My earliest memories of Alice in Wonderland are not of the Disney movie, as most people's probably are, and not of the books either. Instead I most remember the 1985 TV mini series which followed the books a lot closer than the Disney version did. It was absolutely chock full of guest stars, had lots of musical performances and one incredibly scary Jabberwocky. I remember reading the Jabberwocky poem somewhere in my school years and loving it, with its nonsense words and the idea that it was this young boy who was actually the one to defeat the beast. In college we read the first book as part of one of my lit courses. My professor took the approach that since Lewis Carroll said it was nothing more than a children's book, that's all it was.. no allegory or commentary being made within it. However, it kind of makes you wonder why he wanted it to be college reading material then... though I can say that reading it as an adult made me appreciate the writing style that much more.
If there is a writer I wish I could be, it's probably Lewis Carroll. How could one not be jealous of the way he plays with words? Just read the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland if you don't know what I mean. It's just gorgeous.
Not long after being assigned to read the book in college, Disney released their Alice movie onto DVD for the first time. I know I had seen the movie at some point in my childhood, but it had been so long at that point that it was almost like seeing it with new eyes. I remember being incredibly disappointed by the mish-mash that Disney created. Granted, it took the aforementioned TV special 3 hours to tell most of the story, so I know he had to make some sacrifices. Also, if you know your Disney history you know that Walt really loved the Alice story, so I'm sure he was probably just picking some of his favorite scenes here and there to make the best movie he could.
I re-watched the TV special sometime last year as they finally gave it a DVD release. I rented it from Netflix and I have to say with the nostalgia glasses off there are definitely some weaknesses there. Natalie Gregory, who plays Alice, can get rather whiny at times. The costumes are a little silly, even by 80s technology standards. But overall I think it’s definitely worth a one-time viewing just to see a who's who of anybody who had a career in the mid-80s. If you can’t be bothered to sit through it, at least view this: He brings up two of the most memorable scenes, Carol Channing’s crazy performance and that ultra scary Jabberwocky. (The video is marked mature content, but there's really only some mild cursing. The first 4:19 minutes are about the Disney version.)
While it’s not your average interpretation, another connection to the Alice series I've always loved was the Batman villain the Mad Hatter, specifically the animated series version. His origin episode (“Mad as a Hatter”) has so many Alice references cluttered throughout and is probably worth a rent even if you're not a Batman/superhero fan at all.
Another piece I really think is worth mentioning in Alice interpretations is American McGee's Alice. It's a video game, not a movie like the others, but the art is absolutely gorgeous and the story is an interesting dark take on the whole thing. Sadly, I haven't played very much of this game so I can't really give you a review per se.. but I will say that the concept art, with the skinny Cheshire Cat and the downright creepy Mad Hatter is definitely worth a look.
There are so many versions of this story made over the years that I can't possibly include them all. I'd like to get to as many of them as I can eventually.
When it was first announced that Tim Burton was making his own version of Alice in Wonderland, I was incredibly apprehensive. Not only was it yet another Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter movie, but the last two remakes he'd come out with had left bad tastes in my mouth. Truer to the book or not, his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was colorful and pretty to look at but just not anywhere near as enjoyable as the original movie. The origin story and Johnny Depp's choice in characterization just didn't do it for me at all. Watching Sweeney Todd, all I could think was "man, this would be great if they had actually chosen leads who knew how to sing!" So with all that in mind, I just didn't know whether he was going to treat my beloved Alice properly or not.
From the moment the movie started, I was enchanted. The set designs, the costumes, the CGI were all very beautiful. The 3D effects are fairly limited (they were tacked on after the fact) so if you wanted to save a few dollars I wouldn't fault you, but I didn't feel cheated for paying for them either. While I haven't been crazy about the look of the Mad Hatter from the first time I saw the photos, I enjoy the look of nearly all the other characters presented here. Casting choices on nearly all hands were also brilliant. Both Depp and Carter handled their roles wonderfully.. this wasn't like Sweeney Todd where I felt both of them only got the job because of director bias. Allow me to gush on a couple:
Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat - I absolutely loved this version of the character! I'm a cat person in general and I've always loved the Cheshire Cat.. he has the whimsy and flightiness of a cat without the tacked on "evil" qualities that so many foolish writers (probably biased dog lovers :P) like to give them. Stephen Fry has one of those voices you could just listen to for hours anyway, but he really lended "Chesh" just the right amount of playfulness here.
Crispin Glover as The Knave of Hearts - For being a character who is extremely different from what he was in the books, he fits perfectly in place in the movie. And did someone actually manage to make Crispin Glover look kind of attractive? Give them an Oscar! Ok, maybe I'm just weird, or maybe he was just so perfectly suited for this slightly creepy, scarred character. I loved the stretched out look they gave him, as well as that of all the other cards.
Mia Wasikowska as Alice - This movie could have easily been terrible if the girl chosen as Alice had been picked for her looks while disregarding her acting, or by choosing a big name to help push people into the seats. While I can think of a few "big" names who probably could have inhabited the role, I'm glad they went with an unknown. The wonder of these stories is that Alice is an ordinary girl, even if she's one who thinks a little different than most, and allows ourselves to wish we could maybe find ourselves in Wonderland one day too. I hope Mia gets more roles following this movie.. I thought she did great.
I loved the changes to this story, and how it was a sort of sequel while also retaining a lot of the books' moments. One thing I wasn't too pleased about was the suggestion of a romance between Alice and the Mad Hatter. I know enough about the internet to know that the slash fiction is out there, even before this movie and even about the Disney animated versions (eep!), but I really could have done without it. Nineteen years old now or not, that was just a bit ick. Luckily it's not huge and you could even pretend that it isn't that at all if you really wanted to.
What I really absolutely loved was that she got to be the one to use the vorpal blade and slay the Jabberwocky. I also thought it was a nice touch to make the Dormouse female, and have her wield a sword, even if it did make her an awful lot like a female version of Reepicheep from the Narnia series. It's just nice to see women holding their own in these types of movies without everyone making a huge deal over the fact that they're female.
Oh and yes, the dance is stupid. No, it doesn't ruin the whole movie. It's there and done and you could easily close your eyes for a moment and miss it. Besides, I knew it meant I was going to hear "Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" and really that made all the difference for me.
EDIT: I was reminded after I wrote this that there are two more Alice interpretations I am familiar with.
Jan Svankmeyer's Alice - I watched this a few years ago and the details I remember are few. I believe there is very little dialogue and it relies mostly on the stop motion animation (combined with a real life Alice) to tell the story. The creatures are quite creepy and interesting to look at.
Alice by Tom Waits - An album which is essentially the soundtrack to a play about Carroll being in love with the real life Alice Lidell. I haven't listened to this one in ages either, but Tom Waits' voice and love of strange percussion fit very well with the various Alice imagery he uses in the songs. "We're All Mad Here" is my favorite. Not on this album but also worth looking for is Tom Waits reciting The Jabberwocky poem.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Ponyo
Last night I watched Ponyo. I've been looking forward to seeing it for quite some time. In fact this was the first movie that I made a point to get from Netflix exactly on its release date. As an animation fan, Hiyao Miyazaki films are required viewing for me, as they should be for any other animation fans out there. When the Sci-Fi channel was still new, they would have Anime Week, where every night they would play a new film, dubbed of course. This was my first real exposure to anime, and I remember being particularly hooked by Project A-ko and a compilation film called Robot Carnival. My brother and I took this interest with us to the video store, and one of the first we rented was Castle of Cagliostro. I fell in love with that movie. I loved the characters and the story, but I also loved watching Lupin III fall from a great height, with another person landing on top of him, yet still walking away unharmed, and I loved watching him leap from one building to another in a manner no one should be able to do. And its not like he has super powers.. it's just a fantastical part of the film, in the same way that the Looney Tunes can walk off a cliff and yet not fall until they look down.
