Les Miserables (a local color post)

As I mentioned in passing, recently, my oldest son has been a part of a local production of Les Miserables. He's actually getting paid for this gig, which is pretty cool, especially since he didn't even audition for the part. He was requested by the director (whom he worked with several years ago in a production of The Pirates of Penzance). Not that he had a big part in that he was one of the main characters or anything; he wasn't, but he did have several solo bits and was a named character, Combeferre, along with the ensemble stuff he did. Basically, he was on stage through the greater part of the performance. He's even the first one onto the stage, as he gets pushed out as part of the prisoner gang.

As you can guess, I'm going to say my son was great. And he was. But, look, it's chorus work, mostly, and the chorus folk did a fine job, on the whole (with the exception of one kid who didn't know what to do with himself when he wasn't actively doing anything). His singing was right on, so it's hard not to be great when you don't have so much room to screw up. Okay, look, if my kid has one issue, it's that he might smile too much, but that's also one of the things that makes him good. He's got charisma, and he draws eyes to him just by being on the stage. [Recently, he was in Pride & Prejudice in the role of Bingley, largely due to his ability to smile. Well, he got that role as opposed to some other role, because no one can smile the way he can.]

Overall, the production was quite well done, but there were a few issues. Primarily, it was difficult at times to hear the singing over the orchestra. Maybe, this was an issue for use because we were sitting right up front, just one row removed from said orchestra, so the music was right in our faces. Or, maybe, they just didn't have the sound system set up to overcome the orchestra; I don't know. What I do know is that I was glad, as I watched, that I have seen the movie, because there were a few places I wouldn't have know what was going on if I hadn't seen it, because I couldn't hear the vocals. The worst of that happened during the scene where Javert shows up with the revolutionaries, where I still had a moment of "huh? What's he doing there?" until I remembered what was going on.

Speaking of Javert, I'm still waiting to see a version of Les Mis where I think the Javert performance is worthwhile. If the other performances in the recent movie adaptation hadn't been so strong, Russel Crowe could have ruined it, because he was pretty horrible. The guy in this production was better but only just. Mostly, he just stood in place on stage and sang, which is where he did a better job than Crowe, because he did have a good voice and sang the numbers well, but he just stood there and sang for most of them. Unemotionally. In fact, just about his only acting was to tilt his head back and look down his nose at Jean Valjean. My wife says that Javert is the kind of role where you can get away with playing it with a stick up your butt, because Javert has a stick up his butt, and I agree, but I am still dissatisfied.

The actor playing Jean Valjean, Pedro Rodelas, had a very Hugh Jackman look to him and played the role with the same kind of heart, which made him hard not to like, even if some of the music stretched his vocal range beyond his ability. I think the same can be said of Jackman, though (actually, I think I did say that somewhere after I saw the movie), but the emotion both actors poured into the role made up for any gaps in their singing ability.

The most difficult part of this production was the actor they chose to play Marius, David Strock. The man can sing, but he was just too old for the part, and I couldn't buy into him as the student revolutionary standing next to the young woman playing Cosette. He just looked out of place, which made it difficult to buy into that whole young love-at-first-sight thing that's supposed to be going on.

However, the kid they had playing Gavroche, Ari Vozaitis, was amazing and could have completely stolen the show if he'd more "screen" time. I'm guessing he's not older than 12.

The only other issue is a practical one: The show is quite pricey. But I suppose that's the price you pay ["Claim the pun!" as Briane Pagel would say.] for local theater. Still, $30 is a lot to pay for a ticket but, if you can afford it, I would strongly recommend the show. I'll put it like this: It's long. Three hours long. But I didn't once have that feeling of wondering how much longer it was, and that's saying a lot. Also, my wife cried and, as previously stated, if my wife cries, you know it's good.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (a movie review post)

There are times when a movie fails to work for me because it's an adaptation that fails to actually adapt the source material. However, the source material for this movie has become so broad that you can't accuse it of not being faithful to it because you just can't tell what it's trying to be faithful to in regards to said source material. That said, there is one image that will always be associated in my mind with the "Days of Future Past" story line:

And, yes, Wolverine actually dies in that issue but 1. It ended up being a future that was prevented. 2. It was before Wolverine had become "too big to fail" (too popular to die). You'll see none of that in this movie. No, my problem with the movie is that it fails to be faithful just to the Fox X-Men franchise and, really, there's not so much there that it's impossible to do.
But more on that in a minute.

