So I actually sat down and watched The Last Stand
It has everything you could possibly want in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: explosions, guns, dumb one-liners, Harry Dean Stanton, a stupid romance subplot between characters whose names you don’t remember while you’re watching the movie, let alone after… I mean, sure, I’m making fun of the movie but that’s because I’m trying to create some ironic distance between myself and how much I enjoyed this dumb, dumb movie.
Similar to Dredd
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
One of the great advances of our day is the ability is the introduction of personal videoscreens on airplanes, meaning that instead of flying being incredibly tedious, it’s a chance to see (free) movies I would probably never have watched otherwise.
On the flight back from Turkey I watched Unbreakable and AI.
Unbreakable is good. I’d heard it was one of Shyamalan’s better movies but didn’t know anything about it beyond that. Elijah’s speech on the comic as art reminded me what it’s easy to forget with all the recent Mace Windu-ing and Nick Fury-ing – Samuel L. Jackson is a good actor. (And whoever wrote that speech is a highly skilled writer.) He’s the last person in the world I’d have thought of for the role of “incredibly frail man who breaks bones from any injury” – he’s practically as memetic as Chuck Norris for “tough guy” status – but he does an excellent job. I knew there had to be a twist, due to it being a Shyamalan film, but embarrassingly I didn’t figure it out until almost the very end – until Ryvwnu’f zbgure tnir gur fcrrpu ba ivyynvaf. At which point it became so obvious I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.
A.I. was just weird, and deliberately heartwrenching to the point where you felt the filmmakers’ primary intention throughout making the thing was to make the audience cry. But also really creepy when you think about it. The robot is very clearly a sapient being, and – despite his apparent ‘humanity’ – he equally clearly has no free will. He loves his ‘mother’ because he is programmed to do so; it’s something that’s literally turned on like a switch, and he’s incapable of stopping rira nsgre zvyyraavn. It’s supposed to be endearing, but it just feels intensely unethical. And the ending is beyond strange.
Other than that, I’ve just bought BBC’s Africa documentary which is (like all their other nature documentaries – Planet Earth, Life, Frozen Planet, The Blue Planet, Madagascar) excellent and highly recommended. Nobody does nature filmmaking like the BBC. By this point their documentaries are a substantial part of my DVD collection.
I’m also reading Dan Simmons’ science fiction duology of Ilium and Olympos. It starts out as a retelling of The Iliad on Mars in the far futures, and gets stranger from there. It’s pretty good, but almost impossible to summarize or review without giving everything away.
Oh, and I also caught up on the episodes of Game of Thrones that aired while I was in Turkey, which are a mixed bag. Not at all pleased with the torture-porn they’re making of certain scenes (more than a couple have felt like highly gratuitous uppings of the sex-and-violence quotient; V pna’g rira jngpu gur Gurba fprarf nal zber, V whfg fgner njnl sebz zl pbzchgre fperra), but in general I’m still enjoying the show. V nz fbzrjung ybbxvat sbejneq gb gur vagrearg rkcybfvba nsgre gbqnl’f rcvfbqr, juvpu vf pehry bs zr.
(I also started to watch Django Unchained on the flight to Turkey and gave up in disgust a little way in at the sheer ahistoricity of it. That is not a movie that deserved Oscars, but that goes for most of the movies that receive Oscars these days.)
Unbreakable: I didn’t get it until the wheelchair went down the ramp. But then… WHAM. For a while there, Ain’t It Cool News reported that Unbreakable was going to be a Trilogy. They were lying, or repeating lies, of course… but don’t you think that M. Night would be better off today if he started making Unbreakable 2 instead of Lady in the Water? (Some might argue The Village but I kinda like that movie.)
As for Django… well… I can understand being dissuaded from wanting to watch it by its ahistoricity. It’s not a movie about slavery, though. It’s a movie about slavery movies. (Among other movies, of course.) Going into it thinking about it that way may make the movie easier to stomach (because, seriously, there are some gems in there).
If historical accuracy was secondary or even tertiary, the 100+ utterances of the N-word are even more disturbing, given that QT offered historical accuracy as a justification for their presence.
http://mobile.theroot.com/articles/culture/2012/12/the_nword_in_django_unchained_tarantinos_explanation.html
The first “what the heck” moment in Django was the Klan showing up despite it being in the pre-Civil War era and the Klan being created after the war to prevent black people from moving upwards, punish them if they did, and ensure they staying in a state of quasi-slavery. It’s completely out of place in the pre-Civil War period where slavery still exists. The second was the relative lack of objection of the slaveowners to Django being treated like an equal; it completely ignores what Southern slave society was. There’s a reason it was illegal to teach slaves to read; there’s a reason it was made incredibly legally difficult to free slaves. A free black man, never mind one dressed and treated like an equal, was subversive, a threat to the whole system; there’s no way slaveowners would have stood for having him on their plantations. Plus there’s the matter that “freedom” was an incredibly tenuous thing for any black person in the South, and didn’t stop anyone from kidnapping you and selling you into slavery anyway. The movie seemed to reduce slavery to racism and racism to bigotry, rather than a social and economic system that underlay the entirety of Southern society. That’s a shallow portrayal. If Tarantino’s understanding of Southern slavery is whips and the n-word, then he doesn’t understand it at all.
