride, but I wouldn't seek it out.
But first, more about Supergirl - In my initial review, I said that the dialog was horrible, the action sequences senseless, and the premise that having a girl superhero movie be more about relationships than kicking ass was insulting to women. I wasn't going to watch any more, but then I did. It continues to intrigue me, a little, despite what it still does wrong. Actually it really only does a few things right.
Melissa Benoit is cute and clumsy in the right ways as Supergirl; she acts well, instead of wooden and/or eccentric like the rest of the cast. Laura Benenti and Peter Facinelli play characters who may or may not be bad guys, which is nice. These two make the show rise above the usual Moriarty or Mutants that is the staple of comic book derived TV shows. Supergirl is some of both, although it's mostly Mutants.
- A Moriarty show: One bad guy of exceptional and unbelievable intelligence and power always survives, attacks or taunts the hero, performs a dastardly deed in every episode (often with unexplained motives), gets tracked down, confronted, and then narrowly escapes in every episode.
- A Mutants show: In every episode, the hero has to fight yet another villain who has some mutated power - typically resulting from the same source that gave the hero his or her power. The hero is initially overpowered, but rallies to put away or kill the mutant by the end of the episode. There is always another mutant. It is never explained why all these mutants hang out in the proximity of the hero, instead of going literally anywhere else in the world/universe to do their mean things, nor why they attack one or two at a time.
Some shows like to use both of these.
In this show, unlike shows with male protagonists, the superhero requires a team of others to help her, can't manage her abilities without training, must learn that powers are not the solution to everything, and has to wear a short skirt. Instead of being bothered by these points, my reaction is: well done. The other shows should really be more like this one (I'm not talking about the short skirt, although I don't really mind it, since her legs are not the central shot when she is on screen). Supergirl is more vulnerable and not always able to come up with a solution, which makes it more than just a bunch of punching and kicking, snarling villains, and threats and intrigue all managed by a lone hero karate chopper who never gets hurt.
Short skirt aside, I enjoy women protagonists more than male ones, except when they are invulnerable karate choppers (I'm looking at you Black Widow).
Other Marvel and D.C. Shows ...
Since I realize that pilot episodes are usually the worst, I really need to see more episodes of the rest of these shows to make proper judgements. But here they are, anyway. These are listed in the order that I viewed them.
Daredevil - Not entirely bad, but also not too good. You know the basic story: he's blind, he's a lawyer, he whacks people with a stick. A Moriarty. None of the characters were interesting. Brooding and dreary.
The Flash - A Mutants show that predates Supergirl and is a bit similar, with a male protagonist who runs really fast after a weird explosion but who needs a team to help him learn his powers. Many others were also caught in the explosion. I think the problem here is that I didn't find any of the characters appealing. It's a knock off, much smaller version of X-Men. Again, none of the characters were interesting. In the last scene of the pilot, it has the tired cliche of the supposed friend who turns out to be something else by turning his head and looking malevolently at the camera. Boring.
Agent Carter - As I have a preference for female protagonists who have time to do more than kick things, I liked this one more than most. It's the continuing story of Agent Carter from Captain America and her occasional run-ins with Papa Stark and other riff-raff. I nearly considered watching additional episodes, but I was thoroughly disgusted when, in the last scene of the pilot, it had the tired cliche of the supposed friend who turns out to be something else by turning his head and looking malevolently at the camera. Please stop presenting people whose eyes glow red when no one is looking, or who secretly keep tabs on the main character by pretending to be their friend. It's bad writing and bad filming. I HATE these silly "cliffhangers" of pilot episodes; it's a totally unnecessary trope.
The acting was good but the plot was forgettable, as Marvel plots are. Only Carter has any character, although not much; on the other hand, there is hope that some of the other characters may become more interesting, given the chance. But I will probably not watch another episode unless I am bored.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - A totally forgettable Mutants show, going by the pilot. It has a group of misfit powers. My friend says that the show became something else entirely after the fifth episode, and it's one of his favorites. He says I should watch more.
Legend of Tomorrow - Very clunky pilot episode, with too many introductions and cliche characters and intrigue - which is to be expected when you introduce ten main superpower characters in 45 minutes. Good production values for the most part, except for when it wasn't (such as the opening scene). Some of the characters could become interesting, like the ones that have lived and died for 4000 years, but it's more likely that we're never going to really explore their psychology, like how they deal with living a long time while their friends die. Instead I expect to just see the occasional run-in with a past familiar face. It's a big fat Moriarty.
Unnhhhhh ..... maybe I'll watch a second episode.
Jessica Jones - Not bad, again because it's not all about butt kicking; and its no accident that this is because the protagonist is female. However, it suffers from a severe Moriarty problem. Jessica is a private eye who also happens to be a retired power, but whose path once crossed, and will now cross again, a guy who controls people's minds in nasty ways. Krysten Ritter is a fine actress, but the characters had shallow development (in the pilot, at least). Again, I may watch another episode if I am truly bored.