Yes, there will be spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

As a movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past is fine if somewhat (a lot) predictable. The opening fight against the sentinels is fantastic. Well, except for the part where Kitty Pryde can send people into the past. What the heck? The powers of Kitty have long been established, not just within the comics but within the Fox X-Men universe, so giving Kitty the ability to send people consciously back in time seems a bit gratuitous. If they wanted a mutant to do that, why not just put in a mutant to do that rather than give that power to someone who shouldn't have it? Or, you know, include Forge in the lineup, because he would have made a nice addition to the movie.

The other main issue I had with the movie was Xavier's struggle with what amounted to drug addiction. That whole thing felt easy and contrived and, while I get that they needed to present Wolverine with some obstacles to overcome to complete his mission, that one felt gratuitous. The idea that Xavier would sacrifice his mutant ability so that he could walk again and pretend to forget his pain was too far outside of the character we know to really be believable. At least, that's true coming at it from the standpoint of the comics. Maybe, it's plausible looking at it from just the movies, but I'm not feeling it that way, either.

But, really, the movie is fine. Well, except for the appearance of Quicksilver, which was completely out of context. We get Quicksilver but not the Scarlet Witch nor even any mention of her. Also, there was no acknowledgement that Quicksilver is Magneto's son and only even a very vague possibility of that even being true in the movie. So why use the character if you're not actually going to use the character? Just make that some other character that only exists in the movie universe. Honestly, it felt more like a jab at Disney and Marvel Studios who have Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch lined up for the next Avengers movie.

However, the scene where he saves everyone in the kitchen is fantastic.

But, really, the movie is fine. It is. It's enjoyable. The cast is great. Of course, Jackman carries the film. His performance of Wolverine continues to be flawless. And Jennifer Lawrence was so much better in this one than she was in First Class. I continue to like Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake, and I really wanted to see more of Bishop and Blink, and I don't mean more of them in combat. It would have been nice to see them as characters, too.

All of that said, the thing that disturbed my enjoyment the most was the feeling that the whole movie was an excuse for Bryan Singer to fix all the problems he caused when he dropped out of X-Men 3 to go off and make that horrible Superman movie. So let's look at that a moment:
Singer had a plan for X-Men at the time. No one really knows what that plan was because he didn't share much of it and I kind of doubt he even knows, now, what he was doing then. But, in the middle of pre-production for X-Men 3, not only does he go off to make Superman, but he convinces James Marsden (Cyclops) to go with him (and some of his writers from the previous X-Men movies). Understandably, Fox gets pissed at both of them and vows that neither will ever work with them again and, just to prove their point, kills Cyclops off during the opening sequence of The Last Stand.

From there, a bunch of stuff happened in X3 and the other X-Men related movies that Singer wouldn't have done but, you know, he wasn't there. Fox and Singer make up; Singer returns to X-Men; Singer wants his characters back, those characters being Cyclops and Jean Grey. Basically, Days of Future Past is a story that creates a brand new X-Men world and allows Singer to ignore all previous X-Men continuity. He gets to bring back Cyclops and Jean and do whatever he wants from this point on. Until he decides to, again, abandon Fox's X-Men and leave someone else to try to figure out what he was doing. The whole thing lessens my enjoyment of Days of Future Past, which may not be fair to the actual movie, but Singer bothers me enough that I can't just ignore it.

In the final analysis, if you've liked the X-Men movies, there's no good reason that you won't like this one. Probably, it's one of the top three out of the, what?, seven movies. I think my count there is correct. As a series of movies, the X-Men movies still fail to approach what Marvel has been doing over at Disney but, as a single movie, this one is probably on par with the Iron Man sequels. It's good; it's just not awesome.

The Wolverine and a Bowl of Pop Culture

Does everyone have a bowl? Yes, you have to bring your own; I just don't have enough. And a spoon, too. No chopsticks, because we don't want to leave them standing upright in our pop culture, right? It's bad luck. Evidently. Anyway, get your bowls and your spoons, and pour yourself a heaping bowl of pop culture. But no milk; Wolvie doesn't like it.