As I've followed Miyazaki and most of his films, its this love of the fantastical mixed with the ordinary that makes him so wonderful. There are only two films of his I truly love: CoC and Spirited Away. The rest are good, they're just not the type of movie I would sit down to for repeated viewings. Ponyo now sits on a scale just below those two movies, but a cut above the rest. Visually, this movie is absolutely breathtaking. The sea creatures are so large, robust, and beautiful. When the waters swell and begin to take over everything, it is literally a feast for the eyes. In the opening scene when Ponyo's father is creating? feeding? creatures in the sea all you can do is just ogle at it. I'm not a fan of Wall-E because most of the dialogue-less beginning was simply unable to hold my attention. The exact opposite is true for this film. There are many scenes in which there are no dialogue.. but you're not lacking because there's simply so much to look at, so much going on. Even the everyday normal scenes, like Sosuke and his mother going to the grocery store and then bringing the groceries home, are a delight. The way his mother struggles with holding the groceries as she opens their front door... it's just so true to life! Part of what makes Miyazaki so great is that he puts just as much focus on realism as he does on fantastical. This helps to make the fantastical moments feel more real, more likely to happen in the world you are seeing.
The story here is basically that of The Little Mermaid, a story I have a great affection for thanks to the Disney film. I remember being so surprised to find out the original story had such a tragic ending.. her love is not returned and she ends up turning into sea foam. The story in Ponyo once again takes it in a slightly different direction. The threat of her turning to sea foam is there, but in this case she is really more of a goldfish (be it a rather odd one with a face) and her affections are toward a five year old boy. This lends the story a great deal of innocence and keeps it at a very sweet level. The story feels like its made much more for young children than for adults. When Ponyo's mother and father are saying that if the boy can't love her she will turn to sea foam, I foresaw a much more mature and different ending. As an adult, I could not help but think that surely a young boy of five would not continue to love this same girl for the rest of his life. The ending of the movie however, doesn't go anywhere near that far, and ends "happily ever after", in a rather abrupt fashion (or at least that's how it felt for me).
However, unless I'm going crazy, I'm pretty sure the title in the beginning of the movie said "Part 1." At first I thought the story might jump around a bit, and there would be other parts in the movie itself.. but it never did. This leads me to believe that maybe their story isn't a happily ever after at all.. that perhaps in the end, Ponyo will turn into sea foam, just as the little mermaid did in the original story. Or maybe, if you're an optimist, you can choose to believe that their love was young and pure enough that they will grow up together forever. I couldn't find any mentions of a possible sequel being planned, and I've never seen any other Miyazaki film with a sequel really.. so even if I'm totally wrong, I kind of really like this idea of mine.. it helps save the movie from the ending which just left a sour taste in my mouth. Of course, that sour taste may be completely my own fault, and definitely isn't something that would make me tell anyone not to watch it. Just remember that you're watching a children's fairy tale, and you probably won't be as disappointed as I was.
I should point out that I only watched the subtitled version of this film. Disney has been making the dubbed versions of Miyazaki films for quite some time now (7 years, according to the bonus feature on the disc), and they often pick out a very stellar cast, a mix of well known actors and their stock children stars. I can't fault this as it probably gets a lot of people to watch these films that wouldn't otherwise. For me, I just love the sound of the Japanese language in general, and I find the tone of voice they normally use fits these movies a lot better than the dubs do. Anime is known for its extremely expressive faces, and I think a lot of actors/voice directors seem to think that just because a character's mouth is opening a little wider than they do in American animation, said character needs to whine or shout all the time. Meanwhile, if you slip over to the Japanese voice actors.. well, they're not doing that as far as my foreign ears can tell. Another problem is that English dub translations try to fit the mouth movements, so the translation is generally not as literal as the subtitles. A fun way to see the difference in this is to select the English voice track on your DVD along with the English subtitles. Sometimes they're saying the same things in a re-worded manner, and sometimes you get quite different things being said. Obviously, don't do that on a first time run through unless you're really good at multi-tasking.
One thing that left me a little puzzled in the "lost in translation" department was why Sosuke refers to his mother and father by their first names. At first I thought maybe Lisa was his stepmother, but later he also refers to his father by name, and many people refer to Lisa as his mother. Ponyo talks about her mother and father only by those handles so I'm just not sure what that's all about.
Definitely worth the rent, unless you just can't stand fairy tales for some reason.
As I've followed Miyazaki and most of his films, its this love of the fantastical mixed with the ordinary that makes him so wonderful. There are only two films of his I truly love: CoC and Spirited Away. The rest are good, they're just not the type of movie I would sit down to for repeated viewings. Ponyo now sits on a scale just below those two movies, but a cut above the rest. Visually, this movie is absolutely breathtaking. The sea creatures are so large, robust, and beautiful. When the waters swell and begin to take over everything, it is literally a feast for the eyes. In the opening scene when Ponyo's father is creating? feeding? creatures in the sea all you can do is just ogle at it. I'm not a fan of Wall-E because most of the dialogue-less beginning was simply unable to hold my attention. The exact opposite is true for this film. There are many scenes in which there are no dialogue.. but you're not lacking because there's simply so much to look at, so much going on. Even the everyday normal scenes, like Sosuke and his mother going to the grocery store and then bringing the groceries home, are a delight. The way his mother struggles with holding the groceries as she opens their front door... it's just so true to life! Part of what makes Miyazaki so great is that he puts just as much focus on realism as he does on fantastical. This helps to make the fantastical moments feel more real, more likely to happen in the world you are seeing.
The story here is basically that of The Little Mermaid, a story I have a great affection for thanks to the Disney film. I remember being so surprised to find out the original story had such a tragic ending.. her love is not returned and she ends up turning into sea foam. The story in Ponyo once again takes it in a slightly different direction. The threat of her turning to sea foam is there, but in this case she is really more of a goldfish (be it a rather odd one with a face) and her affections are toward a five year old boy. This lends the story a great deal of innocence and keeps it at a very sweet level. The story feels like its made much more for young children than for adults. When Ponyo's mother and father are saying that if the boy can't love her she will turn to sea foam, I foresaw a much more mature and different ending. As an adult, I could not help but think that surely a young boy of five would not continue to love this same girl for the rest of his life. The ending of the movie however, doesn't go anywhere near that far, and ends "happily ever after", in a rather abrupt fashion (or at least that's how it felt for me).
However, unless I'm going crazy, I'm pretty sure the title in the beginning of the movie said "Part 1." At first I thought the story might jump around a bit, and there would be other parts in the movie itself.. but it never did. This leads me to believe that maybe their story isn't a happily ever after at all.. that perhaps in the end, Ponyo will turn into sea foam, just as the little mermaid did in the original story. Or maybe, if you're an optimist, you can choose to believe that their love was young and pure enough that they will grow up together forever. I couldn't find any mentions of a possible sequel being planned, and I've never seen any other Miyazaki film with a sequel really.. so even if I'm totally wrong, I kind of really like this idea of mine.. it helps save the movie from the ending which just left a sour taste in my mouth. Of course, that sour taste may be completely my own fault, and definitely isn't something that would make me tell anyone not to watch it. Just remember that you're watching a children's fairy tale, and you probably won't be as disappointed as I was.
I should point out that I only watched the subtitled version of this film. Disney has been making the dubbed versions of Miyazaki films for quite some time now (7 years, according to the bonus feature on the disc), and they often pick out a very stellar cast, a mix of well known actors and their stock children stars. I can't fault this as it probably gets a lot of people to watch these films that wouldn't otherwise. For me, I just love the sound of the Japanese language in general, and I find the tone of voice they normally use fits these movies a lot better than the dubs do. Anime is known for its extremely expressive faces, and I think a lot of actors/voice directors seem to think that just because a character's mouth is opening a little wider than they do in American animation, said character needs to whine or shout all the time. Meanwhile, if you slip over to the Japanese voice actors.. well, they're not doing that as far as my foreign ears can tell. Another problem is that English dub translations try to fit the mouth movements, so the translation is generally not as literal as the subtitles. A fun way to see the difference in this is to select the English voice track on your DVD along with the English subtitles. Sometimes they're saying the same things in a re-worded manner, and sometimes you get quite different things being said. Obviously, don't do that on a first time run through unless you're really good at multi-tasking.
One thing that left me a little puzzled in the "lost in translation" department was why Sosuke refers to his mother and father by their first names. At first I thought maybe Lisa was his stepmother, but later he also refers to his father by name, and many people refer to Lisa as his mother. Ponyo talks about her mother and father only by those handles so I'm just not sure what that's all about.
