Culture Lab

Early Cancellation: Bane or Boon?

2010-04-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

Having recently finished watching the entire run of Arrested Development, I started thinking about why it seems that so many beloved and acclaimed shows appear to pass on before it is their time to do so. Firefly, Arrested Development, Wonder Falls, Veronica Mars (maybe), Freaks and Geeks, and Sportsnight are just a few of the 'brilliant' shows whose fans vehemently argue were unfairly canceled while other lesser shows were left on the air. Is it that these shows were indeed brilliant and just a victim of bad slotting, being under promoted or some other sin committed upon them by the greedy networks, or were they simply under performers that only really appealed to certain niches?

Before I go into these shows in general, I'd like to first discuss what is perhaps the most famous (infamous?) case of early cancellation, Arrested Development. For those who haven't seen it or don't know anything about it, Arrested Development was a sitcom (here used loosely) that aired on Fox in the mid 2000s. It featured the single camera technique later popularized by other shows such as The Office and was without a laugh track. One could say it was one of the pioneers of the 'new television comedy' that didn't rely on the format and structure used by sitcoms for decades. The show is also famous for having recurring gags that reward continual viewership, and for having dense layers of jokes that improve upon repeat viewing. It's also hilarious.

When glancing at the bookshelves of people from my generation (born early to late 80s) it seems that almost every has a set of these DVDs (along with a copy of Garden State, but don't get me started on that one) and anyone who appreciates television comedies almost obligatorily lists Arrested Development as among their favorite shows. It seems that EVERYONE loves this show. How is it then, that it was canceled if it was so beloved?

Well one of the only things that you need to know was that AD was aired by Fox. Fox is infamous for doing this to shows (see: Firefly). They move a show around to different time slots, show episodes out of order (kind of devastating for a show like this with recurring jokes and a central driving plot) and generally underpromote interesting shows. However I'm not going to hold this completely against them. One of the reason that Fox tends to get shows like AD and Firefly, is that the network isn't quite on the level of the 'big three' and this results in them taking chances on shows that other networks might not. They try to give the show 'chances' by moving it around (even if in the end this fucks with the show's viewership) and at least give the show a shot. Even if that shot is fundamentally doomed.

Furthermore, Fox has shown a little more patience in recent years. It's true that Dollhouse turned into a great show, but it was far from perfect to start with. Add the quality of the early episodes to anemic ratings, and it's surprising that Fox let the show come back and finish a 2nd season (which again, was FANTASTIC). Maybe they were just afraid of all the Whedonites storming their offices and holding the station under gunpoint until Whedon is put back on the air.

Was Arrested Development one of the funniest shows I've ever seen? Absolutely! Should you watch it? I would say that most people in America would love this show if they gave it a full chronological chance. Does that mean the show was unfairly canceled? Well....

Don't get me wrong, the show is brilliant. However it did get 3 seasons (really 2.5) which is more than a lot of shows get. Plus those pesky ratings. Most people only found out about the show after it was released on DVDs, so just because a show is popular now doesn't mean it was at the time. Furthermore I don't think you'll hear any fanboys proclaiming the 3rd season to be the best. For whatever reasons (network pressure, knowledge of cancellation) the quality of AD noticeably dipped in the 3rd season. It's hard to know if this was due to the off the screen issues, or if perhaps the material had just run dry.

What if AD had aired another 3, 4 or 10 seasons? Would it still be as original and funny? Probably not. You would have fans saying that nothing would live up to the original episodes, and that all the good writers left, that the heart left the show, etc etc etc. Pretty much all the stuff that you hear about The Simpsons (I'm a part of that. I stopped watching during the infamous 'homer gets raped by a panda' era). I'm sure the actors and creators would never say that they wanted the show to end, but now instead of having a long lasting show that has lost it's sheen (The Office) they have a cult classic that is fondly remembered by all.

And that's the sticking point. Do the later seasons of shows taint the original ones for fans of long running series? I think it really depends on the person. I could never list The X-Files, or The West Wing as my favorite shows because of what happened on the later run of those shows (dear god does the quality drop off on The West Wing after the 4th season. It's like a completely new show!) I'd much rather have a show like The Wire which has a decent length, but spectacular run. Quality and quantity both matter, and it's hard to say 'I love the X-Files so much' when there is a 50% chance that you might hate it if a random episode was shown to you.

But canceled shows get to live in the idea of 'what-if'. Firefly especially survives on this. There were really only hints of greatness in that show, but what people saw was enough for them to proclaim that their favorite show of all time. It was one of the few cases where fans did get some kind of resolution in the form of the movie, but it was different enough from the show to allow people still to dream. Because Malcolm Reynolds never got raped by a panda, or replaced by T-1000, we can still dream that Firefly could have been the shiniest, best damn show ever.

Why Baseball Upsets Me

2010-03-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to grow up near a baseball city at a time when possibly the greatest legend for that team was in his prime. The Orioles weren't particularly successful, but they were competitive enough with the rest of the league and had a superstar to draw fan interest. Not only was Cal a physical specimen (you can thank him for setting the mold for any and all successful shortstop power hitters in the game today) but he was a tireless worker. He was the local kid who fulfilled all the hopes and dreams of a decidedly blue collar city at a time when he played the only sport the city had to call its own.

I remember many a summer night in my youth spent just listening to baseball games on the radio lying on my floor. We didn't have cable of any kind so I had to get my baseball fix with a crappy little AM/FM radio. I didn't care, I loved listening to baseball on the radio (and still do). Although individual football games are more exciting, mostly because of the limited number of them in any given season, there is something to be said about being able to casually watch (or listen to) a game almost every day of the week. Baseball was the only game I was ever really interested in playing as a kid and it will always be important to me.

This is why the current state of not only the O's, but all of MLB really upsets me.

Much has been made about the fact that unlike the other big two American sports (football and basketball) baseball does not have a salary cap. This means teams are not limited on how much they can spend on their players, whereas in the other two sports the teams are limited (to different degrees) how much money they can spend. You could do lots of fancy statistics on this matter, but I just want to show a simple yet telling plot that I threw together in 10 minutes (click to enlarge).

I didn't want to spend a bunch of time looking at the salaries for the top 5 and bottom 5 spenders and other illuminating stats, but I think this graph speaks for itself. 20 years ago, the Yankees spent around the league average (they weren't even the top spenders, can you guess who was..... that's right the KANSAS CITY ROYALS). By 2009, they not only spent more than twice as much as the league average, they spent $50M more than the next highest spending team (the other New York team), and that gap is more money than 3 teams (Pirates, Padres, and Marlines) spent on their ENTIRE PAYROLL. I could go on and on about individual players on the Yankees making more than entire teams, but you get the point.

First things first, I try not to hold this against them. If any other team was in the same position they'd do exactly the same thing. Secondly, it's true that having a high payroll doesn't guarantee success. As teams such as the recent Mets squads, and the late 90s Orioles teams have shown, money does not equal success. However it does mean that certain teams do have built in advantages. Teams such as the Mets, Yankees, Cubs and Red Sox can take risks with players, or sign players to ridiculous contracts without much worry. If the player doesn't work out, they can always pay them to play for someone else (as the Red Sox are want to do) or they can just cut them without impunity.

In football if a team rewards a player with a huge contract, that player better plan out. Otherwise the team has an albatross hanging around their neck (like the Raiders and their current issue with Jamarcus Russell) and it hurts their ability to compete for years. In baseball this is never a concern for the higher earners, meaning they scoop up all of the best and most expensive players. This results in teams such as the Yankees treating the rest of the league like a farm system. Does your local team have a 27 year old superstar in the making? Too bad, because when he comes up for free agency next year he'll be wearing the pinstripes.

Supporters of the current structure of the league point to the number of different winners in the World Series in recent years as evidence that the leave does not have a competitive imbalance. While this may be true, I don't think this points to the leave being competitive top to bottom. If a team has 2 pitchers get hot in the playoffs, they can easily blow right past 'better' teams. I think you would have to look at how many teams reach the postseason, and how often. Proponents of the current system always point towards the run of the Tampa Bay Rays 2 years ago as evidence that the system works. Yeah a team that toiled in obscurity makes the playoffs once in its 20 years of existence and this shows that the system works? Furthermore as their young players become free agents in the following year the team will be completely blown up once again (it already happened last year with Scott Kazmir). Is a sport where a team with a low budget can only hope to be competitive once or twice every decade really that evenly competitive? Again the Marlins won two world series in 10 years, but were utter crap every other year.

In the NFL every fanbase has hope that their team can turn it around the following year. Recent examples of the Dolphins and Bengals have shown that your team can go from terrible to playoff contender overnight. With both a smart GM and coach added witha few lucky bounces an NFL team can turn itself around. In baseball, what are the Pirates supposed to do? They can't all of a sudden compete financially with other teams, and the example of the Oakland A's shows us that any intellectual advantage smaller teams can gain will quickly be leveled by the pockets of the 'big' teams.

I love the Orioles, and I probably always will. I love the Halloween colors, the beautiful stadium, the idiosyncratic mascot, and how everyone in Maryland yells 'O' during the pledge of allegiance. However it's becoming harder and harder to follow or care about a team that feels like it's in the minor leagues. While they are still in the same division as both the Red Sox and the Yankees, the best they can hope for is a once every decade Rays like run. And is that enough? From an objective viewpoint living down in Atlanta I'm not sure it is. As much as it saddens me to say, it's easier and more fun to follow a team whose management is in a position to at least compete for a playoff spot every year than it is to watch the team of my youth get crushed in the standings year after year with no end in sight.

'Extract' - Mike Judge

2010-02-25T17:11:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty big fan of Mike Judge. Being at least partially from Texas, I always thought King of the Hill was a funny and poignant take on a 'typical' Texan family. In addition to being hilarious, Office Space spoke to my generation's distrust of 'adult life' like few films have before or since. I even thought Idiocracy was vastly underated and unwatched as a thought provoking social commentary, even if it was greatly flawed. Because of all this I was eagerly looking forward to his 2009 release Extract.

After watching it this week (I don't find it cost effective to see comedies in the theater) boy was I disappointed. This movie ranks up there for me in terms of cinematic disappointment maybe almost on the level of The Phantom Menace (OK that might be a GIGANTIC stretch, even if I didn't think it was 'that bad' the first time I saw it). How could the creator of Office Space and Beavis and Butthead make something so.... bland?

In a short plot summary, Extract tells the story of a small business owner, played by Jason Bateman, and his struggle with being a part of the rat race. Really the problems start here. Does Jason Bateman ever play anything other than the likable audience surrogate? He's boring, never really funny, and his exasperated face gets old, quick. You also have That 70's Show's Mila Kunis arriving to spice things up as a grifter/con artist. There is also a subplot where Bateman hires a male prostitute to sleep with his wife (Kristen Wiig) so that he can hook up with Kunis without feeling guilty. Oh yeah, and a bearded and almost unrecognizable Ben Affleck plays Bateman's best friend.

That's a lot of big names to mess up. You get the slightly more hip crowd with Bateman and his Arrested Development stint, and Wiig is often pretty decent on SNL. Ben Affleck and Mila Kunis are pretty big in their own right and were probably used to draw in a bigger audience. Extract wasn't a complete failure (Wikipedia tells me it made $10.8M on an $8M budget) but I don't know anyone who saw it. It also scored decently well with the critics (a score of 61 on Metacritic and 63% on Rotten Tomatoes), even getting a B from my AV Club folks. All this points to a 'decent but underwhelming comedy', however if I had to 'grade' it, I would give it more something in the C- range.

First things first, it's just not very funny. There were a few guffaws here and there while I was watching it, but not anything close to what I think a 'comedy' requires. If your movie has less laughs in it than the average episode of The West Wing, you know there's a problem. No one watches comedies for the plot, especially if the plot of your movie is slow and meandering.

Back to that plot. The story starts when a worker in Bateman's factory suffers a major crotchal injury on the job. Kunis sees this in the newspaper, and starts to date the injured party in order to get him to sue the company for more money. She also gets a job at the extract company for unknown reasons. Bateman's personal life starts to go downhill when the prostitute he hired continues to screw his wife long after Bateman tries to 'fire' him. Additionally his injured employee hires a lawyer (Gene Simmons?) and might take the entire company out with the lawsuit. Everything seems to go downhill for Bateman, until miraculously everything gets fixed. He even meets up with Kunis for a night of romance, and she doesn't steal his wallet!

This last bit is the most confounding part of the movie. We don't spend NEARLY enough time with Kunis to figure out her character. She seems just like a self serving conwoman, and until Bateman gives her a verbal lashing she's completely one dimensional. However after he insults her and her parasitic way of life, she breaks down and cries. She doesn't really say anything, they have sex and then she leaves. Did she learn anything? Was she playing them all along? What the hell happened? Would she really turn down pursuing a multi-million dollar lawsuit just because the nice guy tried to make her feel guilty?

However my biggest problem with the movie is that it just felt like a cheap transparent ripoff of Office Space. I understand why he would want to recapture the magic from his cult success, but it doesn't work if the new movie has nothing to stand on by itself. There are the same comments about work being a drag, and feeling that your life is a waste, but even Judge doesn't seem to be committed to the message this time through. And unlike achieving some sort of cathartic change like we get in Office Space, here everything goes back to the status quo.

Extract is not worth seeing. I hope Mike Judge hasn't lost it, but perhaps after the monetary debacle of Idiocracy (the film industry refused to advertise for the movie, or even put it in many theaters based on it's strong anti-corporate message) he has decided to make middling movies that get made and make money without being the least bit interesting.

Dune - Book and Film

2010-02-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

To me, Dune was always one of those pieces of nerd culture that I was aware of but never really interested in. Although everyone has heard of it, it seems that as the book ages, fewer and fewer young people have actually read it. Add that to the fact that those who do read it tend to be the ubernerds, and thus tend to complain about things like the sequels and the movie adaptations, it never really seemed to grab my interest. As I started to read other science fiction books I realized to really have any kind of basis in science fiction I would have to read the defining book of the genre. I am very glad I finally picked up a used copy of Dune (alas not with the awesome cover I've shown) because it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that Dune is to science fiction what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy.

While I was reading Dune I constantly found myself thinking 'oh hey, that's just like the characterization in Ender's Game' or 'that sounds EXACTLY like the plot in Avatar' (which I haven't seen) or 'gee that sandworm seems mightily similar to those space worms in Star Wars'. Although some people don't like this kind of comparison, Dune is the kind of story in which every thing that comes after seems to rip off from. In a way it's more influential than Lord of the Rings seeing that science fiction seems to have permeated popular culture and mainstream media more-so than fantasy.

Also as in Lord of the Rings, Dune seemingly (I say seemingly only having read it this once) rewards rereading. The story throws you right into the plot and action without much exposition and what back-story you do learn, you learn naturally as the story unfolds. The book contains seemingly hundreds of made up words that require constant referencing to the glossary (as I also found myself doing in my first go through LOTR, although the map is less helpful here) and a complex political, ethnic, and social structure in which out characters inhabit. Frank Herbert's world is a fully realized one, and it's the kind of creation that obsessive readers love to revisit.

Now when it comes to the plot, Dune is a little slow compared to LOTR. The first third of the book is mostly setup and political maneuvering and really only the last 100 pages or so contain any kind of 'action'. The middle section of the book is where it really reaches a lull, where it seems that we spend 200+ pages with Paul and his mother wandering in the desert followed by them trying to convince the Fremen not to kill them. I could imagine why some people might find this book 'boring', although I thought it was written well enough to get me through the sand wanderings.

I must admit however, that I did see the movie before reading the book. About a year or so ago I went through a phase of watching David Lynch movies. Always one to be a completist I watched Dune, even though I knew nothing of the book and hadn't heard very flattering things. Being almost a complete Lynch apologist, I was still completely baffled by the film. A year later I remembered almost nothing about it, except that there was some weird glow worm floating in space and that Agent Dale Cooper was running around in tights. I had to constantly ask Lindsay 'what the hell is going on' and was kind of lost. The visuals were there (as they always are with Lynch) but it didn't make much sense.

After reading the book and re watching the film, I realize why this was the case. The book checks in at over 400 pages of small print, making it longer than any one of the LOTR books. Apparently Lynch shot a 4-5 hour cut of the movie, and presented this to the studio. Obviously at the time the studio did not want to do something as long as what the extended edition of Return of the King would end up being, so they cut it down to 2 hours. In this attempt they seem to have left the first hour of the movie exactly the same, seeing that it follows the book almost page by page. However from the time that Paul and his mother are left to wander in the desert to the end they condensed 350 pages into one hour. The film jumps from one thing to the next, leaving the uninitiated clueless. Making this even worse, there is a fair amount of mythology and religious plot-lines and subtext in Dune, making these parts of the film incomprehensible. Lynch got the mood and setting right, but he was a complete failure in condensing the movie down to a manageable length losing perhaps the whole point of the story. (No worry, Frank Herbert was said to be thrilled with Lynch's creation, and did not hold any changes or omissions against him)

As much as I enjoyed reading the book (although it did take me quite a while) I'm not sure if I could recommend Dune to someone unless they had specific interest in the history of the science fiction genre. As I said, it is a little slow and dense and really isn't for those who aren't invested in the book. Furthermore although the book has many sequels (unlike Tolkein, Herbert wrote this as a stand alone piece, and then as science fiction authors are known to do he hastily wrote 3 more volumes after it made money) everyone I have asked had pretty much said that they weren't worth reading. This comes from a reading nut, a science fiction nut, and an 80 year old man who only seems to like Dune and LOTR along with classics at his old age. Thus I don't have a lot of confidence that the sequels are worth anything. I will probably read Dune again, and I expect I might even enjoy it more the second time. Dune is an important book, and it's incredibly influential. I'm just not sure it's 'required reading' for anyone besides the most dedicated.

The West Wing: Seasons 1-3 - Aaron Sorkin

2010-01-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

Back in when I was in secondary school, everyone in my family had 'their show'. We didn't have cable, and weren't really prodigious television watchers so everyone ended up having one show they were really into. As stated before, I was a Buffy person. My sister (although she watched TV less than everyone else) was a Friends person (which I also occasionally participated in) and my Mom was always a West Wing person (and as a group we were Survivor people). She loved the series from the first season all the way through the season finale 7 seasons later. Although some of my peers also enjoyed the show, I always kind of thought of it as an 'older person's show'. I guess this designation makes sense when you're 16, but at 26 you're kind of an 'older person' and that designation kinda falls apart.

So what did I know about The West Wing in those formative years and up until a few months ago? Well I knew that it involved a fictional president of the U.S., and that something dramatic happens to 'Josh' at some point, and that's about it. I had always heard of what a great talent Aaron Sorkin was (I still haven't seen Sports Night), and how his shows were meticulously put together.

What I didn't know about The West Wing is how entertaining it is. I figured the show would be kind of dry and heady, but did not really expect it to be fun. After watching almost the first half of the series I can report that it is one of the funnest shows I've never seen. Now this is not to say it is the funniest show I've ever seen (although it is quite often funny) but the dialog between the characters is so deft and clever that it often feels like you're watching the the Shakespeare of our time. Because of this, it's not really a show in which you can do other stuff while it's on, or walk away come back and know what's happening in the episode.

Except for Martin Sheen (and I guess the unlikable Rob Lowe) who plays the President, the cast is mostly a bunch of no-name actors (even following the success of the show). The characters are written with incredibly full personalities, and the actors make these characters their own. I think for almost everyone involved, it will be the defining part of their careers. Bradley Whitford will always be 'Josh', and 'Richard Schiff' will always be the persnickety 'Toby'. And the steely eyed President Bartlett may be my favorite fictional president of all time. Quirky enough but also a strong and charismatic leader, Sheen really steals any scene he's in. As it is with all great stories, it takes some time to feel out the characters, but by the end of the first season you love them all. I could easily watch an entire episode of The West Wing where the cast sits around and discusses the minutiae of the White House dress code over coffee.

Unlike most creative heads (Joss Whedon, David Chase, Matthew Weiner, David Simon etc.) Aaron Sorkin wrote the teleplays for almost every single episode (85/88) for the first four seasons of the show (conflict with NBC caused this to end after the 4th season). This is almost unfathomable if you think about it. Even a show like The Wire with the strong central force and creative vision of David Simon has at least 7 people writing episodes for a full season (and this is for 13 episodes, not the 22 per season that The West Wing has). This makes the show incredible consistent episode to episode, and really is the source of its strength. Characters never behave strangely, there aren't 'outliers' or episodes that seem completely out of place. The West Wing is consistent, and consistently spectacular.

Although the first season sets the tone for the rest of the series, I would say it's probably the weakest of the three that I've seen. One of the main characters is incredibly annoying and although they completely write her off the show without explanation by the 2nd season, her presence often throws off even the most cohesive of episodes. By the 2nd season the show really hits its stride, and the last couple of episodes leading up to the famous and incredible 'Two Cathedrals' have yet to be matched.

If there is a complaint with the show is that often too much happens. There are a few too many catastrophic storms or hurricanes, and a few too many hostage situations. Often the political and personal happenings of the staff is more then enough to fill an episode, and then Sorkin feels like there needs to be a national tragedy. Furthermore anytime anyone on the show has something good going for them personally, shit always seems to hit the fan. This has led my girlfriend to note that 'no one is allowed to be happy on The West Wing'.

I'm not sure if you can call The West Wing a procedural, because there are long term plot lines and there is really no other show like it in tv history. However it is the kind of show where most episodes stand alone so in that way it has more in common with a show like House than it does with a show like Lost. That being said, it is probably the best 'procedural' I have ever watched.

To me, The West Wing is to politics (at least for leftists) what Friday Night Lights is to football. The way football games are portrayed in FNL is what you wish real football was like. Almost every game comes down to an exciting finish and (at least up until the most recent season) the better team in terms of skill and likability wins. The main characters on The West Wing are all the 'good guys' and are in politics for all the right reasons. They also quite often 'win'. The 'others', whether it be republicans or members of the House or Senate, are often out to get our heroes for their own nefarious purposes. It's easy to root for our team seeing that they represent everything positive about the Democratic party. It's no wonder that this show was such a hit during the Bush years with liberals and intellectuals.

Just as it is with FNL and football, you don't have to be extremely interested in politics to enjoy The West Wing. Sure it will help if you are politically minded, especially if you have liberal leaning policies (I would like to hear what conservatives think of this, I don't know any who have watched it) but it's not necessary. You do need a rudimentary understanding of how our government works, but one of the hidden qualities of the show is that is also feels educational in these matters. Above all, The West Wing is intellectually stimulating and uplifting. It is a feel-good show, one that revivies your faith in human beings, and makes you understand what makes our country so great.

The Origin of Species - Darwin/Kirk Cameron

2009-11-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

As some of you may be aware, November 24th 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. This truly monumental work is deservedly being celebrated around the world in a manner similar to the celebration that took place in 2005 for the 100th anniversary of Einstein's mind-boggling achievements in 1905 (the year he published papers on Special Relativity, Brownian Motion [his least famous but most cited work] and the Photoelectric Effect). Also as some of you know, Kirk Cameron has taken this time of celebration to be a complete dick.

Walking through campus last week around lunchtime, as I am prone to do, I noticed hordes of students carrying what seemed to be a copy of On the Origin of Species. At first I thought they must have all just been from the same class, but as I saw more and more of these copies I excitedly figured that someone on campus must be handing them out for free in celebration of the anniversary. On my way back from the student center, I spotted some people handing out these books and snagged one. However I got a weird vibe from the man who handed me one and asked 'is this a trick?' to which the man just replied 'no, the whole book is there'. I instantly know that yes, this was indeed a trick.

Because Georgia Tech is a state school, anyone can come and distribute free information on the campus. However what this really results in is religious fanatics handing out pamphlets, showing pictures of aborted children, or yelling about fire and brimstone through a megaphone as students rush off to class. It's taken much of my self-control not to confront or thwart these people in the past.

What I realized after picking up my copy of The Origin of Species (yes I left out the 'On', see below) is that this was no different than the above cases. Yes it does have the entirety of Darwin's text, but the front 50 pages of the book is creationist propaganda. After getting back to my computer and chatting up some informed friends, I discovered this was a well known ploy spearheaded by infamous nutjob (thanks for the word, Pat) Kirk Cameron.

He calls his this is 'Origin into Schools' project, which intends to 'inform' students about the 'truth' involving evolution. Because public schools like Georgia Tech are public domain, he intends to freely distribute roughly 100,000 copies of this monstrosity on campuses around the country, hoping to change the minds of countless 'lost souls'.

Now I don't really want to sit here and point out all the fallacies found in the introduction to the book (and boy are there many) but it's the whole idea behind this stunt that I find despicable. First let me point out that they got the title wrong of Darwin's book (having left out the 'On'). Yes something as simple as the freaking title Cameron, Ray Comfort and their cronies were unable to get right. Secondly it is true that they seem to have included the entire text from On the Origin of Species, they have however made it completely unreadable. Using a text at least 4 points smaller than the intro, they have also eliminated any line breaks and formatting whatsoever, leaving it as a large impenetrable block of text. They obviously never intended anyone to read the majority of this book, which makes their motives loud and clear.

What I have a big problem with, is the 'Trojan Horse' method used here. I can't imagine anyone picking up this copy intending to read Darwin, and being convinced by the shoddy and infantile introduction. As much criticism as atheists often take for 'using hostile methods to force their beliefs on others' I don't think anything Richard Dawkins or others have done anything as disrespectful as this. The only proportionate response would be for Dawkins to publish his own edition of the bible including footnotes whenever the text says something factually incorrect or impossible. And before anyone claims that this is an illegitimate comparison, yes I do believe that On The Origin of Species is equivalent to the bible for evolutionists (just as I also believe that going into space is as close as someone like myself has to reaching heaven).

I don't think this attempt by Kirk Cameron and introduction author Ray Comfort will really have any impact on this intellectual war whatsoever. It is generally agreed that they are pretty crazy and very few (although more than you would like to think) people listen to them. My only hope is that for anyone on the fence with respect to this issue sees through the vile tactics used here to realize how crazy these people really are. I leave you with Darwin's final words, found even in this copy.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

(Interesting side note: as Dawkins points out in The Greatest Show on Earth after the first edition the line 'having been originally breathed' was modified by ending with 'by the creator' due to pressure from religious forces. The fact that this line does not occur in Cameron's edition shows that really, they have put hardly any thought into this section of the book and have no idea what they're talking about.)

Mad Men v. Friday Night Lights

2009-11-15T15:42:00.000-08:00

While watching the first season of Friday Night Lights I was struck by how similar it was to Mad Men and felt the need to do a comparison piece between them. For those who are unaware, Friday Night Lights is a show based on a movie which is based on a book which is turn based on a fictional high school football team in west Texas. The show focuses on the everyday lives of those closely associated with the team, which turns out to be pretty much everyone in the small football crazed town.

The first season starts out with one of the best pilots that I have ever seen, it has a pretty spoilerific incident at it's conclusion that I won't ruin, but really it's not necessarily that plot line that makes it fantastic. The pacing and energy of the pilot really capture the excitement leading up to the first game of an especially promising season for the Dillon Panthers, and the camerawork (as it is throughout the whole show) is especially beautiful. The show is shot in the familiar cinema verite (the shaky hand held camera technique used in Blair Witch, The Office and Battlestar Galactica) and although I guess it's true of any film or show that use this technique, it really ads a sense of voyeurism making it feel like you're watching real people experience real events.

As I pointed out in a previous post, it is often told that Mad Men is really just a well written period soap opera. I'm not the first person to come up with this description, pretty much every casual viewer and critic has pointed this out. However when I described Mad Men as such at the time I was unaware that this would become somewhat of a criticism of the show. People who have not watched it and are skeptical of its greatness just end up quoting what they've heard by asking 'isn't it just like a soap opera?' Fairly or not, because 'soap operas' are often portrayed as trashy low brow entertainment, this ends up turning some people off to Mad Men who may otherwise find the show completely engrossing.

I much prefer the way Mad Men is described by Chuck Klosterman in his new book Eating the Dinosaur.