I wanted very badly to not want to go see The Wolverine in the theater. Why pay for another movie I was just going to be disappointed in, right? I mean, this year has been particularly good for disappointing movies. And that doesn't even take into account the other Wolverine movie, one of the worst super hero movies made so far (and all because of the ending). [It's amazing how a botched ending can ruin an otherwise decent movie.] But Wolverine has been in my top three favorite heroes since... oh, well, a long time, and Hugh Jackman just nails that role, so I couldn't convince myself to wait. I'm actually glad that I didn't; some times, it's good to go into something with, basically, no expectations.

As it turned out, The Wolverine was much better than I expected it to be, and I actually enjoyed most of it. It has its issues, but, at least, they weren't really bad story-telling issues. The story, amazingly enough, was pretty solid and managed to not go off the cliff that the origin movie did. Of course, the story is only "pretty solid" if you look at it within the context of the X-Men movies. This movie has nothing to do with the comics other than that they pull some familiar characters from the Wolverine mythos to use in the movie. If you were hoping for anything resembling an adaptation of the Frank Miller/Chris Claremont Wolverine mini-series from the early '80s, you're not going to find that here. Okay, you'll get something vaguely resembling it. Very vaguely. He does fight some Hand ninjas. Except their not called that. So we're back to that "vaguely" again.

The thing to know about The Wolverine is that it's not about what it's about it. Within the context of the X-Men movies, the story is here to bridge the gap between X-Men: The Last Stand and the forthcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past and deal with the ramifications of how Last Stand ended. Basically, it's to get Logan to let go of the death of Jean and his part in it. With that goal in mind, The Wolverine actually accomplished its purpose and in a way that made sense. The micro-plot of just this one movie wasn't too bad either, even if it did have more than its share of "what the heck?" moments.

Spoiler alert:
The biggest issue with the movie is the sleight-of-hand they play with Logan's healing power. The dying old guy wants Logan's ability, and the best the writers could come up with is that the old dude is going to "steal" it. Not duplicate it, steal it. Which sounds like they're going to do some kind of thing like when Rogue absorbs other mutants' powers, but, no, the old guy is just going to drill into Logan's bone marrow and transfer the power to himself, which doesn't make any sense, but I'll give it a pass on the handwavium principle. Except that they also "suppress" his healing power using a little "Matrix" bug that gets on Wolvie's heart, and they don't explain that, either, especially after making it seem as if this is some other mutant thing before we find out it's a device. Really, you can only get a pass on one of these things in the movie. The deal with the tiny robot is that they want Wolverine to rip his own heart out to get rid of the thing, so I can see that they're going for the "cool factor" with that, but, then, they don't show it, so they lose out on that, anyway. And it leaves all kinds of questions: does the little robot bug suppress all mutant abilities or just Logan's? Or just Logan's healing factor? It's hard to tell, because he really doesn't use any of his heightened senses in the movie at all, so we don't know if he still has those or not. Of course, there's also the argument that Logan's healing power should have just expelled the little robot bug to begin with, but the movie Wolverine isn't quite as powerful as the comic book Wolverine.

And neither is adamantium, evidently, because we again have a "bullet piercing adamantium" situation in that the old guy cuts off Wolverine's claws to get at his bone marrow. It's slightly more believable than the bullet being fired into Logan's head but not by much.

At any rate, those things are just issues with story points not the story itself, and we have to deal with those all the time. Like people surviving explosions by jumping into water or standing behind a wall or whatever. So, whereas there are some... stupid? silly? okay, stupid... things within the story, the plot of The Wolverine holds up both on the level of there being a villain intent upon stealing Logan's healing powers and as a vehicle for Logan to get over have killed Jean.

Having said all of that, The Wolverine is not a movie you have to see in the theater. It's not like Pacific Rim or Man of Steel (although I think it's a better movie than both of those) that really need to be seen on the big screen to get the full effect of the scope of the action. You can just as easily wait for the DVD for this one, and, honestly, I doubt there's anything necessary in this movie for the overall X-Men story line. If you like Wolverine, it's probably worth seeing it, but you're not going to feel like you missed anything if you give this one a pass on the way to Days of Future Past.