Definitely worth the rent, unless you just can't stand fairy tales for some reason.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Battlestar Galactica Season 1
When BSG was on television, I shrugged it off based on what it looked like on the surface. I have a bad habit of doing this. A vampire slayer named "Buffy" sounded so ridiculous that I passed by on the TV show, no doubt thinking of the extreme silliness of the movie as well. That one is now one of my favorite series of all time. So I decided that even though I tend to gravitate away from most Sci-Fi shows that aren't Star Trek, so many people were raving about this show, and it was of course now completely finished, that it was time to give it a chance. There's something really refreshing about watching a show that's already done. You can expect an ending, and you will know in advance if that ending is a complete one or if the show got abruptly canceled without a chance to tie up the loose ends. You rarely get that with shows currently on the air, unless you're talking about Lost where the end was set years in advance. If someone had told me Heroes was going to consistently suck post Season 1, I could have saved myself a lot of hours, let me tell you.
I started BSG by watching the mini-series that introduced this modern version of the show. It's packaged right along with the first season, so if you're out there looking to jump in you don't have to go hunting for it. My brief non-spoiler version is this: I felt like the mini-series dragged and was not really what I was looking for, but by the end it picked up speed and turned into something a bit different, and now I have reached the end of Season 1 and am completely hooked. If you like any of the shows I have mentioned above, you will enjoy this one too. Don't worry about not liking sci-fi, the drama between the characters is so compelling that the setting is just the backdrop. This is what sci-fi is supposed to be: an allegory for humanity's struggles, temptations, and triumphs. You won't be disappointed.
Spoilers below, continue at your own risk.
I had a really hard time starting off with the show. The mini-series in the beginning really reeked of military based sci-fi, the thought of which bored me to tears. My dad and grandfather may love their "war pictures" but that trait was never passed on to me. The details to which they were showing the battles just was not exciting me in anyway. Come to think of it, the battle sequences in the first Star Wars movie also fail to hold my interest for similar reasons. I'm not opposed to action, but apparently I prefer to see my action in hand to hand combat far more than shootouts or tank/plane/starship sequences. However, the entire mini-series is really about setting up the entire world that BSG is based in. They have to show us Caprica because otherwise it would mean nothing to us when the colonies are destroyed and they have to show us this war between the Cylons and humans because how else would we understand the stakes. So while I was really close to just turning the thing off somewhere around the end of the first part, I hung in there. Boy, am I glad I did.
A sign of a good show for me is if I become really invested in the characters. I know there are some people out there who, for instance, only watch Lost because they want to know the big mystery of the island, and really that's okay. But to me it's also about the journey the characters are going through, and why I hate Kate so freaking much - when you have a shitty actor like Evangeline Lily with no emotional range the character is ruined because you're not going to see anything in them that you like or enjoy. So far on BSG, I've not run into a single actor who has this problem. There are characters I don't like, certainly, but it has more to do with who the characters are and nothing to do with anything lacking on the actor's part. The situations they often find themselves in are also believable in the context of the series. I can see easily now why people love this show. This isn't sci-fi military battles on spaceships with robots - this is a civilizations trying to rebuild itself and survive in the face of being annihilated, with an enemy who is almost impossible to distinguish/detect and who very rarely shows any kind of mercy.
Perhaps the most interesting dynamic is all about the Cylons themselves. As a group they are merciless, intent on destroying humanity. Individually they believe in God and seem to have a weakness for falling in love with humans. It definitely sets up this idea that maybe who we are seeing as the "bad guys" are not in fact the bad guys at all. It at least presents the idea to you that the bad guys are still living breathing people with thoughts and feelings of their own. It's something I've always appreciated myself. There were nice people in Nazi Germany, and there were benevolent slave owners. Sometimes good people do bad things because they've been led astray and don't know any better. In the end it's quite possible that neither the Cylons or the humans are the bad guys - they both may be operating under the wrong impression. That in itself is a reason to be in love with this show.
Current impressions of various characters:
Colonel Adama & Captain Adama - The difficult father/son relationship isn't anything new, but the way it's handled here is fantastic. You can easily see things from both their points of view and feel for them, yet I also find myself just really wanting these two to just hug it out and be a strong family again. And of course every time they get close to that, something else happens to pull them apart. They are the old guard vs. the new, and I'm currently refusing to believe that the shots the Colonel took killed him. If I've learned anything from movies and television, it's that stomach wounds take a long time to die from (Thanks, Reservoir Dogs!).
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace - I want to be Starbuck when I grow up. I'm not sure there are enough words to describe how in love I am with this character. She's flawed, to be sure, but she's just so strong and competent and doesn't take shit from anyone and can do just about anything and she's funny and hot and if anything happens to her in the course of the series I'm going to scream and cry about it for days. The main reason I refuse to look up anything online is that I don't want to be spoiled on what happened to her. I was literally cheering her on in that battle with Number 6 in the season finale. I love you, Kara. Please only change for the better.
Gaius Baltar - I hate him. That's really okay, because I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to. He's morally ambivalent and only out for himself. He also may be crazy. Honestly, if anything was annoying me in this series it was the constant presence of Number 6 in his head and the way he would talk to her even though no one else could see her, and how she would make him do things, etc. While I appreciated the one episode that purposely cast a lot of doubt as to whether or not she was just in his head or not, overall the device is just being overused, to the point where when he was all set to have sex with her I was literally groaning aloud. Why wouldn't he lock the damn door first, anyway? I got long before that that she's an influence on him, and any cheap jokes around the fact are just getting old. I'm really hoping that now that he's on the planet that foolishness will end and maybe he'll just start living with her and the other Cylons or something. I can't take much more of it, though it's not enough for me to stop watching the show.
President Roslin - I really love the whole setup. The bottom of the succession ladder who never expected to get there, and on top of that she doesn't have long to live. Her visions are also becoming more and more interesting, and this idea that she's a fabled leader to help them reach earth adds so much more depth over her role as government rep vs. the military philosophy.
Sharon - My feelings are so mixed on this character. I started off really liking her, and now I'm not so sure. And I don't mean because she's a Cylon.. regardless of her species I'm just not sure I'm enjoying who she really is. I do know that while watching the finale I wished that the one aboard Galactica would die and the one on Caprica would remain. By the time we reached the end of the finale.. well I just don't know what to think anymore. The pregnancy is interesting, and the conflict between her "human" side and her "agent" side is interesting.. I'm just sort of finding myself currently ambivalent to her fate now.
I started BSG by watching the mini-series that introduced this modern version of the show. It's packaged right along with the first season, so if you're out there looking to jump in you don't have to go hunting for it. My brief non-spoiler version is this: I felt like the mini-series dragged and was not really what I was looking for, but by the end it picked up speed and turned into something a bit different, and now I have reached the end of Season 1 and am completely hooked. If you like any of the shows I have mentioned above, you will enjoy this one too. Don't worry about not liking sci-fi, the drama between the characters is so compelling that the setting is just the backdrop. This is what sci-fi is supposed to be: an allegory for humanity's struggles, temptations, and triumphs. You won't be disappointed.
Spoilers below, continue at your own risk.
I had a really hard time starting off with the show. The mini-series in the beginning really reeked of military based sci-fi, the thought of which bored me to tears. My dad and grandfather may love their "war pictures" but that trait was never passed on to me. The details to which they were showing the battles just was not exciting me in anyway. Come to think of it, the battle sequences in the first Star Wars movie also fail to hold my interest for similar reasons. I'm not opposed to action, but apparently I prefer to see my action in hand to hand combat far more than shootouts or tank/plane/starship sequences. However, the entire mini-series is really about setting up the entire world that BSG is based in. They have to show us Caprica because otherwise it would mean nothing to us when the colonies are destroyed and they have to show us this war between the Cylons and humans because how else would we understand the stakes. So while I was really close to just turning the thing off somewhere around the end of the first part, I hung in there. Boy, am I glad I did.
A sign of a good show for me is if I become really invested in the characters. I know there are some people out there who, for instance, only watch Lost because they want to know the big mystery of the island, and really that's okay. But to me it's also about the journey the characters are going through, and why I hate Kate so freaking much - when you have a shitty actor like Evangeline Lily with no emotional range the character is ruined because you're not going to see anything in them that you like or enjoy. So far on BSG, I've not run into a single actor who has this problem. There are characters I don't like, certainly, but it has more to do with who the characters are and nothing to do with anything lacking on the actor's part. The situations they often find themselves in are also believable in the context of the series. I can see easily now why people love this show. This isn't sci-fi military battles on spaceships with robots - this is a civilizations trying to rebuild itself and survive in the face of being annihilated, with an enemy who is almost impossible to distinguish/detect and who very rarely shows any kind of mercy.