As a piece of entertainment, Mad Men has done everything right. It's perfectly cast and brilliantly paced, and it uses symmetrical symbolism in a way rarely attempted on television-every plot point is mirrored by a minor, less overt story line in the same allegorical vein. No Character is drawn without flaws.By Placing it in the 'secret' 1960s that everyone now accepts as normative (i.e. the subversive and damaged masquerading as suburban bliss), its white-collar characters are able to get away with living archaic, un-PC lives that (a) feel completely authentic but (b) would be impossible to depict in the present.

Here he points out all the things that are great about Mad Men without having to resort to talking about their sex lives. But this begs the question, what is wrong exactly with having plot lines driven by characters' personal lives? Almost every serial requires this sort of plotting, and what is special about Mad Men that makes people describe it in this way? Really what makes this show anymore of a soap opera than Battlestar Galactica? I don't think it is (actually I think BSG is much 'worse' in this way), and just because Mad Men smartly focuses its slow moving stories around peoples jobs and important incidents in their realistic lives rather than focusing on explosions and robots, doesn't make it any more melodramatic.

The reason I thought of Mad Men while watching FNL is that the later is pretty much the best nighttime soap opera that I have ever watched. Whereas Mad Men parcels out its events and well thought out plot lines, FNL tries to introduce as many different threads as possible. Put it this way: the writers of Mad Men could have used the plot lines from 2 FNL episodes to fill an entire season, and there were 22 episodes in the first season of FNL. This is great whenever the show introduced a lame plot (did Tyra having a one night stand with the oil speculator from LA do anything for anyone?) seeing that the audience was pretty sure that it would go away as fast as it came. However this also results in plot lines that have enough promise to be strung out over the majority of the season getting dropped just as quickly as they came (the introduction of Voodoo Taylor or Smash's steroid problems). FNL isn't as good as it could be because of this (the subsequent seasons are only 12 episodes so it's possible that they fix this problem) but boy is it watchable and entertaining.

Besides both being 'nighttime soap operas' both Mad Men and FNL rely on a strong sense of 'place' to ground the show. Now when I was doing literary analysis for novels in high school, I was one to kind of ignore issues such as place or setting and focus more on character analysis. Although I think sometimes the importance of 'place' is a little overstated, it is wildly essential to both Mad Men and FNL. Whereas Mad Men tries to place its characters in the context of the changing 60s, FNL attempts to chronicle the inter workings of the aforementioned football obsessed town. Although most people are familiar with the important events of the 60s, I have a suspicion that most people who might watch FNL know very little about these type of towns, or really even Texas in general. FNL attempts to show why those who grow up in towns like Dillon are so obsessed with high school football, and to show that they are not all just 'dumb jocks'. I think people who are still bitter from being picked on by the football players in high school might have some problems with this show (the AV Club message board tells me so) but the portrayal of the athletes is especially important and even handed, and might make some people rethink the 'jerky dumb jock' stereotype.

If forced to choose which show I liked more, I think I would still be pressed to find a show currently airing better than Mad Men. I loved watching the first season of FNL, and the first couple of episodes were some of the most emotionally affecting hours of television I have ever seen (really, me and Lindsay were almost to the point of tears for each of the first 6 or so episodes).The show also portrays sports in the way you wish they were, every game coming down to the final play and almost always in the favor of your rooting interest. However because of the way the show constantly brings up and drops new plot lines the show gets a little shaggy towards the end of the first season. Through thee seasons Mad Men has been absolutely superlative. The way the show is rooted in its well developed characters makes viewers more invested the more they watch it. The seasons are not distinct as they are in a show like The Wire, but I think there is something to be said for being consistently spectacular.

The Book of Basketball - Bill Simmons

2009-11-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Bill Simmons tends to be one of those writers that elicits pretty strong opinions by those who encounter his writing. As you may or may not be aware, Simmons is famous for writing on ESPN's Page 2 and more recently for starring in one of the most popular sports podcasts. His schtick is that rather than writing from the perspective of a sports journalist he writes from the perspective of an everyday fan. This results in him being able to take strong, and often biased opinions and he hardly ever tries to be politically correct. Unlike pretty much every ESPN personality he rarely appears on the network, and even actively tries to separate himself from the company. This 'fan friendly' approach is often the source of the bad parts in his writing, but I think it's also what really separates himself from his contemporaries.

In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs Chuck Klosterman points out that it appears that all sports reporters and writers actually hate sports. This is, he claims, because they get so close to the athletes and day to day operation of sports that they can't help to be disillusioned with what they see. Many athletes are indeed terrible people (as are people in any occupation) and becoming too close to those same people you need to idolize in their reporting eventually breaks down pretty much every sports journalist. Simmons avoids this by staying at arms length from the athletes, owners and coaches involved in professional sports. Although this creates some pretty strong biases in his writing (he's a HUGE Boston fan, which has become insufferable due to all their winning this decade) it actually leaves him less biased than most writers or talking heads when it comes to sports as a whole. He's allowed to call athletes out when they act like knuckleheads, and he's allowed to attack the owners when they act like rich, cheap assholes. By being able to voice his real opinions he fills a much needed gap in sports reporting which too often degenerates into a huge circlejerk between the writers, athletes and everyone else involved.

Although this is technically not his first book (he published one a few years ago about the Red Sox winning the World Series), this is Simmons' first book of almost completely new material. In The Book of Basketball he sets out to redesign the basketball hall of fame (which he finds inadequate) with a tier system and by ranking every player to make it into the hall of fame. His reasoning for doing this is something along the lines of 'why should Micheal Jordon (the best player ever) and Vince Carter (a malcontent and infamous ball hog) both be recognized to the same level'? It's a valid question, and one that should be considered for other sports as well. If the hall of fame is to recognize not only the accomplishments of those who contributed to a particular sport, but also to act as a history museum, shouldn't the levels of those accomplishments be acknowledged?

The Book of Basketball also attempts to answer many questions which Simmons thinks are important to the sport as a whole. There is a whole section dedicated to 'what-ifs' that considers how the league might be different if small (and sometimes huge) things happened differently. But really at the core of this book is something that Simmons calls The Secret. He wants to find out what really is the trick to winning basketball games and championships and what is the 'it' that some players seem to have while others are completely clueless. As he is first told by Isiah Thomas, The Secret is that 'basketball is not really about basketball'.

What Isiah, and pretty much every other great player, understands is that winning basketball games to some degree is not just about who has better players. More than baseball, and possibly rivaling football, basketball is a team sport. It doesn't matter who has the better players as much as you might think, what really matters is having a team that plays well together and having players that can fit certain roles. While this may seem obvious to some people, just watch any NBA game of the past 10 years and you'll see that hardly any players gets The Secret (which I guess is where the name comes from).

Simmons frames the focal point of this argument as whether or not you think Bill Russel or Wilt Chamberlain was the better basketball in the NBA's early years. Do you go with the defensive team minded Russell or the unstoppable scoring machine Wilt (who famously scored 100 points in one game)? As Simmons points out, this is a ridiculous argument seeing that Russel won 11 championships in 13 years, often beating Wilt's teams, while Wilt only won 2 championships his entire career. Why was it that Russell routinely beat Wilt even though Wilt arguably had more skills? According to Simmons, this argument is at the heart of understanding basketball as a whole, and where individual players rank against each other.

Other than these topics, Simmons also attempts to lay out a brief history of the league and the important events that shaped the NBA as we know it today. If this seems like a lot to go over for one book it is. There is a reason the book is 700 pages besides the fact that Simmons feels bad making his readers pay for his writing.

Although he has obviously done his research for the book (and likes to remind you of this fact over and over) the best parts of The Book of Basketball are anecdotes either from Simmons personally or from those he reads/interviews. The beginning sections of the book where Simmons describes going to Celtics games during Larry Bird's prime are absolute gold. You really get a feel of what it felt like to attend those historic games, and makes you yearn for the days before jumbotrons and around the clock sports coverage. Even if the Celtic love can get a little old at times, it's hard not to see how growing up watching that particular team would create an NBA fanatic.

Being only moderately knowledgeable about basketball I found The Book of Basketball to be at the perfect level of depth. However, if you know hardly anything about basketball, or more specifically basketball greats of the past, you might glaze over when Simmons starts his countdown to the greatest players ever. Especially in the lower numbers (he lists the 96 greatest players ever leaving room for current players that don't yet make the cut) I too often found myself in sections of 5 or so players who I had never heard of before. Simmons tries to break this up with humor and funny anecdotes, but many of the older less known players blended together. This is not to say this is his fault, I'm sure someone with more knowledge of basketball history would be much more interested in these sections than I was.

The thing that really keeps this book going is Simmons' patented humor and stories. He fills this book with footnotes (almost 2 a page) and while this makes this book a 'long' 700 pages, they are mostly used to break up the basketball talk. I know it might make me somewhat of a 'dude', but I often find Simmons really, really funny. However it's in this 'dude' quality that I think that the book's weakest moments lie. Seeing that normally he has to listen to ESPNs censors, he really lets himself go with lots of dick and sex jokes. He occasionally makes comments that could be deemed sexist, and while I appreciate him trying to challenge the overly politically correctness of out times, it did occasionally make me cringe. Also a little over the top are his pop culture jokes. He likes to think he's a king of pop culture references, but it's really just Karate Kid, Teen Wolf, and Boogie Nights jokes over and over. I also think he'll regret making references and comparisons to things like The Bachelor, seeing that I don't think these references will age particularly well.

As much as I wish Simmons held back at times, what really makes The Book of Basketball great is his ability to point out which players and teams mattered, and which people had worthwhile personal stories to tell. Simmons turned me own to players who I knew about but never fully appreciated, Bill Walton and Julius Erving to name a few (seriously, who was cooler than Dr. J? See below), and made me realize how much of a team sport basketball really is. I also liked the sections where he would trash players (i.e. Patrick Ewing, Vince Carter, Pete Maravich, all for different reasons) who are often (mistakenly) thought of as all-time greats, especially given that his talents for humor lend themselves to negative criticism. Reading this book has already made me appreciate understand basketball when I watch it much more than I previously have.

On the personal stories front, his discussions on race relations in the early days of the NBA are particularly great, especially given that this too often gets ignored when discussing sports history. His treatment of lives of Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robinson gave me chills, and I'm not the kind of person who throws that term around. If anyone ever wonders why sports matter, I would encourage them to read about the lives of these and other players.

If you're a fan of Simmons, basketball, or sports in general I would say this is a solid 'must read'. He structures it such that if you get bored with a certain section, you can easily skip around and still enjoy the book. Only want to read about players or teams you know? Go ahead, he encourages it. The 'R-rated' humor will cause a few eye rolls, as well as some audible guffaws, but you will finish the book having a much better feeling about why basketball is a great sport, and which players were truly transcendent.

Eating the Dinosaur - Chuck Klosterman

2009-10-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

On the back cover of Chuck Klosterman's newest book there is a fake question and answer with the writer. Besides containing some of the typical smartassness found in Klosterman's writing there is the following section discussing the book's theme:

Q: Is there a larger theme?

A: Oh, something about reality. "What is reality," maybe? No, that's not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful that whatever actually happened.

Although Klosterman often hides though humor or snarkiness, this is some of the best self analysis that he's written, and it perfectly explains what Eating the Dinosaur is about.

Compared to the other books of his that I have read (Killing Yourself to Live and Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs) Eating the Dinosaur has a much stronger central theme and seems to have had more thought put into it. Although Killing Yourself to Live has a 'strong theme' in theory, it too often gets dragged down by his various musings and distractions. In Dinosaur he stays much more on topic, and almost never gets distracted from his central idea (he barely brings up his personal life, which is a welcome change from his previous efforts). Although I haven't read all of Klosterman's other work, I think it's safe to say that Eating the Dinosaur is is best work to date.

As stated above, Dinosaur has a central theme of "reality versus perceived reality as it is affected by culture". Although like Cocoa Puffs it is a collection of essays on various subjects, unlike Cocoa Puffs all these essays seem to be connected on a deeper level. Whether it's talking about the failure of Chris Gaines, the fall and perception of Ralph Sampson, laughtracks, the sincerity of Rivers Cuomo, Ralph Nader and Warner Herzog or the things the Unabomber got right (more on this in a bit) Dinosaur attempts to analyze ways in which our world experience is mediated and affected through the culture in which we live.

One of my favorite essays was Klosterman explaining why he loves football (which can be read here on ESPN, to which Klosterman is an occasional contributor), and why it's such a fantastic sport. He ends the chapter with his best thoughts about the subject:

Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

Klosterman is here discussing how when it comes to the way football develops tactically, coaches are willing to try anything, constantly challenging the intellect. There is no 'right' way to play (unlike in other sports, say Baseball) and teams are constantly coming up with unique formations and plays to challenge what we thought was possible. However in a way football does support 'old school values' and this results in Klosterman calling it a kind of reverse libertarian. This section explains many of the reasons I myself love football, and I would point to it for anyone who doesn't understand America's fascination with this sport.

As much as I liked the chapter on football, objectively Klosterman's best section is the one in which he tackles the Unabomber. He begins the section with the usual caveats when discussing a possibly sensitive subject, and compares discussing the Unabombers manifesto to discussing O.J. Simpson as a football player. Regardless of the 'appropriateness' of the discussion, he makes some good points. Klosterman writes:

Like so many modern people, my relationship with technology makes no sense whatsoever: It's the most important aspect of my life that I hate. The more central it becomes to how I live, the worse it seems for the world at large. I believe all technology has a positive short-term effect and a negative long-term impact, and-on balance-the exponential of upsurge of technology's social import has been detrimental to the human experience.

Being a little young when the Unabomber was fully active, I was somewhat unaware of what he was all about. I knew he was a crazy guy who lived in the woods of Montana and who sent bombs in the mail to random people in order to have his manifesto published. After reading this section I went online to read though parts of the manifesto, and it ended up making me really depressed. Really, I was upset that I shared to many of the same ideas about society and technology that the Unabomber posits (and Klosterman agrees with here) that it was hard for me to reconcile how I could not come to the same conclusions as Ted Kaczynski.

Kaczynski's main thesis is that as we have become more reliant on technology, and thus don't have to work to fulfill our basic needs as an organism, we have become unhappy and depressed as a species. Almost every activity we associate with 'being human' from art to science to even charity, he ascribes as a 'surrogate activity' that is really taking the place of living and surviving. I don't necessarily agree with him here, but it's hard not to follow his logic to some of these conclusions. After thinking about this a while I came to the conclusion that yes our species seems to be having some issues with the acceleration of society and technology, but I don't think we can go back at this point. Not everyone in the world can live in a cabin in Montana, and many of the people that I love would not be alive if it were not for advanced technology. It's true that human's weren't 'made' to sit and look at screens all day, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

It's in this last section that many of the ideas that Klosterman has batted around for a while in various books and articles come together. The modern human is fully immersed in his society, and many of our ideas or thoughts that we would think originate from ourselves are actually a manifestation of the society we inhabit. Is our own reality different than the reality we experience through media such as television, movies or the internet? How much of our own mind is distinct to us and not shared with the rest of our society? These are some serious questions that Klosterman hints at in Dinosaur while discussing his usual assortment of 'irrelevant' topics. Like his other books Eating the Dinosaur is entertaining and a fast read, but I think it does dig a little deeper. Instead of finding myself rereading sections from confused by what Klosterman is saying because of his complicated wordplay, while reading Dinosaur I found myself rereading sections in order to understand what sophisticated philosophical idea he was trying to connect to ABB, or whatever other piece of irrelevant pop culture he choses to disect.

Ender's Shadow - Orson Scott Card

2009-10-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

After a college friend revealed Orson Scott Card's feelings towards homosexuals to me it was hard not to let his personal feelings affect my opinion of Ender's Game. This brought up the common question of 'does an artist's personal opinions affect the enjoyment of his art or ideas in such a way that it completely ruins them?' Nietzsche was a well known sexist, and there are even many passages in his books that tout these ignorant opinions, but does that mean his other, more enlightened views are thus negated? Some (okay, 99 percent) rappers have hateful or sexist lines in their songs, but does that mean we can't look past it or enjoy their other songs? Or with the case of Card, can we enjoy his books even though he actively supports the mistreatment of an entire section of people in our society?

Card's situation is a little different that the other examples above because his personal opinions are a little less obvious from his work. There is no way to tell that he is a homophobe from the text of Ender's Game. In fact all the scenes of little boys running around naked and talking about their love for each other is more than a little homoerotic. However, Ender's Game was written before Card became more outspoken about his beliefs so it's possible that he just didn't feel as strongly at the time. After talking to some friends, and reading about his other work on the internet, I decided I had no interest in reading the rest of the Ender series. However, I was interested in Ender's Shadow on the strength of a couple of recommendations, and was also interested to see if Card's homophobic beliefs would rear their ugly head in this later written piece.

On the later of these accounts, I found Ender's Shadow to be no more homophobic than Ender's Game. Frankly it was possibly even more homoerotic than his seminal work. Now I'm not the kind of person that thinks every homophobe is possibly just a closeted self-loathing gay, but the thought did cross my mind more than once when it comes to Card.

Ender's Shadow is as the subtitle says, 'a parrallel novel to Ender's Game'. It takes (mostly) the same story and tells it from the character of Bean, Ender's right hand man and another small but intelligent child. Additionally to telling Bean's point of view, Shadow is used to give us more background and explanation for the events that happened in Game either through Bean's interaction with the teachers and commanders or through blunt bits of exposition through other characters.

I found Bean's own development to be interesting, if not a little more than reminiscent of the story we are told about Ender. They are both younger than the typical members of battle school, and furthermore they are small for their age. They both are singled out for their size and intelligence by their instructor during their lunch to the school in order to ostrisize them from their fellow students. Although this makes sense later on when we learn that Bean is really the 'back up' to Ender in case he should fail, it still feels a little too repetitive. Further making Ender's Shadow repetitive is the fact that the sections with Ender are exactly like they are in the previous book, with us getting the running monologue of Bean's head instead of Enders. Also, Card still has no idea how to write children (I don't care how smart they are, children don't speak like that!).

In addition to using many of the same sections for the plat, Card also doesn't have the best of writing styles. It is often said that the best films 'show and not tell', and even though this is a book I think the same basic principle applies to all storytelling. It is best to tell a story while leaving the audience to fill in some gaps themselves. The best storytellers will leave enough gaps to keep the audience stimulated and thinking, while giving them enough information so everyone can follow along and come to (mostly) the same conclusions. There are way too many sections of unnecessary explanation in Card's books, and it makes him only a mediocre writer. There is no need ot have a character explain what happened and why in a two page monologue after the reader themselves have also read the event in question. Card is either spoon feeding the reader, or trying to make his characters seem 'analytical', but it really just comes off as both patronizing and boring.

I didn't hate Ender's Shadow, and found much of it entertaining as I did with Ender's Game. Card does reuse a lot of the same tricks, and clumsily connects events and characters while over-explaining everything, but the story is still interesting. After reading Shadow, and reading about the other books in both the Ender and Bean series, I can see why people think Card is a one trick pony. Shadow did feel a little like Card realized he had used up his one good idea, and that he missed the boat and underdeveloped many of the characters in that book. Shadow is really for Ender's Game fanatics who can't get enough of that universe, but for everyone else I'd say it's a solid skip.

So how did I come out of this feeling about Card the person? Well from Shadow and Game I gather that Card feels two things about himself, or at least about himself at a young age. 1) That he was small and unfairly picked upon as a child. And 2) that he was beyond his age in intelligence and was able to use this to trick the older and bigger kids. Furthermore, it's obvious from his online commentaries that he is just another conservative religious man who recently decided to make gay-bashing his personal quest. So can we disconnect his art from the person? In this case I think you can, even though he only has 1 great book (that is poorly written like many sci-fi greats) and I don't think he's really worth the energy getting that upset about in the first place.

The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins

2009-10-18T08:22:00.001-07:00

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact... [It] didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even
educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is.

In my previous post discussing one of Dawkins' other books I wrote that I didn't really want to get into another debate about evolution vs. creationism. In reviewing his most recent book, it would be impossible and irresponsible for me to ignore this ongoing and often spiteful dialog.

The goal of this book, as the subtitle lets on, is for Dawkins to produce the 'Evidence for Evolution'. Although examples of and evidence for evolution is found throughout his other writing, he doesn't have a book that states 'these are the facts, and this is why evolution is true'. In this way The Greatest Show on Earth is a much needed book. Although another book (which Dawkins fully reccomends) that tackles this subject was released earlier this year in Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, I think it's neccesary for someone who is widely known (as much in our society that a scientist can be) to also tackle this subject. Too many people either believe or contradict evoluution without really knowing the facts. As Dawkins often points out, General scientific knowledge in our world is at an extremely depressing level given how much knowledge we as a species have. The purpose of this book is both to convince those on the fence that evolution is indeed true, and to arm those who believe in it against those who Dawkins calls 'history deniers'.

The first thing that Dawkins tackles in this book, and the one thing that I think is sorely needed in the current discussion about evolution, is the idea that it is 'only a theory'. He frames the argument so well in the book it would be hard for me to recapitulate his ideas. Basically, he points out that the only thing that can be proven are mathematical theorems. You often hear Darwinists sarcastically say 'well gravity is only a theory', and really it's true. You can prove that the square root of 2 is an irrational number, but you cannot prove that evolution is true. This does not mean that beyond any doubt it is true.

Dawkins uses the risky move of pointing out that many people in the world no longer believe the Holocaust occurred. He compares this case of 'ignoring' the facts to those who ignore the truth of evolution. It's a risky move because any time you use Hitler or the Holocaust in an argument, one typically losses all credibility. But here I think he makes a valid point. Even with the eye witnesses (which are becoming fewer and fewer these days) he claims that the evidence for evolution is just as strong as the evidence for the occurrence of the Holocaust. The point here is for him to point out what we consider to be 'evidence' and how we as humans make decisions about what happened in the past.

This brings up the next set of arguments that Dawkins tackles. He spends a fair amount of time on the fossil record, and whether or not it is 'incomplete'. Many people (not just creationists) believe that the fossil record is the biggest, and perhaps only, evidence for evolution. Thus they are taught to say 'the record is incomplete' thinking that if they point out areas where we don't have fossils of intermediate species evolution will be blown to shreds. There are two main points here that Dawkins points out. First, our record is more complete than we have any right ot expect. We have so many 'intermediates' and examples of not only human ancestors, but ancestors of many species that it is more than enough to conclude evolution's truth. Second, any time we find a new fossil, creationists then can say 'where is the intermediate between that and the one before'. As I've pointed out in my reivew for The Ancestor's tale, there are an infinate number of 'intermediates' between species. Placing everything in a neat and tidy box is a human way of thinking, and nature does not work this way.

Furthermore, Dawkins makes the argument that our evidence for evolution is so convincing that even if we did not have one fossil we would be just as confident in the truth of evolution by natural selection. Comparing scientists to detectives who have to figure out what happened inthe aftermath of a crime, Dawkins writes:

The fossil record, like the spy camera in the murder story, is a bonus, something that we had no right ot expect as a matter of entitlement.

There is something else that creationists, and those who don't take the time to learn the subject often miss. They think that evolution is 'in the past' and something that has to be proven like a fact of history. The thing they miss is that evolution is happening all around us every day. Furthermore, as Dawkins writes:

there is more than enough evidence for the fact of evolution in the comparative study of modern species and their geographical distribution. We don't need fossils - the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution. We are, as I say, lucky to have fossils at all.

It is theses other pieces of evidence that I think make this book required reading for enlightened adults. Everyone knows what fossils are and how they work. But hardly anyone really understands the other pieces of evidence that are produced throughout this book. I won't really go into them here, because I think one really needs to sit down and read this book (or a book like it like Coyne's) to understand the evidence. The domestication of animals, our relationships to other creatures, geological features and countless other examples are used to show how everything in biology and life is driven by evolution and natural selection.

One of the main arguments that is often used against 'Darwinists' is that they're just replacing one ideology with another. This argument is used by both those who are religous and obviously at odds with Darwinism, and by those who think that any kind of ideology is ridiculous and harmful. Furthermore, this argument is even extended to all of science, where they believe 'Religion' is just being replaced with 'Science' with those who believe acting just as blind and indoctrinated. I find this argument utterly ridiculous. Science is a way of thinking, not a set of beliefs. As Dawkins points out above, evolution didn't have to be true but all of our evidence points out that it is. If there were some, any, evidence that Darwinian Evolution wasn't true those of us who believe in it would have to abandon this idea and try to figure out how things really work. Those who believe in 'creationism' or any other religious belief will never change their indivdual beliefs. They are set in stone for all time, unable to be changed by even the most convincing mounds of evidence.

Dollhouse - Joss Whedon

2009-10-11T13:49:00.001-07:00

In my previous post, I tried to make a case for Fringe being one of the better shows on television that no one watches. I think that this discussion could easily be shifted to Dollhouse, a show that absolutely no one watches and one that is in dire straights. On a week-to-week basis I don't think Dollhouse is as strong as Fringe, it occasionally has a few groan inducing episodes here and there which takes the show down a level. However at its peak Dollhouse is easily the best show on television when LOST isn't airing, which feels like 95% of the year. (I'm not including Mad Men here, which is a different kind of good.)

Because so few people watch this show, likely you included, I think I need to give a little background on what the show is about. The dollhouse in Dollhouse is a place where people can go to get any desire or wish fulfilled. The dollhouse is populated with people who have had their memory wiped, a blank slate if you will, and can hence be programmed with any set of memories or skills that could be imagined. The 'dolls', or 'actives', are people who have volunteered to go through with this for 5 years, at which time they will be released carrying a boatload of money under their arms and their original memories intact.

If all of this sounds sinister, it should. Although not every person comes to the dollhouse for sexual purposes, a fair amount do. In less creepy jobs the dolls take on jobs such as being bodyguards, helping to solve kidnapping cases and being a proxy mother for a motherless child. Although this process is an extremely powerful tool, the company is seemingly only interested in making money and gaining power by helping those at high places.

Dollhouse is a different show, because we have very few 'good guys' to root for. Most of the characters are people who work in the dollhouse, an admittedly morally questionable place. We also get a fair amount of exposure to the dolls, but because they are just empty vessels who are filled with a different personality every week it's hard for the audience to feel a connection with them. The show does have Paul Ballard (played BSG's Tahmoh Penikett) an FBI agent obsessed with shutting down the dollhouse. But he's pretty inept as an agent, and turns out to be not the most upstanding person himself. I think having almost all of the characters able to be considered 'villains' is one of the problems with the show, more of which I will go into below.

Of the original 12 episode season run last year, a little over half involve the main doll, Echo (Eliza Dushku), getting an assignment, which usually turns out to be more difficult than originally intended, and having her clean up the pieces and save the day. Most of these are pretty weak, and after the first 5 episodes, I was not sure if this show lived up to Whedon's previous work. However starting with the 6th episode 'Man on the Street' the show turned from a pleasant but spotty weekly diversion to a fantastic show that delves into deep philosophical questions.

As the dolls start malfunctioning, the question of 'what makes a person who they are' starts to be addressed. Is a person the whole package, body and soul, or are they just a collection of memories that could conceivably be placed in another body? As Echo starts to remember more than she should (none of the dolls should remember anything about their engagements) she starts wondering who she is. Even without her original identity, she has fragments of memories from multiple sources and this is obviously confounding. Then as agent Ballard gets closer to the dollhouse, and a ex-doll who had an infamous and bloody escape a few months prior makes his presence felt the show really kicks into high gear. The last few episodes of the first season are truly spectacular, and the season finale (which was left off the air and only available on DVD) is one of the riskiest, and best, season finales I have ever seen.

As great as Dollhouse is, and the heights do really compare with the best of anything Whedon has ever done, it does have flaws that prevent it from becoming one of the great shows in recent memory. First is to again bring up the weakness in the 'doll-of-the-week' episodes. The second season, which is only 3 episodes young, has had a couple of these kinds of episodes and they have fallen far below the peaks the show can reach. The second problem is the obvious flaw of having Eliza Dushku play the lead. As decent as she is in other roles, she really doesn't have the chops to carry this show. The show's format requires her to be a different person every week, and this would be difficult for even the best actors. Many of the actors on the show blow Dushku out of the water, and all the Echo based episodes are a little weak.