Arrow - I finally watched the original D.C. show and I see what the fuss is about. This show is neither Moriarty nor Mutants; Arrow's hit list of targets is a little like Mutants, but the list isn't endless and they don't have mutant powers. The story is original - well, actually, it's basically a take on Bat-Man. He returns from a shipwreck where his father died and so did the girl he was banging (his girlfriend's sister). His relationships, such as to his ex girlfriend and best friend, are well done. Some of it didn't make any sense - how did he learn all that technology when he was out of commission for so many years (and you know that computers don't work like that, right?) and it's unbelievable that he can be shot at at point blank range by dozens of machine guns and never hit by a bullet - but I gave it a pass because of the interesting plot. I will probably watch more episodes.
iZombie - This is another well done story, and rather unique. Basically, zombies exist but are not well known; being a zombie is something you can hide from your friends and family, so long as you get to work in a morgue and eat brains. And it gives you ex-machina crime-solving abilities. That means that, in future episodes, Ms brain-eater is going to get just the right flashes at just the right times, which is awfully convenient. And oh yeah: zombie may be a curable illness. I gross out easily, so I didn't like the gory parts, but the "fades from comic panel to real life action sequences" are fun and stylish. If I was into crime-dramas at all, I might watch more of this, but I'm not.
Gotham - A solid, well-acted police/detective serial. Follows the story of James Gordon's early days on the police and the boy Bruce Wayne, sprinkling in early looks at half a dozen future criminals in the meantime. Lots of mob and crooked policemen. It's Mutants, with some Moriarty thrown in. If I liked crime/detective shows with lots of violence, I would probably watch more episodes, but I don't.
Other Shows ...
The Shannara Chronicles - This is a PG fantasy series, loosely based on the Elfstones of Shannara (the second book in the series). The acting is wooden or eccentric. The plot turns a good and powerful story into a series of cute meets and irrelevant action sequences. A magic tree that holds back hordes of demons is dying; one elf has to take a seed and bathe it in some mountain fire to make a new tree. I stuck around for the first three episodes, but I got bored by the plot distractions, like arranged marriages, deaf leaders, and people running away from responsibility. These aren't inherently bad ideas, but they are done without grace. The scenes engender no empathy, nor do they create any emotional connection to the characters. The funny scenes aren't funny. The tense scenes aren't tense.
Manu Bennett as Allanon is perhaps the best thing going for the show. Possibly Ivana Baquero's or Poppy Drayto's elf women characters will become something interesting eventually. Austin Butler's Wil Ohmsford is a complete blank, so I have no hope for his character becoming anything at all.
Humans - A foreboding take on human-looking androids, as depicted by the movies A.I. and Ex Machina. Here you buy them as companions or servants, but they are obviously going to be sexually and physically abused. An interesting question would be whether this can exacerbate, or help sublimate, abusive behavior against real people, but I don't know if the series gets (got) into that question.
Instead, the story is about displacement and other kinds of social dynamics, and (having read the series synopsis) eventually the same issue explored by movies like Ex Machina and Blade Runner: whether or not androids can really be sentient, and thus granted equal rights like humans.
It's not bad, but it also didn't quite grab me. I think the human characters were just not that interesting in the pilot. It might get better after the pilot, when the characters become more familiar. I might try a few more episodes.
Movies
Suffragette - This movie is not, unfortunately, the story of the Suffragette movement. Instead, it is a series of scenes depicting the suffering undergone by some of the suffragettes. To have been the story of the movement, it would have had to have shown how the suffragettes' activities gradually came to win over the hearts and minds of the people. None of that is shown.
The movie is just a repetition of women plotting, protesting, or breaking windows, followed by the women being ignored, beaten, arrested, abused, or otherwise mistreated. That's it. Details of the unfair situation of, and the abuse and sacrifices made by, the main character, played by Carey Mulligan, are shown. I found it hard to tell the other women apart, since they had no differences in character, other than being a bit louder or weaker. The one man shown to be slightly supportive - a husband - is given almost no role and no voice. And then someone dies and the movie ends. Great cinematography, but kind of a waste for such an important topic.
Steve Jobs - Three half-hour scenes in the life of Steve Jobs, all right before product launches. For what it is, it's okay. Jobs is shown as a prick, as usual. I don't know that it adds anything to what we know about Jobs from what we already know from the previous movies. We learn a bit more about product launches, and a bit more about what it was like to be Jobs' daughter.
My main problem here was that Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Jobs, so it was hard to believe him in the role. Another problem was Jeff Daniels as John Scully; Daniels acts exactly like his character from Sorkins' The Newsroom, and the pacing and camera shots, and even some of the dialog, is lifted straight out of Sorkins' TV shows, so the movie seemed like another episode of The Newsroom. Don't talk to me like I'm other people!
The Peanuts Movie - An aberration upon humanity. I can't step away from the fact that I've seen all of the original Peanuts movies and many of the shows, and read the comics; perhaps I would see this a bit differently as a newcomer. I recognized many of the one-liners, characters, and even short set-up scenes from previous Peanuts media, but the majority of the movie was slapstick: characters getting smashed or hit, falling down, bonked on the head, jumping into a bush, screaming, or otherwise, in fast sequence after sequence. The original material barely surfaces for a few seconds before another pratfall or smack in the face. Maybe a little kid who enjoys seeing people get hit or hurt will enjoy the movie. Otherwise, it is blasphemous. There is a reason that many cartoonists don't want other people continuing their work after they're dead.