Perhaps the most interesting dynamic is all about the Cylons themselves. As a group they are merciless, intent on destroying humanity. Individually they believe in God and seem to have a weakness for falling in love with humans. It definitely sets up this idea that maybe who we are seeing as the "bad guys" are not in fact the bad guys at all. It at least presents the idea to you that the bad guys are still living breathing people with thoughts and feelings of their own. It's something I've always appreciated myself. There were nice people in Nazi Germany, and there were benevolent slave owners. Sometimes good people do bad things because they've been led astray and don't know any better. In the end it's quite possible that neither the Cylons or the humans are the bad guys - they both may be operating under the wrong impression. That in itself is a reason to be in love with this show.
Current impressions of various characters:
Colonel Adama & Captain Adama - The difficult father/son relationship isn't anything new, but the way it's handled here is fantastic. You can easily see things from both their points of view and feel for them, yet I also find myself just really wanting these two to just hug it out and be a strong family again. And of course every time they get close to that, something else happens to pull them apart. They are the old guard vs. the new, and I'm currently refusing to believe that the shots the Colonel took killed him. If I've learned anything from movies and television, it's that stomach wounds take a long time to die from (Thanks, Reservoir Dogs!).
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace - I want to be Starbuck when I grow up. I'm not sure there are enough words to describe how in love I am with this character. She's flawed, to be sure, but she's just so strong and competent and doesn't take shit from anyone and can do just about anything and she's funny and hot and if anything happens to her in the course of the series I'm going to scream and cry about it for days. The main reason I refuse to look up anything online is that I don't want to be spoiled on what happened to her. I was literally cheering her on in that battle with Number 6 in the season finale. I love you, Kara. Please only change for the better.
Gaius Baltar - I hate him. That's really okay, because I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to. He's morally ambivalent and only out for himself. He also may be crazy. Honestly, if anything was annoying me in this series it was the constant presence of Number 6 in his head and the way he would talk to her even though no one else could see her, and how she would make him do things, etc. While I appreciated the one episode that purposely cast a lot of doubt as to whether or not she was just in his head or not, overall the device is just being overused, to the point where when he was all set to have sex with her I was literally groaning aloud. Why wouldn't he lock the damn door first, anyway? I got long before that that she's an influence on him, and any cheap jokes around the fact are just getting old. I'm really hoping that now that he's on the planet that foolishness will end and maybe he'll just start living with her and the other Cylons or something. I can't take much more of it, though it's not enough for me to stop watching the show.
President Roslin - I really love the whole setup. The bottom of the succession ladder who never expected to get there, and on top of that she doesn't have long to live. Her visions are also becoming more and more interesting, and this idea that she's a fabled leader to help them reach earth adds so much more depth over her role as government rep vs. the military philosophy.
Sharon - My feelings are so mixed on this character. I started off really liking her, and now I'm not so sure. And I don't mean because she's a Cylon.. regardless of her species I'm just not sure I'm enjoying who she really is. I do know that while watching the finale I wished that the one aboard Galactica would die and the one on Caprica would remain. By the time we reached the end of the finale.. well I just don't know what to think anymore. The pregnancy is interesting, and the conflict between her "human" side and her "agent" side is interesting.. I'm just sort of finding myself currently ambivalent to her fate now.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Gamer?
I think that video games have been a part of my life since pretty much when my memory begins. As a small child we had my dad's Intellivision on which we would play Kool Aid Man, Bomb Squad, Snafu, Poker, Football, Astrosmash, B-17 Bomber, Bowling, Soccer, and a tank related game that I'm totally losing geek points for not being able to name. At my grandparents we would frequently play the Summer Olympics game on their Commodore 64. They also had that little handheld version of Mrs. Pacman. I wasn't particularly good at any of these games.. the Olympics game mostly consisted of us making up silly names for our characters, and then watching the diver do belly flops and laughing at him.
We got our Nintendo a little later than most kids, I think. I seem to recall that Super Mario Bros 3 came out not too much later after we had gotten it. We had that one, along with the requisite SMB/Duck Hunt, Dragon Warrior (Free with Nintendo Power, of course), Cabal, and RBI Baseball. We also rented games for it constantly. My ability was improving with my age, though to this day I've still never beaten Super Mario Bros, warping or not. I also never really understood just what you were supposed to do in Dragon Warrior back then.. it seemed to be mostly a guessing game to see what direction you could move in before you got to enemies that could kill you in one or two hits. I remember pushing down on the A button so hard in the hopes that maybe I would score a critical hit. I don't think I ever got past the point where I was able to kill the ghosts and warlocks.
Both my brother and I played NES so frequently that I think my parents were much more willing to spend the money on the Super Nintendo at an earlier release date. I'll never forget that we got it on my brother's birthday, and that he literally fell to the floor in a dramatic display of excitement. (He'll probably tell you he doesn't remember that, and that I specialize in remembering "embarassing" moments for him. But I just think its cute.) Once again the games we had were few: Super Mario World, Mario Paint, and eventually Mortal Kombat II and Final Fantasy 3 (that's 6 to you kids today). We rented Link to the Past, Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest so frequently that we probably should have just bought them and if it wasn't one of those we were trying something else. I was apparently becoming a better player too because I know I at least beat all but the last two of those games as well. Mario Paint doesn't really count, unless you include that fly swatter game as something you can beat.
By the time the Nintendo 64 came out I was dating, and the b/f actually got me the special green one that came with Donkey Kong 64. He may have been the same guy who yelled at me for reading my comics instead of talking to him, but video games were one of our common grounds, and we played both the 64 and his Playstation quite frequently. We even played MajorMUD together along with a good portion of our friends (think World of Warcraft, but all text and on a local level). This was of course the on set of 3D into gaming, and so my skills took a step back and suddenly jumping from platform to platform became a lot harder.
I eventually got all three Playstations and the Wii, and with my tastes I tend to mostly own a lot of fighting games, JRPGs, puzzle games, and the occasional platformer. I bought Metal Gear Solid 4 but have never played it.. I'd rather let someone else play and just watch the story. In what I can only describe as temporary insanity, I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 because everyone was talking about how great it was. See, it's insane because I hate those games. I hate GTA because very few people I know actually play the game, and even among those who do, they love to waste hours of time randomly stealing cars and running over pedestrians, beating people up, etc.. and to me that's just boring. I'll play a racing game if I want to drive a car and I'll play a fighting game if I want to beat people up, and I won't have to worry about having cops on my trail the whole time. The only thing that would possibly be more insane for me is if, say, I went out and bought Modern Warfare 2. I've never been able to get into first person shooters of any kind. I can't handle the controls and the games never seem engaging enough for me to want to try. I chose a PS3 over an Xbox 360 because it seemed to me like the vast majority of exclusive titles on the 360 were FPS, while the PS3's were a bit more varied. Occasionally a game will come out for the 360 that will make me stop and think if I want to be one of the few that owns both, but I just can't do it for monetary reasons more than anything else.
I would consider myself a gamer, without any question. The thing is, I'm fairly certain a lot of people within the gaming community would try to dispute me on that. FPS games shatter records when it comes to sales, yet I don't like them and don't play them, so can I really be a modern gamer? If online play is any indication, I'm also not anywhere near as good as the average gamer, regardless of what type of game we are talking about. So if I'm not any good, can I call myself a gamer? As I've described above, I'm not that good at the old stuff either unless its SNES era.
I own a bass guitar and a keyboard, but I'm no where near proficient enough in either and would not be so presumptious as to call myself a musician. Of course, I also go months or years without ever touching the things. The PS3, on the other hand, gets turned on at least once a week. The Wii gets turned on at least twice a month. As long as I'm playing video games, is it ok that I'm not getting any better? Does the genre of the games I choose to play make me only a casual gamer and not a hardcore one, regardless of how often I'm playing? They're valid questions, I think, in an industry where so many people do not even consider the Wii as competition to the PS3 & 360 solely because of the type of games it has and it's lack of HD graphics.
When it comes to labels and titles, I think everyone has the right to choose their own. Even if you only play Bejeweled Blitz, if you feel passionately enough about it to want to call yourself a gamer, go ahead. Fanboy hate can make you angry or upset if you let it but in the end it's just some idiot judging you unfairly. How we choose to identify ourselves is a big part of who we are as individuals.
Expect me to post the occasional video game review as they come up.