Another problem with the show is that because of the purpose of the dollhouse, everything feels a little dirty and wrong. I have already discussed the fact that the show is chock full of 'bad guys', but I haven't brought up the inherent misogyny and sexism found in much of the show. Many of the episodes at least start out with Echo or one of the other female dolls being in some ridiculous overly sexed up outfit ready to go out and please one of the male clients. Furthermore in many episodes where the doll's 'programming' goes awry, we're stuck with innocent women who are completely helpless and often at the mercy of some big strong man who has less than honorable intentions. I give Whedon a little extra slack here because he did create the great feminist figure of Buffy, but sometimes the sexism still gets a little oppressive in Dollhouse. This is not to say the writers are inherently sexist, it's just that the basis of the show inherently explores the sexism found in our society and the writers just need to try a little harder to make sure that they don't get carried away exploring these themes.

I'm not sure if it's these problems inherent to the show that are causing it to get such terrible ratings, or if it's more on Fox's hands being that the show is aired on Fridays and with terrible shows leading up to it. Fox also doesn't advertise the show very well, and really seems to care less whether or not Dollhouse succeeds. I know that much of the suits at Fox have turned over in the past few years, but I find it hard to believe that Whedon trusted that Fox would do what it could for Dollhouse when it failed so spectacularly with Firefly. It remains to be seen if the second season will pick up where the first one left off, or if they try to change it so much to gain new viewers that the show gets completely gutted. If you have any interest in this show, or have enjoyed Whedon's products in the past, I emplore you go online and watch the first season on Hulu. It's only 13 episodes long and once you get to the unaired episode 'Epitaph One' I think it will be hard for you to say that your breath wasn't taken away. Let's give Whedon support so we can see what he can do with a full run of television like he did with the essential Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Edit: Seems like the show will finish the season with a satisfying ending. Although it doesn't look like it'll be back for a third season.

In Defense of Fringe

2009-10-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

I don't personally know anyone else who watches Fringe, and I'm not really sure why this is. In fact I don't know what demographic watches Fringe, and how it got renewed for a 2nd season in the first place. It seems that much of the nerd community has dismissed it as either an X-Files ripoff, or just another boring cop show with some 'weird elements'. And it's those 'weird elements' that I would think would turn off your normal NCIS fan or other watchers of CBS style dramas. I think Fringe is an excellent way to spend an hour a week, and find it to be something like a cross between LOST and yes, The X-Files.

Obviously if you were just to describe Fringe in a sentence it would sound exactly like an X-Files ripoff. It would go something like this:

"A team of FBI agents investigates strange and paranormal happenings around the city of Boston as they fight both external and internal forces in order to find the truth behind these strange occurrences."

This is likely how the show was pitched, and that with the addition of the creative force J.J. Abrams (Alias, LOST, the new Star Trek etc...) it got green-lighted. However I think it would be a fallacy to think that Fringe is just another Abrams show, or just another 'weird' FBI show. After the initial growing pains of the first season, Fringe has gone on to combine the best of all of these shows to become something great and unique.

During the first half of the first season we were stuck with the expected 'freak-of-the-week' format that one would expect. I use the word 'freak' here and not the typical 'monster' mostly because all of the paranormal activity around Fringe involves humans, not monsters or aliens or other creatures found in myths. This is the first thing that separates it, possibly just ascetically, from The X-Files. Where The X-Files was more interested in creatures or events that were rooted in mythologies or legends, Fringe takes a more scientific and technological route. People are often found with extraordinary abilities, some malevolent some not, and our team is tasked with figuring out the science behind these strange people or events. The show often explains what is going on, and how they're accomplishing these feats where The X-Files was more than happy to leave everyone in the dark, the viewer included. On a basic level it's an X-Files for a more scientific and technological age.

On a personnel and character level, Fringe is nothing like The X-Files. A show like Bones with its will-they-or-wont-they FBI agents owes much more to the dynamic of Mulder and Scully than Fringe ever will. Here we have the seemingly 'straight-man' Oliva Dunham as the lead and the character that grounds us in this world. She seems to be a typically competent agent who gets caught up in all this due to personal reasons. Anna Torv has steadily improved her performances and while I initially thought she might be a liability to the show, she has really become a strong point. It's also refreshing to have a strong blond woman in a lead role who is not only attractive, but doesn't have to rely on those looks as an actress or as a character. The show doesn't use Torv as a source of T&A for viewers, and I really think it gives the character an air of respectability.

Our other main characters are rounded out by the father/son combo portrayed by John Noble (think the grape tomato eating Denethor in LOTR) and Joshua Jackson (OMG PACEY!!!). Joshua Jackson has really grown up from his Dawson's Creek days and sells his character very well. Noble on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. I wasn't that into Fringe when it first started, but Noble's portrayal of Walter Bishop brought me back week after week. He plays Bishop as a part loon, part evil genius, and part caring father which only recently was removed from an insane asylum. Not only is he responsible for all the pseudo-scientific explanations and experiments performed on the show, Noble is also responsible for the majority of the comic relief. Often as he's inspecting a body or performing an experiment he lets out a string of non sequiturs that are easily the funniest part of the show. The following exchange takes place as agent Dunham is preparing to enter a sensory deprivation tank:

WALTER smiles slightly: Uh, oh.
OLIVIA: What?
WALTER: I just got an erection. Oh, fear not. It's nothing to do with your state of undress. I just simply need to urinate.
OLIVIA: That's good to know.

He's so perfect that Walter Bishop might be the new archetype for 'crazy scientist' after all is said and done.

After the show started to find its footing in the middle of he first season, it started to connect all these strange events in what is called 'The Pattern'. Besides the silliness of the typical J.J. Abramism of giving something an ominous name (like 'The Passenger' in Alias) having these seemingly unconnected events all have their origin in a similar place really holds this show together. Every freak that we find that does something like mutate into a giant hedgehog/bear creature or person with psychic abilities has some connection to Walter Bishop's past as an experimentalist. Having one of our main heroes possibly be the main source of the problems in which they are investigating gives the series a dramatic element that most procedurals never have, although I'm not sure if at this point you can really call Fringe a procedural. Sure there is the typical 'cold open' where we see a 3 minute scene of the freak or strange event that our heroes will investigate in the upcoming hour, but once everything starts to have a connective thread the show somewhat morphs into a straight up serial. I think you can still enjoy a stray episode of Fringe here or there, but like all great shows it rewards its dedicated viewers.

This season has gone even further with giving the entire series an overarching plot with the introduction of the alternative reality, or what I would call 'Earth-2'. After dealing with Abrams on the set of Star Trek, Leonard Nemoy agreed to play Walter's old partner who may or may not be a sinister force. He lives in this 'Earth-2' and the season has started to put in motion a plot that pits the two Earths in a war with each other. 'The Pattern' may or may not be a way of 'Earth-2' waging war with the Earth in which our characters inhabit, but whatever happens so far this season seems promising. Out of the four episodes which have aired about 2 have been mainly about this upcoming war, and the other ones were very similar to the 'freak of the week' format from the first season (one which was pretty good, one which as terrible). Instead of trying to gain a new following and starting from 'square one' as shows often do in their second season, the second season of Fringe went full steam ahead and picked up where the first season left off. This may be a bad move, and result in lower than expected viewing numbers, but it sure makes for some good television for those of us who know what is going on.

It may be too late for those who are interested in watching the show to jump in now. Luckily we live in the age of 'tv on the internet' and you could catch up some weekend if you ever really got interested in the show. I think it's a shame that not too many people watch Fringe, because I think at its best it contains the best of what both The X-Files and shows like LOST have to offer. It's fun seeing what weird shit the writers can come up week to week, and how Walter can explain it, while at the same time having a strong central plotline to keep the show moving along. Additionally, the characters are not one dimensional and the show slowly unveils interesting aspects about their person or their past, but without completely destroying the flow of the episode like LOST is apt to do. Fringe is a great show and it's too bad that many people to whom this would seem to be right up their alley never really given it a chance.

Zombieland

2009-10-05T18:42:00.001-07:00

I'm not really sure what it is about comedies that doesn't really grab me. It's not that I don't like to laugh (who doesn't like to laugh? except these guys), I think it's just that I find them kind of lacking in the context of the format of film. Most good comedies start out pretty great, they have a good amount of jokes and humorous scenes along the way, (as long as the trailers don't spoil everything for you) and then fall apart in the third act. Because they are films they have to follow the conventional formula and this usually leads to large chunks of the movie spent developing and bringing resolution to the (often) half baked plot. They can't just keep the same comedic tempo and pacing throughout the entire film. Because the plot is often an afterthought when comedies are being written, the audience doesn't have as strong of a connection to the characters as you would in a drama. Thus as the movie reaches the final act it looses all steam seeing that the audience isn't invested in the characters enough to keep it going. This leaves many comedies such as Dirty Work that switch pretty drastically from a brilliant work of comedy to a boring plot based drama as the story must be resolved.

I think this is why I am more likely to see and enjoy comedies that are set within or blended with another genre. Because these kind of films are both a comedy and something else at the same time, when the movie becomes more plot driven it still remains interesting because it doesn't only rely on it's comedic edge. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are the most recent filmmakers that are famous for this with their movies Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, and this is where Zombieland comes in. Of course the easiest comparison to Zombieland would be Shaun of the Dead and any review that doesn't at least mention this would be amiss. However besides the fact that they are both zombie comedies (or zomedies) they share little in common. Without considering their very different plots, Shaun of the Dead is more concerned with showing a humorous take on the zombie movie and deconstructing the genre, whereas Zombieland is more about having gross zombies serve as the backdrop for its humor and action.

Unlike most zombie movies which feel the need to explain why and how the infection spread, Zombieland is content to feed the audience a line about a bad hamburger and move on from there. I think this works very much in the films favor seeing that the audience never gets bogged down with some ridiculous backstory. As much as I love exposition, I found it refreshing that Zombieland was free from having to explain itself at every turn. We're thrust into a zombie apocalypse, much like the main characters must have been, and as the characters we try to make the best of it.

The film tries to be many things (horror movie, comedy, buddy picture, road trip movie, it even has elements of romance) but the film is at its best when Jesse Eisenburg and Woody Harrelson are just hanging out killing zombies together. Eisenburg plays his awkward, gangly, Michael Cera speaking self while Harrelson plays a tough-talking, ass-kicking southerner in a snakeskin jacket who feels the need to paint a 3 (in honor of Dale Earnhardt) on every car he co-ops. As Harrelson says in the film, the thing he was put on earth to do is kill zombies, and boy does he enjoy it. The film constantly finds new and interesting ways for him to maim and kill zombies, whether it's with a banjo or from a roller coaster, and it's almost like the movie took all the fun parts of zombie a video game.

The pair of sisters that are later introduced are useful to move the plot along, but they don't really add much to the movie besides to give Eisenburg a romantic interest and give the movie a place to move towards. There is also a 'secret' guest star that I won't ruin for you, but this section is getting a lot of press and accolades. The scenes in which they're in are fun, but they come in a section of the movie that is relatively zombie-free and what I think is the lowpoint for the movie. It just feels that they invested a lot in this having person and it kind of slows down the exceptional pace in which the movie usually moves.

The film is also stylized in way that is both interesting and unique. As is becoming increasingly common these days the movie has a great opening sequence (on par with Watchmen) which consists of a bunch of scenes of zombies chasing people in slow motion that lets you know that you're in for gore, humor and style. The most unique aspect of this style is how whenever Eisenburg brings up one of his 'rules' to surviving in Zombieland the rule appears on screen as text, and then interacts with whatever is happening on screen. Subsequently, the rules then appear on the screen whenever the characters do something in which they are applicable. The 'double-tap' rule especially comes up in humorous ways throughout the film.

As good as most of the film is, the movie is really worth watching for the last 20 or so minutes. I'm not ruining anything to say that the final destination for the movie is an amusement park (part of what gives Zombieland its name) and this is the best part of the movie. It's pretty much nonstop fun zombie kills, interesting action scenes, and a bit of drama that is genuinely interesting. At a quick 80 minutes, when Zombieland ends you wish that you could get right back in line for more of the same.

Ghost Dog - Jim Jarmusch

2009-09-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Jim Jarmusch is one of those filmmakers that most everyone has heard of, but at the same time most people have never seen any of his output nor could they even name one of his films. In this way, Jarmusch is very much like David Lynch, and the fact that he is a white guy from middle America with big white hair doesn't help to separate them. However their films could not be more different. From what I've seen of Jarmusch (Ghost Dog, Dead Man, and Broken Flowers) his movies tend to be very simplistic studies of idiosyncratic individuals while Lynch focuses more on the surreal nature of life and the human mind, and are sometimes complicated to the point where they step on their own toes.

Ghost Dog is a fantastic film that is squarely in Jarmusch's wheel house. It's simple enough that the plot doesn't get in the way, but interesting and innovative enough to keep the viewer interested and engaged. Ghost Dog tells the story of a black man, named Ghost Dog, who envisions himself as a modern-day samurai. He works for a member of the local mob, doing 'cleaner' work for them when necessary. During a job at the beginning of the film, something goes awry that is not the fault of the ever professional Ghost Dog, and the local mob leaders decide to take Ghost Dog out so as to cover their own tracks. The rest of the film follows Ghost Dog as he attempts to take out these mobsters before they get to him, and delves further into the psyche of this modern samurai.

What makes Ghost Dog great is not the plot but the characterization of the title character. It is never really in doubt that Ghost Dog will be able to get to the mobsters before they get to him, but that doesn't make the movie any less exciting. The ways in which Ghost Dog preemptively strikes at the mob are often fresh and innovative and watching him take out the overweight, ineffectual mobsters is very satisfying. Although Ghost Dog is technically a murderer, there isn't much in terms of moral ambiguity here: he's the good guy and he's going to take the bad guys out.

Much of the film is spent going into the samurai code that drives the way Ghost Dog lives his life. He is often seen reading the Hagakure, which records the samurai code and sayings of famous samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo. There are many sections of voice over where the text of a passage of the Hagakure is displayed on the screen accompanied by Ghost Dog's reading. In many other directors hands this technique might feel clumsy or appear to be spoon feeding the audience, but Jarmusch is able to make it work with an assist by Whittaker's dramatic line readings.

Ghost Dog does have many of those 'quirky' qualities that would qualify it as an 'indie' movie besides just its budget. There are many peculiar characters besides Ghost Dog, including his Hatian best friend who speaks only french yet runs an ice cream truck in the ghetto, and the little girl who takes a shine to him and carries not lunch in her lunchbox but a wide variety of books. One clever scene has Ghost Dog and his Haitian friend view someone building a wooden ship on a roof and have a discussion about it without understanding a word the other one says (this is a recurring theme that could be seen as a joke, or as an examination of the connection two people can make even without the use of words). Additionally, Ghost Dog only communicates to his handler through carrier pigeons and practices with his Katana outside his bird coop even if he doesn't use the sword for his jobs. Finally, at it's core, Ghost Dog is a blend of the gangster and samurai genres that were wildly influential in rap music of the time. And as we all know white indie kids love both blending genres and analyzing black inner city culture that they weren't really a part of.

However as much as I joke, this is not meant as a criticism, Ghost Dog does not feel disingenuous in any way. There is/was a reason that so much of rap music focused on gangsters and samurais (especially the Wu-Tang Clan in the latter case) and this movie does that connection justice.

Forrest Whittaker is absolutely fantastic in a career performance as the title role and the soundtrack (done by Wu-Tang's RZA) is mesmerizing. Hollywood puts out gangster and assassin movies like it's going out of style and frankly I am usually annoyed by them, usually feeling that the genre has nothing new to offer. However, this movie is a great take on those old genres and is one of the best films that I've watched in recent memory.

Angel: Seasons 2 & 3 - Joss Whedon

2009-09-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember when I wrote that Angel was more of a procedural than Buffy ever was, and that this 'vampire detective' schtick was exciting, fun and a refreshing change from Buffy? Well that may all true about the first season, but about halfway into the second season all that goes flying out the window. There are multi-season story archs, plot lines darker than most anything I've seen on television, and one ridiculous cliff hanger. Oh, plus Pete from Mad Men shows up as an evil Peter Pan from hell, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The second season starts right where the first one left off. Angel is busy being a champion (the show's word, not mine) and saving all sorts of helpless people. Already being more useful than she ever was in Buffy, Cordelia acts as the show's emotional center and as Angel's guide to the higher powers by receiving visions of people Angel is supposed to save. In addition to a tougher and more likable Wesley the show adds to the main cast Gunn, a 'street' (read: black) vampire fighter. Eventually added are Lorne the empath demon (also the most likable 'theater person' I've ever seen on screen) and Fred the quirky but intelligent girl discovered in Lorne's home-world. As well as I thought the 3 man team of the first season worked together these character additions (especially Lorne and Fred) add a much needed breath of fresh air to the show. As the series progresses and gets darker and darker, any level of levity is greatly appreciated. So let's get to those dark plot lines that plague Angel's middle seasons.

At the end of the first season Angel's main rival, the law firm Wolfram and Heart, brought back Darla, the vampire that sired him back in the 18th century. It's never really clear why they do this, nor why this is such a big deal, but they pretty much bring her back to screw with Angel. We get lots of exposition about Angel's past (not really that much more than what we got in Buffy) and when he eventually finds out that Darla is alive he obviously loses his shit. There are some pretty intense (and occasionally melodramatic) scenes where Angel is deciding what to do about Darla being alive. Eventually an old friend turns Darla back into a vampire (she comes back as human) and this upsets Angel so much that he fires everyone he works with, starts to brood constantly, and starts blurring the line between 'hero' and 'villain'.

This section of season 2 was a little melodramatic, especially given how annoying Darla is. It's hard to buy that Angel cares so much about her as a human when he only knew her as an evil fiend. Additionally, we're supposed to believe that Buffy was Angel's true love, so it's hard to understand his actions with respect to Darla seeing that he was only with her when he was evil himself. It also seems a little forced to rely on the possibility of Angel going 'bad' seeing that Buffy's second season already explored this territory very successfully. However after the Darla storyline finishes, and Angel gets everything back in order the show picks back up. The final story arch with the crew going to Lorne's hometown to save Cordelia is especially good, and it's nice to see these characters interact in a more traditional 'fantasy' type setting.

Whereas the episodes of the second season was about half and half overarching story and one-offs, the third season completely destroys this ratio. From the get go we get scenes of a pregnant Darla, and discover that she's pregnant with Angel's baby from a night of hate sex which occurred during the previous season. This pregnant-Darla storyline dominates season 3, and the MOTW episodes completely disappear when a rival from Angel's past shows up to muck up things further. Darla eventually gets out of the picture and dies in childbirth (by her own hand even!) and at that point the series takes an extremely dark turn. There are lots of dire monologues about revenge and vengeance, hate, and the steps necessary to dispose of one's enemies. Gone are the days of the loquacious mayor who is both a germaphobe and an immortal demon, and instead we have a villain who is driven purely by hate of the long-gone evil Angelus. Frankly, Hotlz is not much fun, and every thing he's involved in is covered by a thick depressing cloud.

Having Holtz around to make everyone act out of character was bad enough, and I haven't even brought up the 'prophecy'. Wesley discovers that according to a prophecy (that later turns out to be false) that Angel is destined to kill his son. Being overly distraught, he plans on stealing the baby from Angel and raising it himself far away. Of course Holtz gets involved in this as well and eventually steals the baby (now named Connor) after Wesley takes it, and slits Wesley's throat for good measure. After stealing the baby Holtz takes it to a 'hell dimension', seemingly never to be seen again. Obviously Angel is distraught over these events, but it seems a little extreme to have him try to suffocate Wesley while he's recovering the hospital. Wesley essentially gets ostracized from the group even after they understand his side of the story, and starts hatefucking one of their main opponents from Wolfram and Heart. (There sure is a lot of hate sex in Angel, isn't there?)

The child eventually comes back from the dimension as a teenager (time works different in different dimensions) and after gaining the trust of Angel Investigations he finally turns on them as are Holtz's wishes. The season ends with Holtz killing himself in a manner than makes Connor believe that Angel was responsible, and then Connor trapping Angel in a large metal box and throwing him to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I cannot think of a darker cliffhanger than having Angel's son betray his father by making the immortal Angel suffer with this knowledge at the bottom of the Pacific ocean for the foreseeable future.

Joss Whedon's shows are famous for their witty dialog and humor even when the shows delve into serious storylines, as they often do, and I think Angel lost sight of this somewhere. This is not to say that I wasn't engrossed in the story, it's just that I wish there was a little more time for the characters to interact and play off each other with the original premise of the show. There are so many character additions in these seasons just having them solve demon or paranormal related events would be more than enough to keep the show interesting. While Buffy also introduced 'big bads', I think that it was much more able to successfully fit those stories within the original premise of the show. By the end of the third season Angel pretty much turned into a supernatural soap opera with teeth.

House - Season 6: Episode 1

2009-09-21T19:26:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed my posting has become a little more sporadic as of late. The main culprit behind troubling trend is the fact that the fall TV season has started once again. When I was a child this time of year was very exciting for me. I loved getting new school supplies and finding out what classes I'd be taking and who I'd be sitting next to in those classes (yes I was a big dork). Combine this with the fact that this was the time that my favorite shows would begin anew and my birthday is not far off made fall one of my favorite seasons (changing leaves and the cooling of the air rules as well).

So as this time has approached I've been a little conflicted on how I should continue writing. I obviously won't have as much time to watch about movies since I keep up with a couple of shows, and thus if I continue with my current format I won't have much to write about. So I have decided to write my thoughts on a couple of my favorite shows as they air. I may not post about every show I watch or every episode of shows that I do write about, but I will comment on things when I find them interesting or thought provoking. So without further ado let's start with the first week of the fall TV season (at least for most shows).

House - Season 6: Episode 1

As was probably the case with most fans of House, I was a little concerned with how this season would unfold. At the end of the previous season House checked into a mental institution after battling a both a drug addiction and hallucinations. It was interesting to see how these would play out in the fifth season, and I think the writers did a fantastic job weaving House's problems within the case of the week plots throughout the season. At it's heart House is a procedural, and it was pretty neat to see how that format could be combined with a riveting season long character arch. They kept the whole 'medical mystery' format of the show while delving into House's psyche in a way that most procedurals don't usually attempt.

Although I appreciated the build up to the end of last season, I was pretty weary about how they could keep House, House with the titular character being completely out of his element. Would they keep him in the mental institution for the majority of the season and have him solve mysteries within the compound or possibly as a consultant to his 'crew'? Or would they have him leave fairly quickly and return to the status quo? The first route completely changes the dynamic of the show and would make House much more of a serialized show. And the second route would seem to negate all of the emotional impact that the fifth season created.

After a fantastic opening sequence set to No Surprises from Radiohead's essential album OK Computer, the episode shows House settling into living in the mental institution and causing problems as you would expect. Even the biggest House supporter can't really defend his bullying of the other mental patients (making suicide jokes at a cutter? really House?) but these episodes eventually show House finally having some of that elusive contentment. After his initial posturing and misbehaving, House actually shows remorse over some bad choices, and even makes a real personal connection. It remains to be seen if the show will continue his personal improvement when he goes back to work next week, but it was a little nice to see House act like a real person.

Overall I was pretty satisfied with the premiere even if I did have a few qualms with it. While it was nice to see House improve as a person, we didn't really get anything in the way of 'medical mysteries' (there was a tease midway through that was pretty frustrating) that gave House a chance to use that brain of his, and there was nothing to be seen of the rest of the cast. It also seemed a little rushed having him get over his addiction and hallucination problems within the first 5 minutes of the show, and the rest of his stay at the hospital pretty much involved him trying to be less of a dick. I think they could have drawn out his addiction storyline and had him stay at the hospital much longer, as long as he was consulting with the rest of the doctors from Plainsboro so that the show could still keep some semblance of what it used to be. Or maybe I've been watching Mad Men too much and just find all this plot development a little hectic and possibly forced.

The Blind Side - Michael Lewis

2009-09-16T12:34:00.001-07:00

The subtitle of The Blind Side is 'Evolution of a Game'. This gives one the impression that Lewis will spend a large amount of the book delving into the development of the left tackle and how it affected football strategy over the past fifty years to the same depths in which he probed the changing strategies of baseball throughout Moneyball. Although there is somewhat of a discussion of these ideas, less than a quarter of the book is spent discussing football strategies and players while the rest is spent telling the (often saccharine) tale of a troubled young man named Michael Oher who fits the new prototype of the increasingly important left tackle. Moneyball was a fantastic book, and it had far reaching implications for the public's understanding of the new trends in baseball statistics. I was hopping that The Blind Side would do the same thing for football, more specifically offensive line play.

The impetus behind The Blind Side is the fact that as football has become more and more pass oriented and the quarterback became the most important position on the field, the man that protects the quarterback, and thus the entire game plan, has also become increasingly important. Traditionally offensive linemen were thought to be interchangeable and replaceable, and they were the lowest paid players on the team. The left tackle (the offensive lineman who lines up at the far left) was thought to be no different than the other 4 lineman. However as most quarterbacks are right-handed, when they drop back to pass the left tackle is the one protecting the quarterback's back and blind side. As defensive schemes were being developed to attack the nervous system of the passing game, it became increasingly obvious that the left tackle was not only another part of the line, but a 'skill position'.

The biggest misconception about football is that the players, more specifically the linemen, are just a bunch of big, dumb, fat men running into each other mindlessly. It is often thought that this takes no skill and that the only requirements to be a lineman is the size involved. While it is true that some linemen are pretty overweight, most of them, and especially the best ones, are incredible athletes. As the left tackle became increasingly important it could even be said that the best athlete is often found at that position. They are fast, nimble, strong, intelligent and unrelenting.

What The Blind Side does best is to educate the reader about these 'freaks of nature'. The few chapters that focus strictly on football, and many of the sections on Michael Oher, make it very clear the importance of and skill involved in playing left tackle. Michael Oher is described in highschool as a 300 pound six foot two athletic freak. He shoots and handles a basketball like a guard, and is able to dominate in many track events (that obviously involve throwing) on his first attempt. He's not just some big, dumb, strong jock. These things are hard to notice for outsiders because on television the camera just follows the ball. Even when you try to specifically pay attention to the line play it's hard to see what they're doing and I think it's important for fans of football to understand these positions on a deeper level. I know that line play is complicated and that it is often said that they are the most intelligent players on the field next to the quarterback, and I wish The Blind Side did a better job of explaining the intellectual aspect of the position.

Although the most interesting part of The Blind Side is when Lewis is discussing the position of the left tackle (and figures such as Bill Walsh and Lawrence Taylor that made it important) the largest chunk of the book is spent discussing Michael Oher and his life. The book was written when Oher was a tackle at Ole Miss and tells the story of how he came to find himself at an SEC University when he basically grew up homeless. Through some events that could attributed to chance, Michael was introduced to a christian high school in Memphis and later to the Tuohy family. Although he basically knew nothing of schooling, organized sports, or the rich white person lifestyle that he would soon inhabit, Michael was accepted into the school and eventually taken in by the Tuohys. The rest of the book tells this story and discusses how this poor black kid from the Memphis ghetto was able to overcome his deficits and make it in a private school and later in a major university. Often when his personal life is being discussed, The Blind Side turns into an overly sweet after school special that extols the virtues of dedication, loyalty and hope. It is heartwarming in a way, but often a little too touchy-feely for my taste.

The one aspect of Michael's personal story that was the most interesting to me was when he was preparing to enter college, and all the complications that go along with that decision. Many people know that I am highly critical of the institution known as college football, and this book just reaffirmed my positions. After Oher narrows his decisions down to just a couple, the head coaches at these schools come to visit the Oher family. Big names like Nick Saban (who comes off as the snake oil salesman he is) and Phillip Fulmer come to woo Oher and the whole process is disgusting. They pretty much offer him everything except the kictchen sink all the while telling lies about themselves and the rival schools. Michael eventually chooses Ole Miss, but this causes some issues seeing that Ole Miss is the Tuohy's alma mater. It's sickening that he has to be investigated for making this decision because of his adoptive parent's affiliation, and even more sickening because it's not completely ludicris that a southern family would take in a poor black kid just to get him to play for their school. The whole college football obsession is beyond me.