The Little Prince - An odd, but not too odd, animated movie that tells the story of The Little Prince in the first half of the movie, while simultaneously telling the story of a girl and her mother who move into a new house. The mother has the girl's entire future planned out to a ridiculous degree; the girl makes friends with her neighbor, who turns out to be the aviator of the eponymous story. The second half of the movie sees the old man going to the hospital and the girl's search for The Little Prince who is now an adult and has forgotten all of the lessons of the book.
It doesn't take a genius to know what will happen next, but kids will enjoy it, and hopefully their interest in reading the book will be aroused. Watchable as an adult.
Big Eyes - A nifty movie about Margaret and Walter Keane (Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz). In the early 1960s, Walter painted many kitchy paintings featuring kids who had big eyes. These became very popular, and Walter hobnobbed with the media, celebrities, and the art world until Margaret suddenly left him, and shortly afterwards claimed to have been the actual artist. This was demonstrated as undeniably true in a famous courtroom battle, although Walter continued to claim to be the real artist until his death. It's a movie about a woman who supports a Big Lie by her husband; I would think it would be hard to relate to by today's women. None of the women I know could or would do such a thing for so long, but maybe there are still many who would. I felt that the moment of her first willingness to go along with the lie wasn't presented sufficiently, but that may be simply because I am a man. Anyway, the rest of the movie is interesting, moves well, is acted, scripted, and directed well, and is worth watching on a small screen.
Joy - A small story starring Jennifer Lawrence as the real-life Joy Mangano, a woman from a dysfunctional, poor extended family of leeches who invented the miracle mop and marketed it on television. It's pretty grim for most of its running, even though you know it has to turn out well somehow, eventually. J-Law is fine, as usual, and the rest of the cast and directing is, too. Something is missing from the story, however. Either they told the wrong parts of the story, or the story isn't that interesting. It tries to make up for this by presenting all the weird characters that surrounded Joy, but the movie spends too much time on those characters, who are not interesting stories. It's ok for watching on an airplane ride, but I wouldn't seek it out.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Shabbat Gaming
I spent the weekend at my brother's; one of his boys had a bar-mitzvah. We got to play a few games:
- High Society: First play for me and everyone else. This is a quick auction game from Knizia. You bid on cards from a 16 card deck; the auction ends after the 4th "red" card is revealed from the deck, so the game could be as short as 3 rounds or as long as 15. There are 12 yellow cards: 1 through 10, -5, and "lose a card". The four red cards are three x 2's and one x 1/2. You have a hand full of money to bid with, and the person with the most points in cards at the end wins (add the yellow cards and then apply multipliers, if any). The "lose a card" makes you lose a card you already have or the first one you acquire. For the 13 good cards, top bidder takes the card and pays his bid. For the 3 bad cards, all players pay their bid, except for the first one to pass who gets the card but keeps his money. The twist is that the person with the least money when the game ends is automatically disqualified from winning (money doesn't count among the remaining payers, so you can't bid nothing and win the game, if at least two other people acquired cards).
Ben's theory was to pay a lot of money for a x 2 and a high card (like a 9 or 10) and then sit tight. Unfortunately, he also had to pay to avoid some bad cards, and he tried to bid on a second x 2 at one point. In both of the games we played, he had the least money at the end; in the first game it was simply because the game ended only halfway through the deck. The bar mitzvah boy won the first game, and his younger brother won the second. It's a nice, quick filler (very abstract), but I worry that everyone's cash holdings are trackable; It's not hard to do, but I refused to track it exactly, because it would bog the game down and make it less fun. - La Isla: First play for me and everyone else. This is a small box Alea game from Stephan Feld. There is a board with island spaces of different terrain types (five types). Surrounded by every two, three, or four terrain spaces are animals that you can collect (five types). You get points for collecting the animals (2, 3, or 4 points, depending on how many people you need to collect them). You have five guys to move around the board. To move a guy to a place, you need two cubes of that terrain type (five types of cubes).
Each round you get three cards (from a deck of 180 cards). Each card can be used in any of three ways, and each round you must use one card in each of the three ways. One card you will add to your bonus abilities; it stays in front of you giving you a bonus ability. You only have three slots for bonus abilities, so every round you have to lose one of your previous abilities and gain the new one. One card you will use for the resource cube it gives, and then toss the card. And one card you will use to raise the value of one of the five animals, giving you points for its current value times the number of animals you have of that type (and also tossing the card). At the end of the game, everyone scores the value of the animal times the number of animals he has of that type, as well as 10 points for each complete set of animals (one of each type).
Nadine warned me that you have to guess and worry about which animal type the other players will be increasing, but I don't think the way she does, which is why she a) takes a lot longer to make her moves than I do, and b) wins these kinds of games more often than I do. I was happy to just play cards and see what happened. I didn't do too poorly, but the bar-mitzvah boy ran away with the game by collecting four animals of one type and scoring 12 and then 16 points several rounds in a row, while we were all making 2 to 5 or so. Even though he had no sets, he still won by a large margin (124 to my 77 to last place who had 61).
I enjoyed the game: it's fairly quick (medium length), plays nicely, and has some competition on the board. My only complaint is too many cards, and the cards are of poor quality (easy to bend and/or rip). - Speed ("Chinese-style") played with a young cousin. I don't really get this version of the game, and in any case she tended to cheat. :-)
Sunday, January 03, 2016
The Real Reasons The Force Awakens Fails as a Star Wars Movie
In a word: development.