We got our Nintendo a little later than most kids, I think. I seem to recall that Super Mario Bros 3 came out not too much later after we had gotten it. We had that one, along with the requisite SMB/Duck Hunt, Dragon Warrior (Free with Nintendo Power, of course), Cabal, and RBI Baseball. We also rented games for it constantly. My ability was improving with my age, though to this day I've still never beaten Super Mario Bros, warping or not. I also never really understood just what you were supposed to do in Dragon Warrior back then.. it seemed to be mostly a guessing game to see what direction you could move in before you got to enemies that could kill you in one or two hits. I remember pushing down on the A button so hard in the hopes that maybe I would score a critical hit. I don't think I ever got past the point where I was able to kill the ghosts and warlocks.
Both my brother and I played NES so frequently that I think my parents were much more willing to spend the money on the Super Nintendo at an earlier release date. I'll never forget that we got it on my brother's birthday, and that he literally fell to the floor in a dramatic display of excitement. (He'll probably tell you he doesn't remember that, and that I specialize in remembering "embarassing" moments for him. But I just think its cute.) Once again the games we had were few: Super Mario World, Mario Paint, and eventually Mortal Kombat II and Final Fantasy 3 (that's 6 to you kids today). We rented Link to the Past, Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest so frequently that we probably should have just bought them and if it wasn't one of those we were trying something else. I was apparently becoming a better player too because I know I at least beat all but the last two of those games as well. Mario Paint doesn't really count, unless you include that fly swatter game as something you can beat.
By the time the Nintendo 64 came out I was dating, and the b/f actually got me the special green one that came with Donkey Kong 64. He may have been the same guy who yelled at me for reading my comics instead of talking to him, but video games were one of our common grounds, and we played both the 64 and his Playstation quite frequently. We even played MajorMUD together along with a good portion of our friends (think World of Warcraft, but all text and on a local level). This was of course the on set of 3D into gaming, and so my skills took a step back and suddenly jumping from platform to platform became a lot harder.
I eventually got all three Playstations and the Wii, and with my tastes I tend to mostly own a lot of fighting games, JRPGs, puzzle games, and the occasional platformer. I bought Metal Gear Solid 4 but have never played it.. I'd rather let someone else play and just watch the story. In what I can only describe as temporary insanity, I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 because everyone was talking about how great it was. See, it's insane because I hate those games. I hate GTA because very few people I know actually play the game, and even among those who do, they love to waste hours of time randomly stealing cars and running over pedestrians, beating people up, etc.. and to me that's just boring. I'll play a racing game if I want to drive a car and I'll play a fighting game if I want to beat people up, and I won't have to worry about having cops on my trail the whole time. The only thing that would possibly be more insane for me is if, say, I went out and bought Modern Warfare 2. I've never been able to get into first person shooters of any kind. I can't handle the controls and the games never seem engaging enough for me to want to try. I chose a PS3 over an Xbox 360 because it seemed to me like the vast majority of exclusive titles on the 360 were FPS, while the PS3's were a bit more varied. Occasionally a game will come out for the 360 that will make me stop and think if I want to be one of the few that owns both, but I just can't do it for monetary reasons more than anything else.
I would consider myself a gamer, without any question. The thing is, I'm fairly certain a lot of people within the gaming community would try to dispute me on that. FPS games shatter records when it comes to sales, yet I don't like them and don't play them, so can I really be a modern gamer? If online play is any indication, I'm also not anywhere near as good as the average gamer, regardless of what type of game we are talking about. So if I'm not any good, can I call myself a gamer? As I've described above, I'm not that good at the old stuff either unless its SNES era.
I own a bass guitar and a keyboard, but I'm no where near proficient enough in either and would not be so presumptious as to call myself a musician. Of course, I also go months or years without ever touching the things. The PS3, on the other hand, gets turned on at least once a week. The Wii gets turned on at least twice a month. As long as I'm playing video games, is it ok that I'm not getting any better? Does the genre of the games I choose to play make me only a casual gamer and not a hardcore one, regardless of how often I'm playing? They're valid questions, I think, in an industry where so many people do not even consider the Wii as competition to the PS3 & 360 solely because of the type of games it has and it's lack of HD graphics.
When it comes to labels and titles, I think everyone has the right to choose their own. Even if you only play Bejeweled Blitz, if you feel passionately enough about it to want to call yourself a gamer, go ahead. Fanboy hate can make you angry or upset if you let it but in the end it's just some idiot judging you unfairly. How we choose to identify ourselves is a big part of who we are as individuals.
Expect me to post the occasional video game review as they come up.
Friday, December 11, 2009
"What do you mean you don't like football??"
Fair warning: If you spend most of your Sundays right now unable to do anything other than sit in front of a TV for 3-7 hours, you're probably not going to like what I have to say. But I hope you'll read it anyway to help give you an understanding of "the other side."
I was pretty much destined to be a nerd from birth. I inherited lots of book smarts and my very small stature from both my parents. Athleticism just wasn't in the cards for me. Despite this, for whatever reason when I was young my grandmother absolutely insisted that my brother and I play some kind of sport, and it ended up being soccer. I spent most of the time running behind everyone else to at least have the illusion of participation, all the while scared to death that I was going to have to hit the ball with my head the way they do on TV. That ball was hard and it would hurt. As you can guess, I only did this for one season.
In elementary school, we seemed to play more kickball than anything else. I spent most of this time doing my best to kick the ball as far as I could, being yelled at by the boys on my team for not knowing when to run or stay, and being insulted when everyone from the opposing team came up really close whenever it was my turn to kick. We also occasionally played volleyball, and the first time I tried to hit the ball my wrists and palms stung so bad that I basically did my best to move out of the way and let my teammates hit the ball, and let's just not even talk about when it was my turn to serve. In high school I had repeats of both soccer and volleyball, until junior year when we got to pick what sports we wanted to participate in. I chose walking and aerobics, and did the same for senior year too.
In terms of spectator sports, I really tried. I was a daddy's girl, and my dad loved football. I remember asking him to explain the game to me and telling me what all the terms meant. I remember he, my brother and I all playing a mini game in our yard one year. My memory tells me I actually attempted to get into the game twice in two different years of my life, spread out from each other. But I just couldn't do it and I think after the one time my dad accidentally smacked me in the leg in his excitement after a successful play, my enthusiasm waned and the game was just so boring to me.
Here's my interpretation of football: A bunch of guys line up in a formation. One passes the ball to another, and he runs for a few yards before being tackled to the ground. Everything stops while the referees review everything. They continue this cycle for awhile, sometimes changing sides, until miraculously someone manages to get near the goal line, in which case they try to run one more time, or they send in the little guy to kick the ball instead. Also, there's like TEN MILLION time outs that slow everything down even more because apparently the game isn't moving slow enough already for the coaches and they have to stop and think about it for awhile.
I went to a hockey game once and I enjoyed the constant movement of the game.. until they had to stop everything for like 20 minutes because a guy fell and they were afraid he had broken his neck. I might enjoy basketball for similar reasons, but I'm just not motivated enough to sit down and watch a game to find out. Baseball moves even slower than football, and even if it didn't, OMG the announcers. My memories of going to a Zephyrs game are all about the announcer and the goofy ads they made him keep repeating, and nothing about the game itself.
Living here in the New Orleans area, football is the only sport that seems to matter to people. Oh, you'll find some who enjoy going to a Hornets game, for sure, but the masses are all about football. This year especially, because the Saints are actually winning. Can't help but wonder if this has to do with the deal Benson made and that he's been ordering them to suck all this time before hand. After that Patriots win in the superbowl post 9/11, I'm pretty much convinced all football is rigged. But that's a whole other topic.
Right about now, you can't go anywhere in the city without black and gold, a fleur de lis, "WHO DAT," or some other sign of "Saints pride" smacking you in the face. Jefferson Parish (the suburb outside N.O.) has canceled Family Gras, their family oriented Mardi Gras celebration with bands and food as well as parades, because they honestly are already convinced that the Saints are going to be in the Superbowl that weekend. Facebook on Sundays is nothing but people either saying "Geaux Saints!", "XX-0 Baby!", or people recycling lame Christmas song rewordings about how they're going to win. And then once the game starts, they seem to think its ok to use their status to make comments about the game. A hint folks: those of us who actually understand how to use the internet know that there are things called "chat rooms" and "forums" that you use to discuss a particular topic in real time with other like minded people. I check facebook to see what's going on in the lives of the people I care about; if I gave a rat's ass about what's happening in football, I'd watch the game.