As much as I don't really get the college football culture, the thing that really upsets me is how the kids are treated. They are expected to be both students and athletes when they don't really have the time or skill to do both. Many people are skilled enough to play football at the college level and even the NFL, but at the same time not trained to attend college. Why should a prospective athlete be required to have academic skills when it has no connection to their chosen line of work? As a grad student I am not expected to be able to dunk a basketball, so why should a prospective athlete be required to learn how to write research papers? I love education and have thus far dedicated my life to it, but that doesn't mean that academia is right for everyone. And don't get me started on the fact that everyone associated with college football makes an assload of money off of the product except those producing it. The students are used up and then spit out with nothing to show for it except a degree built on classes they barely had time to attend.

This problem doesn't just start at the college level, many young people don't even make it that far. Even someone like Michael Oher who had the support system and the will to get the grades he needed couldn't do it without some trickery. His adoptive father had to pull some strings and find loopholes so that Michael could have the GPA to attend college. There are countless numbers of kids who are in terrible situations in the ghetto and elsewhere who don't have an education system or social structure that supports them in this way, and they are just left by the wayside. It's obviously not feasible for every poor kid from the ghetto to become a professional athlete, but there are plenty of them who don't get the opportunity because of the way the system is set up.

I obviously don't have a solution to this, and the fact that some students do make the best of their scholarship makes it even more of a difficult situation. I'm not sure if students should get paid, or not be required to actually be 'students', but I know the current situation isn't right. It works out great for the small handful that makes it to the NFL or who use their degree to pursue a career, but there is a large number of college athletes who don't even end up graduating and just leave school after their last game. Michael Oher is a spectacular success story, and it's too bad that the majority of people in his position don't have the slightest chance of following in his footsteps.

Thirst - Park Chan-wook

2009-09-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

When Oldboy was released it was a cultural phenomenon for movie lovers my age. Set as a part of Park's 'vengeance trilogy' Oldboy is the story of Oh Dae-Su's search to find out why a man has trapped him in a prison-like hotel room for 15 years. After that time he is released into the word like a rat in a maze until his captor's game reaches its completion. It's everything that Quentin Tarantino wishes his movies were, and more. It's violence is guttural, exciting and unique (check out the famous and awesome hammer fight that was done in a single shot) and the torture scenes are brutal but not without purpose. It also has probably one of the best 'twist endings' I've ever seen in a movie (as long as it's not spoiled for you or you think too hard about what the twist is). If you can stand violence I would heartily recommend it, as it's probably the best 'violent movie' of the decade.

When it was released many people felt the same way about Oldboy as I do so you can imagine the anticipation when it was announced that the same director would release a vampire movie. If anything I knew it wasn't going to be another vampire story high on romance and low on teeth and in this aspect I was not disappointed. Thirst is every bit as brutal as Oldboy, even if it is a little slower and less exciting.

Thirst tells the story of a self-flagellating priest who hates himself and life to the point where he volunteers for a medical experiment that has a 0 percent success rate. He volunteers to be infected with a leprosy-type virus so that researchers can try to find a cure. Predictably he cannot fight off the infection, and seemingly dies as he's being treated. However as a complication from his treatment, it seems that he was injected with a bag of vampire blood (from where? who knows?) and thus his transformation starts. Typing all this out the setup seems a bit clumsy, but while you're watching the film it's easy to go along with it. The priest soon finds out what he has become, and he begins to thirst for human desires much more than he ever has.

During his initial discovery and transformation, Thirst is pretty entertaining and novel. The audience is pretty unsure where this vampire lies within the vampire canon, and it's fun to discover one scene at a time, which cliches will be used here and which won't be. He's damaged by sunlight but we're not sure what else. He has super-human abilities that come directly after drinking blood, but there are also a few clever scenes in which we are assured that yes, he still has a reflection. The best parts of Thirst come when both the audience and the priest is finding out what his new powers are, and where his limitations lie.

However once Thirst starts to develop its plot and progress towards the climax, it becomes pretty much Park's standard fare. The priest develops an unstoppable lust towards a friend's wife, and she is enamored with him both because of his strange magnetism and because of her awful home life. Kim Ok-bin is pretty great in playing the love interest and the faces she makes early on garner some of the strongest laughs of the film. However after she becomes interested in his vampirism the film takes a turn towards the south.

Like Park's other films, Thirst eventually exists mostly as a morality tale and a story of revenge. The priest's actions eventually leave a trail of death (some not solely on his hands) that eventually catches up with him. Park is obsessed with violence and sex and their consequences, and he uses Thirst to again explore this fixation.

Thirst doesn't completely lose its footing once the plot because a little more standard, there are still some interesting ideas found throughout the film. I thought it was particularly clever to have the vampire virus amplify the desires and vices of those it infects, rather than make anyone who gets it a blood sucking demon. Because the priest was always a do-gooder and someone who denied himself bodily wants, he tends to be somewhat of a thoughtful vampire and tries not to kill to feed himself. However another character who is infected eventually becomes bloodthirsty and downright evil. I liked the idea that the virus affected everyone differently, even if we didn't get a lot of test cases for this theory.

Thirst does have a place in today's cinema, but I'm not sure if it's really worth going out of your way to see it (which you would likely have to do). It's often very beautifully shot, I think it makes a good counterpoint to the relatively safe and romantic vampires currently in vogue (Twilight, True Blood), and be assured, no vampires in Thirst sparkle. However the movie drags on a little bit at 130 minutes, and it seems not to know where it's going until it decides to be a straight up morality tale. Park's other efforts never reach the pinnacle that Oldboy did, and I worry that he may be a filmmaker that only has one great film in him, and a bunch of mediocre ones.

Angel: Season 1 - Joss Whedon

2009-09-06T12:47:00.001-07:00

When it first aired, I wasn't very invested in Angel as a series. I was a huge fan of Buffy, and although I was excited for Angel to get his own show and to see more of Joss Whedon could do, the show didn't really grab me. This might have been partially because I was so into the whole Buffy world and didn't really want to leave it, or that I was just liked the characters in Buffy more (especially Willow and Giles), but whatever the reason I never really considered myself an Angel fan: I was a Buffy guy. Then when Buffy switched networks after the fifth season and at the beginning of my senior year of highschool I stopped watching both of them. It seemed like a clear stopping point for Buffy, and I let Angel fall with it. I always considered picking up watching Angel at some point, and besides a little viewing here and there I didn't re-watch any of it until I saw it on uber-sale at Target. (4 seasons for $35? How could I resist!?).

Watching the first season it's hard for me to see what I didn't really like about the show. It's true that because the three main characters are castoffs from Buffy it did feel a little bit like Buffy JV, and the characters they picked were some of the least likable from the parent show. They took the rich spoiled Cordelia, the brooding overly serious Angel, and later the bumbling super-British occasionally dickish Wesley. Although fans from the early seasons of Buffy might balk at watching the show from the list of characters, they are given much more of a diverse and in depth characterization. Plus, Angel is spectacular. Many of the MOTW plots are extremely inventive, there are some extremely funny scenes, and overall the show is both clever and engaging.

Like Buffy, the majority of Angel is done on a MOTW (monster of the week) basis. Each week our heroes investigate a demon or supernatural event and try to help those in need. However, unlike Buffy, the first season of Angel doesn't have a 'big bad'. For those unfamiliar with he show, each season of Buffy would have a 'big bad', or a super evil villain, that drove much of the plot and was finally defeated at the end. The first season of Angel chooses to forgo this route, and I think it's refreshing. There are overarching themes, and recurring characters (both good and bad), but there is no videogame-like villain that needs to be defeated by episode 22. I hear the show has more of a series long story arch, but since I haven't seen much else of the series I can't really comment on it.

Because of this, Angel is much more of a typical procedural than Buffy was. In this day and age calling a show a procedural (a drama that has mostly stand-alone episodes that follow a similar formula) is often considered an insult, but I don't think that it should be. Having somewhat of a formula can be comforting, and makes episodes where overarching themes or plots occur that much more exciting. In this context, an episode that is a two-parter or ends on a 'to be continued...' is much more exciting than if every episode ends this way. This is not to say Angel doesn't reward faithful viewers, but you can easily pick up and watch a stand alone episode of the first season much easier than you can most of Buffy.

Speaking of faithful viewers, one of the major problems of Angel season one is that to fully appreciate it the viewer needs to have seen Buffy. In fact, in the first season (and I believe also the second) there are many crossover episodes where something would happen on Buffy, and then repercussions would be seen on Angel (which aired immediately afterward). I remember being very excited for these at the time, but mostly they are unrewarding. Typically the only thing that you get from the crossover episodes is getting to say something like 'hey I remember Oz!' where people who never watched Buffy would be left slightly in the dark. Furthermore, the episodes where Buffy visits the show tend to be more depressing than one would like. I know people want to see them interact because of their epic love affair on Buffy, but watching them yell at each other like the recently broken up lovers they are is extremely upsetting. Buffy comes across as a one-dimensional bitchzilla without the lush characterization she is given in her own show. I recall Angel also being a one-dimensional mopeasaurus during his appearances on Buffy so maybe the writers just have problems writing the titular characters in each other shows.

As with many shows, the first season takes a little while to get going. There are some clunker episodes here and there and it takes a while to get used to 'Angel the private investigator' rather than 'Angel the vampire boyfriend'. But one thing is sure, Angel is much more likable on his own show than he ever was on Buffy. David Boreanez shows a much wider range of acting ability (much of which he uses in Bones) and he is easily able to carry the show. Additionally, because Angel takes place in LA rather than in the small-time Sunnydale, we're introduced to a much wider word of demons than we ever are in Buffy. In many ways it's a more complex world, where there are less events or characters that are strictly good or bad, and much more in the moral gray. When first watching Angel it feels like you're watching un-aired or 'lost' episodes of Buffy. However as the show develops over its first season it starts to separate itself from Buffy and becomes its own beast, and another worthy addition by Joss Whedon to the pantheon of great sci-fi shows.

Plastic Fantastic - Eugenie Samuel Reich

2009-09-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

'Science' is often seen by the outside world as a perfect, well oiled machine. Money pours in, smart-guy scientists work towards a predetermined goal, and then after reaching said goal they use it to help humanity. Outsiders like to think that any problem in science (and especially medicine) can be fixed by just throwing enough money at it. Scientists are infallible geniuses and if only they had enough time and resources all problems and questions in our world would be solved. Plastic Fantastic is an attempt to give laymen a look inside the way scientific progress is really made, and how scientists as individuals are far from perfect.

Plastic Fantastic follows the story of Hendrik Schön and his rise and fall within the scientific community. Schön received his PhD from the University of Konstanz in 1997 and then went on to work at the prestigious Bell Labs in New Jersey. Even those who don't know much about the history of science may have heard the name Bell Labs before, and if you haven't it was the site of many important discoveries of the 20th century including the creation of the transistor, the discovery of cosmic background radiation, and laser atom trapping (by our Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu!). Bell Labs was the place to be for cutting edge research, but it has since fallen on hard times and is nowhere near the powerhouse it used to be. In just four years Schön published eight papers in Science, seven in Nature and six in various Physical Review journals. Science and Nature are the two most prestigious journals for those within the scientific world to publish, and Physical Review is the main outlet for discoveries in the field of Physics. This rate and quality of publications is almost unheard of, and it seemed that Schön was on his way to a Nobel Prize and other greatness until it all came crashing down.

It turns out that all of it was fake. Schön manipulated existing data, created artificial results from theoretical functions, and even duplicated the same plot on multiple papers. Plastic Fantastic takes a journalistic approach to figure out how and why this happened, and why it took so long for the scientific community to catch him.

In part, Plastic Fantastic is an attempt to try to describe how the normal process of checks works in science and how it failed this time. Typically, when a scientist believes he or she has done some research of worth, they submit a paper to one of the various journals in which their research topic is published. The editors at said publication then sort through the submissions, and send many out for peer review. Peer review involves the editor sending the manuscript out to multiple authorities in the field on which the paper is based, and the authorities taking an objective look at the science to see if it is new, interesting, and correct. If the reviewers decide on a whole that the paper is a good one (often with corrections or additions needed) the author is allowed to make changes before the paper is published. This can be a long and laborious process, but it usually weeds out badly written papers or those with bad science. However one aspect of the paper that the reviewers don't usually check for is fraud. Science is based on trust, and the reviewers are trusting that the results reported in the paper are factual.

This is where Schön was able to fool the scientific community and those close to him. Because the reviewers were not checking to see if he was lying, or just plain making stuff up, his papers passed with flying colors. In preliminary discussions, Schön would present some data to a colleague and ask him what experiments he might try next, and what results he might expect. He would then go off, and seemingly work hard to get those results, and then would precisely replicate that which was expected. In this way he played off scientists hubris in that they were more than excited to see their theories come true. Because all of his early papers seemed reasonable and had wonderful plots that mirrored what theorists would expect, he was able to get away publishing fraudulent papers at a breakneck speed.

He was finally caught because a couple of skeptics started to look hard at him and his suspicious data. No one was able to replicate his results, and he was unable to describe his techniques to those interesting in doing so. Finally someone noticed that two of his plots where exactly the same in seperate papers describing wildly different devices. This lead to a review of his work and eventually it was discovered that he had never done any of it, and that all the work others had been doing to follow up on his results had been a waste.

Plastic Fantastic is written from a journalistic point of view, trying to get all the specifics of when and where and who down to try to build a complete picture of Schön's actions. It's very successful in this and those even more familiar with the case or the people involved might get much more out of it than I did. Where Plastic Fantastic fails is in trying to build a central narrative or trying to flesh out the people, especially Schön. I was not left with a strong feeling about Schön, and maybe this was a reflection on his personality, but I would have liked much more about what kind of person does this. Schön wasn't particularly egotistic, and he wasn't really that selfish or headstrong, he just seemed like a guy who wanted to fit in and wanted to appease his superiors. However beyond that description there wasn't much personal information about him, and more anecdotes might have been nice. Additionally the subtitle 'How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World' is bit much. Although it's true that these events had a huge effect on those involved with the subject at hand, it would be quite a claim to say that they 'shook the scientific world.' I'm sure many scientists are aware of the case, but it is also true that many are only overly familiar with their own field and it probably barely affected them.

One interesting note that was brought up was that apparently Isaac Newton was guilty of fraud! Apparently during his work on optics, he claimed that something was true (that you couldn't make an achromatic lens) in all cases even though he only viewed it in a specific case. Furthermore he reported results that would be ideal as work he had actually done. Newton was also apparently notorious for fudging numbers and figures in his work on gravity. However this makes sense because his gravitational theories are only approximately true and one needs Einstein's work to fix the problems. It's just very fascinating to me that one of the sharpest minds of human history could fall prey misrepresenting his work because he wanted his theories to be 'perfect'.

I think that Plastic Fantastic works pretty well as an introduction into the way science works, and the kinds of people involved in the work behind the curtain. It's important for people to understand how 'Science' works, and how results are made. The book is also fairly informative on the science involved, which is nice for those with somewhat of a technical background and want to know what was going on scientifically. Obviously people aren't infallible, and in this case it took a little while, but science is self correcting and the truth will be found out eventually. Reproducibility the corner stone of modern science, and without it we would just be a bunch of alchemists trying to turn rocks into gold. In this case 'Science' won, but not before a sad man had everyone on the ropes wasting tons of resources and believing ridiculous claims.

Ponyo - Hayao Miyazaki

2009-08-31T07:06:00.001-07:00

As I have hinted at before, I have tried to get into Japanesse Anime but mostly have come upon a wall of failure. Now I won't claim to have viewed every Anime movie and series worth seeing, but I have come across a few that I like and everything else I have absolutely hated. Besides Cowboy Bebop (I know, liking only this makes me some kind of Anime poser or something) the only Anime I have found worthwhile has been the work of Hayao Miyazaki, and calling his work 'worthwhile' is like saying Jimmy Page is 'pretty good' at guitar.

Miyazaki is pretty prolific, and his multitude of films have included My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. He is often called the 'Walt Disney' of Japan, but to be frank his accomplishments (in the movie world anyway, we're not counting theme parks and overall influence) dwarf those of Walt Disney. Whereas Walt Disney was only the producer on the films accredited to his name, Miyazaki both writes and directs many of his films in addition to doing a fair amount of the animation. He's fully involved in each of his films, and they surely are his product. If the term 'auteur' is to be considered, Miyazaki certainly fits the bill.

The things that really makes Miyazaki stand out (especially compared to his American predecessor) are the unconventional content and themes found throughout his films. His work is filled with themes of feminism, environmentalism and pacifism and there is very much an air of anti-establishment, which is in pretty stark contrast to most films made for kids (excluding Pixar). The protagonist is often a young girl who is independent and adventure seeking. There is rarely the traditional 'bad-guy' that is often found in movies for kids (and most movies for adults), and when such an antagonist exists they are often morally ambiguous or under some sort of curse. His films have a magical realism quality to them in that there are often sorcerers, spirits, or other magical creatures that interact with the young characters. This last aspect might throw off some viewers not used to Japanese cinema or Anime, but I don't think it's much more ridiculous than what's found in American animated films.

As such, Ponyo is a worthy addition to Miyazaki's long catalog and very much a film worth seeing. Ponyo is another attempt to animate Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Really though, after the initial concept of a creature of the sea wanting become human, very little of Ponyo can said to be taken from the story or Disney's previous animated attempt. In Ponyo, it is a 'special fish' that wishes to set out on her own and become human after meeting a small boy on the edge of the water. I'm not really sure how to describe her rather than calling her a 'special fish'. Ponyo has a human like face, which really only disturbs one old lady, and has some magical powers but her classification is really left a mystery. In order to become a human she must escape her protective and moody father, and the boy she meets must show that it is 'true love'.

But really, you're not going to see Ponyo for the plot. The outcome is hardly ever in doubt and even the 'trials' they have to go through are a cakewalk. The reason you would see Ponyo is because of how beautiful it is, and because Miyazaki creates the most pure forms of joy to be found in all of cinema. Watching his beautifully drawn characters interact in their magical world and find joy in almost every aspect of life is intoxicating, and you'll find yourself smiling the entire time. In this way Ponyo is most similar to Totoro, at least compared to his other films. Like Ponyo, Totoro barely has a plot beyond the exploration of a magical realm, and watching the characters explore this world is a blast. Many of his other films are much more serious, but these two are purely enjoyable in every sense of the word.

As with most animation movies, including Miyazaki's other films, the American dubs are done with celebrity voices. In Ponyo you have Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Matt Damon, another Jonas brother, and Miley Cyrus' younger sister. However unlike other animation movies, these names are not at the top of the billing, and the advertisers aren't trying to trick you into going to the movie because 'that lady that plays Sarah Palin is in it'. As in his other movies (and Pixar's films) these big names are not distracting, and often you even forget who's doing the voicing. Disney actually releases his movies in America, and I don't fault them for trying to get celebrities to bring in more viewers, but really it doesn't really add or subtract anything.

If you haven't seen any of Miyazaki's films I would heartily recommend that you do so, especially if you are a fan of the superlative films that Pixar releases every year. Like the Pixar movies his movies are intended for kids, but really they are meant for everyone to enjoy. There is no reason for parents to be watching endless streams of 'talking animal' animations when the works of Miyazaki and Pixar exist. Make no mistake, his films are dramatically different than the Pixar movies, but they are both worth seeing on their own account.

If you wanted a place to start with Miyazaki I might recommend Princess Mononoke for those who want a little more of a plot and conflict, and Totoro for those who like the 'twee' ascetic. However if you make it out to the theaters anytime soon I would have no problem recommending Ponyo as your first Miyazaki experience. Watching his completely hand-drawn images of the sea and it's life in the theater is certainly a treat for the senses.

The Guild - Felicia Day

2009-08-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

This is both an interesting and difficult post for me to write because of my status within the nerd community. I'm not a n00b by any stretch of the imagination, but I have many friends and I'm sure many readers who are much more familiar with the nerd society than I am. My family got a computer at a pretty early time and I became much more experienced with computers and then the internet than most people my age. I was on the early lines of music downloading (though I never got into IRC) and spent a lot of time downloading albums and songs and making my friends mix CDs with that newfangled CD burner. All through my life I have been into some fantasy and sci-fi, am now pretty well versed in comics, and hell in college I was even a physics major.

Although I had the credentials and promise of being an uber-nerd, I never quite fulfilled that destiny. During college I reached a certain level of understanding with computers and kind of just stopped there. But I really think the reason I never fully submerged myself into the nerd culture was because of my lack of interest in online gaming. I played a ton of video games as a kid (sorry Mom!) and still keep up with some console titles to this day, but I never got into online gaming. All of the biggest nerds I know really got into Diablo or some RPG which implemented online play at a young age, and then World of Warcraft or some other MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) when online play was even bigger. Although I know I missed out on a little bit of important culture related to my interests, I've seen lives destroyed by online game addiction so I don't regret it too much.

Why do I bring up all this nerd-cred talk? Well this post is about The Guild and Felicia Day, who is the 'it girl' of the nerd community. Most of you who are aware of Felica Day know her from playing Penny on Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (which if you haven't seen, you should do so now!) but she's pretty much a superstar to those who consider going to comic-con a holy pilgrimage. She obviously has some sex appeal, more in the girl-next-door way than in the Megan Fox way, but I think the majority of her appeal comes from the way she interacts with her fans. It's a little bit of a case of the right person at the right time, but the way she interacts with her fans via flickr, twitter, her blog and in public appearances gives her fans the feeling like they are in her life. She interacts with her fans on the internet like one of their friends might, not like some kind of aloof celebrity. It also doesn't hurt that she has some major nerd-cred.

Her online series The Guild is based on her love and previous addiction with World of Warcraft. I think everyone of my age has met someone in their life who had a major addiction to this game. People will spend upwards of 20 hours a day playing WoW at the expense of everything else in their lives. I knew someone in college who was not only brilliant but was majoring in biochemistry. I had some of the most intellectually stimulating conversations of my college career with him, but it was impossible to engage him beyond a certain level because of his investment in WoW. Day took this common phenomenon, and something she knew quite well, and turned it into an idea for a TV sitcom. After being shot down by TV execs because the show was for such a niche audience, she decided to turn it into an online series.

The Guild is a series of 5-8 minute 'episodes' that was originally posted on YouTube and produced on the creator's own dollar. Although they had free hosting due to the (possibly fleeting) glory of YouTube, having the correct equipment and people to run that equipment is fairly expensive to get that profession look. The creators actually paid for the first few episodes until running out of money, using PayPal donations to pay for the rest of the first season. They have a few sponsors now which are combined with DVD sales to produce the show.

I will not pretend to be very knowledgeable about other web series, because frankly most of them that I have watched have been absolutely dreadful. The reason I think that The Guild succeeded and these others have not is that both Day and the others that helped make the show had previous experience in film and television. They knew what was needed to make a professional and interesting show, and combined that with their internet savvy and nerd knowledge to create possibly the most successful web based series to date.

I finally got around to watching The Guild after knowing of it for a year or so because of the above video. The video (which is extremely catchy) is a promotion for the third season which comes out to the general public this week. The video has the 6 characters dressed up as their online personas from the show. It also gives further evidence to Felicia Day's unmistakable charisma. I then went to YouTube to watch the first season and their website for the second.

As stated above, the show is a comedy based on Day's life and her experience with online addiction. If the show has any stated 'purpose', it's to make outsiders aware that more people than just teenage boys in their parents basements play and are addicted to online games. The actors are pretty much unknowns (except for Day) but they do a decent job with what they are given. The show makes plenty of gamer jokes, but they stay away from specific WoW terminology so that those who are uninitiated can follow along. I got most of the jokes and phrases just from being vaguely familiar with WoW, so the show is definitely not strictly for insiders.

The show is pretty funny, as long as you like nerd jokes and jokes about nerds, and I often had a pretty big grin while watching (I'm not a laugh out loud kind of person). The shows all start with a 30 second or so online diary entry by Day talking about the events in the previous or upcoming episode which are often the best part of the show. The first season starts with all 6 characters talking to each other purely through voice-chat while they play a WoW-like game until they have reason to finally meet in person. Of course many of them are opposed to meeting in RL (real life) and their social interactions are pretty awkward and amusing. To give a run-down the 6 characters include a sexually aggressive Mama's boy Indian, a technology obsessed Asian girl, a teenager who lives in his parent's basement, a neglectful mother, the cheap middle aged guildmaster, and Day's cute but awkward ex-violin prodigy. The episodes in a given season all run together right after each other, and tell one story that ends with them defeating a videogame like 'boss'.

The internet has definitely changed how we think about and view TV and movies, and although it's still in its infancy I think web-based material has a huge role to play. Dr. Horrible was the first web-based film to which many people were exposed (Buffy's Joss Whedon created it during the infamous writer's strike) and it's not surprising that Day was the inspiration for its creation. She has combined her knowledge about film and television with her love of gaming, nerd culture, and her irresistible charm to become one of the first successful web series creators. The Guild may be harder to watch as one 5 minute clip every month but I look forward to the upcoming season.

District 9 - Neill Blomkamp

2009-08-23T16:56:00.001-07:00

Because of its viral advertising campaign, I hardly knew anything about District 9 going into the theater. The movie is shot in a way similar to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, and the creators and marketing directors decided to promote the film in a way similar to those other films. There were posters similar to the one above that give no indication about the story or plot, and many of the original trailers give away very little of the movie, even using footage that was not included in the final cut. I think almost every movie would benefit from less knowledge going in, but I really think it helped District 9. That being said if you think you might want to see this movie (and I really think you should) you should stop reading here and go into the theater a blank slate.

So for the rest of you, either people who've seen the movie or those who like spoilers, I won't really go too much into a plot summary. I actually missed the first 10 minutes of this movie (blame Julie & Julia) but I really didn't feel like I missed that much. From my research, the only thing the first 10 minutes establishes is the basic concept, which I already knew. An alien spaceship makes its way to Earth but then stalls over South Africa. No contact with the aliens is made until humans cut open the ship and find roughly a million aliens living in squalor and starvation. Eventually the aliens are set up in resettlement camps and the rest of the movie takes place 20 years in the future.

Although some youngsters might not pick up on this, the movie is a thinly veiled commentary on the apartheid situation in South Africa. The director and writer Neill Blomkamp (who is not Peter Jackson who was just a producer and helped get it made) is from South Africa and used the film to share his feelings about the subject and help others understand the awful apartheid situation. The film could easily generalize to any situation where there are displaced peoples, such as the Palestinians, or could even be used as a commentary on modern attitudes towards legal and illegal immigration. At a more basic level it's a look at the classic 'us vs. them' attitude that causes most of the problems in the world. In this way I think District 9 is a very important film. Because it's an action/sci-fi flick it might get people in the theater who normally don't think about these issues and hopefully at least a few people change their minds how they feel about others who could be in situations analogous to the 'prawns' in District 9.

Blomkamp really shows a lot of skill in this directorial debut, especially with his treatment of the aliens. The 'prawns' (as they are derisively called in the film) are initially very weird and disgusting. He follows a long line of sci-fi that imagines aliens as being insectoids who really look nothing like intelligent life on this Earth. Although some might think this is unoriginal, I think it's wholly reasonable to expect intelligent life on other planets to evolve from insects similar to the ones on Earth. They are just way too successful evolutionarily speaking to not expect similar forms to arise on other Earth-like planets (this is critical because if the planet was not Earth-like all bets are off). Anyway, the aliens are pretty gross and they excrete all sorts of fluids, are both slimy and gangly, love cat food and very hard to initially like. I think this is a master stroke because as humans the audience's initial reaction has to be repulsion, so that the humans actions in the movie seem reasonable. However, after you look more at the aliens on a personal level their human-like eyes give away a soul that once you see it, your empathy for them begins to grow. In fact very quickly the aliens become the ones you root for, and you begin to cheer for the aliens at the expense of their oppressors.