Vampire Karate Witches

As those of you that have been around for a while will know, I frequently mention the difference between what is good and what we like and that they are not necessarily the same thing. For you newer people, you can go back and check this post in particular to get the background). People like to think they are, because people want to think "I like this, so it is good" or "I don't like this, so this is bad." Whether we like something or not has no bearing on its quality of "goodness."

I have a direct experience of this to relate.

Over this past weekend, I went to see Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Let me just start by saying that we didn't go see this so much because we wanted to see it but because we were willing to see it. I was going with a friend and there weren't that many options of movies that he hadn't already seen, so that left us with less than a handful of movies to pick from (I think the actual number was three), and this was the one that rose to the top of things that we were both most willing to go see. For me, it was mostly about Jeremy Renner.

To say that this movie was bad is an understatement. The dialogue was horrible. The story was full of more holes than Swiss cheese. What's really big? Hmm... let's say a planet. But not a small planet like Pluto that gets downgraded from being a planet; let's say something around the size of Uranus, yeah, that one works for this. The plot holes were so big, Uranus could orbit right through them. The movie was absurd. Ludicrous, even. Actually, the movie was at Ludicrous Speed.

And I loved it for that. Okay, well, maybe I didn't love it, but I love it in concept. I enjoyed most of the heck out of it despite how bad it was.

I can imagine how the concept for this movie came about:

#1: Let's make a vampire movie!
#2: Vampires are too done, right now. People are over vampires.
#1: Well, let's make it vampire hunters, then!
#2: No, that's still vampires.
#3: What about witches? No one is doing witches.
#2: Ooh! We could do Hansel & Gretel! They fight a witch.
#1: Witches are lame. They're old hags that can't fight. You'd just have witch hunters walking in and killing all the witches.
#3: We can give them powers.
#1: Like vampires! They can be super strong and super fast.
#2: And know karate!

And, so, we get these huge fight scenes of pasty faced witches that look like vampires and act like vampires, except for the biting, where everyone smashes through trees and boulders and flings spells and never get hurt. It was kind of awesome. I mean, it was completely unashamed of itself in how bad it was. It was like watching a four-year-old rolling around in a mud puddle being all self-satisfied. In fact, it was exactly like that.

I mean, it was like watching kids play an imagination game where they keep making stuff up as they go.

It starts out in a pretty normal Hansel & Gretel setting with some peasant abandoning his children in the woods. The look of the movie is as if it's set in the 1600's. All hovels and burning at the stake and all of that. But, then, as they become witch hunters, there's a scene of newspaper clippings of all the witches they kill as hunters. Newspapers which, of course, didn't exist. All of the "photos" are sketches. The movie is full of anachronistic things of that nature. The movie just doesn't care if it fits the time period or not, which is part of what made it fun. It's also part of what makes it ludicrous.

Kid #1: We're being attacked by a witch!
Kid #2: I pull out my crossbow and shoot at her!
Kid #1: She's too fast for your lame crossbow.
Kid #2: It's a double-barrel machine crossbow!
Kid #1: Fine! I pull out my gun!
Kid #2: You can't have a gun! They didn't have guns!
Kid #1: They didn't have machine crossbows either.
<silence>
Kid #2: You can have a gun.
Kid #1: It's big shotgun, and I shoot at the witch!

The whole movie is like that, and, really, it does just wallow in it, and it made it a lot of fun.

Unlike, say, Van Helsing (with Hugh Jackman) which is much  the same but took itself much too seriously to be enjoyable. In fact, Van Helsing is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, which is unfortunate, because I thought Jackman did a more then fine job with what he was given. Hansel & Gretel never takes itself seriously, and, so, I never had a problem with it. Despite all of the horrible inconsistencies. Even as I sit here writing this, I'm thinking about some of the stupid things in the movie, like the witches being, basically, a separate race and the fact that they don't actually look human at all, so why is there ever a witch problem to begin with? But I kind of also don't care even though my brain is yelling at me that I should care.

Seriously, it's up there yelling, "That's so stupid!" And I'm shrugging and responding, "But it was fun."

Which is not to say that I'd actually recommend the movie to anyone, because I wouldn't. Unless you like mindless action, because that's what this is. Mindless action with a vague setting. Total cotton candy. If you like that kind of thing, this movie is just for you.