But you know what? The fact that I don't like football and other people do is not the problem. Lots of people like American Idol and The Bachelor, and I have major objections to both shows and what they stand for, but you don't see me griping about either of them. Because no one gets in MY face about not liking them.
You see the subject of this post? Do you know how many times I've heard that phrased, either exact or slightly paraphrased? You wanna know what else I've heard throughout my life?
"You read comic books? Aren't those for little kids?"
"Harry Potter is for nerds, I don't read that stuff."
"OMG, I can't believe people are dressing up in costumes and going to a movie premiere, what a bunch of freaks."
"Coworker A & B were making fun of you because you watch anime."
"You have a bunch of toys in your room?"
"No one cares about that stuff. Why do you know that much about a cartoon?"
And so on. You get the idea.
I once got tears in my eyes while reading a comic book because Professor X was talking about giving up his dream. I made it a point to wear my Harry Potter shirt when I went to see the Half Blood Prince. I once watched all three extended versions of the Lord of the Rings in the span of one week in the evenings after coming home from work. I do not like being disturbed when I watch Lost, because I don't want to miss a single detail. I threw my hands up in the air at the end of X2 when the Phoenix bird appeared in the water and then got immensely pissed when they totally misrepresented her in X3. I was giddy as a schoolgirl watching the recent Wolverine and the X-men version of the same storyline. I love both Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid games for the stories, and don't really care about any weaknesses in the game play. I'm really excited to see the Princess and the Frog this weekend because it will be a chance to celebrate my home town and my love of 2D animation. I think muppet Yoda will always be better than CGI Yoda, even if the latter one gets to move and fight.
I am a geek. I'm proud of it. I've been treated as "weird" for it for most of my life, but I'm not gonna change myself just to please others. I like what I like, I like what I am. I have found others, thanks to the internet I've found many more than I ever would locally, who like similar things and we rejoice in these things together and debate and discuss and have so much fun, I don't really see any need to conform to please anyone.
The fact of the matter is, my devotion to all of my interests are absolutely no different than the masses' devotion to football. That excitement you feel when they run across the field and make the touchdown? I get that when the Batman lands a good solid punch in the Joker's face. That pride you feel when your team is winning? It's the same pride I feel when I walked out the new Star Trek movie knowing they had treated the franchise right. And I feel the same disappointment you do when they lose when R.A. Salvatore stopped caring about his characters and is obviously just putting out books to make more money or fulfill his contract.
So why am I the weirdo? Yes, I get ridiculously excited about works of fiction, but you get ridiculously excited about a bunch of meatheads throwing a ball around. You will let it ruin your whole Sunday when they lose, and you will fill up your entire Monday bragging when they win. You spend ridiculous amounts of time during draft season discussing things that don't make a difference to your life at all. You wear certain colors and perform certain rituals because you believe they will give good luck to your team. It's just as preposterous when brought down to brass tacks, and yours isn't any more acceptable and ok just because a bunch of other people agree with you.
At least I'm pretty much guaranteed that my heroes are always going to win in the end. ;)
So can we please just agree to like other things in peace????
I was pretty much destined to be a nerd from birth. I inherited lots of book smarts and my very small stature from both my parents. Athleticism just wasn't in the cards for me. Despite this, for whatever reason when I was young my grandmother absolutely insisted that my brother and I play some kind of sport, and it ended up being soccer. I spent most of the time running behind everyone else to at least have the illusion of participation, all the while scared to death that I was going to have to hit the ball with my head the way they do on TV. That ball was hard and it would hurt. As you can guess, I only did this for one season.
In elementary school, we seemed to play more kickball than anything else. I spent most of this time doing my best to kick the ball as far as I could, being yelled at by the boys on my team for not knowing when to run or stay, and being insulted when everyone from the opposing team came up really close whenever it was my turn to kick. We also occasionally played volleyball, and the first time I tried to hit the ball my wrists and palms stung so bad that I basically did my best to move out of the way and let my teammates hit the ball, and let's just not even talk about when it was my turn to serve. In high school I had repeats of both soccer and volleyball, until junior year when we got to pick what sports we wanted to participate in. I chose walking and aerobics, and did the same for senior year too.
In terms of spectator sports, I really tried. I was a daddy's girl, and my dad loved football. I remember asking him to explain the game to me and telling me what all the terms meant. I remember he, my brother and I all playing a mini game in our yard one year. My memory tells me I actually attempted to get into the game twice in two different years of my life, spread out from each other. But I just couldn't do it and I think after the one time my dad accidentally smacked me in the leg in his excitement after a successful play, my enthusiasm waned and the game was just so boring to me.
Here's my interpretation of football: A bunch of guys line up in a formation. One passes the ball to another, and he runs for a few yards before being tackled to the ground. Everything stops while the referees review everything. They continue this cycle for awhile, sometimes changing sides, until miraculously someone manages to get near the goal line, in which case they try to run one more time, or they send in the little guy to kick the ball instead. Also, there's like TEN MILLION time outs that slow everything down even more because apparently the game isn't moving slow enough already for the coaches and they have to stop and think about it for awhile.
I went to a hockey game once and I enjoyed the constant movement of the game.. until they had to stop everything for like 20 minutes because a guy fell and they were afraid he had broken his neck. I might enjoy basketball for similar reasons, but I'm just not motivated enough to sit down and watch a game to find out. Baseball moves even slower than football, and even if it didn't, OMG the announcers. My memories of going to a Zephyrs game are all about the announcer and the goofy ads they made him keep repeating, and nothing about the game itself.
Living here in the New Orleans area, football is the only sport that seems to matter to people. Oh, you'll find some who enjoy going to a Hornets game, for sure, but the masses are all about football. This year especially, because the Saints are actually winning. Can't help but wonder if this has to do with the deal Benson made and that he's been ordering them to suck all this time before hand. After that Patriots win in the superbowl post 9/11, I'm pretty much convinced all football is rigged. But that's a whole other topic.
Right about now, you can't go anywhere in the city without black and gold, a fleur de lis, "WHO DAT," or some other sign of "Saints pride" smacking you in the face. Jefferson Parish (the suburb outside N.O.) has canceled Family Gras, their family oriented Mardi Gras celebration with bands and food as well as parades, because they honestly are already convinced that the Saints are going to be in the Superbowl that weekend. Facebook on Sundays is nothing but people either saying "Geaux Saints!", "XX-0 Baby!", or people recycling lame Christmas song rewordings about how they're going to win. And then once the game starts, they seem to think its ok to use their status to make comments about the game. A hint folks: those of us who actually understand how to use the internet know that there are things called "chat rooms" and "forums" that you use to discuss a particular topic in real time with other like minded people. I check facebook to see what's going on in the lives of the people I care about; if I gave a rat's ass about what's happening in football, I'd watch the game.
But you know what? The fact that I don't like football and other people do is not the problem. Lots of people like American Idol and The Bachelor, and I have major objections to both shows and what they stand for, but you don't see me griping about either of them. Because no one gets in MY face about not liking them.
You see the subject of this post? Do you know how many times I've heard that phrased, either exact or slightly paraphrased? You wanna know what else I've heard throughout my life?
"You read comic books? Aren't those for little kids?"
"Harry Potter is for nerds, I don't read that stuff."
"OMG, I can't believe people are dressing up in costumes and going to a movie premiere, what a bunch of freaks."
"Coworker A & B were making fun of you because you watch anime."
"You have a bunch of toys in your room?"
"No one cares about that stuff. Why do you know that much about a cartoon?"
And so on. You get the idea.
I once got tears in my eyes while reading a comic book because Professor X was talking about giving up his dream. I made it a point to wear my Harry Potter shirt when I went to see the Half Blood Prince. I once watched all three extended versions of the Lord of the Rings in the span of one week in the evenings after coming home from work. I do not like being disturbed when I watch Lost, because I don't want to miss a single detail. I threw my hands up in the air at the end of X2 when the Phoenix bird appeared in the water and then got immensely pissed when they totally misrepresented her in X3. I was giddy as a schoolgirl watching the recent Wolverine and the X-men version of the same storyline. I love both Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid games for the stories, and don't really care about any weaknesses in the game play. I'm really excited to see the Princess and the Frog this weekend because it will be a chance to celebrate my home town and my love of 2D animation. I think muppet Yoda will always be better than CGI Yoda, even if the latter one gets to move and fight.