Another interesting stroke is the physical characterization of the aliens. They are portrayed as being very fast, strong, agile, and are easily 7 foot on average. However they are also constantly pushed around by the humans being abused, beaten, and often killed for no reason at all. They hardly fight back and mostly do whatever the humans say. We are not used to seeing large insectoid aliens being pushed around by humans so easily, and the images are fairly startling. You just want to scream 'come on! rip his arms off!' because they surely have the ability, but it's pretty depressing to watch the resigned aliens kneel down and accept their fate.

There have been some complaints about the last 1/3 of the film, mostly because it turns into a straight-up action movie but I was never annoyed or bored. Oftentimes I find myself really bored with action scenes that are too long and that drag on. People like explosions, but if we don't have a rooting interest in the action how are the directors to expect the audience to care about what's going on. Furthermore, in modern movies action scenes tend to involve lots of quick cuts that create convoluted scenes. District 9 has none of these problems and I found the action exciting and refreshing. In fact for me, the movie went by in a breeze and after the end I was left asking 'wait, that's it?'.

After a disappointing summer for films, District 9 is probably my favorite 'big' movie of the summer. It never really reaches the heights of last year's Dark Knight, but District 9 succeeds as both a high concept film and as a standard sci-fi action movie. The film never bogs itself down in unnecessary explanation, and expects the audience to put pieces together or to come up with explanations ourselves. District 9 is another great film in the long line of sci-fi (Children of Men, Starship Troopers, various incarnations of Star Trek, etc...) that uses the genre to comment on difficult social situations in our current times in interesting and novel ways.

Julie & Julia - Nora Ephron

2009-08-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

Ah the delights of dating. Normally I would never go see a movie like this in theaters unless I was with someone who really wanted to go, but after doing some carpet cleaning Lindsay and I set out to do a double feature while the carpet dried. The first of movies was Julie & Julia mostly on Lindsay's account. I didn't really protest seeing that I like to combine an action movie with something a little more fluffy when doing a double feature and because Meryl Streep is almost always superlative. And in this way especially, Julie & Julia did not let me down.

For those that are unaware, Julie & Julia is a film that combines the stories of Julie Powell and Julia Child. As many know, Julia Child is famous for bringing french cooking to American kitchens with her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her TV program The French Chef as well for having ridiculous mannerisms and speech patterns. Here she is discussing omelettes for those who uninitiated with her work. On the other side, Julie Powell is a modern author that got her start by attempting to cook every one of the 500+ recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, and blogging about it. She is pretty famous for being one of the first people to turn blogging into a successful writing career, having turned the project into a published book. I have some problems with her but we'll discuss these as we go along.

One thing you should be aware of before you see this film (if you plan on doing so) is that it was directed by Nora Ephron. What should this mean to you? Well if you're like most people this name won't mean much to you, but the names When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail might. In the vein of her other movies Julie & Julia has its roots in the chick flick genre. Now many of the sections in this film don't feel like a chick flick at all (most all of the Julia Child scenes) but there are many sections of the film that feel like they are ripped from one of Ephron's other movies. Julie Powell has a loving husband, but as she becomes self-obsessed with her blog their relationship starts deteriorating and they begin to have fights seemingly rooted in nothing. This gives her the chance to look puffy eyed at the camera and wonder if her life will ever be right again. Of course they get back together because he is the most wonderful man in the world and she doesn't deserve him. There is a strange amount of husband adulation in this film that I don't really want to get into beyond mentioning it.

Another classic motif of chick flicks is the gratuitous amount of sex scenes (both for Julie and Julia) in this movie. Now this movie is only rated PG-13 so there obviously aren't any sex scenes but you know what I'm talking about. The husband comes home and whisks the young lady off her feet and carries her into the bedroom. You barely see any kissing and then the scene cuts to them lying around after the fact. I think this idea of 'romantic sex' that is never accompanied by the actual act is a pretty big problem. It gives the impression to many young girls that sex is always romantic and perfect and doesn't prepare them for what's really going on. I think movies and scenes like this contribute the problems and differences that men and women have when they think about sex seeing that they go in expecting drastically different things. This is mostly from girls having learned about sex from romcoms and boys having learned about it from porn scenes.

Anyway I digress, the whole movie is not a chick flick and in fact this is half of a fantastic movie. Now I don't claim to be original here in that most everyone who has seen this movie feels the same way. Not only does Meryl Streep nail the role of Julia Child, but there is more than enough material here to make an entire movie. Julia Child is an interesting enough person that a film about her self-discovery through cooking and her quest to bring french cooking to the American home could easily fill a feature film. Streep's scenes in Paris and in the kitchen are lively, funny and entertaining. I would easily watch a 90 minute biopic about Julia Child if she were portrayed by Meryl Streep and this is a big problem for the film. Every time the movie cuts to an elongated scene about Julie Powell I was left wondering when the film would return to the better half. I ended up wondering when the movie would switch back, and then when it would end. The movie clocks in at over 2 hours, and even for two stories this a little long for me for this type of film.

An interesting aspect of this story is that apparently the real life Julia Child did not approve of Julie Powell's quest. Now this was mentioned in the film but then dropped immediately and never discussed. I was unsatisfied with the way the film dropped this and I had to know why, so I looked around on the internet and found this article in which the second half discusses the subject. Apparently Julia Child didn't think Julie Powell was a serious chef and thought she was doing this for a 'stunt'. In addition, the real Julie Powell is supposedly much more abrasive than the one in the film. For example she threw around f-bombs regularly on the blog and even later groaned about the 9/11 victims she had contact with for her job in her book. Now Julia Child was 90 years old and possibly on her death bed. She probably had no idea what a 'blog' was in 2003 and was not really with it anymore. But I think it's a little silly for the film to bring this up, and thus question our belief in the main character, and then not really discuss the reasons why Julie Powell's hero so disapproved of her.

So should you see this movie? Well if you like chick flicks I'm sure you'd love it. And if you are either a Meryl Streep fan, Julia Child fan, or a self proclaimed 'foodie' who wants to 'oooo' at some delicious looking food on the big screen, you will probably like the movie. However if you are none of these things I would suggest you stay away from Julie & Julia seeing that I only think it has something to offer the above mentioned groups.

Bon Apetit!

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman

2009-08-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Chuck Klosterman seems to be a pretty polarizing figure in the pop culture world. After very much enjoying Killing Yourself to Live, I thought I would pick up his seminal work Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, and see what all the hubbub is about. People seem to either love him or hate him, and those in between are mostly just trying to figure out which camp they belong to. I think I love him but with some caveats I'll introduce later. If you want to see the perfect (and amusing) example of Klosterman hate check out this article, in which the author starts it off by pretty much calling Klosterman a 'buttface'. If anything, Klosterman is interesting solely as such a polarizing character and deserves to be part of any discussion of pop culture as a whole.

Cocoa Puffs isn't so much a 'manifesto' as it's subtitle suggests, but more of a collection of his thoughts about specific subjects within popular culture. Now Klosterman may have chosen these particular subjects in order to paint a mostly complete picture of current pop culture and its influence on our society, but it feels more like a collection of things that he has interesting thoughts on. The subject matter varies wildly from chapter to chapter and covers such subjects as Saved by the Bell, porn, country music, Larry Bird v. Magic Johnson, evangelical Christians, newspapers and media, serial killers, reality TV, love, Bill Joel, and the titular breakfast cereal. His strong points tend to be the chapters that discuss music or sports, seeing that these are his main interests, but because of the nature of the book almost every chapter is interesting and well thought out.

He usually comes up with an interesting idea about a subject in pop culture, and it's hardly ever what you would expect. If Klosterman has a 'schtick' at all, it's being overly earnest and sincere about almost any subject. If irony ever becomes passe, and the 'new sincerity' is ushered in, expect Chuck to be on the front lines leading the march. In this book he expounds his love for Billy Joel, the superiority of 'regular' country music over the trendy 'alt-country' (think some Bright Eyes, Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, etc), and why he envies evangelical Christians (not the typical 'I envy their naivety' discussion). If these opinions came from anyone else, I would be skeptical that the author was just trying to be ironic. What could be more ironic than a rock critic espousing the importance of Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks? But luckily Klosterman is from rural North Dakota, and tries to constantly clarify that he's not being ironic or insincere. A small part of me dreads finding out that all of his writing has been an elaborate hipster joke, but I'm pretty confident that he is who he says he is.

It's that last statement that I find to be the most interesting. Who is Chuck Klosterman really? Is he just some snarky, occasionally smarmy, Midwesterner who is overplaying the sincerity card? It sometimes feels like he might just be defending the opinions he does just because he knows they might be controversial and rub the current 'cool kids' the wrong way. Does he really spend his whole road trip in Killing Yourself just going to chain restaurants like The Olive Garden and Shoneys, or does he just focus on those things to try to seem more proletarian and contrary? There's little doubt that he believes the things he writes about, but how much of this is the whole truth, and how much is a 'persona' that he is trying to paint of himself?

Personally, I think that Klosterman does often agree with what's cool or in, but chooses not to discuss these opinions because he doesn't find discussing widely held beliefs to be very interesting. As previously stated, he does have pretty questionable taste in music, but also occasionally brings up his love of Radiohead. Sometimes I'd rather read a little more from the Radiohead loving Klosterman than the one who dismisses alt-country as insincere.

I would really recommend reading Cocoa Puffs not only for those who are interested in pop culture, but also for those who want an entertaining read. The two books of his that I have read have been very entertaining, and quick reads. And as far as Klosterman's place in popular culture, I think he really has the chance to be something special. He's not there yet mostly because of the sporadic nature of his books, his tendency to bring up his personal life, and the annoying tick start paragraphs after being sidetracked with the lazy phrase 'But ANYWAY', but if he puts his mind to good use he can go places. He's an incredibly intelligent man, and I would love to see something a little more cohesive from him. If Klosterman ever puts everything together I really think he could be a defining voice for our generation.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - Stephen Sommers

2009-08-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

As much as I might tend to complain about 'mindless Hollywood movies' I actually quite enjoy the occasional large budget action flick. There was one summer as a 13 year old boy where I spent every week trying to sneak into 'Con Air'. This isn't to say I enjoy every action movie but that I do understand their appeal having once been the target demographic.

If you spend any time reading film reviews it should be pretty apparent that most critics hate Michael Bay. And I don't just mean that they hate them in some sort of casual 'god I have to watch another Michael Bay movie' kind of way. They HATE HATE HATE him. Michael Bay is treated as the anti-Christ, to many he is the downfall of both American cinema and our country as a whole. Now I don't really think he's THAT bad (The Rock did come only 1 year before Con Air, little Louis loved that shit) but I do find his movies pretty intolerable in general.

So the thing is, critics hate Michael Bay movies but audiences can't get enough of them. They all make boatloads of money and he gets to make a new one every year. When I heard that G. I. Joe ( helmed by The Mummy's Stephen Sommers) was not going to be screened for critics before it was released to the public I just assumed that it was because the studio knew it was bad, but that it was going to be just as financially successful as Bay's Transformers sequel. Transformers was universally panned by critics with perhaps my favorite quote belonging to Michael Phillips from the Chicago Tribune. Phillips says that the film is 'like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2½ hours.' Even his citymate Roger Ebert who likes at least something about every movie he sees loathed it, giving it only 1 star. Now I didn't see Transformers 2, I saw the first one and didn't really feel like going to a movie that was just supposedly a louder, longer version of the original, but I initially expected G. I. Joe to be more of the same. After sensing the more congenial reception to this movie, and being in a situation where this was the only film available to see while at the movies I ended up seeing G. I. Joe against my initial reservations.

I really don't think it takes much for a studio to make a successful summer blockbuster. For me it boils down to a couple of things:

1. Does it end soon enough not to overstay it's welcome? (2 hours is often the cut-off here)
2. Are there awesome action sequences that don't rely too much on obvious CGI?
3. Does the plot avoid insulting my intelligence?
4. Does the movie avoid being too sexist, racist or offensive?
5. Are there explosions?

If a summer blockbuster fulfills all 5 of those things it's a pretty good chance I'll like it and have a good time at the movies. I'll let you know right now that G. I. Joe has all those things and that in general Michael Bay movies do not (well they both tend to have more than enough explosions) and that this is the big difference between most 'good' action movies and the stuff that Bay puts out.

To elaborate, Bay movies tend to be mindless, sexist, confusingly shot movies that are laborious to watch. Obviously 13 year old boys (or those who think like them) don't tend to be sensitive to these things so it's not a problem for a large section of our populous. Not only are the women treated like pure objects in Bay's movies (Megan Fox) but the men all act like the biggest jerks in the world. Most of the men walk around with their tough guy posturing saying 'fuck' approximately 3.2 times a minute and generally acting like Quentin Tarantino wishes he could. In addition the action is badly shot and confusing to watch. It's hard to know what's going on during any action scene (the first Transformers was a particularly good example of this) and I haven't even mentioned the product placement (see The Island) or racism (Transformers and the 'black' robot Jazz).

G. I. Joe isn't the best film ever made, and it's not really up there for me in terms of action movies, but it's pure good fun. Now this is the argument that people always use for Michael Bay's success, but I think we should still be selective when it comes to 'fun' movies. There can be 'good' fun movies that are a blast to watch and make us laugh and smile. But there can also be 'bad' fun movies that are poorly planned or executed and use offensive stereotypes for cheap laughs.

If you notice above I didn't mention quality acting as a part of my requirements for a summer action movie. In fact G. I. Joe has some of the laughably worst acting I've seen in a while (aside from indie darling Joesph Gordon-Levitt). Bad acting sometimes makes action movies better because it would be hard to take someone like Russell Crowe seriously during the obligatory fast vehicle 'WOOOOOO' scene. Speaking of Gordon-Levitt, he's great in this movie! He spends the entire film as a proto Cobra Commander that leers and gestures while wearing a mask covering everything except one eye. Gordon-Levitt really hams it up and enjoys this role, so it's easy for the audience to do the same. He pretty much acts circles around everyone else in the film, stealing every scene he's in. I almost want to see it again just to rewatch his scenes.

There's not much to say about G. I. Joe except that it's a lot of fun and a pretty good 'summer blockbuster.' The action keeps it going and the plot involves a pretty original (for summer Hollywood movies) nanotechnology based scheme that is a breath of fresh air compared to the movies that keep relying on nuclear warheads or other traditional threats. There's the sassy redhead, the serious evil brunette, the stoic large chinned alpha male and the energetic black best friend that cover all your action movie stereotype bases. Although, the women are given more to do than just wear hot pants and Marlon Wayans is pretty successful in helping to save the day. The movie does seem to just end in kind of a random place, but I'm OK with that knowing that there will be the inevitable sequels. G. I. Joe is the kind of movie I wouldn't mind letting my hypothetical 13 year old son watch.

Michael Vick

2009-08-13T19:22:00.001-07:00

As some of you may know, I am a huge fan of professional football. I'm not really into college football (which is due to a combination of not going to a school with a big football program and the overall quality of play) but the NFL has always been a love of mine. This being said, I want to to weigh in on the biggest subplot of the NFL offseason.

I should start by saying that I am a big fan of Michael Vick the football player. I always think excitement and innovation are good things especially in the copycat NFL, and watching Vick was thrilling. The first year I moved to Atlanta I eagerly awaited watching Vick every Sunday. My roommate and I were pretty big fans of other teams from our hometown cities, but we were often more excited about seeing what Vick and the Falcons would do on Sunday. He may have not had the best individual statistics (at least when it comes to the traditional statistics that evaluate quarterbacks) but no one can argue that he won (he was 38-28-1 as a starter, including a memorable postseason win against Green Bay and Brett Favre) and was exciting to watch.

Vick's fall is so well known by everyone in our society including those who have no idea how 'downs' work so I won't chronicle it here. He did something pretty horrible, and now has paid for his crimes. He spent multiple years in prison and has become completely crippled financially. Whether or not the prosecution set out to make a name for themselves by making an example of Vick is unclear, but he definitely got hammered. This is not to make any kind of moral judgement but to say that Vick was punished to the full extent of the law. Even PETA can't argue with this. They may want larger sentences for these crimes, but that's not the case and Mr. Vick was not awarded any special treatment.

He deserved a second chance. As is often said, our country was built on second chances awarded to those who couldn't make it on their first attempt at life. As Americans, we love redemption stories. There are few heroes in literature that are more romantic than the ones who fall from grace, only to pick themselves up and to make it on their second chance. I know there are many dog or animal lovers who think Vick is the scum of the Earth, but really the way he is treated is completely ridiculous.

There are possible murderers (Ray Lewis, Marvin Harrison), drug dealers (Jamal Lewis), and people who commit manslaughter with DUIs (Leonard Little and now Donte Stallworth) in the NFL. All of these players (except Stallworth) are currently playing in the league. True, the old regime at the NFL front office wasn't as strict as the current one, but I don't hear these same people who champion animal rights standing up for the humans that Little and Stallworth killed. Leonard Little killed a human being while driving drunk, and even got caught with a DUI a couple years after serving a minor sentence! Even the most adamant animal rights activist have to agree that the life of a human being is worth very much more than the life of an animal. I'm sorry it's true, and anyone who claims to think otherwise is just lying to themselves. Stallworth is currently being held from playing the NFL after serving less than a month in prison. I'm pleased commissioner Goodell is being this tough on him, 30 days is a paltry amount to pay for the extinction of a human life.

Again all these criminals (some convicted, some not) are playing in the league and I don't hear a peep about people protesting their presence. Vick has been profusely apologetic and is even doing some work with anti dog fighting groups away from the spotlight. What do people want him to do? Playing football is the only thing in which he is trained, and Vick should be able to try to make a living for himself. A common counter argument is the the 'role model' one. Anyone who thinks that all professional athletes are role models are deluding themselves, just ask Charles Barkley. There may be some athletes who we can look up as role models (Lance Armstrong, Kurt Warner (if you're religious), and Dikembe Mutombo come to mind) but sports are just an occupation, and like other occupations they come with lots of seedy characters. Michael Vick doesn't have to be a role model, but he can be a valuable lesson to see what can happen if you make bad decisions.

I am ecstatic that Vick has been picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles (putting my rooting interests aside). It'll be interesting to see how he is used on the football field, but he joins a team with a bunch of strong characters that will help him get re-acclimated to civilian life in the NFL. It's hard for almost any of us to understand what Vick has been through. No one I know grew up in the poverty or culture in which Vick grew up, and thus we can't understand why he did what he did. Things that are acceptable to one culture might be completely ghastly to another and it would be foolish to cast stones at someone without realizing this. It's true that Vick allowed himself to be surrounded by people of questionable character, but he also felt that he had to support many of these people because of his success. Saying all this, I really hope that he learned his lessons and will lead a different life. I will be rooting for Vick to rebuild his life and to have a successful career in the NFL.

Mad Men: Season 1 - Matthew Weiner

2009-08-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

After The Wire went off the air it felt like there was a vast hole in the television landscape. Previously, HBO produced a string of very successful, but also very acclaimed shows. In the new landscape in which television rivaled and even in some cases surpassed movies in terms of quality, originality and acclaim, HBO lead the way with The Sopranos. In the later stages of The Sopranos, the mantle of 'best show on television' passed to The Wire, which not surprisingly is what I think is the best show ever made. As The Wire was winding down its successor seemed unclear. HBO wasn't really coming out with great shows (and still isn't) and Showtime was still a little trashy (see The Tudors, Californication, Secret Diary of a Call Girl etc...) to start producing 'the best' TV. Surprisingly it was a basic cable channel, and a network known for showing movies that only 70 year olds or film buffs would want to see that would produce 'the next great show.

At first glace, Mad Men doesn't seem like it would be very interesting. The show takes place in the early 60s in a high powered ad agency on Madison Avenue. There are no cops, no gangsters, no doctors, and no smoke monsters. Really I'd be hard pressed to say what the show is 'about' beyond saying that it's about the people in this ad agency, and the lives they lead. I think Mad Men is the perfect example that what makes a show good is not what it's 'about', but is how it's written, produced and acted. A creator could have the best idea in the world, but if it's not executed well, who cares? I think that more than in movies, in TV it really doesn't matter what the subject matter is about. What matters is if there are interesting characters that we care about, and want to follow week after week.

Although in saying all this I might be selling Mad Men's content a little short. Besides having intriguing characters, the show also tries to paint a picture of early 60's America. This is an especially interesting exercise because media often paints the 60s as just existing in a drug induced haze. Depictions of this era often go straight from the idyllic and iconic images of the 50s to Woodstock. There are only glimpses of it here (the first season starts in 1960 and ends with Kennedy's election) but it seems that Mad Men will attempt to chronicle this changing society.

With all that exposition out of the way, Mad Men is pretty darn good. It's not as 'exciting' as other shows (like The Wire or Lost) but it's endlessly clever. The majority of the show consists of witty dialog and subtle body language that the actors pull off effortlessly. Like other great shows, Mad Men doesn't try to spell everything out for you, and the viewer has to gather much from context. It's not really a 'casual viewing ' show and it rewards attention.

Also, the show is even prettier than LOST. The period outfits really help, but there sure are a lot of nice looking actors in this show. John Hamm, Christina Hendricks and J anuary Jones really lead the list here, but everyone in the show is at least interesting or good to look at. In addition, the houses and work spaces are also works of art in themselves. There aren't a lot of sets, but the creators work with what they have and create a realistic, and beautiful, recreation of early 60s America.

Often, the writers will add lines or scenes that seem to be winking at the audience. The characters are constantly drinking (even while pregnant), smoking and doing all sorts of things that we would now consider unhealthy. The show also adds lines about technology or the characters current understanding of the world, trying to goad us into chuckling at the silly people stuck in the past. This is a little gratuitous in the first couple of episodes, but gets a little more subtle as the show goes on. It's one thing to make social commentary on a way of life, but it's entirely another thing to try to make us laugh at the old people using type writers.

Furthermore, the abuse of women in this show sometimes borders on gratuitous. I know that women were treated badly during that time, especially by the rich, but there are many painful shots in this show of men laughing about a women thinking or treating them as pure objects. You have the neurotic cheated on housewives, the abused (verbally and sexually) secretaries at work, and even the 'strongest' woman character in the show is constantly undermined by her father. The triumphs for the women in this show are few and far between, and I hope they get a little more room to shine in future seasons.

Above all, I really think that Mad Men is just like a well written, period soap opera. You could make the case that a show with any kind of continuity is just a dressed up soap opera, but I think this really rings true for Mad Men. As much as the show might be an investigation into the culture of the upper crust in the 60s, the show is really just about individual people's lives. The show isn't continuity obsessed, there aren't any real cliffhangers or 'to be continued....' scenes, but the season really flows as one story. We are introduced to secret love affairs, long lost brothers, hidden pasts, scheming villains and hidden sexuality. These things are all long standing staples of the soap opera genre, and Mad Men uses them to its advantage.

Calling Mad Men a soap opera isn't to dismiss it. Nor is it to suggest that it's just a glossy soap opera like The OC. It's an extremely well written and produced show that is rightful well respected within the television world. It also just happens to share much in terms of plot and content with many day time soap operas.

Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman

2009-08-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

I didn't plan on reading a book written by a rock journalist immediately after reviewing the most prominent movie made about a rock journalist, but sometimes these things just happen. I have heard of Chuck Klosterman for quite some time, but have never really looked into him or his books. It makes sense that I would review a book written by one of the more well known commentators of pop culture for this blog, so I'm glad I happened to see this book in a friends bathroom and be able to snag it before he left town.

In Killing Yourself to Live Chuck sets out to visit places where famous musicians died and to make some kind of point about death being a good 'career move' for rock stars In practicality this book is only partially about this. The book ends up being 1/3 about dead rock stars, 1/3 Klosterman's observations about music and pop culture as a whole, and 1/3 discussions on ladies that he is currently entangled with or ladies he wants to be entangled with. The first two sections of this book are pure gold, and the last not so much.

It's not that his problem with having multiple love interests isn't relateable (hey, we've all been there). It's just that his other writing is so great that listening to him talk about relationship issues isn't nearly as interesting as his thoughts on rock music. I think memoirs have this problem in general: relationships that are so very important for the author are of little interest to the reader. The same thing happens in Nathan Rabin's book in that the parts of his life that may be the most important to him (his girlfriends) really aren't that interesting to anyone else.

But this is all really beside the point. The rest of the book is fantastic, and it's not like the girlfriend talk takes anything away from it (there are no Penny Lanes), it really just pads the text so that it's actually book length.

He rents a car and travels across the country in 20 or so days to visit these famous sites. And when I say across the country he really goes across the country. He starts out in the northeast (he currently lives in in New York City) and heads down south, then up through the Midwest, and then west across Montana to Seattle. It's an epic amount of driving, and he does the whole thing with only 600 cds to keep him company.

Something that is very refreshing about Klosterman is his Midwest sensibility. He's from North Dakota and even though he lives in NYC for work purposes, he's still very much a Midwestern boy. He's constantly going out to eat at the Olive Garden and Bennigans while he's on the road, and reminisces about his high school football days. But the thing that really stands out is his critique of hipsters and irony. While visiting the club where the tragic Great White concert occurred, he makes these remarks about the show:

"To me, that's what makes the Great White tragedy even sadder than it logically was: One can safely assume that none of the 100 people who died at the Station that night were trying to be cool by watching Great White play 20-year-old songs. This was not a bunch of hipsters trying to be seen by other hipsters..."

Klosterman constantly criticizes hipsters and the music they embrace, if they can truly be thought of as genuinely embracing anything, because he finds it disengenuious. To be sure, Klosterman has suspect taste himself, but whether it's his defense of Rod Stewart or his love of KISS (including their solo albums) he's genuine about everything. "Why would I want other people to think I like something I do not actually like? What possible purpose would that serve?" says Klosterman. He has a pretty good point and even though most people don't agree with his tastes (KISS? Really?) at least he's honest and genuine.

In my favorite section of the book, Klosterman spends 3 pages trying to describe why Led Zeppelin is a timeless band that is loved differently than other other band in history. He agrees that the Beatles and The Rolling Stones may be better, but Zeppelin has something that makes them special. A couple of quotes from this section:

"Led Zeppelin is the most legitimately timeless musical entity of the past half century; they are the only group in the history of rock 'n' roll that every male rock fan seems to experience in exactly the same way."

"There is a point in the male maturation process when the music of Led Zeppelin sounds like the perfect actualization of the perfectly cool you"

And about the time that every male goes through the 'Led Zeppelin phase" what they say to themselves:

"This shit is perfect. In fact, this record is vastly superior to all other forms of music on the entire planet, so this is all I will ever listen to, all the time."

Now he may be overstating this a little bit (I'm pretty sure I have male friends who don't really like Zepp) but I'm a little more likely to believe him because I went through a phase exactly like this. I went through a phase where I thought Zeppelin was the best band of all time, and that no one could come close to rocking as much as they do. In fact I revisit this stage every now and again and when I pick up old records (including Zeppelin) at my house next week I may enter this stage again.

Led Zeppelin rules.

Predictably, Klosterman ends his journey in Seattle to consider the death of Kurt Cobain. This makes sense, Cobain is the most famous rock star death for almost everyone in our generation (except a certain pop star who I'll get to in a second). Says Klosterman about Cobain's death and it's impact on society:

"Kurt Cobain had not merely made culturally important music--suddenly, he had made culture. His death became a catchall event for anyone who wanted their adolescence to have depth: It was not possible to achieve credibility simply by mourning retrospectively. Cobain's iconography hadn't changed that much, really; what changed was the number of people who suddenly thought Cobain's iconography said something about themselves."

I think his comments on this are extremely interesting, especially given current circumstances. Not only does Klosterman argue that people rewrite history about a dead star after their death, but they somehow try to connect with this death to find meaning in their own lives. People no longer though of Nirvana as being headed by an asshole drug addict, who didn't even make the most popular music of the time (that would be Pearl Jam). Everyone found Cobain tragic, and treated him like some kind of martyr.