George Lucas had the vision and ability to unfold scenes that were slices of an epic story, not just connected pieces of one story.
In IV, consider the first scenes with Luke and his uncle and aunt. There are conversations about washing droids, cleaning up, going to town, fixing water harvesters. They talk about dreams and hopes for the future. It's not only the content; it's the pacing ... not only the pacing, it's the flow. The first Luke scenes don't seem like an integral part of one main story - though they are. They seem like the middle of another story and a typical slice of life during that story. Until the first visions of Leia in the hologram there is no feeling of being part of a "plot". From the hologram until C-3PO mentions that R2 ran away, again there is no feeling of rushing forward in a plot. When exciting things happen, it feels like worlds of different stories are intersecting and getting caught up in each other.
You get the same feeling watching Luke fight the battle ball - it's a slice of a longer time period, making you feel that much time has passed, and Luke has experienced similar events, and many more will come. When Leia is interrogated, same thing. In VII, the interrogation scene we saw was the only one that happened. In VII, every scene felt like it existed only to get to the end of the scene - okay, got it? Let's move on to the next. The process of getting there was clean and executed quickly and antiseptically. The movie needed to tell you this to move the plot forward.
VII gives us just one scene that feels like a slice of time - the scavenge scene and the cleaning of what was scavenged. It lasts about 2 minutes. Even the meeting of Rey and Finn is a sequence of bursts: a fight, then a challenge, then seconds later we're on the run. Then 40 seconds of trying to fix the ship, then a capture. Then a brief exposition by Han, and then another challenge/fight. After the scavenge scene, VII NEVER feels epic. It always feels like a rush to finish a story that is already completely scripted. Even the one scene that should have been filled with wonder - Maz and Rey and the lightsaber - was a rushed scene to get to the point, and then to the end, and then we run off to the next action sequence.
Remember V, with Luke training on Degobah? There was no rush to get to the end of it; it felt like slices of weeks of training. Remember VI, with the walks through the woods? Even in I, II, and III there were (a few) scenes of patience: they may have been terribly acted and poorly scripted, but they were scenes that gave you the sense of epic, long-haul, world-building, not just plot-driving.
That's the first reason.
The second reason is one that others have mentioned: There is nothing new in this movie, other than a female protagonist. Every Star Wars had new ships, new worlds, new creatures, new weapons, new plots, new conflicts, new robots, new costumes, new discoveries, and so on and on. What was new in VII? Takodana looks a lot like the moon from IV, as does its cantina. The Starkiller world has snow, which could have been interesting, but we didn't get to see any of it. The rest was just everything we've already seen.
Again: it was an enjoyable sci-fi movie based on the Star Wars story. The acting was great, there were good lines, it was fun to see a tough, non-sexualized capable heroine. But there was no character development, no epic story, and nothing mystical, at least not until the very last frame. Maybe, maybe, the next movie will give us something more than a very good Star Wars version of a Marvel movie.
See here for my initial review.
George Lucas had the vision and ability to unfold scenes that were slices of an epic story, not just connected pieces of one story.
In IV, consider the first scenes with Luke and his uncle and aunt. There are conversations about washing droids, cleaning up, going to town, fixing water harvesters. They talk about dreams and hopes for the future. It's not only the content; it's the pacing ... not only the pacing, it's the flow. The first Luke scenes don't seem like an integral part of one main story - though they are. They seem like the middle of another story and a typical slice of life during that story. Until the first visions of Leia in the hologram there is no feeling of being part of a "plot". From the hologram until C-3PO mentions that R2 ran away, again there is no feeling of rushing forward in a plot. When exciting things happen, it feels like worlds of different stories are intersecting and getting caught up in each other.
You get the same feeling watching Luke fight the battle ball - it's a slice of a longer time period, making you feel that much time has passed, and Luke has experienced similar events, and many more will come. When Leia is interrogated, same thing. In VII, the interrogation scene we saw was the only one that happened. In VII, every scene felt like it existed only to get to the end of the scene - okay, got it? Let's move on to the next. The process of getting there was clean and executed quickly and antiseptically. The movie needed to tell you this to move the plot forward.
VII gives us just one scene that feels like a slice of time - the scavenge scene and the cleaning of what was scavenged. It lasts about 2 minutes. Even the meeting of Rey and Finn is a sequence of bursts: a fight, then a challenge, then seconds later we're on the run. Then 40 seconds of trying to fix the ship, then a capture. Then a brief exposition by Han, and then another challenge/fight. After the scavenge scene, VII NEVER feels epic. It always feels like a rush to finish a story that is already completely scripted. Even the one scene that should have been filled with wonder - Maz and Rey and the lightsaber - was a rushed scene to get to the point, and then to the end, and then we run off to the next action sequence.
Remember V, with Luke training on Degobah? There was no rush to get to the end of it; it felt like slices of weeks of training. Remember VI, with the walks through the woods? Even in I, II, and III there were (a few) scenes of patience: they may have been terribly acted and poorly scripted, but they were scenes that gave you the sense of epic, long-haul, world-building, not just plot-driving.
That's the first reason.
The second reason is one that others have mentioned: There is nothing new in this movie, other than a female protagonist. Every Star Wars had new ships, new worlds, new creatures, new weapons, new plots, new conflicts, new robots, new costumes, new discoveries, and so on and on. What was new in VII? Takodana looks a lot like the moon from IV, as does its cantina. The Starkiller world has snow, which could have been interesting, but we didn't get to see any of it. The rest was just everything we've already seen.