Made for 3D

Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to go down to Skywalker Ranch and see a screening of the new 3D release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Before any of you say anything, I highly doubt that there is a single one of you out there that would have turned that down, no matter what you feel about The Phantom Menace. However, I happen to like the movie. Really like it. So, no, it's not my favorite of the Star Wars movies, but even the least of the Star Wars cannon is still Star Wars which puts it miles ahead of everything else. And, honestly, I love the movie. Even Jar Jar, as I've said before. [Scoff if you want, but I think if more of you were able to look at the movie based upon its own merits apart from your expectations, you'd see a different film. But more on that in a bit.]

It's been more than 12 years since I last saw this on the big screen, and it was so worth it to go see it again. And the 3D was AMAZING! Seriously. Of course, I saw it in Stag Theater on Skywalker Ranch, and, as the man said before the movie started, you won't see it anywhere else at a higher quality. I believe it. My children are not happy with me (because, unfortunately, I can't take them with me when I go down there for things like this).
And here's what makes it so awesome: there are no gratuitous 3D shots. I love the new Real 3D; however, I'm not always thrilled with the movies made in 3D. I hate those shots that have no real place in the movie, but the producers really wanted an over-the-top 3D shot for the trailer. It's annoying, to say the least. However, the Star Wars movies weren't made with 3D in mind, so there are none of those shots in the movie. I have to say, though, that Star Wars was just meant for 3D. I think that must be the way Lucas' mind works, because the movie was just incredible. AMAZING! I really don't care how you feel about Menace, you shouldn't let this opportunity to see it in 3D slip past you.
I also have a new respect for the lightsaber duel in Menace. The one from Empire has always been my favorite. It's just so classic in its style, and I love it. Just after that falls the duel at the end of Sith. However, the one from Menace may actually push it out of the #2 slot. After seeing it again on the big screen, I think it is the best example of what it must be like to be a Jedi involved in a lightsaber duel. Most of the credit there has to go to Ray Park. He made that duel.

On the question of gratuitousness (which wasn't really a question, but I'm making it one), this 3D stuff makes an excellent example of the pitfalls for writers in adding things in just because they're cool. Not that there's anything wrong with having cool things in your work, BUT. But sometimes it's out of place. Seeing Menace  in 3D, there is nothing out of place. There is amazing 3D, but nothing jumps out and pokes you in the eye and screams, "I'm here to show you how cool 3D is!" A long while back there was that Spy Kids movie done in 3D, and it's full of shots that are there just to highlight the 3D. Even Coraline, which is a great movie, has specific shots made just for the 3Dness of it.

I suppose what I'm saying is that you have to be really careful with this stuff. When the audience becomes aware that something was added in just to please them, the audience actually, usually, is displeased by it. Yes, the definition of irony. As a writer (for whatever medium), you can't be too overt with these things. Avatar, actually, is a good example of this. There are some shots in the movie that are there just to display the 3Dness of the movie (like the shot in the control room with all the holographic screens (and I can't wait to see the 3D holographic image of the Death Star in Jedi, by the way (and it's totally not gratuitous))), but they are melded into the film so flawlessly that you can barely tell. It seems natural. And it is even though it's shown the way it is just to be 3D. However, one might say that the whole prospect of re-doing Titanic in 3D is the very definition of gratuitousness.

There's a balance that must be maintained between the integrity of the story and giving the audience what it wants. Audiences are fickle in a lot of ways, and, if you give them too much of what they want, they no longer like it. Sort of like allowing kids to gorge on sugar until they're sick.

Which brings me to my next point: audience expectation.

The Phantom Menace disdains audience expectation. People wanted another A New Hope. Maybe, they wouldn't say it that way, but that's what they were looking for. They wanted to relive that experience of seeing Star Wars for the very first time as a kid. And, most of all (I think), they wanted Han Solo. But you know what? Lucas already made that movie. It was called A New Hope. Why make it again? He's said as much in interviews, and I agree with him. He can never make that movie again no matter how hard he tries because the adults, now, that experienced that movie for the very first time back in the 70s can never relive that experience again. You can't go back to being a kid and have that joy and awe that you had when you first saw Star Wars.