This is exactly what everyone has been doing to Michael Jackson. No longer do we think of him as a possible pedophile that was just a big creepshow for the past 20 years. No longer do we consider that the person who made all of those awesome and genre breaking songs has been gone for quite some time. Everyone chose to rewrite history and remember him in their own way. And even more, people got so worked up and upset it seemed to affect their entire lives for days. I would like to read Klosterman's thoughts on the death of Jack-O because where for Cobain's death affected mainly young white men, Jackson pretty much made the news world stop for 2 weeks because everyone wanted to find meaning in their own lives and connect through his death.

Almost Famous - Cameron Crowe

2009-08-02T07:41:00.001-07:00

The impetus for me making my list of the best movies of the decade was Bill Simmons' similar discussion on his podcast and in a recent article. For him it came down to Almost Famous and The Dark Knight, with Almost Famous winning out mostly because it's been around longer and he had more time to consider it as one of his favorite movies. In making my list I ignored Almost Famous because frankly, when I first saw it I hated it. This movie came out in 2000 so it had been at least 8 years since I saw it and I was much younger at the time. I thought that the movie deserved reconsideration because so many people I know and respect love this movie.

Right from the beginning I could see why people so highly respect this movie. The dialog is incredibly well written, the movie is extremely well acted, and the soundtrack is amazing. Cameron Crowe put to good use his experience in writing for Rolling Stone to be able to make the rock stars come to life as real and interesting people. Billy Cruddup and Jason Lee are perfect as the feuding bandmates, and as usual Philip Symour Hoffman steals every scene he is in as the local film critic in young William's hometown. And if that's not enough, Frances McDormand knocks her role out of the park as her portrayal of William's overprotective mother. In fact my favorite scene of the movie might be when William's mother dressed down Cruddup's Russell Hammond for leading her son astray and for not living a very respectable life.

So far it seems like I loved Almost Famous almost as much as Bill Simmons does, but I have one sticking point with the movie, and it's a major one. I cannot stand the character of Penny Lane played by Kate Hudson. It's not that Hudson does a bad job, she sells the role perfectly well, I just find everything about to character to be REALLY lame. This starts with her posturing at the beginning of the film with a phony name and superiority about being not a groupie but a 'band-aid'. It only gets worse when she does things like tell William that they are going to move to Morocco and leads him on while pinning for the lead guitarist, Russell. I know we're supposed to see through her facade at least a little bit, but I find her utterly deplorable.

This might be the result of the fact that I have never appreciated or respected idolatry, especially of rock stars. I really love good music, but I have never really found most of the people behind it interesting at all (except in rare cases like David Bowie) and don't understand people who try to become groupies. Penny Lane's goal in this movie is to hang out with rockstars, pretend to be more than a mere groupie and thus looks down on the other girls, and to lead a glamorous lifestyle to which she adds nothing. She claims to love the music and this is what separates her from the other girls, and yet we never hear of her discussing music. Her conversation completely revolves around gossiping about rockstars and talking about 'the life'.

I hated her and her friends so much that anytime there was a scene involving them I would audibly groan and roll my eyes. They were just so annoying for the entire movie and I couldn't get past it. For me, they ruined any scene they were in. Maybe I will soften on this stance as I get older seeing that I believe this is the reason I hated this movie in it's entirety when I was a teenager and now I only hate 1/5 off it. I can see why people would love this movie so much, and I can even respect someone who thinks of this as their favorite movie of the decade but for now I consider Almost Famous part spectacular film and part incredible annoyance

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

2009-07-31T10:27:00.001-07:00

As a child I never really read 'young adult' fiction. I went straight from reading kids books to reading Lonesome Dove, Jurassic Park and Stephen King novels. In middle school I even had an English teacher that would question my reading list for the journal entries we were to write for class. Mr. Hillenburg wrote 'this book might be inappropriate, do your parents know you're reading this' in my first Lonesome Dove journal entry. I didn't always know what was going on in these books because of technical or adult issues (especially my first few times through Jurassic Park) but I sure enjoyed reading them.

I bring this up not to say that Ender's Game is young adult fiction, but the book was originally described to me as the 'perfect book for a 13 year old boy' and after reading it I can agree that this is indeed the case. It may be a little violent at times but it's action packed, quick paced and virtually all of the main characters are between the ages of 6 and 14.

The Ender in Ender's Game refers to the main character, a boy who gets picked at the age of 6 to join the illustrious Battle School. Battle School is necessary, as we learn throughout the book, because there is an ongoing intergalactic war between humans and an alien race only called the 'buggers'. We eventually learn that in the past hundred years there have been two major conflicts with the buggers and humanity lives constantly under the threat of another possible bugger invasion attempt. Because of this climate, children are taken at a very young age and trained to become the soilders of the future.

Although the bugger war could have been a rich source for wide reaching plot lines, the novel mostly focuses around Ender's personal development in battle school and how the bugger war relates to him and those he knows. Battle school is mostly a training ground for soldiers, teaching them battle tactics instead of traditional academic studies. They do have classes on things other than battles, but as the story goes on it becomes clear that the only thing that matters are what the kids learn about war.

The kids are all separated into teams (which is slightly reminiscent of the houses in Harry Potter) and then are pitted against each other in play battles every week or so. They battle in a zero gravity room (the school itself is a space station that has gravity elsewhere in the building) with fake guns and flashsuits that simulate real battles by freezing the kids if they get shot. The students start out as scrubs, and as they grow and mature become they become platoon leaders or commanders of entire teams.

Although we never really learn why, Ender is a an especially gifted child and is considered by the army leaders to be the future commander of the army and the savior in the war on the buggers. The teachers and military staff constantly put him in situations that will shape him into the future military leader of Earth. They isolate him by pointing out how great he is and getting the other students to turn on him, and by constantly testing him with unfair battle conditions as he quickly makes his way up the ranks.

Much of Ender's Game is concerned with how an almost superman like person deals with adversity and the knowledge that the future of humanity rests with him. You don't often hear of stories that focus around someone who has an ingrained superiority to all those around him, and how he uses that to fulfill his destiny. Ender does often whine that he is being treated unfairly, and yearns to be just 'one of the gang' , but these are more often passing feelings that are quickly replaced with thoughts of how he can overcome his current situation and how he can beat those around him. In fact Ender never loses a battle in the whole book! He overcomes adversity to be sure, but he is never truly tested.

Because of this, one could mistakenly believe that Card is trying to promote the idea of the superman, akin to Hitler's master race. This would be a mistake because despite all of his superior gifts and ability to implement them, Ender never truly desires to be a despot. Even when he crushes his enemies he never intends to hurt them, and is often concerned with their safety above all else. He may be a superior man, but he never acts arrogant and doesn't want to control those around him.

You may have noticed that despite saying that the book started when Ender was 6 I have been talking about him like he is a full grown man. The characters are mostly children, but they are written and act like adults. Part of this I think rests on the inability of Card to correctly write a child, but I think he is also making the point that these children are so special they have the advanced mind of an adult. Also as Ender grows up in the battle school he ages much more quickly than his contemporaries.

Because I knew this book was a series I was kind of fooled by the twist at the end. As stated before, the majority of the book concerns the battle games kids play in the special school. In the last quarter of the book Ender graduates and starts his training to become the future army commander. They give him a new game that involves him commanding fleets and ships in what looks like a video game simulation. I figured that the book would end with Ender assuming command of the fleet and the subsequent books would be about his epic war against the buggers.

In the climax of the book, we see Ender enter a room to complete his final simulation in frontt of the military officials. Everyone acts as if this were like an oral qualifier for grad school. Ender faces seemingly impossible odds in the simulation and through his cleverness and ruthlessness he cruses the simulated bugger army and destroys their entire fleet. Everyone in the room celebrates and Ender is confused by how jubilant they seem over his passing of the exam.He then learns that it was not a simulation at all and that for quite some time Ender had actually been controlling the Earth's fleet! They used a talented child who thought he was just playing games to destroy and entire race not only because of his abilities, but also because he would have no qualms about sacrificing his own virtual ships or cruelly obliterating the enemy.

I felt a little foolish for not seeing this coming but as I stated before I was slightly tricked by knowing this was a many book series, but let's not to take anything away from Card's ability to write a riveting story. I'm not sure if I'll read anything else in the series, this book actually wraps up pretty well and easily stands on its won, but I quite enjoyed Ender's Game and would definitely recommend it to my 13 year old self.

Best Films of the 2000s

2009-07-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about my favorite films of the decade. On his podcast and in his articles Bill Simmons has been discussing what he thinks are the best movies made since 2000 and this made me want to make my own list. His qualifications are 'excellence, originality and (this is crucial) rewatchability.' Although I appreciate the importance he places on rewatchability, I don't necessarily consider that as important as the ability of a film to stimulate me intellectually or emotionally. I also place a higher importance on originality, I like to watch a movie and think 'wow I have never seen anything like this before.'

Below are my top 5 films of 2000-2009. Although I may title this post as the 'best' films of the 2000s I realize that everyone is looking for different things from a movie. It's more of a list of my favorite movies, but that is all semantics. I figure that towards the end of this year many lists like this might come out so I want to put this out there before I have the chance to be affected by the other lists. Hopefully I didn't overlook anything, and I had quite a few films that barely got cut. The films that just missed the cut include Primer, Donnie Darko, Gladiator, Oldboy, The Departed and Let the Right One In.

Honorable Mention: Comedies - Zoolander (2001)

I'm not the biggest fan of comedies. I tend to enjoy them, but never really get obsessed and don't often feel the need to watch them more than once. My problem is not that I don't like to laugh, it's that as movies they tend to lack that extra something that dramas have. It's incredibly hard to balance the comedic aspect of films with the plot arc necessary for the medium. Thus for my list it was necessary to create an independent comedy category so as not to ignore an entire genre. And for me, Zoolander wins this category in a landslide.

Although there might be 'better' comedies (like Juno) nothing that came out in the past 10 years made me laugh like Zoolander. It might have helped that I had friends in high school who were also obsessed with it and walked around randomly yelling 'OBEY MY DOG' at inappropriate moments, but as I've gotten older I found that people in college, and now in my life after college were equally into this movie. Not only is this my favorite performance by Ben Stiller, I think that this might be Will Ferrel's best role. Almost everything that Mugatu says or does in Zoolander makes me laugh and all of his lines are extremely quotable. It may be completely ridiculous and nonsensical, but I haven't found a comedy as funny or rewatchable as Zoolander.

Honorable Mention - Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

I love these movies. Love, love, love them. Some of the best nights I've ever had involve just sitting around watching one of the extended films with my best friends. But I wasn't able to put them in my list because for me, it's impossible to separate these films from the books that spawned them. Peter Jackson did what was once thought impossible, and turned the most famous fantasy book of all time into a series of epic movies. Although a few plot points were changed for better or worse, he completely nailed the tone, feeling and overall story of Tolkien's masterpiece. They are a wonderful companion to the books and although technology might improve in the next century, I think future directors will be hard pressed to create an adaptation of the books that surpasses than Peter Jackson's crowning achievement.

#5 - Children of Men (2006)

Children of Men not only works as a depiction of a possible dystopian future, but also as a straight up action movie, political and social commentary, and as an intense personal drama. As you might note from this list or my other posts, I am partial to genre films and Children of Men fulfills that part of my interest while being a great film in many other ways. It's hard not to get caught up in Theo's struggle for self preservation in a dead world even before his conscious forces him to care for, and protect humanities last hope found in the first pregnant woman in decades. The story is taut, the action is exciting, and the camera work is superlative. The film uses many single-shot sequences which are incredibly hard to pull off, but extremely rewarding when done correctly. In my opinion, the final action sequence, which is over 7 minutes long, is one of the best action scenes ever filmed.

#4 - WALL-E (2008)

I think that any list of the best films of the decade that doesn't include a Pixar film would be amiss. No film studio of the 2000s comes close to the string of success that Pixar has achieved. Since 200o Pixar has put out Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up. Not only are Pixar movies financially successful, they are uniformly loved by critics, kids, adults and young adults. Everyone enjoys Pixar's films and rightfully so.

Although I love Monsters, Inc., WALL-E is probably my favorite Pixar film. The first 20 minutes or so which are completely without dialog might be the best single sequence of any of the movies on this list. The film becomes a little more formulaic after the initial sequence, but the quality of the film hardly drops at all. The ability to make the audience feel the entire range of human emotions with just the body language and facial expressions of a pair of robots should not be overlooked. I even have a friend who refuses to watch WALL-E and claims she doesn't like it because it always makes her cry. WALL-E also contains some very poignant social commentary in its view of our possible future that is a little more believable than the picture painted by most films which use science fiction as social commentary (ie Children of Men or Idocracy).

#3 - The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight might end up being the defining film of the 2000s. It fully captures the fear that permeates our post 9/11 society in a way no other piece of art has. I also can't remember another film that opened with such high expectations and then fully surpassed them. Think of The Dark Knight like LeBron James if he had already won 3 championships. Although the Academy that runs The Oscars will never nominate an action or science fiction film for any major awards, many people and critics felt like this movie should have won more than just the award Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded.

In addition to all this it is easily the best superhero/comic book movie of the decade in a time where at least a half dozen or so of these open a year. Time will tell how future movies are affected by The Dark Knight, but it already seems like the film is to the superhero film genre that Watchmen was to comic books in the 80s. Although films had been getting darker before The Dark Knight opened, it ratcheted up the intensity and respectability the same way that Watchmen did for super hero comic books. And like Watchmen I doubt that The Dark Knight will be surpassed any time soon.

#2 - The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

This would have to be my sentimental favorite. The Royal Tenenbaums was my first 'favorite movie' and holds a special place in my heart. I'm not sure what to say that hasn't been said about this film. Wes Anderson still has a long way to go in his career, but it feels at this point that you can separate his career into pre-Tenenbaum and post-Tenenbaum sections. After The Royal Tenenbaums his films seemed to be more concerned with quirk and aesthetics than with real human emotion. However The Royal Tenenbaums combines the meticulous and beautiful aesthetics of The Life Aquatic with the emotional anguish found within Rushmore.

Barring the effect that The Dark Knight might have on future films, The Royal Tenenbaums more than any other film on this list has shaped the films that came after its release. Every indie film of the day feels like a Wes Anderson knock off and even commercials such as the ones currently run by Comcast use a distinctly Anderson look. However, none of these imitators can touch the emotion or feeling found in The Royal Tenenbaums.

#1 - Mulholland Drive (2001)

It was tough for me to order my favorite films after narrowing down the top five. I had all of the top three in this slot at some point before settling on David Lynch's masterpiece. The reason that Mulholland Drive claimed the top spot is the 'intellectual' factor that I discussed in the opening. While watching Mulholland Drive you end up asking yourself 'wait, what's going on' for most of the film, and Lynch makes no concessions to make this easy for the viewer. Not only do you have to think while watching the movie, after its conclusion if you didn't have to discuss what you just saw with whomever you watched it with and/or go online to read about the film, I'm not sure we were watching the same thing.

Lynch gets a lot of crap for being 'weird' or 'Lynchian' (the nice way of calling his particular methods weird) and I think that's just unfair. Lynch has no interest in typical story telling, and I find this refreshing. His movies are all unique and interesting, and there is a reason that there are armies of cinephiles that swear by everything he does.

Interestingly, Mulholland Drive was initially intended to be a television pilot for ABC in 1999. Predictably, the network declined to pick up the show and Lynch was left with some fantastic, but unusable footage. When he was making Twin Peaks Lynch was faced with the same possibility, and shot an 'extended pilot' that wrapped the story up and could be told as a stand alone story. As anyone who has seen this 'extended pilot' knows, it's completely awful and unwatchable. It seems like Lynch learned from his mistake and whether he had a contingency plan to turn Mulholland Drive into a film or not, the result is stunning.

Because much of it was initially shot to be a television pilot, there are multiple loose ends and red herrings that could be found to some as bothersome. I don't mind these seemingly unconnected loose ends because with Lynch's dreamlike style it's impossible to tell metaphors from plot relevant events.

Mulholland Drive does have that 'weird' factor found in Eraserhead and his later films Lost Highway and Inland Empire, but it also the great storytelling and mood found in what many people consider to be his best film, Blue Velvet. For the first 90 minutes the movie feels like it may just be another straightforward narrative that, like Blue Velvet, examines the horrors that lie underneath American society. However, as the last hour of the film unravels it becomes much more than that.

I remember the first time I watched Mulholland Drive and how I felt afterward. It was just like the first time I listened to Radiohead's OK Computer, I knew immediately that it was the best album I had ever heard. It's not often that upon a first experience I have such a strong feeling about something, and it's for this reason that I rank Mulholland Drive first.

Reel Big Fish - Live at the Masquerade

2009-07-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't initially plan on writing much about music on this blog because frankly I've lost interest in almost all of the new music coming out. In my heyday (2003-2007) I listened to, judged, and sifted through almost everything of note that came out, and even made large strides in listening to older artists that were considered 'seminal'. This was true of classic rock of the 70s and 80s, indie rock, rap, and even most pop music. Somewhere along the line I gave up on trying to keep up with the new music coming out. This is likely the result one of the following 3 reasons:

1. New music isn't very good.
2. I didn't have time to sort the good from the bad because I wasn't spending hours in front of my computer in my dorm room listening to music and wasting time.
3. I'm just old and crotchety and nothing could be as good as it was 'back in my day'.

I think it's probably a combination of the three (although I'm still holding out that #1 is true and new music will be awesome again) but whatever the reason I lost interest in the music scene as a whole, stopped going to concerts, and just listened to my old favorite albums or albums that I always liked but never really listened to that much (like with my current Morrissey kick).

Reel Big Fish doesn't fall into any of the previously discussed categories. Being born in 1983, I was already pretty fluent in 90s rock, ska and punk and my love of this music is a little more deeply ingrained. I was a late bloomer when it comes to music, and didn't get into it until 9th grade. I went through the normal albums for a kid my age (Nirvana, Cake, Everclear, The Smashing Pumpkins) but the first album that really hooked me was Turn the Radio Off by Reel Big Fish.

The themes of rocking out, going against the grain, and just having a clean good time really took hold of me. Or it might have been a result of the fact that I grew up mostly listening to and participating in classical music, and this might have caused the horn section of Reel Big Fish to really get to me, but whatever the reason, I was hooked. My first memorable concerts were all Reel Big Fish shows, and although I branched out to other punk and ska bands they were always my favorite. The music was fun, the shows were great and they were actually good at their instruments. I may have moved on in terms of the genres of music I mostly listen to since going to college, but Reel Big Fish always had a special place in my music pantheon. As silly as it may seem to some people, they were the first band I absolutely loved and called my own.

My good friend Brandie was in town this weekend and besides showing her around lots of fun places in Atlanta, we had the chance to go backstage for a Reel Big Fish show. She has become friends with the band since moving to Los Angels, and so she had the hook-ups to get us backstage. I was a little hesitant because I've never really been interested in going backstage for concerts. I always figured the sound was worse, you couldn't see what was going on, you would be pushed around and in the way, and besides I never had any desire to rub elbows with rock stars. I was wrong on most of these counts.

Before the show we actually spent some time on their tour bus before heading in. They were all getting ready in the back so us non band members just hung out in the front having a casual drink and watching the Colbert Report. This was the first time that I got the impression of how workmanlike the whole band was. They have been around since 'making it' in 1996, and half of the original six still remain. It was interesting to see how they approached getting ready just like a businessman puts on his suit and straightens his tie. The members didn't have elaborate outfits or anything, it was just interesting to see how matter of fact everything was, and how little they talked.

Once we headed into the green room and everyone was assembling while the opener finished the energy ramped up a little bit. There was still a little bit of anticipation for the 20 minutes or so while they waited to go on. People were tuning trumpets and strumming guitars getting ready to go. Once they got on stage it was just like seeing all the Reel Big Fish shows from my youth except that I wasn't extremely hot, didn't have people running into me, and could see everything that was going on. They were still as entertaining on stage, and Aaron Barrett (the lead singer) is still good at playing a rockstar. The show moved by quickly (the free booze didn't hurt), the crowd was pretty into it, and it was pretty fun.

After the show most of the band members just put away their instruments, changed, and headed back to the bus. This is when I got the biggest feeling that to most of them this was just a job. Sure they had fun out on stage, but either they were never into acting wild, or the novelty of being a rockstar and partying hard had warn off over the years. Some of them might be good friends, but mostly they acted like a bunch of co-workers going about their own business. Hanging out in the green room after the show wasn't very exciting (again I don't really have an interest in hanging out with 'famous' people), but it was interesting to see how a talented, moderately successful rock band treats a typical workday.

The Big Rewind - Nathan Rabin

2009-07-19T17:36:00.001-07:00

I am not usually a big fan of biographies or memoirs. I will occasionally read life-based nonfiction (I am a pretty big fan of David Sedaris) but I feel like most biographies end up the same. The author talks about what adversity they had to overcome when they were young, and how through sheer wit and skill they overcame insurmountable odds to become a success. OK I may be exaggerating a little bit and allowing the recently read Outliers to taint my ideas, but the subjects of biographies are almost universally not as interesting as the author thinks they are. Thus I probably would have never considered reading The Big Rewind if it weren’t for the name on the cover.

As many of you are probably aware, The AV Club is probably my favorite website, and has been ever since graduating college. I find it to be an endless source of entertainment, both intelligent and humorous, and use it as my go-to source for film and TV reviews and articles. Although their music and book sections tend to be a little lacking, everything else is golden. I especially like that the writers are given clearance to write not only reviews about the new releases, but longer articles about older films that really give the authors a chance to spread their wings.

One of my favorite authors at The AV Club is Nathan Rabin. His film reviews are fine, but the article I really enjoy reading are his features. His best feature, ‘My Year of the Flops’, cleverly discusses films that that were interesting cases of commercial and critical failure, and whether or not these films deserved this reception at the time. He also participates in an AV Club feature that Lindsay is particularly fond of, ‘I Watched This on Purpose’, where the staff members watch shitty movies that have a certain cultural infamy. It’s because of his online film writing that I bought and read Rabin’s book. If anything I didn’t mind financially supporting a writer who has given me hours of free writing and entertainment.

The Big Rewind is mainly about Rabin’s life story, and how certain events or themes of his life relate to popular culture. Each chapter is tied somehow into a piece of pop culture that either is important to Rabin, or relates to something in his life. This ranges from Girl, Interrupted and time spent in a mental institute, to the Nirvana album In Utero where he discusses his time as an angry youth in an orphanage, to possibly his most clever connection where he discusses how a rival critic made him feel Frank Grimes to her Homer Simpson, which is taken from a famous episode of The Simpsons.

The Big Rewind was pretty interesting because Rabin’s life wasn’t very normal. After being middle class at a very young age, he grew up poor and eventually had to spend time in a mental institution due mostly to an error. He then spent much of his child and teenage years at an all boys orphanage and then at a seedy, sinful co-op. The book spends a large amount of space discussing the weird people he met along the way and how they rubbed off on him. The later half of the book mostly chronicles his time on a low-rated, shortly lived movie critic show on AMC and his other professional pursuits. I would have liked a little more information about the formation and development of The AV Club, because he hardly mentions it, but I guess he finds that failures are usually more interesting that successes.

In the introduction Rabin states that the purpose of the book is to relate how his personal pantheon of pop culture relates to his life and how it helped him get through the tough times in his life. It seems that he often chooses pieces of pop culture that obviously relate to his life subject-wise, but I would have liked it if a little more time was spent discussing how the pop culture touched him on a personal level. His observations and discussions about pop culture are very interesting, and his reflections on his life story itself were entertaining and thoughtful, it would have just been nice if everything connected a little better.

I am especially looking forward to his upcoming book based on ‘My Year of the Flops’ because I think Rabin’s forte really lies in discussing ridiculous and culturally infamous movies. Although his life story is different than what you would normally find in biographies, I don’t know if I can really recommend this book unless you are really into biographies or his writing on The AV Club. However if you do enjoy Rabin’s other writing, and want to learn a little more about the neurotic self-deprecating fellow, I would easily recommend The Big Rewind.

Brick - Rian Johnson

2009-07-19T07:15:00.001-07:00

Film noir is an interesting genre because although everybody is very aware of the cliches and style associated with the genre most people are not very familiar with the classic film noir films. I myself have never seen a 'classic' film noir movie and am mostly left with interpretations of the genre in modern films such as Blue Velvet and Blade Runner, or in the television show Veronica Mars.

Brick is often described as a seamless blend between two genres, film noir and high school drama. This is a little misleading because it gives the impression that the movie is in the style of Veronica Mars. This would bring to mind something that combines the quick dialog, inscrutable characters and questionable morals associated with film noir with the parties, melodrama and fun seeking teenagers associated with high school movies. I imagined a fun almost Mean Girls type movie cast in the style of film noir. Brick is not simply an 'interpretation' like the previous examples. At its core Brick is a straight-up noir that just happens to involve high schoolers.

The film starts with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of 3rd Rock From the Sun fame) finding an ex-lover dead near a sewer entrance. After a flashback where we see his view of the events that led up to her terrible end, he vows to find out how this could have happened by any means possible. Gordon-Levitt proceeds to enter a world filled with violence and drugs to get close to the 'Pin', a man who seems to be the head honcho of drugs in this town, and someone who might have answers about his Emily.

It's very clever to cast high schoolers in the film noir genre because as we all know high schoolers are nothing if not melodramatic. Every event is the biggest thing in the world, every girlfriend is the 'love of one's life', and it sure does feel like the world will come crashing down if things don't go their way. The characters in film noir tend to be very self serious, as do teenagers, and the people in their lives tend fall into a binary; they are with them or against them. Brick doesn't just cast the characters in this light to make a commentary on teenage dramas or film noir: the story is serious. People die from gunshot wounds or overdosing on spiked drugs. The main character is kicked, hit and maimed and his survival is very much in doubt.

The teenage drama aspect of this movie is mostly used in a role of subversion. Gordon-Levitt's character seems like a pretty tough bad ass, but we have to question this a little when he talks about 'brown bagging it' or when he gets called into the vice principal's office to answer some questions. In fact he constantly brings up that the VP is on his case, and treats this as if he were being hounded by the police commissioner. When Gordon-Levitt tries to set up meetings through his friend Brain, he tells Brain 'they know where I have lunch'. And when he finally gets to meet the Pin (a 26 year old) he does so in the Pin's kitchen where the Pin's mother serves him country style apple juice served 'in a country glass'. These characters may be bad ass drug dealers with gun toting muscle, but they are still just kids (or in the Pin's case a 26 year old living in their mother's basement) who get served oatmeal cookies on napkins and apple juice in special glasses.

Besides the plot of drugs, guns and the occasional femme fatale, the thing that makes Brick most like a conventional film noir is the dialog. Film noir stories are known for having very quick, witty and obtuse dialog that make it almost difficult to follow. Brick not only has this rapid fire style dialog, it also uses many terms either borrowed from the classic film noirs, or invented for this movie. Because of this, Brick is fairly hard to follow at times, and rewards patience, attention and multiple viewings. It's not so confusing that the audience has no idea what is going on, but you'll often feel as if you are a couple of moves behind the characters.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Brick is how much money it took to make. Brick was shot in 20 days on a half of a million dollar budget. This is remarkable considering the fact that Johnson used regular film, which is really expensive compared to digital film, and cast a well known (if not very commercial) actors. This budget is a far cry from the seven thousand dollars that was used to make Primer (one of my favorite films of the decade and likely an upcoming post) but this is still a minute sum compared to Hollywood movies of the day. Brick is a well designed, smart film that is another example that the best, most interesting films of our generation are not coming from Hollywood but from smaller independent filmmakers who are willing to take risks.

The Hammer - Adam Carolla

2009-07-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Adam Carolla is funny. There, I said it.

Like almost everyone my age, I spent a portion of my teenage years listening to Loveline on the radio. What normal teenager wouldn't want to spend late nights listening to a national radio show that featured sex advice from a doctor and a blue-collar smartass? Besides Loveline the other thing that Adam Carolla is known for is The Man Show, which if taken at face value (which is probably a mistake) was a misogynistic show focused on beer, boobs, and dudes being dudes. If these are the merits on which you base Carolla you probably think that he's dim, crude, and definitely not worth the time of anyone with a sophisticated sense of humor.