Again: it was an enjoyable sci-fi movie based on the Star Wars story. The acting was great, there were good lines, it was fun to see a tough, non-sexualized capable heroine. But there was no character development, no epic story, and nothing mystical, at least not until the very last frame. Maybe, maybe, the next movie will give us something more than a very good Star Wars version of a Marvel movie.
See here for my initial review.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Review: Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
When the movie ended, I mulled over how to react. It took a lot of mulling. I could not instantly say "This was great!" I certainly couldn't say "This was bad!" Is it good? Is it
great? Is it good only in the context of the Star Wars saga, or good as
movie qua movie? Is it just another sci-fi movie with Star Wars
nostalgia thrown in to appeal to fans? Or is it a better movie
than the usual crop of sci-fi movies?
(For context, I love the original trilogy (RotJ a bit less) and I do not hate the second trilogy. I disliked the enhancements that Lucas made to the original trilogy: they didn't add anything and they really look kind of hokey, but they didn't ruin the movies for me. The second trilogy had some pitifully bad acting, midichlorians were a useless and stupid addition, and Jar Jar was annoying, enough to stress my enjoyment of the first movie. The pod race went on for too long. It was insane that none of the Jedi could see that Annakin was a complete failure as a Jedi (he was so transparently unable to control his emotions that it was criminal to let him be a Jedi), and the final fight between Annakin and Obi Wan ended really stupidly, what with the "high ground" and Obi Wan letting his friend burn to death instead of putting him out of his misery. But I didn't find the taxation and blockade plots boring. I liked Amadalia's spunk, the light saber fights was awesome, and I thought the plot hung together fairly well. Remember that Return of the Jedi had stupid Ewok battle scenes and really bad acting from Carrie Fisher (who acted fine in the first two movies). Something about the second trilogy movies were still appealing to me: that thing that made Star Wars. Which may simply be the well-choreographed lightsaber battles.)
Is it good? Yes. Is it great? Um... maybe?
It is entertaining and plotted well, even if they leave out a number of explanations to fully understand some of the plot details. However, it is missing parts of what made Star Wars unique. The first is development between the action scenes, like Luke talking to his Aunt and Uncle or looking out over the horizon, Han and Leia talking, Han and Luke talking, Obi Wan talking to Luke and training him, etc. This movie has one conversation between humans, and it is flat and forgettable. It has a few slower scenes, and they are great; but more were necessary. Another is character transformation, like Luke learning to take on responsibility, Han turning back to save the rebellion, or Darth Vader, for that matter. There are two transformation in this movie: one is early in the movie and very quick, so it hardly counts, and the other is non-mental and not really a kind that makes you feel invested in it. It just happens, and you're left wondering why. Mostly, what is missing from this movie is mysticism. No one is reaching out to a higher cause or into the unfathomable unknown. Mysticism is nearly, almost, kind of struggling to be there in the movie, but it doesn't happen until the very last frame of the movie.
The nostalgia is there, but not overwhelmingly so. We get some of the old characters on screen for a while, and they don't just stand there looking wistful. I realize that it's hard to strike the right balance. Nevertheless, it is mishandled a bit. The movie tries to copy the original trilogy too much; there really is too much New Hope in it. A planet sized weapon attacked by X-Wings and Tie fighters, plans hidden in a droid, a freakin' alien bar scene. There is even a father son conflict. We did these already, didn't we?
The cinematography is vastly better than the first or second trilogies. Ships and hovercraft move in erratic patterns with oddly tracked shots full of detail as the camera focus swirls around. Ships don't look like models or sterile backdrops; they are fully realized and lifelike. If Lucas was trying to "update" his original trilogy with enhancements to make it look more modern, this movie shows how far he failed in doing so. THIS movie looks incredibly good, so much so, that it feels un-Star Wars, which has always been a bit less complicated and a bit more hokey than the modern sterile sci-fi we are used to.
It was great to see a mad dash to save the girl only to find out that she doesn't need saving. It was nice to see diversity, but really, there is only one black dude in the galaxy, so far (unless Lando is hiding somewhere). BB-8 is really good as a WALL-E type droid, though mostly a substitute for R2-D2 who is awol for much of the movie.
The acting is universally good. Like the original movie, there is nearly no on-screen romantic dialog, a welcome change from the worst elements of episodes II and III. Newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are charismatic, and even have a bit of chemistry. On the other hand, Adam Driver as Kylo (the villain), and Oscar Isaac as Poe (a hero) are both uninteresting, flat characters.
Though the movie has plot problems, little character transformation, and little substantive dialog between characters, I still enjoyed the movie. Partly due to nostalgia. Partly that it is a decent action movie, like the better Marvel or Batman movies. Party because there are lightsabers. And partly due to the charisma of Harrison Ford, Daisy, and John. As for the latter two, we will watch your careers with great interest.
Spoilers, questions, and complaints ahead.