So this is another fine line to walk. Although, I agree with Lucas in that he made the movie that he wanted to make (except not exactly, because Qui-Gon was added in because they couldn't do with Yoda, yet, what they wanted to do with him, and Lucas knew that the puppet Yoda could never perform a believable lightsaber duel), he may have gone too far the other direction. That's a hard one to call. And, see, I'm actually on the side of Lucas. My kids love all of the movies, and my kids love Jar Jar. In fact, I don't know of any kids that didn't love Jar Jar. And I think that's great, and I think the problem lies within the adults if they can't get past the fact that Jar Jar is in the movies. [I'm sorry. Remember back to when you first saw Star Wars and take into account how old you were. Now, put yourself at that age in front of Menace and tell me (honestly) that you wouldn't have loved it.]

That doesn't change the fact that Lucas failed to meet the expectations of the greatest proportion of his audience, and his audience has been roasting him for it ever since. As an author, what should you do? Should you strive to meet audience expectation? I'd say no, because it doesn't matter how hard you try, you'll never achieve that goal. Of course, that's me, the author, talking. Most people that are just audience would say, "yes, meet my expectations! Throw in gratuitous 3D shots to show me how cool everything is!" And, then, they wouldn't like it anyway. So, really, it's a no-win situation, and I don't have any good answers.

Well, that's not true, I think we, as the audience, have to learn to accept things as what they are and quit demanding that story tellers write our stories for us. If you feel so strongly about how a story should be written, go write it yourself. I guarantee it will change your perspective.

Other short reviews (because I won't have time to give these the attention they deserve):

Real Steel
I highly enjoyed this movie. Hugh Jackman was great. When is he not great? The kids was a bit to precocious (beyond his years), but it was a good exchange the two had going. The robots were cool. You can boil it down and say this was Rocky with robots, and, in many ways, it was, but the dynamic of the father/son relationship makes it worth watching.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Great movie. Seriously. I can't even begin to explore this in the time I have to do so, so you'll just have to see it. James Franco was great as was John Lithgow. Of course, it was Caesar that stole the show and Serkis certainly deserves some kind of recognition for his performance. I think they did a fabulous job of going back and setting the stage for the old Apes movies, and it made me want to go back and watch them all again (I haven't seen them since I was a kid). I think I'll be doing that, in fact.

Other News:
"The Evil That Men Do" is almost finished. Well, it is finished; I just have to finish with the formatting and the notes. I'm hoping to have it ready for Thursday but, certainly, by the end of the week.

The Audition Process

My oldest son is in choir in high school. Well, he's in the ArtQuest program in drama, but he takes choir along with that. He's learning a lot about auditioning by being involved in this program. To begin with, he had to audition just to get into the ArtQuest program. Even if he'd been in the district of the school, he still would have had to audition to get into ArtQuest. That particular audition wasn't a huge deal. Here's the thing: he's a boy (obviously), and they always need more guys in the drama program (the choir program, too), so he was (almost) a shoe in (something like 85% of the boys that auditioned got accepted (I don't know the exact number and am guessing based on the number of boys my son auditioned with vs the number of those same boys that ended up in his drama group)).

Being in the ArtQuest drama program means that my son has to audition for at least two community productions each school year. That's an interesting requirement. Not be in any outside performances, just audition for them. Obviously, they think knowing how to audition is important. I don't think they actually expect that any of the students will actually get cast. Or maybe they do. One of the two productions my son auditioned for last year was The Pirates of Penzance. We were surprised to find out that he was chosen, because, honestly, we just didn't expect it. Other than the (deleted) shows he was in in middle school, he hadn't done anything. Basically, no experience. But he has a lot of charisma. And he got cast.
But I digress... This is about choir, not drama.

My son didn't want to be in choir. However, my wife took high school choir and is gifted musically, and I was involved in church choir, although I wouldn't say I'm gifted musically. In fact, when people find out I can sing at all, they are often very surprised. heh (Remember that stuff about singing on the phone...) At any rate, my wife kept suggesting that he take choir, that it was one of her best memories from high school, and he kept protesting. And I would remind him that both Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman can sing and dance, but he maintained a "so what" attitude about it. Until a girl at school started telling him about how great choir is, so he dropped Spanish I and took choir. Like I said, he's a boy.

He figured out pretty quickly that he loves choir. And I don't even think it's mostly due to the high girl to boy ratio. Beginning choir is the, for no apparent reason, ACappella group. I say no apparent reason, because they do not perform a cappella. It's a mystery to me. That was last year, though, so I'm trying to pretend it doesn't exist, now.