I understand that Django Unchained was supposed to be, to a large extent, a play on old Westerns as well as slavery movies. But as I haven’t seen any films from either genre (other than the True Grit remake, which was good enough) I don’t get much from that aspect of it.
I liked Unbreakable too. The reveal at the end really worked for me.
Unbreakable is good.
AI is pretty much a masterpiece.
I saw Unbreakable with a group from work when it came out. I thought it was great, but as soon as we left the theater, everyone started talking about how boring it was.
No accounting for taste.
A second post because seriously, I’ve been watching a ridiculous amount of stuff recently:
Iron Man 3. It was entertaining, and that’s pretty much it. No great depth or quality, just an enjoyable movie with RDJ playing a character that he’s very good at inhabiting. Liked that Crccre svanyyl tbg gb or njrfbzr sbe n ovg (an obvious development as soon as they vawrpgrq ure jvgu Rkgerzvf – frevbhfyl, znlor vs fbzrbar’f lbhe rarzl vg jbhyq or fzneg gb svaq n jnl gb gbegher gurz gung qbrfa’g vaibyir nyfb tvivat gurz fhcrecbjref?); didn’t like that fur nyzbfg vzzrqvngryl ybfg gubfr cbjref jvgu Gbal “svkvat” ure. Crccre erznvavat n fhcreureb naq fgneevat va shgher Niratref svyzf jbhyq unir orra cerggl pbby. Liked the twist with the ivyynva – V’q urneq uvagf bs vg, naq qrfcvgr abg ernqvat nal pbzvpf orfvqrf Fnaqzna, qhr gb cbcphygheny bfzbfvf V xarj NVZ jrer gur onq thlf nf fbba nf gurl jrer vagebqhprq. Post-credits scene made the film, best part by far – qnzzvg Gbal, ur’f n culfvpvfg, abg n gurencvfg!
And with that coded reference, on to a far less satisfactory movie. Star Trek Into Darkness has its good points, but has far too many irritating ones mixed in with them. V jnf ebyyvat zl rlrf ng gur cenpgvpnyyl-genafpevorq rkgraqrq ersrerapr gb gur raqvat bs Jengu bs Xuna, naq vs lbh ZHFG qb gung, qba’g or purnc naq oevat onpx gur thl lbh xvyyrq bss jvguva gra zvahgrf. Vg jbhyq unir orra zbqrengryl orggre vs gurl unqa’g pbzcyrgryl gnxra gur qvnybthr sebz gur cerivbhf zbivr. Mnpunel Dhvagb’f “Xunnna!” jnf cnegvphyneyl onq. In the second place, Xuna Abbavra Fvatu vf ”Vaqvna”. Lbh qba’g pnfg n juvgr npgbe gb cynl uvz; gung’f juvgrjnfuvat, abg “pbybheoyvaq pnfgvat”, abg hayrff lbh nhqvgvbarq oynpx, Nfvna, rgp. npgbef gb cynl gur ebyrf bs Xvex naq Fcbpx. Juvpu lbh jbhyqa’g.
On the upside, I now have a few seasons of The Original Series and Next Generation, as well as First Contact, on hold at the library to see what Star Trek used to be like (and, out of curiosity, to see how it stacks up against Babylon 5. From the few clips I’ve seen of the Original Serious, Babylon 5 is far superior to it). As long as I can make myself remember “no, that’s not Xavier, he’s walking around”, I should do fine.
The important thing to understand with Next Generation is that first season isn’t very good. Once Riker grows his beard, the show hits its stride.
I just got back from watching Star Trek, and I more or less agree with your assessment.
I have seen both movies and really liked both. I think I liked Star Trek a littl better. What was a little funny, they both had a similar gaping plot hole.
For Ironman: nyy gur bgure Vebazna zbivrf unq FUVRYQ irel vaibyirq, lrg va guvf bar FUVRYQ qbrf abg rira tvir rabhtu bs n qnza gb fraq n ntrag gb ybbx ng gur jerpx bs Gbal’f ubhfr. Frevbhfyl, lbh jbhyq guvax gur Vebazna fhvgf naq gur perngbe bs gurz jbhyq or vzcbegnag gb gurz.
For Star Trek: Fb, yrg zr trg guvf fgenvtug, gjb srqrengvba fuvcf pbzr bhg bs jnec nobir Rnegu (urnqdhnegref gb Fgne Syrrg), fgneg oynfgvat rnpu bgure, bar frrzvat gb oybj hc, nabgure snyyvat yvxr n zrgrbe gb Rnegu, gura gur bgure bar qbvat gur fnzr. Naq Fgne Syrrg qbrf abg rira gel gb pbagnpg gurz??? V xabj ng gur ortvaavat gurl jrer orvat “wnzzrq”, ohg nsgre gur qernqanhtug oyrj hc?? Jung qvq Fgne Syrrg qb? Tvir hc nsgre bar cubar pnyy jnf abg gnxra?