I only recently reconsidered Adam Carolla as having any kind of relevance in todays culture. I first started thinking that he might not be that bad because of the common references to him on Bill Simmons' podcast. Although Simmons can sometimes be a little too much of a dude, he's pretty intelligent and an incredibly entertaining read. He and Carolla share the same social circle, and if Simmons likes him that much Carolla can't be that bad. Then as I got into a grove of doing extended experiments at my lab that involve lots of hand/eye work but not much thinking (once everything is set up) I got into podcasts. I heard form a friend that Carolla's podcast was supposedly pretty funny, and after listening to a few I was hooked.

He's still pretty crass (because he now has a podcast instead of a radio show he can curse and talk about raunchy material to his heart's desire), and occasionally makes some unintelligent comments, but boy is he funny. The interviews and guests aren't always my cup of tea, but when he gets ranting on a subject, it's pretty unbeatable. He may bring up political or social ideas you don't necessarily agree with (especially if you're a sensitive liberal type) but he brings a much needed sense of humor and common sense to the discussion. He's not politically correct, and doesn't pander to anyone's needs. You might think he's being rude, but more often than not you will end up thinking 'hey he's right' (or at least see where he's coming from), but only after you laugh out loud a few times.

But this post is not about his podcast, it's about his 2007 movie, The Hammer. In The Hammer Carolla pretty much plays a less successful version of himself. The character is an out of work carpenter (Carolla has a fair amount of skill in this arena) who is an ex-amateur boxer (as is Carolla) whose only joy in life is the few hours of boxing classes per week he teaches to beginners. It has no other notable actors, and was almost released straight to video if Carolla hadn't ponied up a few thousands dollars to get it released in a few cities, just so it wouldn't have to say 'straight to video' on the cover.

Does this sound like something you would want to see? Probably not. However it has a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Nathan Rabin of the AV Club gave it a B+. These favorable reviews may be a result of the fact that no one expected anything of this movie, but the film still got a better reception than most any comedy coming out of Hollywood.

The movie doesn't have a high concept, and it's often very easy to predict where the plot is going. However the plot is decent and the jokes are evenly distributed throughout the movie to give it a light and low key feel. There is some drama, but nothing ever gets too serious or feels stressful. The movie is just shy of 90 minutes, which gives Carolla enough time to make the jokes he wants without having to draw out the plot. It's a comfortable, humorous effort that brings the essence Carolla's observational humor to the big screen.

Many modern comedies have problems with the pacing of the plot. They tend to just be a series of skits and jokes in the first 2/3 of the movie that end up getting dragged down by the 'necessary' plot at the end. We have to see characters we don't really care about do things we don't really care about, and it really kills a lot of movies.

This is the fatal flaw in the movie that The Hammer most resembles, Norm MacDonald's magnum opus, Dirty Work. Carolla has a very Norm-like delivery and tone, and they're both ugly dudes with curly black hair (although Carolla wears better fitting shirts). Dirty Work feels like a bunch of semi-related SNL skits at its front half, all which are really pretty funny, and a bad sitcom at its end. Once we have to care about the semi-serious plot everything falls apart. Although The Hammer doesn't reach the high points of hilarity that Dirty Work does, it paces itself much better and feels like more of a complete film as a result. I'd probably recommend Dirty Work over The Hammer due to the fact that it's funnier, but I appreciate Carolla's effort.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-14T12:09:00.001-07:00

Snape kills Dumbledore.

Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac

2009-07-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

While visiting Fort Collins Colorado this past week Lindsay and I arrived at the city early and had some time to kill before the rest of our party got into town. We found a cafe/used bookstore on the main drag and I happened upon the first two editions of Boneshaker. Boneshaker intends somewhat to be a 'compendium' of information for the bike commuter, but its contents really touch all branches of cycling. It contains fiction, prose, journals, educational information, historical pieces, poems, and pretty much any form of writing you can think of, all which relate to the bike or act of riding a bike.

My trip was my first real visit to Colorado, and my first time through Fort Collins. After the trip I can see how Boneshaker could be centered and published out of a small Colorado city. In just the brief afternoon we spend in Fort Collins, I saw every type of bike and every type of cyclist imaginable. Every street was covered in bike lanes and there was a bike shop on almost every block. There is even a bike library that lends bikes for people to explore and ride around downtown (although it was closed when we were there). Fort Collins obviously embraces the bike in all its forms, and Boneshaker shows it.

There are plenty of periodicals and publications based on road bikes and bike racing, and there is a fairly large internet community based on the trendier and fashionable fixed gear bicycle. However there doesn't seem to be much to read for the 'normal' cyclist. This could be a result of the fact that the other two camps tend to be fanatical about their bikes and subcultures, but that doesn't mean that commuters and other cyclists don't love their bikes and the ride just as much.

While reading the first two editions of Boneshaker I was really surprised to see the number of articles written by authors from Atlanta. The first volume had three articles, and the second one had two. This was by far more than any other city or even state. There was a series of journal entries written about commuting from Decatur to the Atlanta suburbs on a fixed gear bike (a completely ludicrous idea), articles written by a local bag maker, a movie review written by an Atlantan, and a couple of articles written by the head of Sopo Bikes, Rachael Spiewak.

I know that at this point Boneshaker is a small publication and that most of the articles were probably commissioned so that the authors were known to the publishers, its still great to see such a representation by my city. When people think of a 'cycling culture' people think of Portland, Austin or New York, no one thinks of hot and sprawling Atlanta. This isn't to say there isn't a huge and diverse bike culture here that takes advantage of the many small communities within the city limits. People just tend to think of the massive highways and sprawling suburbs that lie outside the city limits. In fact there are no articles written by authors from Austin or NYC, and the only article written from Portland is a pretentious interview with the PDX Bike Milita (which answers questions with either more questions or obtuse answers that tend not to make any sense). I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride when I picked up a national bike publication, from a very bike oriented town, and discovered that Atlanta was more that well represented.

Boneshaker is a valiant attempt to start a bike publication that everyone can enjoy, but not all of the pieces are wonderful. Pretentious fixed gear pieces make their way into the book which tend to overstate their own importance. Although I understand the utility and simplicity of fixed gear bicycles in the urban environment, acting like it's a more 'pure' form of riding is ridiculous and really gets on my nerves. Biking in the Atlanta suburbs on a fixed gear, or touring from San Francisco to Missoula on a fixed gear make absolutely no sense. I suppose one could make an argument similar to the one that often comes with the Harry Potter or Twilight books ('at least children are reading something'), but I really think all cyclists should be united. Acting like you're superior to another cyclist because you choose not to have gears (or often stupidly, brakes) is counter productive to the cycling cause as a whole.

Despite the occasional pretentious fixed gear article (and some of the fixed gear pieces aren't that bad), Boneshaker mostly contains interesting, fun or educational articles. There is definitely a place in the market for a periodical for the 'normal' bike rider and I look forward to reading future installments.

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

2009-07-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

(Wayne Gretzky, born January 26th 1961)

We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth… To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and the arbitrary advantages that today determine success… with a society that provides opportunities for all.

The above statement pretty much sums up Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis statement in Outliers. He aims to elucidate the many factors that precipitate success in individuals that lie outside their individual ability and drive. However this book is not nearly as dull as the above statements suggests it could be. He skillfully combines a decent amount of data and statistics relating to incredibly interesting cases with clever analysis and detailed description.

Probably the most famous case that Gladwell uses is that of the success of Canadian hockey players born in certain months. If you look at the months in which elite hockey players are born roughly 40 percent of them will have been born in the three-month period between January and March. Furthermore this number decreases 10 percent for every three months so that thirty percent of them will be born between April and June and so on for the rest of the months. Is it the case that people born in those months are just better at hockey than those born in December? Of course not.

The reasoning behind the elite hockey player birth month discrepancy is this: the system is set up for those with early birthdays to succeed. Canadian hockey is highly organized (like baseball in America and soccer in Europe) in that every year or so kids are judged by their skills, and then sorted into leagues in the following season depending on their skill level. This seems like a reasonable approach, the cream will rise to the top. This would be true of adults where 6 months doesn’t mean a lot in terms of aging, but for 10 year olds this is a huge amount. Thus the kids born early in the year (the cut off date for leagues is January 1) have a distinct advantage over the late year kids just because they are slightly older and thus more physically mature. As they get pushed into the higher level leagues they get more attention and better coaching, until the gap is widened so much that the late year kids have no chance of making it.

This example is interesting in its own right, but really shines a light on how we think about success and those who achieve it. The analysis above can be used for many situations, and one of the most startling is that the same thing happens when you look at birth dates and success in school. As many of you recall the same sort of sorting happens in primary schools. Gladwell describes the results of one such study below.

At four-year colleges in the United States… students belonging to the relatively youngest group in their class are underrepresented by about 11.6 percent. That initial difference in maturity doesn’t go away with time. It persists. And for thousands of students, that initial disadvantage is the difference between going to college… and not.

This should be an eye-opening statistic, 11.6 percent is a huge number! So if you were/are fairly successful in school and you were an early month birthday or were held back for a year to avoid being the young kid, you should really consider yourself lucky and thank your parents (thanks Mom!).

Gladwell spends the rest of the book describing other examples where one might look at success and say ‘that person just tried harder and was smarter’, where if we look closer the culture and environment that that person grew up in had just as much, if not more, influence in their success. He does this for Bill Gates (and other silicon valley kings), New York Jewish Lawyers, Robert Oppenheimer, Asians being good at math, and many other examples. He successfully describes the situation they were in, and what eventually led to their success. Gladwell does tend to downplay the innate ability of these successful people. Obviously they are very gifted and if you replaced Bill Gates with someone in the exact same situation they most likely would not have had nearly the success of Gates. Gladwell recognizes their ability, but tries to focus on the other factors determining their success seeing that society and our culture already does a good enough job of promoting the ‘self-made man’.

It’s hard to walk the line between general cultural analysis and creating a prejudice. Using the example that Asians are better at math (it has to do not only with their culture and attitude towards work but also how their languages are constructed, if you are interested) is a dicey move, seeing that it could easily degenerate into ridiculous stereotypes. Gladwell does a good job of explaining what he means and giving supporting evidence so he doesn’t come off as someone who is trying to reinforce cultural stereotypes.

I actually found his discussions of the importance of culture quite refreshing. Our country and world is way too politically correct these days. Some (but not nearly all) stereotypes exist for a reason. Asians as a whole are better at math! There is data and statistics showing this. There is a high percentage of lawyers in New York which are Jewish, and they are great lawyers! These are not opinions but fact. Gladwell’s attempt to uncover why these things are true is a worthwhile and interesting effort. Only if we understand where certain developed skills come from, and why some kinds of people have more success than others at the same task, can we start to ‘even the playing field’ and give everyone the chance to rise to the top. Imagine if Canada restructured its junior hockey leagues to give everyone an equal shot of being a high level pro. There might be a Sidney Crosby every couple of years instead of once a generation.

(Interesting note, Crosby was actually born in August. Maybe he's the real 'outlier'.)

Moon - Duncan Jones

2009-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Just by looking at the promotional picture above, one can see how Moon takes after 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this day and age it's almost impossible to make a 'thinking' sci-fi movie that doesn't pay some sort of homage to 2001. 'Moon' acknowledges this early on and by doing so it's able to move past it and become it's own movie. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Moon is a small indie movie (it still had a five million dollar budget, but small compared to major studio films) directed and co-written by Duncan Jones. You might know Duncan Jones by his other name, Zowie Bowie in that he is David Bowie's (real name, Robert David Jones) son. The film stars Sam Rockwell as a miner on the far side of the room that is charged with keeping an almost completely automated operation going. The only real interaction he has is with a helper robot voiced by Kevin spacey. Rockwell's character is on a 3 year tour of duty and is 2 weeks away from being able to go back to Earth when he starts hallucinating and acting twitchy.

As mentioned above, Moon acknowledges it's sci-fi roots. Much of the white paneled rooms and Rockwell's space suit look like they come directly from 2001. When the movie starts, and you are introduced to the talking robot that constantly calls Rockwell's character by his first name (Sam), you get the feeling that this might just be another evil/unfeeling robot movie with a creepy monotone voice. However we quickly learn that Spacey's robot (named GERTY) is just there to help Rockwell and most comparisons with 2001 fall by the wayside. In addition, this movie has a gritty and dirty feel to it and has a sort of 'lived in' quality. His space suit may have the style of '2001' but it's covered in soot. His living quarters are also dirty and cluttered, and not all of the equipment works properly. All of this is done to give us a feel that Sam is just a blue collar worker, and that space is not as romantic as we always tend to make it.

It's impossible to discuss this movie any further without giving away some major spoilers. So if you plan on seeing this movie I suggest you stop reading right now and come back after you've seen it. The trailers give away the big plot twist but I figure most people haven't seen them and have no idea what's coming.

After the initial setting of tone and place, the plot gets going and there is an accident with one of the mining machines and Sam goes out on the Moon's surface to investigate. Again he hallucinates seeing a young girl and when distracted crashes his lunar truck into the harvester. After the crash, he has the wherewithal to put on his space helmet before he passes out from a head injury. In the next scene we awake with him in the infirmary seemingly with no injuries besides memory loss and general fatigue. After recovering, he realizes that one of the harvesters is stuck and convinces GERTY to let him go outside even though the robot has strict orders to not let him outside, and to wait for a recovery team to fix the problem. As Sam approaches the truck he peers inside and realizes there is a body inside.

From this point it's pretty obvious where the plot is going to go. The body inside the truck is another Sam, and it becomes pretty clear that clones of the original Sam are stored and awakened within the station. It's a clear problem that the two Sam's meet each other, and they have about 15 hours before the extraction team comes to 'fix' the problem with the harvesting machine. They slowly learn about their situation and eventual fate by asking GERTY questions and by investigating the station.

The plot after the initial set up isn't the most original, but the movie never becomes dull. Although many of the general details are pretty obvious, we learn the specifics slowly as the two Sams come to grips with each other and try to figure out what the hell is going on. Their interactions with GERTY are pretty spectacular and the audience really connects with the robot without anthropomorphizing him. However this movie, and your reaction to it, almost completely relies on Rockwell's performance. I thought he did a pretty great job, and thought he kept it going with the interactions between the older, sicker, stately Sam and the 'newer', brash one. However I could see how this movie might not work if one's not a fan of one man shows or of Sam Rockwell.

Moon is definitely worth seeing. It may not be the most intelligent movie, but it's interesting and occasionally thought provoking, and I thought the last 10 minutes were pretty thrilling. I appreciate that Duncan Jones was willing to do a sci-fi movie that was different that the common fare, and although it may not be one of my favorite sci-fi movies it's the sort of movie that should be getting made and seen, rather than just more shitty Transformers type movies. I appreciate any effort that is made to bring sci-fi back to its high concept roots and away from the more vapid interpretation of the genre.

The Room - Tommy Wiseau

2009-07-01T06:45:00.001-07:00

If you recall, my last movie experience was a little disappointing. I saw a movie that I think is genuinely awesome, and got a little peeved at the overreacting and self conscious crowd. Just one week later I went back to the same theater, but this time I was looking forward to a ruckus crowd. If you haven't heard of The Room, it's one of those 'so bad it's good' films that most people end up loving. It also happens to be the successor (at least for now) to Rocky Horror for midnight showings and crowd interaction. You yell things at the screen, throw spoons and footballs around the theater, and some people even dress up and act out the scenes at the front of the theater. If you like laugh out loud bad movies, or an interactive movie experience, this is the film for you.

The origins of the film and it's cult following were pretty well documented in an Entertainment Weekly piece, but I will give a short summary here. It was released back in 2003 in L.A. and pretty quickly flopped. Tommy Wiseau (the writer, director, and lead actor) raised the six million dollars to make the movie by himself (or by some other unknown source). Although the movie was obviously terrible, some people in L.A. took a shine to it and started a monthly midnight showing. Wiseau usually attends these and talks to the audience before and after the film. From there it gained a large cult following and over time has spread to other cities. It's not that widespread yet, and if you don't live in a huge city you likely won't be able to see it in the theaters. This is a shame because I can't imagine viewing this movie in any way besides in a group of enthusiastic The Room supporters.

But what kind of movie is this? From the poster above it's almost impossible to figure out. At first I figured it was some kind of horror or supernatural movie that had cheesy effects and ridiculous sets. Boy was I wrong. The movie is pretty much a straight up soap opera, with terrible dialog, bad acting, ridiculous non sequiturs, and pretty much everything you don't want in a movie. I imagine an instructor could use this movie for weeks in a film class explaining 'see this? This is exactly what you don't want to do!' The unintentional comedy scale is off the charts for this movie and Wiseau now claims that this was intentional, but it's pretty clear after viewing the movie that he was very earnest in making it.

The plot is pretty simple. Actually it's overly simple seeing that the characters seem to have the same conversations over and over. Wiseau plays a nice guy, in fact he has no bad bone in his body and is the most caring guy in the world. He even pays the rent and college tuition for a boy named Denny (who may or may not be retarded) who lives in his apartment complex just because the boy doesn't have any parents. However, his fiance Lisa not only finds him boring, but despicable! She plots to hook up with his best friend (who we are reminded is his best friend approximately 100 times) behind Wiseau's back. More characters flow in and out of the movie (some without any introduction at all) but most of the scenes involve these three. Wiseau's character eventually finds out and is obviously devastated by Lisa's treachery.

But really, the plot is not what is interesting here (if you can call it that). There are so many bad lines that I won't even bother to list them here. Plot points are brought up and then never discussed again. Lisa's mom offhandedly mentions she has cancer but is much more worried about her brother trying to get money from her. Lisa claims she is pregnant towards the end of the movie 'just to make things interesting' even though it's a complete fabrication and no one really bothers to ask about it. Denny gets involved in a drug deal gone bad but we never figure out what was going on. A character has to be carried off screen after falling down while tossing a football and the next time we see him he is fine. These are just a few of the ridiculous scenes that make no sense whatsoever when taken into the context of the rest of the movie. And I haven't even mentioned the 4 minute long sex scenes (where footage is repeated!) or Lisa's pulsating neck that looks like an Alien might burst out of it at any moment.

Part of what makes this movie funny is Wiseau himself. He obviously had his his heart broken in real life, and this movie was his way of dealing with it. He takes his role really seriously, but it's hard for the audience to do the same because of his mysterious eastern European accent, his long gross black hair, and the ridiculous lines. He's obviously a crazy guy, as seen in his lengthy but rare interview with the AV Club. The above interview was initially done via email, so as to not misquote Wiseau. It was continued on the phone, but the audio clips were obviously posted via his request to again assure that he wasn't misquoted. Most of his responses don't make any sense, and towards the end he goes off the rails against women and their powers of manipulation. I highly recommend reading it if you have the time.

I'm not sure if this movie will have staying power in the mind of popular culture or not. Because of the internet and our short attention spans, things come in and out of favor quite quickly. Furthermore, DVDs, Netflix, and home theaters make going to the movies a rare occasion, and it isn't as much of an event as it used to be. It might be fun to initially watch this movie at home with some friends, but the only way it will stay in the collective conscious is if people continue to attend late night screenings at obscure or independent movie theaters.

The Game - Neil Strauss

2009-06-25T18:28:00.001-07:00

This post may appeal to the smallest subset of my readers so far. Nonetheless I have been claiming that I was going to read this for a while and I finally got around to it. The above image is of a man named Mystery (real name Erik James Horvat-Markovic) who is a pickup artist. He is mostly well known by the fact that he had a show of the same name of his occupation (The Pick-up Artist) and because of this book. A pickup artist is someone who develops certain lines, strategies and skills to be able to attract and seduce women. If this sounds creepy, it is.

The Game is the writer Neil Strauss' introduction to, and development within the pickup community. Strauss is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine and was known before for ghost writing many books for rock stars. He starts out as an awkward average guy, who gets introduced to the pickup society by an article suggestion from an editor. What follows is a description of the characters and methods of the pickup society along with his personal development. I didn't read this book to try to learn the art of the pickup, but read it because I had seen The Pick-Up Artist and found Mystery to be equally ridiculous and fascinating. Just look at his outfits! He is very rarely seen without that large feathery hat, and often comes dressed in goggles, platform shoes (even though he is 6 foot 5), leather pants and various other ridiculous accessories. However he seems to be very successful with the ladies; at least when it comes to initial conversations at bars and clubs.

Most everyone found within the seduction community comes from the ranks of socially awkward computer (or otherwise) nerds. Many of them start off as virgins who have no idea how to talk to the opposite sex. Strauss wasn't that socially awkward initially, but admits to having some problems with the ladies. After getting his first taste of the seduction community, he gets sucked in until it reaches a full blown obsession. It seems that the first thing that someone has to do when entering the pickup community is to get a silly nickname, and Strauss chooses 'Style'. He starts to learn from many of the masters and eventually settles in with Mystery. He then proceeds to start teaching pickup seminars with Mystery and becomes his main wingman. These seminars involve them teaching a handful of young men how to interact with and pickup women. They lecture and give them notes, and then go out with the students into the 'field' and watch their interactions with women to give them further tips. This takes them all over the world (there is a pretty funny series of events that happen in Eastern Europe) and eventually settles them in as the head of the pickup community.

The techniques of the pickup community (at least the Mystery Method) focus on social manipulation of women and groups. The technique that grabs you immediately is their 'peacocking'. This involves wearing ridiculous outfits in order to stand out in a crowd (see above and below for a picture of Mystery and Style) and seems to work. Other techniques involve ignoring the 'target' (or woman of interest) in order to make her more interested in you, giving her backhanded compliments ('negs') in order to lower her apparent worth in comparison to yours, and many more sneaky techniques. The Method also develops a set of 'openers' or ridiculous lines in order to break the ice of groups. Their idea is that it really doesn't matter what you first say to someone, as long as it gets them interested in talking to you. Additionally Mystery himself uses sleight of hand magic tricks to charm women and has aspirations to be a world renown illusionist (thus his nickname).

After Style and Mystery seem to conquer the seduction world, they move into a house together with other pickup artists to make a pickup community called Project Hollywood. The group rent a large Hollywood mansion in order to organize their pickup seminars (in which they make thousands of dollars) and to have a place to party and bring girls. You can imagine what happens when a bunch of socially awkward misogynistic people get together to live under one roof. They almost immediately begin to backstab each other by stealing each others girls, pickup tricks, and just by being all around jerks.

Mystery is a complete mess throughout the book. The reason I decided to read this was because how ridiculous I think Mystery is, and was not disappointed. He has breakdown after breakdown in the book, needs various psychotic medication and has to be taken to a mental hospital multiple times. He also dates completely unstable women which doesn't help the situation. One of these girls causes the breakdown of Mystery and the entire idea of Project Hollywood by falling for one of the other guys in the house.

Because these men are socially awkward and insecure at the core, they are unable to have stable relationships after they get past the tricks and lines that get women to give them their number and on occasion into their beds. As the house falls apart Style starts to see how shallow and empty many of the men are in the community are and becomes distant from the other house mates (other than Mystery with whom he is still close). He starts to desire a real meaningful relationship, rather than a series of hookups and week long stands. After meeting and temporarily boarding Courtney Love, Strauss falls for one of her band mates. Realizing that all of his 'tricks' won't work on the confident guitarist, he acts like himself and eventually gets the girl (it should be noted that they are no longer together).

Although the motives of many of the men in this book are suspect, there may be something useful to be found in the seduction community for awkward men. It teaches them how to approach women, and how to have the confidence to interact with them beyond a predetermined set of lines. The moral issues come in when men use these techniques to bed woman after woman while treating them like objects. The community does frown strongly against using drugs or alcohol to try to pick up women as well as lying (beyond the initial silly lines), but they end up treating women no better than many of the douchebags that picked on them back in high school do.

This book got a little graphic at times so it's not for someone who wants to avoid the occasional sex scene. It's fairly well written for a book about the seduction community, and is broken up into small chapters making it easy to read. The look of the book matches the ridiculousness of the characters within; it has a leather cover with gold rimmed pages and a red satin bookmark, just like the bible. Strauss is able to walk to line between being the journalist who is an outsider, and someone who is ingrained as an important part of this society. He obviously cares about the seduction community, and thinks it teaches mean important things about themselves and others. While at the same time he is able to critique the people within the community and the ways that the techniques that he has helped develop can be misused.

So ladies, when men dressed in ridiculous outfits or accessories come up to you and ask 'if you believe spells work' walk away. Just walk away.

Blue Velvet - David Lynch

2009-06-24T06:37:00.001-07:00

A little less than a year ago I started watching David Lynch's films as guided movie watching. I hadn't seen any of them, and knew I was late for the party as a mid 20's movie fan that likes to think he's a little 'hip' and 'with it'. This was what got me started thinking about possibly writing a blog. I liked viewing things in a directed fashion, as if it were the syllabus for a film class, and I especially enjoyed discussing them with Lindsay afterward. I moved on to do the same thing with anime (a little bit of hit and a whole lot of miss), John Carpenter, and possibly in the future David Cronenberg. So far I think the David Lynch 'class' has been the most successful. He has a pretty wide catalog, but not too big as to be overwhelming. His movies are also all worth watching (except maybe Fire Walk with Me the terrible Twin Peaks 'prequel') and also usually elicit a pretty strong response (which may or may not be positive).

Blue Velvet may be the best place to start if you were interested in getting into David Lynch. I first watched Eraserhead which although spectacular in it's own way, isn't really for everyone. The only rival to Blue Velvet in terms of being a good introduction into the world of David Lynch would be his best film (in my opinion), Mulholland Drive. Blue Velvet is probably his most straightforward film in terms of genre and plot. Sure, a fair amount of weird things happen, but the story is mostly a film noir about a young man coming home from college and getting into some trouble with local mobsters.

The young man in question, Jeffrey (played by a young Kyle MacLachlan) comes home to his hometown during a college break because his father is having some health issues. Passing through a field on the way back from visiting his father in the hospital he finds a severed ear. David Lynch uses his patented technique of making the ear much creepier than it should be by having the camera zoom inside the ear, which is accompanied by a loud deafening rumble. After taking the ear to a detective, he decides that with the help of the detective's daughter (Laura Dern) he wants to investigate the case himself. Eventually this involves breaking into a local lounge singer's house (Isabella Rossellini, whose current role is portraying bug sex acts) where he sees some weird shit involving a mobster played by Dennis Hopper, and eventually gets caught up with Dennis Hopper and his crew.

Blue Velvet seems as if it's another piece of media where we are introduced to a small sleepy 'perfect' suburban town, only to realize the horrors that lie just underneath the surface. This is telegraphed right from the beginning when David Lynch (who's middle name is not subtlety) pans from a beautiful well cut yard of grass to the bugs that are infesting the soil that lies underneath. However, this film is not in the same vein as say American Beauty where the suburbs are displayed as a soulless place where everyone is screaming with rage on the inside. There may be crimes and criminals that exist in this 'perfect' town, but not everyone has a secret or is rotting from the inside. Most of the town, including the detective that Jefferey turns to for help as well as the men who work in his dad's hardware store are stand-up people. This may be the result of Lynch growing up in a small city (Missoula, Montana), so he's not as dismissive of middle and small town America as are most artists from the coasts.

Besides Lynch's distinct direction, the thing that really makes this movie is the acting by Kyle MacLachlin and Dennis Hopper. MacLachlin's character seems to be a younger more naive version of the character he plays in Twin Peaks, Special Agent Dale Cooper. He has the same wide-eyed optimism, toughness, and thirst for solving crimes that Dale Cooper does. He also attracts younger women and gives off an aura of collected cool. Jeffrey may be a little wet behind the ears, and a little foolish, but you can almost see how his brush with the evil incarnate Dennis Hopper would push him into the FBI. Speaking of Hopper, holy cow! This was the role that he was born to play. After watching this movie the first time, I couldn't help but think that every other crazy, off the rails, yelling incoherently Dennis Hopper character was just a toned down take of Frank Booth. From his weird sexual desires to yell at Rossellini's crotch while having his face stuffed with a patch of blue velvet, to his drug fueled rage issues and his ridiculous costumes it just seems that no one else could have played this role.