This year... well, this year is different. But let me backtrack a moment. His debut concert for the year was last week, and that's what has me going on about all of this. This year is concert choir. They call it their advanced group, but they only have the two options for the boys: beginning and advanced. The intermediate group is girls only. But that's not precisely true. There's another group called Chamber Singers. This is the actual advanced group. The other classes are like any other high school class, you sign up for it. So, no matter how badly you may suck, if you've taken beginning choir, you can sign up for the next level, but that's not true with Chamber Singers. Chamber Singers has to be auditioned for. And it's pretty accepted that it's for juniors and seniors. You have to be serious about the whole choir thing to be in Chamber Singers. You have to be in concert choir and, then, audition for the privilege to get to come to school for 0 period and have an extra class of choir every day of the school week.

What's 0 period, you ask? That's the class that starts at the butt crack of dawn (translated as 7:00am) that they have to be there by 6:45am which causes the students to have to get up at around 5:30AM in order to be there on time. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

School started off this year with my son in concert choir as he should be, and all was well with the world. They announced auditions for Chamber Singers. Just to make this clear, my son is a sophomore this year, and Chamber Singers is almost exclusively juniors and seniors. Not that auditions are restricted to juniors and seniors, because you only need to be in concert choir to audition, but that's how it works out. These are the guys and gals that are serious about their singing (and I just have to say some of these kids are amazing). My son decided to audition. Many of his friends told him he shouldn't bother. He's a sophomore. He'd never make it. (Some of you are seeing where this is going.) He talked it over with us. Basically, our advice to him was that he should not not audition. Sure, he probably wouldn't make it, but it would be a good experience, and it wouldn't cost him anything (not even his dignity). It's one of those things where if you don't do it (ask a girl out), then you don't get to do it (go on a date with the girl), but, if you do it, although you may still not get to do it (because she might (and, in some cases, will probably) say no), it might work (she might surprise you with a yes). So what did he have to lose? If he didn't audition, he would certainly not get to be in Chamber Singers, but, by auditioning, there was the chance, however small it might be.

And he made it in. Not necessarily because he's a great singer (he's still working on that), but they (always) need boys, and he was good enough. I mean, it's not like they took every boy that auditioned, so he made the grade even if he's not as amazing as some of the other boys that have been in Chamber for multiple years.
(Yes, this means I have to get up at 5:30AfreakingM every morning to make his lunch and make sure he gets off to school okay. But it's worth it (I think).)

Which finally brings me to my point. As I was sitting and listening to the choir teacher explain what they have to go through to be in Chamber Singers and how daunting it must have been to audition, and I know he was daunted, because he came home talking about how great some of the other boys' auditions were and how he would surely not make it, because, in comparison, he sucked, I realized that this is what's it should be like to write. The audition process that is. If you want to write, you have to approach it all the same way my son did with his audition to get into Chamber Singers.

You look at it and realize, "Wow, there are a lot of talented writers there trying to get into that group. I certainly don't measure up against them."  Still, "What have I got to lose, though?" Not trying is the same as failing, after all. So you write your book, and, even as you are looking around at the other books out there (like Rowling, Mary Doria Russel, Stephen Lawhead) and feeling completely daunted, you go forward anyway. Because, sometimes, sometimes you make it. Sure, you're not the best, but you're good enough. And, in the end, that's what really matters. Being good enough. (Unless you're my daughter, in which case you do have to be the best, because she has to win at everything (and don't even think about playing board games with her, because she has uncanny luck with  them).) Then, once you're in, you continue to get better until that time someone new comes along and is looking at you the way you used to look at all the other writers there before you.

Unfortunately, the writing world isn't really like auditioning for my son's choir group. You know, a place where things are based on merit and skill. No, the writing world is more like a cattle call. Hundreds of people show up and some bored guy comes out and "randomly" (>snicker<) selects a hand full of people to join him. Sure, they keep going through that process until they have some people they can use, but most people are turned away without a chance because they failed to be wearing a white shirt with red spots on the particular day. Or didn't have a tall enough hat on. Or failed to wear a blinking, neon sign over their head saying "pick me." Or did wear the sign, but everyone else showed up with one, too.