(For context, I love the original trilogy (RotJ a bit less) and I do not hate the second trilogy. I disliked the enhancements that Lucas made to the original trilogy: they didn't add anything and they really look kind of hokey, but they didn't ruin the movies for me. The second trilogy had some pitifully bad acting, midichlorians were a useless and stupid addition, and Jar Jar was annoying, enough to stress my enjoyment of the first movie. The pod race went on for too long. It was insane that none of the Jedi could see that Annakin was a complete failure as a Jedi (he was so transparently unable to control his emotions that it was criminal to let him be a Jedi), and the final fight between Annakin and Obi Wan ended really stupidly, what with the "high ground" and Obi Wan letting his friend burn to death instead of putting him out of his misery. But I didn't find the taxation and blockade plots boring. I liked Amadalia's spunk, the light saber fights was awesome, and I thought the plot hung together fairly well. Remember that Return of the Jedi had stupid Ewok battle scenes and really bad acting from Carrie Fisher (who acted fine in the first two movies). Something about the second trilogy movies were still appealing to me: that thing that made Star Wars. Which may simply be the well-choreographed lightsaber battles.)
Is it good? Yes. Is it great? Um... maybe?
It is entertaining and plotted well, even if they leave out a number of explanations to fully understand some of the plot details. However, it is missing parts of what made Star Wars unique. The first is development between the action scenes, like Luke talking to his Aunt and Uncle or looking out over the horizon, Han and Leia talking, Han and Luke talking, Obi Wan talking to Luke and training him, etc. This movie has one conversation between humans, and it is flat and forgettable. It has a few slower scenes, and they are great; but more were necessary. Another is character transformation, like Luke learning to take on responsibility, Han turning back to save the rebellion, or Darth Vader, for that matter. There are two transformation in this movie: one is early in the movie and very quick, so it hardly counts, and the other is non-mental and not really a kind that makes you feel invested in it. It just happens, and you're left wondering why. Mostly, what is missing from this movie is mysticism. No one is reaching out to a higher cause or into the unfathomable unknown. Mysticism is nearly, almost, kind of struggling to be there in the movie, but it doesn't happen until the very last frame of the movie.
The nostalgia is there, but not overwhelmingly so. We get some of the old characters on screen for a while, and they don't just stand there looking wistful. I realize that it's hard to strike the right balance. Nevertheless, it is mishandled a bit. The movie tries to copy the original trilogy too much; there really is too much New Hope in it. A planet sized weapon attacked by X-Wings and Tie fighters, plans hidden in a droid, a freakin' alien bar scene. There is even a father son conflict. We did these already, didn't we?
The cinematography is vastly better than the first or second trilogies. Ships and hovercraft move in erratic patterns with oddly tracked shots full of detail as the camera focus swirls around. Ships don't look like models or sterile backdrops; they are fully realized and lifelike. If Lucas was trying to "update" his original trilogy with enhancements to make it look more modern, this movie shows how far he failed in doing so. THIS movie looks incredibly good, so much so, that it feels un-Star Wars, which has always been a bit less complicated and a bit more hokey than the modern sterile sci-fi we are used to.
It was great to see a mad dash to save the girl only to find out that she doesn't need saving. It was nice to see diversity, but really, there is only one black dude in the galaxy, so far (unless Lando is hiding somewhere). BB-8 is really good as a WALL-E type droid, though mostly a substitute for R2-D2 who is awol for much of the movie.
The acting is universally good. Like the original movie, there is nearly no on-screen romantic dialog, a welcome change from the worst elements of episodes II and III. Newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are charismatic, and even have a bit of chemistry. On the other hand, Adam Driver as Kylo (the villain), and Oscar Isaac as Poe (a hero) are both uninteresting, flat characters.
Though the movie has plot problems, little character transformation, and little substantive dialog between characters, I still enjoyed the movie. Partly due to nostalgia. Partly that it is a decent action movie, like the better Marvel or Batman movies. Party because there are lightsabers. And partly due to the charisma of Harrison Ford, Daisy, and John. As for the latter two, we will watch your careers with great interest.
Spoilers, questions, and complaints ahead.
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Movie Reviews: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Spectre, Minions, Paper Towns
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2: This movie, while not as good as the first two films, is a fine action flick with some unique elements that sets it apart from other modern action movies. One is that it tackles the question of whether the resistance is really a better substitute than the existing tyranny. Another is the fine, strong and useful heroine as the central character.
The acting and directing are good and the movie is put together well. But this movie is only half a movie, and you won't understand most of it without having read the books or seen the first three movies, especially the third. If the third book would not have been split into two movies, the result would have been one much better movie.
As usual, I don't ding a movie just for leaving out parts of the book or for changing elements in the book. However, what was left out of the movie includes some of the central themes the book, and that's a pity. Perhaps the most crucial element left out of the movie is that Katniss was a selfish, spoiled, and lazy heroine who had to train in order to be able to handle herself in the field. Also left out of the movie is the brutal and permanent physical disfigurements she sports by the end of the book; she lives out the remainder of her life with half of her face burned off. J-Law's Katniss suffers no such problems in the movie, despite a scene showing her getting burned. Like in the first movie, the physical and social desperation and psychological trauma are dispensed with in favor of the kind of insensitive and careless video game violence that we come to expect from movies, where no one eats or goes to the bathroom and children can kill hundreds of people or watch hundreds of people die horrible deaths and yet suffer only a brief cry or angry outburst. Pity. Go read the books.