I am a geek. I'm proud of it. I've been treated as "weird" for it for most of my life, but I'm not gonna change myself just to please others. I like what I like, I like what I am. I have found others, thanks to the internet I've found many more than I ever would locally, who like similar things and we rejoice in these things together and debate and discuss and have so much fun, I don't really see any need to conform to please anyone.
The fact of the matter is, my devotion to all of my interests are absolutely no different than the masses' devotion to football. That excitement you feel when they run across the field and make the touchdown? I get that when the Batman lands a good solid punch in the Joker's face. That pride you feel when your team is winning? It's the same pride I feel when I walked out the new Star Trek movie knowing they had treated the franchise right. And I feel the same disappointment you do when they lose when R.A. Salvatore stopped caring about his characters and is obviously just putting out books to make more money or fulfill his contract.
So why am I the weirdo? Yes, I get ridiculously excited about works of fiction, but you get ridiculously excited about a bunch of meatheads throwing a ball around. You will let it ruin your whole Sunday when they lose, and you will fill up your entire Monday bragging when they win. You spend ridiculous amounts of time during draft season discussing things that don't make a difference to your life at all. You wear certain colors and perform certain rituals because you believe they will give good luck to your team. It's just as preposterous when brought down to brass tacks, and yours isn't any more acceptable and ok just because a bunch of other people agree with you.
At least I'm pretty much guaranteed that my heroes are always going to win in the end. ;)
So can we please just agree to like other things in peace????
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Watchmen: Film vs. Comic Adaptation
This past weekend I found myself with a lot of time to kill so I sat down to watch the "Ultimate Edition" of the Watchmen film. I had already seen the original version in the theaters, and rented Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood, so I wasn't going into it 100% blind as much as I was looking to see how the combination of the two would work and whether I would feel differently about it afterward than I did after viewing the film the first time.
The short of it is: not very much.
I spent a lot of time on this run through trying to remember if the transitions into the Black Freighter were matching when they happened in the book, or perhaps certain scenes were missing that were making the transitions incomplete. With maybe one exception, I found it just didn't work as well. Apparently, there is a strong difference between moving through frames in a comic than moving through scenes in a movie. Or maybe this was simply done as an afterthought rather than planned from the get go, so it didn't work quite right. It didn't feel so jarring like you were suddenly and completely taken out of the movie, but I didn't feel the sharp comparisons between the two narratives to the same effect as I did while reading the book.
I went to see Watchmen with my father, my brother, and my stepmother. I have no earthly idea why my stepmom came to see it, as sci-fi action movies aren't normally her thing. She did enjoy the X-men movies, but I think that may have more to do with Hugh Jackman than anything else. My father does enjoy sci-fi action movies, the more special effects the better, and will even forsake plot for them if necessary. He used to read my X-men comics with me back when I was young but he had never read Watchmen. My brother and I tend to have very similar tastes when it comes these kind of things, though he had apparently only started reading Watchmen and never finished it. I myself had finally read the book the year before the release, determined to be "in the know" before going to see the movie. I fell in love with the book, and even convinced my non-comic fan boyfriend to read it. Of the four of us, I was the only one who walked out of that theater without being completely disappointed/turned off. I believe the main complaints they found with it were that it was too confusing and complicated, took too long to get the point, and, of course, way too much blue penis. Seeing the IMAX version probably didn't help that last one.
I remember that much of my giddiness while watching it was all about seeing various panels come to life and hearing the actors recite almost word for word many key scenes in the comic. I had gripes like any true comic book fan does, but I loved it. Being completely unable to separate myself from my fandom, it was hard to judge the movie in and of itself. This isn't X-men after all, where the history is so long that it makes perfect sense for them to pick and choose elements to create something that still stays true to the characters. This was a 12 issue limited series that built upon itself and made it really hard for you to take out anything. To judge the movie on its own requires pretty much forgetting that you already know the entire story. But, given who I went with and what their impressions were even given their different tastes, I was left with one conclusion:
Watchmen the film is a great comic book adaptation, but it is not a good stand alone film.
If you happened to have not read the book or seen the movie yet and do not wished to be spoiled, please stop reading here.
But here's the ultimate catch: It's a great comic book adaptation up until the ending of the film. Early on when the movie was being hyped, spoiler sites warned that the ending was changed. I went ahead and spoiled myself and saw that, really quite predictably, the alien monster was gone and would be replaced by nuclear energy. This is not the problem I have with the ending. It actually makes a pretty good amount of sense. The alien represented an attack from the outside world, and an attack from Dr. Manhattan also represents an attack from the outside since he is now so far removed from humanity. It is quite plausible that both would have the same effect on the world's nations. The problems I have with the ending have everything to do with the characters reactions to this event.
The single most chilling panel in all of Watchmen, in my opinion, is when Ozymandias raises his arms in the air, smiling, tears in his eyes, screaming "I did it!" When reading I literally laughed one of my uncomfortable laughs I normally experience when people are fighting around me or yelling at me and I'm so uncomfortable I don't know what to do with myself. A person reacting with such joy after killing millions of people.. it horrifies you, and it also shows you just how committed this man is to what he believes. In the movie, we instead get him calmly explaining more justifications. I suppose in some way this could be considered chilling, but whether it's the dialogue or the way it's said, it just comes off to me like every other cliche villain in a movie before it. When he says "I've made myself feel every death.." I just can't say I believe him.
It becomes worse as they completely change Dr. Manhattan's exit. So typical hollywood ending, giving the girl a kiss goodbye and then leaving to explore a brave new world. Not even a word to Veidt about what he's done, other than to convince the others to keep quiet about it. As someone's whose sense of justice falls more in line with Rorschach's than any of the other characters, one of the key panels at the end to me is when Veidt asks Dr. Manhattan if he did the right thing in the end, and Dr. Manhattan replies "Nothing ever ends" before disappearing. They attempt to touch on this by having Dan and Laurie discuss it in the following scene, but to me it's all about seeing Veidt's face fall when the "omnipotent" man tells him.
The short of it is: not very much.
I spent a lot of time on this run through trying to remember if the transitions into the Black Freighter were matching when they happened in the book, or perhaps certain scenes were missing that were making the transitions incomplete. With maybe one exception, I found it just didn't work as well. Apparently, there is a strong difference between moving through frames in a comic than moving through scenes in a movie. Or maybe this was simply done as an afterthought rather than planned from the get go, so it didn't work quite right. It didn't feel so jarring like you were suddenly and completely taken out of the movie, but I didn't feel the sharp comparisons between the two narratives to the same effect as I did while reading the book.
I went to see Watchmen with my father, my brother, and my stepmother. I have no earthly idea why my stepmom came to see it, as sci-fi action movies aren't normally her thing. She did enjoy the X-men movies, but I think that may have more to do with Hugh Jackman than anything else. My father does enjoy sci-fi action movies, the more special effects the better, and will even forsake plot for them if necessary. He used to read my X-men comics with me back when I was young but he had never read Watchmen. My brother and I tend to have very similar tastes when it comes these kind of things, though he had apparently only started reading Watchmen and never finished it. I myself had finally read the book the year before the release, determined to be "in the know" before going to see the movie. I fell in love with the book, and even convinced my non-comic fan boyfriend to read it. Of the four of us, I was the only one who walked out of that theater without being completely disappointed/turned off. I believe the main complaints they found with it were that it was too confusing and complicated, took too long to get the point, and, of course, way too much blue penis. Seeing the IMAX version probably didn't help that last one.
I remember that much of my giddiness while watching it was all about seeing various panels come to life and hearing the actors recite almost word for word many key scenes in the comic. I had gripes like any true comic book fan does, but I loved it. Being completely unable to separate myself from my fandom, it was hard to judge the movie in and of itself. This isn't X-men after all, where the history is so long that it makes perfect sense for them to pick and choose elements to create something that still stays true to the characters. This was a 12 issue limited series that built upon itself and made it really hard for you to take out anything. To judge the movie on its own requires pretty much forgetting that you already know the entire story. But, given who I went with and what their impressions were even given their different tastes, I was left with one conclusion:
Watchmen the film is a great comic book adaptation, but it is not a good stand alone film.
If you happened to have not read the book or seen the movie yet and do not wished to be spoiled, please stop reading here.