Just the other post, I was complaining about a lack of theaters that show older movies in the way they were originally to be seen. Thus I was really excited when I found out that the Plaza Theatre here in Atlanta was going to have a showing of Blue Velvet. This theater shows lots of indie and small movies, along with having some interesting horror and gore shows if you're into that. I really love that it exists. That being said the crowd really got on my nerves.

The show was sponsored by PBR and thus I didn't mind the promoters giving out free PBR merch/advertisements at the beginning of the show. What I minded was the attitude that the majority of the crowd came in with. This being an independent theater near little five points that was showing a David Lynch movie, I expected a lot of hipsters. I knew that hipsters had adopted Lynch as their movie director, but I didn't understand their reaction to the movie. At the beginning of the movie there was a pretty energetic buzz of the movie, and I was happy to be in a room full of people excited to see this movie. The movie starts out as pretty innocent, with some ridiculous Lynchian lines and shots that are admittedly pretty amusing. Additionally, some of the scenes in the middle of the film with Dennis Hopper are definitely laugh out loud funny. However, as the movie went on they began to laugh more and more even though none of the scenes warranted it. I understand that seeing a movie in a theater is an interesting experience because of the crowd, but laughing because Laura Dern is crying, or because the characters are being emotional on the screen doesn't make any sense. It also kept pulling me out of the movie which had a negative effect on the experience. I know hipsters have to love things only if they're 'ironic' but why can't they just like something in all sincerity? Maybe people in the theater may have really liked the movie, but it seemed like they had to laugh and make sounds because of the developed sense of awareness that being a hipster requires. For once I wish this new group of 'counter culture' could just earnestly like something, without having to laugh or make fun of it in order to still seem 'cool' to the people around them.

My rant being over, I still really enjoyed seeing Blue Velvet on the big screen. It's an interesting movie that is thrilling, dark, and terrifying while still being weird. While it's a little slow and not my favorite of Lynch's films, but it's still an effective piece of cinema that everyone should see at least once.

The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins

2009-06-21T14:29:00.001-07:00

(Homo Habilis skull. The oldest known member of the homo genus)

Not only is life on this planet amazing, and deeply satisfying, to all whose senses have not become dulled by familiarity: the very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction. - Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins gets a bad rap. It is generally agreed by those who read him that he is equally gifted as both a scientist and as an author. However this is not how most people know him. Most people know him by his book The God Delusion and his public appearances following that book. He was so much in the public eye that he was satirized in a multi-part South Park episode that lampooned both him and zealous atheists. I think it would be a mistake to dismiss his other works just because you find his God bashing distasteful. There is something to learn from his writing even if you do believe in a god (as long as you're accepting of the theory of evolution).

The Ancestor's Tale is written as a backward pilgrimage to discover the ancestors of human beings and eventually the ancestors of all life. The structure is vaguely based on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales but I'm not really that familiar with Chaucer so I won't comment on it. The pilgrimage starts with modern day man and then traces our ancestry back until we reach multiple rendezvous points with other species. The evolution of man, or any species, can be seen as starting from the beginning of life, and branching off in a tree-like fashion as organisms speciate. This forms a tree similar to the one shown below for eukaryotes (plants, animals and fungi). For those interested, this tree was formed using DNA comparison analysis, and the length of the branches roughly marks the difference in the DNA. Note how on this scale humans and chimps don't even qualify as having separate branches.

(Eukaryotic evolutionary tree. Taken from Science issue 199, 1978)

Often Dawkins tries to imagine what our common ancestor (or as he terms it concestor) with another branch looked like. One the chart above this would be the intersection or 'branching point' between two lines. I found this exercise to be utterly fascinating, if occasionally disappointing. Often when trying to imagine what our concestor looked like, Dawkins postulates that it looks exactly like the creature we were joining! When humans (and all those who branched off with us) join the lemurs, he images that our concestor would be lemur! When we join fish, you can guess again what he imagined that concestor to look like.

The most fascinating thing about this book to me, was the order in which we 'joined' other species. Are we closer to reptiles, birds or amphibians? Did we evolve from single celled organisms like you might see today or are they a sister group to us? Did we come from bacteria or again are they sister to us? (Quick note on this one, no one knows!) As new branches and groups of species join us on our journey Dawkins often uses a 'tale' about one of the joining species to elucidate something about the way evolution works, or just to point out something cool. These 'tales' help keep the book from being too technical and really keep it moving.

Dawkins also uses his time to help explain how we determine these rendezvous dates and figure out which other species share a more recent concestor with us. He discusses fossils and radioactive dating in rocks to be sure, but the most interesting technique he goes over is the widely used DNA comparison analysis. People who question how we know any of this stuff, and wonder how fossils can tell us so much about our past, should really try to understand how important DNA analysis between contemporary species is in helping us pinpoint our evolutionary roots. His introduction to this is technical enough to satisfy my scientific interests, but I'm sure it's a greatly dumbed down description. I imagine that this book could be possibly dull for an experienced zoologist or geneticist, but it was perfect for someone with general (but not specific) scientific knowledge.

Although the order of concestors closest (most recent) to us is pretty well known once we start going back into the Pre-Cambrian things start getting trickier. Dawkins makes his best guess, but makes sure to reiterate time and time again that he is making an educated guess. To me this is the difference between the scientific and religious way of thinking, and what makes something like the theory of evolution vastly superior to the theory of creation. Evolutionists will freely admit when they don't know the answer to a particular problem, where as creationists will just once again fall back on their old arguments. I don't want to turn this into another evolution/creation debate but reading books like this that help elucidate the wonders of evolution and nature make it hard not to get frustrated with the creationist point of view. Dawkins offers his (non-inflammatory) feelings in the quote below.

My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.

Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan - Star Trek

2009-06-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

'Space Seed'

Like most people my age I had seen The Wrath of Khan many times before sitting down to watch the first season Star Trek episode that spawned the titular character. Although when the movie came out it was almost impossible to watch the old television episode as a refresher (this was before the days of torrents and DVDs), watching them in succession improves them both.

'Space Seed' starts the way many episodes of Star Trek do: there is a rudderless spaceship adrift with seemingly no humanoid pilot. Thus the crew of the Enterprise decide to make an away team to see what's up. This is a very popular plot device in science fiction, another example being the Firefly episode 'Bushwhacked' (which is interesting because the way that Khan disposes of some scientists in the film is reminiscent of the way the Reavers hung up bodies in this same Firefly episode), but this being the original 'Star Trek' series it doesn't yet seem cliche. The Enterprise crew discovers that this ship is from the 1990's (where's my spaceship, 90s!?!) and contains a fairly large crew in suspended animation.

Khan is the leader of the ship and is the first one re-animated. After figuring out his current situation and recovering on the Enterprise, he then quickly starts to plot to overtake the ship and crew. We learn that Khan is the leader of a group of genetically engineered humans who attempted to control the planet back in 1996 (where's my superman, 90s!?!) who then escaped in a ship to attempt to take over some alien races in the distant future. Kirk makes sure to compare Khan to Napoleon at least 4 times so we understand that this guy means business, and that he's bound to try to take over the ship. Khan actually succeeds briefly (with the help of a starry eyed earth historian who has a Napoleon/Alexander the Great jonze) but our captain eventually takes him out with a sweet karate kick or two. Kirk then gives Khan the option of punishments, and Khan takes the 'deserted on a habitable planet to surely cause trouble in the not so distant future' option and away he goes.

Like all Star Trek episodes this one has its amount of camp. Almost all of the scenes with the historian and Khan are pretty ridiculous, and it's impossible not to laugh at Kirk's fighting style. Even so, this episode maintains a pretty heavy tone, which is really helped by Ricardo Montalban portrayal of Khan. Although it is only one episode in the first season, one can't help but feel it was being set up for a sequel (in TV or the movies). One of the final lines, in which the episode title comes form, from Spock to Kirk lets the audience know that this battle is far from over.

It would be interesting, captain, to return to that world in a hundred years, and learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.

The Wrath of Khan

I find it impossible to fathom how The Wrath of Khan got made. It's a sequel to a boring, slow movie that didn't do that well critically or financially, which was itself a spin off from a canceled television show. Furthermore, the end of The Wrath of Khan pretty much demands a sequel, which is pretty ballsy for a franchise in the state that Star Trek was in after The Motion Picture. However it got made it's good that it happened, because The Wrath of Khan is one of the most well known, and influential movies in American cinema (at least when it comes to sci-fi).

I won't go into as much as a plot summary as I did above, because I figure most everyone has seen this film. Having not viewed it in a while, I forgot how smooth it flows and how quick it moves. The movie doesn't feel dated at all, it has the somewhat 70s outfits and old looking spaceships, but the pace and direction feel like they could have come from a movie today. The film is also helped by the fact that all of the actors improved considerably in the 15 years that elapsed. (An interesting side note, I never knew that the crew of the Enterprise was constantly in flux. I was used to TNG where the crew stays pretty constant. Sulu and Chekov were not in the above episode and in fact Chekov is in less than half of the total episodes and Sulu in just over half. That being the case I feel less bad that they aren't given much to do in any of the movies.) In addition, the movie just looks and feels darker than the tv show. The bridge is cast in shadows and doesn't have that bright and shiny feel found in the series. I think this helps give the movie a little more weight which definitely helps improve it from the series. Watching the TV episode on which this movie is based really helps give you a sense of history between Kirk and Khan and really improves the film. Again Montalban's portrayal is excellent as Khan and the war of wills between him and Kirk is very believable because of the personalities involved.

Khan has its share of memorable moments and one of the most memorable movie moments of all time is shown below so you don't have to go looking for it (I know you'd have to look it up. Also sorry for the annoying panning and annotation, there isn't a 'normal' clip out there that I found).

Although this movie is one of the better sci fi movies ever made, and probably the best trek movie it has its share of problems. One of the main problems I found was the multiple plot holes. If Chekov wasn't on the ship on the previous episode, why would Khan remember him when they first meet on his desolate planet? The planet that Khan was stranded on was initially habitable but became a desert after a nearby planet blew up. How does a planet just blow up? When Khan inserts the mind controlling desert slug he claims that it will make them susceptible to suggestion until the slug grows so big and the host dies. Why then does it just leave Chekov's head randomly at just the right time? I'm not one to be a nitpicker so I'll let the previous problems slide, I just figured they should be noted.

Of course I have left off what might be the most moving scene of the whole movie, Spock's death. Even though now we know that Spock obviously makes a return (the existence of the sequel The Search for Spock gives us a hint) his death is still affecting nevertheless. His quote to Kirk 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one' is one of the movie quotes that has followed me ever since childhood. His sacrifice and the efforts and losses that Kirk goes through to get him back in the following film is what defines the best part of 'Star Trek' to me. Although they are very different 'people', they have formed such a bond that they would do anything for each other. Kirk and Spock might be the best and most pure 'best friends' of all time.

Dead Like Me: The Complete Series - Bryan Fuller

2009-06-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Claiming that Dead Like Me is from Bryan Fuller is a little misleading. As Wikipedia will tell you, he left the show shortly after it started because of arguments with Showtime about where the show was headed and it seems personality conflicts. This is noteworthy because like all of his other works, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me seemed headed for early cancellation right from the start. Dead Like Me is also similar to his other shows in that it cultivated a small but devoted following, and combined this with moderate critical claim.

But to fully discuss the fate of this show I need to take a step back and discuss the show itself. As the image above hints, this show is about grim reapers. A young college dropout named Georgia Lass (played by Ellen Muth) is hit by a flaming toilet seat that broke off from a space station during the lunch break of her mind numbing temp job. It just so happens that her death coincides with the 'retirement' of the grim reaper that took her soul, and the job is passed to her. She soon meets up with the rest of the 'external influence' reapers in Seattle and begins her afterlife as a grim reaper.

If the above description makes the show sound dark, it's because the premise is misleading. Although it is all about death, the show mostly takes a lighthearted and quirky approach to the heavy subject, even though it does have some serious and dramatic moments. As you can imagine, the 'external influences' death department deals with all sorts of wacky and unexpected deaths (along with the occasional murders) that lets the show embrace its quirk. Normally I kind of cringe when you can tell shows or movies are trying to be quirky, but this show does it in a subtle enough way that it actually works. Trying to figure out how the victim dies in the upcoming scene is morbidly fun. The viewer doesn't know how the person will die, because even the reapers only get a name and a time of death. There are many entertaining scenes in which the main characters sit around guessing in what kind of freak accidents the various people passing by will die.

It's the character interactions that really make this a memorable show. The 'external influence' death department only consists of 5 reapers so we get to know them all pretty well. There is the aforementioned newcomer Georgia Lass, the drug addict/grifter Mason, the badass parking attendant Roxy, the movie starlet wannabe Daisy, and father figure Rube. The best scenes of the show revolve around the groups daily morning meetings at 'Der Waffle House' to get their daily assignments from Rube.

Although many episodes focus on Mason and Daisy, Rube and Roxy are easily the best characters. Rube (Mandy Patinkin, known by many as Inigo Montoya from 'The Princess Bride') is the centerpiece of this show and takes it from being merely entertaining to really good. It might be because he can act circles around the rest of the cast (except possibly Jasmine Guy as Roxy) but Rube brings a much-needed gravitas to the show. It's not that he's overly serious, he has some of the funniest lines of the show while taking every chance to cut down Mason, but his mysterious background and overall enigmatic persona help make the show interesting.

Other characters in the show include Georgia's lamenting family, and her coworkers at her day job. The show cleverly plays with the idea of a dead girl living in her hometown, and has her interact with people she knew while alive. To get around the obvious issues involved here, the show introduces the idea that reapers look different to the living than they did while alive. This lets Georgia hang around her old family to see how they cope with her death and how they move on with their lives. Although this sounds like a possibly interesting subplot, I found the family to be a little dull.

Another interesting aspect of Georgia's afterlife is that although she gets to live for the foreseeable future, she has to pay for rent and other aspects of living with our society. Thus she has to get a desk job at the Happy Time temp agency. Georgia's interactions with her coworkers (especially her boss Dolores and the secretary Crystal) evolve as the show goes on and they develop quite a rapport. This was one area of the show that I felt could have been improved by having more episodes. The cat-loving Dolores and 'more than meets the eye' Crystal had a lot of room to grow and I would have been interested to see where their characters were headed.

The collection contains a straight to video sequel to the show that falls flat on its face. As with the later part of the series, Bryan Fuller had nothing to do with the movie. In addition Mandy Patinkin declined to appear in the movie and the actress who played Daisy (Laura Harris, who played the villainous Marie Warner in season 2 of 24) was busy at the time. Although Daisy was not necessarily my favorite character, the replacement actress (who interestingly enough played Marie's sister Kate in 24) was awful as Daisy. The movie didn't have the humor of the show, and didn't help itself by not staying true to many of the characters and having a sloppily put together plot. Let's move on.

I think Dead Like Me holds an interesting place in television in that it would have been helped by not being on Showtime, but on a major network. The show works mostly as procedural, which is what many networks crave. The best premium cable shows are continuity heavy and require sequential viewing on the network or on DVD. Dead Like Me could easily be casually viewed, and is well written enough to have survived on a major network. I haven't seen his other shows, but I don't think anyone will claim that Bryan Fuller's shows are the best shows of all time. If Dead Like Me is any indication of his other work, Fuller makes fun, entertaining shows that combine the best parts of comedies and dramas, and have a definite place in the TV landscape.

Ida - the 'Missing Link'?

2009-06-15T06:03:00.001-07:00

As you might recall, there was quite the hubbub about the fossil named 'Ida' a couple of weeks ago. Many websites along with the twittering public (including myself) proclaimed this fossil to be the 'missing link' and claimed it as a score for evolution in the ongoing battle between evolutionists and creationists. Some people went further and not only claimed it as a win for evolution, but the win for evolution. Some of this commotion has died down, and I think the subject requires reconsideration.

I have been thinking about evolution lately because I am currently reading The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. This book will be featured in an upcoming review so I won't discuss its specifics here, but it has made me reconsider what I know about evolution and what I still need to learn. It's not that I don't know how evolution works, or that I forgot how it works. It all seems pretty clear to me, but these things can get muddled when you go many years without reading an advanced or even intermediate discussion on the subject.

Opinions about this fossil were pretty varied when it arrived, even among my friends. Many people proclaimed 'this is the Missing Link, suck it creationists!', where many other people met it with indifference. Of course there is still the 'dinosaur bones were put in the Earth to test our faith' contingent and you can imagine how convinced they were at this being our ancestor. My new opinion is that everyone in the camps listed above was wrong. The very term 'Missing Link' misconstrues what evolution is all about; gradual changes in multiple species at the same time for them to better survive their current environment. The term 'Missing Link' assumes there is something different about us and the rest of life on this planet, more specifically us and the other great apes. Originally it was thought that we are so different (and superior) to chimps, apes, and all other life that there must have been something about our evolution that we didn't fully understand. These of course are ridiculous claims. There is nothing special about our evolution, or our branching off from the chimpanzees. In fact we are closer to chimpanzees than many other similar looking animals are to each other.

The term 'Missing Link' also denotes the incorrect idea that evolution is a progression. Many people feel this way, and thus incorrectly assume that this progression has led the animal kingdom to the homo sapiens. We are not the 'goal' of evolution. Humans are just one of the many evolutionary branches that happen to be quite successful (we are not even necessarily the most successful, lets ask cockroaches what they think). It's not that chimps are our ancestors, and where they stopped evolving we kept going. We both have a common ancestor that we broke off from and kept evolving. We decided (of course we didn't decide to do anything, it just happened to be advantageous for our situation) to go bipedal, hairless, and grow a bigger brain. This does not mean that chimps are 'primitive' compared to us, in a way they are equally evolved.

This is where Ida comes in. Just looking at the fossil you can tell that she is not the 'Missing Link' between humanity and the apes. She looks nothing like an ape! Ida resembles something like a Lemur, which are our closest cousins after all apes and monkeys. Thus at a point (some 63 million years ago) we shared an ancestor with the lemurs. This does not mean that it looked like a lemur (it could have) and then at that point lemurs stopped evolving and our line kept going.

Ida is not this common ancestor, and most likely is not an ancestor of ours at all. Because the evolution 'tree' branches off very rapidly there are many species that may 'look' like our ancestors but are actually ancestors of some extinct species. This is most starkly seen when we consider Neanderthals. We did not 'evolve' from Neanderthals, our ancestors actually lived at the same time as them! Eventually they went extinct (many people think we wiped them off the face of the Earth) and we now have fossils that look fairly 'human'. Species branch off and go extinct all the time, so it's almost impossible to say if any fossils we have found are actually ancestors of living species. However fossils are useful for us to see what kind of species our ancestors may have resembled, and radioactive dating (among other methods)gives us good dates for these developments. A good description of the way evolution works and how this relates to Ida by an angry and silly nerd can be found in this video.

So what is Ida if she is not our ancestor, or even the ancestor of lemurs or other living creatures? Because of certain bone characteristics it is known that she comes from our side of the branching off from lemurs. Thus Ida can be seen to be a step in the evolution between the common ancestor we hold with lemurs (which likely looks like a lemur given Ida's appearance) and the monkeys, gibbons and apes that follow. She may be our direct ancestor, or is more likely a branch of species that long went extinct.

This does not mean that Ida is not an exciting find. It's a very old, intact fossil that comes from our branch of evolution. It helps to complete the very sparse puzzle that is the fossil record, even though we will never have enough fossils to 'fill in the gaps'. Paleontology is a tough gig, we have to use what we find, and it's often not what we 'need'. Ida is a very exciting discovery, but it won't help to convince anyone who already questions evolution more than previous fossils or the mounds of genetic evidence we already possess.

Star Trek - J.J. Abrams

2009-06-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

Although I saw Star Trek about a month ago, I rewatched it last night as part of a double feature with The Hangover (which was fun, but not spectacular) and am using this opportunity to write about it since the movie is fresh in my mind.

If you have been reading my blog, or if you know me personally, you know that I love Star Trek in all of its incarnations. Although I have a preference for The Next Generation because of my youth, I greatly enjoy the original movies (at least the non terrible ones) and have even dabbled in Voyager and Deep Space Nine. I have not seen much of the original series, owing to the fact that I never had cable and now the DVDs are way too expensive, but I am pretty well versed in the characters and Gene Roddenberry's original vision. It's this 'vision' that I will spend most of this review discussing. I don't want to come across as some kind of anal 'uber-nerd' like the comic book store owner in The Simpsons, but I think it's important to discuss what Star Trek' was intended to be, and how that relates to modern sci-fi and more specifically the 2009 version of Star Trek.

First things first, this movie was fun as hell. When I had to describe to Lindsay how I felt after seeing it the first time, I immediately said 'stressful'. Not that it was emotionally draining or tough, but there is just so much that happens you never have a chance to catch your breath. There are few sequences where this becomes overbearing and kind of annoying (the Hoth planet Cloverfield monster chase and the scene where Scotty gets stuck in the cooling system for the engine of the Enterprise) but overall I think the pacing helps the movie. It helps it not necessarily in making it a better film, but in making it more accessible to the public. As much as trekies would like films made specifically for them, the only way large budget sci-fi movies are going to get made is if they appeal to the public en masse and make boatlaods of money. I will gladly accept a less nerdy Star Trek if it means that they keep getting made.

That being said, someties this movie could be serviced by being a littler nerdier. Although some of the previous movies have quite a bit of action, Star Trek at its core was always a story about internal and external discovery, diplomacy, and stargazing. I will have to rely on my experience with The Next Generation here, but most of the TV episodes involve either the Enterprise acting as an ambassador or peacekeeper for The Federation, or crew members experiencing some sort of personal ordeal that leads them to discover something about themselves or humanity as a whole. Very rare are there any spaceship battles or fight scenes, which makes their rare occurance a very exciting thing. I always like to think of Star Trek as Carl Sagan's kind of sci-fi. It's not Star Wars or the new Battlestar Galactica; Star Trek never lived off explosions and physical conflict. Although it could be preachy at times (check out this AV Club inventory list for a couple of examples) I loved the fact that Star Trek was more than just about spaceships and explosions.

This is where the new movie comes in. I'm not someone who cares much about minor or often major continuity issues (even though the plot of this movie gets rid of those problems in an obvious way), but I do care about the 'essence' of the series. This is where Star Trek kind of fails. It's an exciting, fun, and entertaining movie, but in many ways its not really a Star Trek movie. The fact that I was going into this movie ready to hate it, and have actually seen it twice lets you know that I do indeed like it, I just don't think it has the same soul as its predecessors.

The characters are all cast very well. They almost uniformly come off as interesting takes of the familiar characters without resorting to imitations or impersonations of the original cast. I especially liked the fact that Uhura was given something to do besides answer the phone and thought that Zachary Quinto was excellent as Spock. The movie was well shot (even if the cuts were a little quick) and looked great. It's just a little sad that the original feeling of the show had to be lost in order to appeal to the short attention span of our current culture.

The X-Files: Season 1 - Chris Carter

2009-06-06T17:07:00.001-07:00

Revisiting things from your childhood is always a dicey proposition. For every Transformers: The Movie that holds up extremely well, there are dozens of shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark that makes you think 'why the hell did I ever like that? This is terrible!' Although The X-Files is not a kids show like those examples, it was something that was important to me growing up as a child. The first season came out in 1993, when I was only 10, and hooked me right away. I would sit in my bed under the covers with the lights off on Friday nights and wait for the creepy (at the time) theme song to play. I didn't know anyone else who liked it, so The X-Files was 'my' TV show. It would also routinely freak me out and leave me terrified in my bed, having trouble falling asleep.

I had watched the first five seasons, and movie that came out the following summer, and I stopped there. I can't really remember why I stopped watching, but after talking to other X-Files fans and reading reviews on the internet, it seems I got fed up with the show at the same point as most people. As the show kept going, the mythology it was creating, and relying on, became more and more complicated and the whole show started to sag under the weight of keeping up. After realizing that the movie didn't answer the questions that I wanted it to answer, and realizing that the creators were going to drag it out as long as possible, I gave up on the show. Not having cable as a child I never really watched that much TV. I would watch some shows with my sister (ie Friends) and then really would have 1 show for myself. After I gave up on the X-Files I moved over to Buffy in the 2nd season and my new allegiance was sworn. Although Buffy was probably my favorite show growing up (even though I also gave up on that after the 5th season) The X-Files was my first TV love.

Going back and watching the first season, I can see why Little Louis loved this show so much. It doesn't feel as creepy as it once did, but most of the stories are at least very interesting, and a little creepy. Because I only watched this when it was on I barely remembered any of the episodes. I had a general knowledge of some of the mythology episodes, and pretty much remembered the entire pilot, but watching all of the monster of the week (MOTW) episodes it felt like I was watching them for the first time. This might have been because I saw the alien/mythology episodes more often on reruns, or because they interested me more, but it was nice to not know what was going to happen in most of the stories.

If you're not familiar with the structure of The X-Files it alternated between overarching mythology episodes, which had to do with the existence of aliens and the governments inevitable cover-up, and standalone MOTW episodes which had to do with varying paranormal incidents. Although the show might be best known for the mythology and alien plots, there are only 5 of these in the first season and thus the show has to stand on the MOTW episodes. It's a good thing then that most of these are of pretty high quality.

Some of the Season 1 highlights include 'Ice', 'Eve', and the character Tooms. 'Ice' is an homage to John Carpenters 'The Thing' and involves Mulder and Scully going up to a drilling station in Alaska to investigate the suspicious deaths of the drillers. They are joined by an all-star supporting cast that includes George Mason from '24', Kenny Bania from 'Seinfeld', and Felicity Huffman. As in 'The Thing' they get trapped due to weather, and there is an alien species that infects and controls the investigators. It's a nice commentary on human violence and distrust and as in all episodes Mulder and Scully make it out alive (their partners are not so lucky). 'Eve' is a creepy story concerning genetic modification experiments, and uses a classic horror move of creepy murderous children. The two episodes that concern Tooms are also knockouts. Tooms is a creepy mutated human that eats livers and squeezes through small spaces. Mulder and Scully end up putting him away early on in the season, but as his parole comes up later on Mulder's off the wall explanation of how he committed the murders falls apart and causes Tooms to be released. This is a common theme of The X-Files. Mulder and Sully come across some crystal clear evidence, only to lose said evidence (they even learned to stop carrying cameras seeing that they were always confiscated) or to be disregarded when grilled by other authority figures.

The mythology episodes at this early part of the show are almost all fantastic. It is commonplace in the contemporary TV landscape to have season or series long storylines, but this was not the case in the mid 90s. The reason people kept coming back to The X-Files (especially in the early goings) was to find out about the possible alien invasion and Mulders battle with the very government that he was working for. As stated previously, these storylines went awry later on but in the early episodes the drive the underlying purpose of the show.

Many people complain that the new series Fringe is just an X-Files rip-off. It may be true that they obviously have a lot in common, but I think this is a ridiculous claim. How many cop, lawyer, and doctor shows are there? Just because the series involves a team associated with the FBI investigating unexplained phenomenon doesn't mean they're the same. First of all, the X-Files is more interested in investigating paranormal activities and myths found in urban legends and ghost stories than is Fringe. Fringe takes a much more scientific approach, and tries to explain every 'unexplainable' event with our current scientific knowledge. The X-Files is much more likely to leave an event unexplained, and with a 'wasn't that creepy!' kind of ending, whereas Fringe leaves nothing unexplained. This is to say nothing of the characters involved or the overarching plots, which are very much different.

I loved re-watching the first season of The X-Files. Not only did it remind me of storylines in which I was previously very invested, it introduced characters that would become more important as the series went on (The Lone Gunmen, Skinner, The Cigarette Smoking Man, and Deep Throat). It also reminded me of what was really the driving force behind the series, the interaction between Mulder and Scully. Although sometimes their interaction becomes a little standard (Scully: ' Mulder there has to be a rational explanation for all this.' Mulder: 'Scully after all you've seen why can't you just believe!') watching them work together become close is at the base of this show. Although there were a few number of misses on the MOTW episodes, the episodes in general were very good to great. The first season The X-Files is still better than almost any show currently airing on television.