Still, this last movie is worthy and entertaining. We will watch Jennifer's career with great interest.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: At least this series, like the original Bourne trilogy, but unlike the current superhero movies or the Bond franchise, gives us thrilling action sequences that appear semi-possible and even - occasionally - make you think that they may end with the main characters dead.
This MI, like the last one, is far more entertaining than it should have been. It only crashed for me in the middle during a car chase that had one too many car flips. When the occupant jumps sprightly out of the overturned car onto a motorcycle, my disbelief could no longer be suspended and the movie was ruined for me for about twenty minutes.
The end also seemed rather impossible since the plan required a bunch of people to be exactly at one spot at a specific time with certain hardware and construction that could not possibly have been obtained or constructed, but whatever. Tom Cruise manages to not crowd out everyone else in the movie, at least.
It's all still pretty dumb, but it's entertaining and occasionally clever. The whole plot is a mcguffin for the action sequences. Something about an organization taking over the world.
Spectre: Spectre completes a four part mini-arc for Daniel Craig's James Bond. It is better than the frenetic and unwatchable Quantum, and not quite as stupid as the ridiculously plotted Skyfall. I would rank it below Casino Royale, which was the most straightforward of the films.
While not quite as stupid as Skyfall, please tell me Bond's plan wasn't to walk into the lair, let himself be captured, trussed, and tortured, and, while drills are going into his head, hand his watch to his girlfriend in full view of many bad guys, have her toss the watch so that it blows up exactly the right way to knock out exactly the right people and release his electronic locks, and have all the bad guys miss him from close range, and walk to the unguarded and available helicopter, and have the lair blow up from a couple of bullet shots due to ... actually, I still don't know why it all blew up. It's like the scriptwriters are not even trying anymore. The surveillance capabilities are also presented as ridiculous; I don't put it past governments to have more surveillance than many of us know, but I feel pretty confident that they still can't capture video inside a remote house without at least having placed a video camera in the house first.
And since when can nine different governments cooperate sufficiently to put all of their surveillance into the hands of a British guy? Heck, since when can nine different government organizations in the same country even connect their computers to the same network?
The film tries to introduce an actual romantic interest, as opposed to just a sexual interest, for our hero. And it brings into question whether Bond really wants to continue being a 00. Watchable, but silly. The whole plot is a mcguffin for the action sequences. Something about an organization taking over the world.
Minions: The prequel to Despicable Me, this fluff kids movie contains many funny moments but a pretty bad plot. It is the movie equivalent of a game with a lot of tactics but not a smidgen of strategy.
Despicable Me at least had the bad guy turn into a good guy, which makes sense when the main characters all care for and love each other. This movie dispenses with any kind of character arcs or growth, has only bad guys, and hangs the movie on a quest by three walking babbling banana slugs in search of "the most evil" person to serve. This really makes no sense. The movie ridicules the idea of evil, making "the most despicable" characters into jewel thieves who steal lollipops from kids ... and not much worse. I can think of worse people who work at my bank. And no one ever gets killed or hurt for real.
The animators and director do an incredible job of carrying the movie along with almost no understandable dialog for most of it. The silent movies did it 100 years ago, and apparently these were part of the inspiration for how to achieve it in this movie.
I am uncomfortable with the whole premise, since there is no one to root for, really. If we ignore that, the movie is basically plotless, and the quest is nonsensical. Despite this, in between holding my head at the inappropriateness of the whole endeavor, I laughed out loud quite a few times. Scene after scene is thrown at you with joke after joke, and some of them are quite clever and funny. Something like The LEGO Movie (which didn't suffer from the problems that this movie has). But ... are all the minions boys? Why?
There are so many better movies with better values that I wouldn't buy it for my kids or go out of my way to see it. However cute the banana slugs are.
Paper Towns: John Green is having a few good years. After The Fault in Our Stars, he comes back with another movie based on one of his books. This one has more normal teenagers, none of whom are heading for imminent death.
Quentin (Nat Wolff) loves a neighbor girl Margo (Cara Delevingne) who has a habit of disappearing. Near the end of high school, she takes him out for a night in which she exacts her revenge on her (now) ex-boyfriend, ex-friends, and a few others and then disappears the next day. He and his friends decide to track her down based on the clues she left as to her whereabouts. Meanwhile, high school is drawing to a close and each of the friends has his or her own stories and concerns about the present or future.
Part high school romcom, part mystery (very small part), and part road trip, I started off not liking the movie because neither Quentin nor Margo initially appeared to be likeable. The disappearance to come was predictable, so I am not spoiling that for you. It is after this that the movie picks up, slowly, slowly the characters evolve and they all become likeable. The minor things in the movie are not always predictable, and even the major ones, while more predictable, are handled well.
A sweet movie with several interesting allegories that I expect (hope) are explored more thoroughly in the book.
The acting and directing are good and the movie is put together well. But this movie is only half a movie, and you won't understand most of it without having read the books or seen the first three movies, especially the third. If the third book would not have been split into two movies, the result would have been one much better movie.