But here's the ultimate catch: It's a great comic book adaptation up until the ending of the film. Early on when the movie was being hyped, spoiler sites warned that the ending was changed. I went ahead and spoiled myself and saw that, really quite predictably, the alien monster was gone and would be replaced by nuclear energy. This is not the problem I have with the ending. It actually makes a pretty good amount of sense. The alien represented an attack from the outside world, and an attack from Dr. Manhattan also represents an attack from the outside since he is now so far removed from humanity. It is quite plausible that both would have the same effect on the world's nations. The problems I have with the ending have everything to do with the characters reactions to this event.
The single most chilling panel in all of Watchmen, in my opinion, is when Ozymandias raises his arms in the air, smiling, tears in his eyes, screaming "I did it!" When reading I literally laughed one of my uncomfortable laughs I normally experience when people are fighting around me or yelling at me and I'm so uncomfortable I don't know what to do with myself. A person reacting with such joy after killing millions of people.. it horrifies you, and it also shows you just how committed this man is to what he believes. In the movie, we instead get him calmly explaining more justifications. I suppose in some way this could be considered chilling, but whether it's the dialogue or the way it's said, it just comes off to me like every other cliche villain in a movie before it. When he says "I've made myself feel every death.." I just can't say I believe him.
It becomes worse as they completely change Dr. Manhattan's exit. So typical hollywood ending, giving the girl a kiss goodbye and then leaving to explore a brave new world. Not even a word to Veidt about what he's done, other than to convince the others to keep quiet about it. As someone's whose sense of justice falls more in line with Rorschach's than any of the other characters, one of the key panels at the end to me is when Veidt asks Dr. Manhattan if he did the right thing in the end, and Dr. Manhattan replies "Nothing ever ends" before disappearing. They attempt to touch on this by having Dan and Laurie discuss it in the following scene, but to me it's all about seeing Veidt's face fall when the "omnipotent" man tells him.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Song
It's Halloween! I think Halloween counts as my favorite holiday, though Christmas is a close second. That probably explains why I love The Nightmare Before Christmas so much. I saw it the day after Halloween when it first came out. I remember a time when you could mention that movie and some people wouldn't even know what you were talking about. Now of course half of Hot Topic & Spencer's stores are filled with merchandise, and if you were to walk into Disneyland right now and get in line to view the "Haunted Mansion Holiday" featuring Jack Skellington and all the rest, you'd be in for a long wait. From what I've seen, you can even take pictures with Jack and Sally out there!
This kind of thing always seems to stir a strange feeling in "true" or "original" fans. On one hand you want to rejoice, because finally people out there won't look at you like you're crazy when mentioning it, and there's suddenly all kinds of goodies available for you to get your hands on. I'll never forget the first time I was working in the mall and heard two guys walking through the store discussing who Wolverine could beat up. It wasn't long after the first X-men movie and it just filled me with so much glee that other people suddenly acknowledged this character I had been in love with for years now. And then somewhere along the way I realized everybody loved him and... it lost its "specialness."
I guess that's what it comes down to. When you love something that isn't popular, you have this wonderful little secret. I always knew that the songs in NbC were pure joy and beautifully sung, and not many other people did. At that level, it's easy to pretend like its just you, or maybe you and your close friends, who share this little secret with the movie/book/artist/etc. It's sort of like a relationship, isn't it? And then suddenly every goth kid on the block is wearing a Jack & Sally shirt, and you almost feel cheated on. Surely those kids are just following a trend and don't actually feel the same special feelings you do! Those are yours! They're private and special and no one else can have them!
I've never been able to have long conversations with other Beatles' fans. Sure, I'll tell you about my faves and such, but I'm not going to go into why I love them. Because if I found out you feel the same way... it's like no longer do I have this special connection with John Lennon, and doggone it, illogical or not, I'm keeping that.
The thing us fans all need to remember is that regardless of how many other people enjoy what you do, it's still yours. In a little while I'm going to put on NbC and I'm going to sing along and gape at the stunning animation and nothing can take that away from me.
Do you have a thing that you consider "all yours" and prefer not to discuss with others? Is there a particular fandom that you feel has been ruined by popularity?
This kind of thing always seems to stir a strange feeling in "true" or "original" fans. On one hand you want to rejoice, because finally people out there won't look at you like you're crazy when mentioning it, and there's suddenly all kinds of goodies available for you to get your hands on. I'll never forget the first time I was working in the mall and heard two guys walking through the store discussing who Wolverine could beat up. It wasn't long after the first X-men movie and it just filled me with so much glee that other people suddenly acknowledged this character I had been in love with for years now. And then somewhere along the way I realized everybody loved him and... it lost its "specialness."
I guess that's what it comes down to. When you love something that isn't popular, you have this wonderful little secret. I always knew that the songs in NbC were pure joy and beautifully sung, and not many other people did. At that level, it's easy to pretend like its just you, or maybe you and your close friends, who share this little secret with the movie/book/artist/etc. It's sort of like a relationship, isn't it? And then suddenly every goth kid on the block is wearing a Jack & Sally shirt, and you almost feel cheated on. Surely those kids are just following a trend and don't actually feel the same special feelings you do! Those are yours! They're private and special and no one else can have them!
I've never been able to have long conversations with other Beatles' fans. Sure, I'll tell you about my faves and such, but I'm not going to go into why I love them. Because if I found out you feel the same way... it's like no longer do I have this special connection with John Lennon, and doggone it, illogical or not, I'm keeping that.
The thing us fans all need to remember is that regardless of how many other people enjoy what you do, it's still yours. In a little while I'm going to put on NbC and I'm going to sing along and gape at the stunning animation and nothing can take that away from me.
Do you have a thing that you consider "all yours" and prefer not to discuss with others? Is there a particular fandom that you feel has been ruined by popularity?
Friday, October 30, 2009
A few words about my title and chosen name.
My Own Little Corner - In Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella, C sings a song called "My Own Little Corner" and it's all about her playing pretend and being whatever she wants to be, safe from the persecution of her stepmother and stepsisters. I always loved the song as a kid because I spent most of my time playing pretend, and I find it has even more meaning now when I'm an adult who picked a career for the sake of making money and not for following my dreams. So until I can actually get out there and pursue my passion, this is my place to "be whatever I want to be."
Syrin - In high school I used to play MajorMUD. I started off as a thief named Rogue, but after reading the Drizzt Do'Urden novels I decided I wanted to be a ranger. For whatever reason I've never had the patience for learning proper stats, so I let my boyfriend do the actual rerolling for me. I told him I wanted my name to be Siryn, after the character from the X-force/X-men comics. In MajorMUD you only have that one chance to change your first name. You can change your last name as often as you'd like, but it takes a Sysop to edit your first name and depending on how nice your Sysop is, you may not have that choice at all. So he and I are talking online (in the 90s talking on the phone and being online were not an option, remember) and he says "Ok, so your name will be Syrin." "NO, Siryn." He goes in on my account, does the rerolling... and suddenly "Syrin has entered the realm." Sigh. So that was my name. It's supposed to be pronounced like the word siren, but lots of people started referring to me as see-rin after that, so I suppose you can choose whatever pronunciation you would like. No one pronounces my real first name properly either, so it's nothing new to me.
I think both of these explanations provide some insight into my personality and who I am. I hope to update this page on a weekly basis, but we all know in internet terms that is a death knell. So I'll see you when I see you.
Syrin - In high school I used to play MajorMUD. I started off as a thief named Rogue, but after reading the Drizzt Do'Urden novels I decided I wanted to be a ranger. For whatever reason I've never had the patience for learning proper stats, so I let my boyfriend do the actual rerolling for me. I told him I wanted my name to be Siryn, after the character from the X-force/X-men comics. In MajorMUD you only have that one chance to change your first name. You can change your last name as often as you'd like, but it takes a Sysop to edit your first name and depending on how nice your Sysop is, you may not have that choice at all. So he and I are talking online (in the 90s talking on the phone and being online were not an option, remember) and he says "Ok, so your name will be Syrin." "NO, Siryn." He goes in on my account, does the rerolling... and suddenly "Syrin has entered the realm." Sigh. So that was my name. It's supposed to be pronounced like the word siren, but lots of people started referring to me as see-rin after that, so I suppose you can choose whatever pronunciation you would like. No one pronounces my real first name properly either, so it's nothing new to me.
I think both of these explanations provide some insight into my personality and who I am. I hope to update this page on a weekly basis, but we all know in internet terms that is a death knell. So I'll see you when I see you.
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