Obgu zbivrf fhssrerq sbe sbetrggvat gung gurer vf n ovt havirefr nebhaq gurz gung unf orra rfgnoyvfurq.
Finally finishing the anime “Dual.”
Finishing Orphan Black, though that might not happen today.
Trying to figure out what to start next. I think White Collar.
KnittingNiki and I have been enjoying White Collar a lot.
White Collar was okay. Not great, but okay.
Think I will save the Orphan Black finale until later this week.
This week’s Hannibal was *pure nightmare fuel*. NBC renewed it, woo-hoo! I am kind of annoyed that I have been deleting the eps from my DVR for space, because the plot has gotten baroque enough that a re-watch is in order. I may just buy the DVDs.
Finished A Clash of Kings last night; looking forward to GoT & Mad Men tonight; sounds like the former will bring the crazy, while I just don’t see what else the latter can do this season to make it any crazier.
WTF GRRM
lbh xabj jul trbetr ee znegva qbrfa’g gjrrg?
ur xvyyrq nyy bar uhaqerq sbegl bs uvf punenpgref.
(dhbgr fgbyra)
I heard the joke slightly differently, as “What’s the difference between GoT and Twitter? Twitter only has 140 characters.”
What’s the difference between Wheels of Time and a phone book? A phone book has fewer characters and more plot.
Trust me dude: I feel your pain.
Last ep of Orphan Black: Pretty badarse.
I introduced Junior to Bobby’s World today. What a walk down memory lane. I love the parents!
“And for you, Tin Man, I award you this bicycle for conscientious recycling. It’s made out of your ex wife. (It’s a girl’s bike.)”
Kids can’t appreciate this. It’s too good.
Still going through the new Arrested Development season. I look forward to seeing the complete picture, but I am trying not to make it one huge binge.
I finally watched Prometheus. I heard a lot of bad press about it, but I thought it was a good movie. Maybe it is not as ground-breaking as Alien, but I am not sure why it got a lot of hate.
I have been reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It is definitely interesting. It appears that there is more going on than simply Harry being brought up with knowledge of science, since many of the other characters are changed in ways that should not be affected by that. I do have a nebulous theory.
We’re still piecing our way through AD. We are not loving the format. The character-specific episodes rob the show of its greatest feature: the various family members interacting together. The connections are too spaced out to try to remember. I heard it gets better in the second half but it has been a bit of a slog thus far.
The new format is a huge mistake. (Actually, I’ve read that it was forced by the limited availability of the actors.)
I enjoyed Prometheus as well.
I got a chance to read a couple of Wheel of Time novels this week since I was off work. All going well, I should be finished with the series by the end of the month.
Which book are you on? I’d like to hear what you think about the three that Brandon Sanderson wrote when you get there.
I’ve just finished book 12, although I have read book 13 once before. I thought there was a distinct improvement in quality when Sanderson took over, I’m a big fan of Sanderson’s work generally, and its clear that he’s just a better writer (especially of female characters) than Jordan was.
There’s also the fact that he actually starts to get one with the fishing story, which had been moving far too slowly (though at least we got some big events in book 11, so it was clear Jordan was starting to get on with it before he died).
I’ll look forward to Sanderson finishing up A Song of Ice and Fire.
Sad thing I don’t know if this is something I should dread or hope for.
Signs point to “hope”.
Maybe he’ll finally wrestle the tropes back to ones we recognize.
“You’re going to resurrect Ned? That’s not possible!”
“Yeah, well, I found a magic spell.”
(Ned is brought back.)
“I’ve got something to say to Joffrey.”
(Ned stands in front of Joffrey.)
*slap*
[next 800 pages consist of nothing but zombie Ned slapping Joffrey repeatedly]
[book sales reach unprecedented levels, requiring entirely new accounting theories]
I don’t have a problem with fireballing tropes.
I do have a problem with “not knowing where you’re going with this”.
I finished reading a book called Live Free or Die by John Ringo. Very fun book about Earth force to join the the other races in the universe.
You have to wonder if his favorite basketball player is Paul George.
And I can’t resist asking: did you ever read Ringo and Kratman’s The Tuloriad?
Eleanor & Park was really good. I’m in the middle of a lot of things. Still watching Downton. I kept carousing instead of reading/watching things… and now I keep sleeping instead of reading/watching things.
Proximately, I’m in the middle of an anthology of essays (and a few comics and photographs) about lesbian marriage, called Here Come the Brides!. I keep expecting to get sick of it, because there are SO MANY of them and many of them are quite similar, but I never do. I feel so safe and warm reading a book like this, as schmoopy as that sounds.