As usual, I don't ding a movie just for leaving out parts of the book or for changing elements in the book. However, what was left out of the movie includes some of the central themes the book, and that's a pity. Perhaps the most crucial element left out of the movie is that Katniss was a selfish, spoiled, and lazy heroine who had to train in order to be able to handle herself in the field. Also left out of the movie is the brutal and permanent physical disfigurements she sports by the end of the book; she lives out the remainder of her life with half of her face burned off. J-Law's Katniss suffers no such problems in the movie, despite a scene showing her getting burned. Like in the first movie, the physical and social desperation and psychological trauma are dispensed with in favor of the kind of insensitive and careless video game violence that we come to expect from movies, where no one eats or goes to the bathroom and children can kill hundreds of people or watch hundreds of people die horrible deaths and yet suffer only a brief cry or angry outburst. Pity. Go read the books.
Still, this last movie is worthy and entertaining. We will watch Jennifer's career with great interest.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: At least this series, like the original Bourne trilogy, but unlike the current superhero movies or the Bond franchise, gives us thrilling action sequences that appear semi-possible and even - occasionally - make you think that they may end with the main characters dead.
This MI, like the last one, is far more entertaining than it should have been. It only crashed for me in the middle during a car chase that had one too many car flips. When the occupant jumps sprightly out of the overturned car onto a motorcycle, my disbelief could no longer be suspended and the movie was ruined for me for about twenty minutes.
The end also seemed rather impossible since the plan required a bunch of people to be exactly at one spot at a specific time with certain hardware and construction that could not possibly have been obtained or constructed, but whatever. Tom Cruise manages to not crowd out everyone else in the movie, at least.
It's all still pretty dumb, but it's entertaining and occasionally clever. The whole plot is a mcguffin for the action sequences. Something about an organization taking over the world.
Spectre: Spectre completes a four part mini-arc for Daniel Craig's James Bond. It is better than the frenetic and unwatchable Quantum, and not quite as stupid as the ridiculously plotted Skyfall. I would rank it below Casino Royale, which was the most straightforward of the films.
While not quite as stupid as Skyfall, please tell me Bond's plan wasn't to walk into the lair, let himself be captured, trussed, and tortured, and, while drills are going into his head, hand his watch to his girlfriend in full view of many bad guys, have her toss the watch so that it blows up exactly the right way to knock out exactly the right people and release his electronic locks, and have all the bad guys miss him from close range, and walk to the unguarded and available helicopter, and have the lair blow up from a couple of bullet shots due to ... actually, I still don't know why it all blew up. It's like the scriptwriters are not even trying anymore. The surveillance capabilities are also presented as ridiculous; I don't put it past governments to have more surveillance than many of us know, but I feel pretty confident that they still can't capture video inside a remote house without at least having placed a video camera in the house first.
And since when can nine different governments cooperate sufficiently to put all of their surveillance into the hands of a British guy? Heck, since when can nine different government organizations in the same country even connect their computers to the same network?
The film tries to introduce an actual romantic interest, as opposed to just a sexual interest, for our hero. And it brings into question whether Bond really wants to continue being a 00. Watchable, but silly. The whole plot is a mcguffin for the action sequences. Something about an organization taking over the world.
Minions: The prequel to Despicable Me, this fluff kids movie contains many funny moments but a pretty bad plot. It is the movie equivalent of a game with a lot of tactics but not a smidgen of strategy.
Despicable Me at least had the bad guy turn into a good guy, which makes sense when the main characters all care for and love each other. This movie dispenses with any kind of character arcs or growth, has only bad guys, and hangs the movie on a quest by three walking babbling banana slugs in search of "the most evil" person to serve. This really makes no sense. The movie ridicules the idea of evil, making "the most despicable" characters into jewel thieves who steal lollipops from kids ... and not much worse. I can think of worse people who work at my bank. And no one ever gets killed or hurt for real.
The animators and director do an incredible job of carrying the movie along with almost no understandable dialog for most of it. The silent movies did it 100 years ago, and apparently these were part of the inspiration for how to achieve it in this movie.
I am uncomfortable with the whole premise, since there is no one to root for, really. If we ignore that, the movie is basically plotless, and the quest is nonsensical. Despite this, in between holding my head at the inappropriateness of the whole endeavor, I laughed out loud quite a few times. Scene after scene is thrown at you with joke after joke, and some of them are quite clever and funny. Something like The LEGO Movie (which didn't suffer from the problems that this movie has). But ... are all the minions boys? Why?
There are so many better movies with better values that I wouldn't buy it for my kids or go out of my way to see it. However cute the banana slugs are.
Paper Towns: John Green is having a few good years. After The Fault in Our Stars, he comes back with another movie based on one of his books. This one has more normal teenagers, none of whom are heading for imminent death.
Quentin (Nat Wolff) loves a neighbor girl Margo (Cara Delevingne) who has a habit of disappearing. Near the end of high school, she takes him out for a night in which she exacts her revenge on her (now) ex-boyfriend, ex-friends, and a few others and then disappears the next day. He and his friends decide to track her down based on the clues she left as to her whereabouts. Meanwhile, high school is drawing to a close and each of the friends has his or her own stories and concerns about the present or future.
Part high school romcom, part mystery (very small part), and part road trip, I started off not liking the movie because neither Quentin nor Margo initially appeared to be likeable. The disappearance to come was predictable, so I am not spoiling that for you. It is after this that the movie picks up, slowly, slowly the characters evolve and they all become likeable. The minor things in the movie are not always predictable, and even the major ones, while more predictable, are handled well.
A sweet movie with several interesting allegories that I expect (hope) are explored more thoroughly in the book.
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