Still... you can't let the reality of the situation keep you from trying. Reduced down, it's still like my son going out to audition for Chamber Singers. You're always going to go into these things without enough experience, skill, and clout, but you have to do it anyway. Even though you may never be the best, you don't have to be the best to be good enough. In  the end, I think "good enough" is all that's really important as long is "good enough" is your best. Because that's what my son did, his best. It wasn't the best, but it was good enough. And "good enough" is a good place to start.

And, because it feels appropriate to repeat:
Jim Butcher (of The Dresden Files) says that being published is like being chased by a grizzly bear. You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the guy next to you.
I'll leave that to you to puzzle out.
heh heh

DC vs Marvel and How It Relates To Writing (pt 2): Captain America

Super hero movies have really come into their own in the last decade. It was long believed, along with fantasy, that it was a genre that would never be tapped. Marvel struggled for more than two decades to get Spider-Man off the ground. Even the super hero movies that had been made (the Reeve Superman and Burton's Batman, neither of which I liked) were only brief flashes that quickly descended into all sorts of foolishness. None of which can be forgiven. I think the nipples on the Batman and Robin costumes in Batman & Robin scarred me. However, all of that changed with X-Men, the movie that proved a real super hero movie could be made. And it opened the door to everything that has come since in terms of super hero movies.

Marvel has shown again and again that they know how to capture the essence of their characters even while changing some of the details to be more contemporary. Spider-Man and Iron Man are as near to perfect adaptations as you can get. I would like to say that DC got it right with Batman Begins, but, even though it's a great movie, it failed to really give us a distilled Batman. Rather it just gave us Nolan's version of Batman, a man really motivated by revenge, rather than the protector, the knight, that he's supposed to be. With the fiasco that was Green Lantern (along with Superman Returns), I'm beginning to think that Warner Brothers doesn't understand comic books or super heroes. Marvel, though, has given us another movie to add into the near perfect adaptation category: Captain America: The First Avenger.

Of all the new movies I saw this summer, Captain America was the one I enjoyed the most. I think it also has to rate as the best. I could break that down movie by movie, but I don't really want to spend the time to do it.  Set against the other super hero offerings, though, I think it's the winner, although Thor may make it a close call. At any rate, I've added it to my top three of near perfect super hero adaptations (alongside the aforementioned Spider-Man and Iron Man).

Before the release of the movie, I was worried about how they would deal with the whole being frozen in an ice cube thing that allows Cap to be revived in our time. After all, Captain America wasn't actually a part of the original Avengers team; he wasn't re-introduced until Avengers #4. I was pleased with how they chose to handle that, though, and telling the story as a flashback worked really well. I'm also not troubled by Cap starting out in the Avengers from the beginning in the movies. Captain America has become the symbol of the Avengers, inextricably entwined with them, and it's part of delivering the essence of Cap and the Avengers that has him there from the beginning.

The casting was spot on. Chris Evans was excellent. Beyond excellent. I think he was perfect in all actuality, and I can't imagine a better choice for the part. Like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Or Patrick Stewart as Professor X. Tommy Lee Jones was completely enjoyable and perfect for that role even if it wasn't a stretch for him as an actor. Hugo Weaving was impressive as the Red Skull; likewise, I can't think of a better choice in actors for that part, although I'm not as committed to my position on that as I am on Evans. Stanley Tucci is one of my favorites, so I was glad to see him included. Joining the Howling Commandos to Cap made perfect sense, and the casting there also worked.

The weaving of the plot into what is going on in the rest of the Marvel Universe was superb. The cosmic cube ties in the Asgardian elements. Tony Stark's father is there. And we've already seen pieces of the Captain America legacy in some of the other films, so they've done a great job setting up for The Avengers. And the story as a self-contained entity was also excellent. We see the kind of person Steve Rogers is. Someone who believes in doing what's right no matter the personal cost. Someone who won't back down even against impossible odds. And, most importantly, we get a glimpse of him as a man out of time and dealing with having to adjust to a brand-new world.

The only negative thing I can say about the movie has to do with something my son pointed out. My younger son. He didn't like that they had "lasers" during World War II. He thought that was too sci-fi. Otherwise he loved the movie. Of course, they didn't have lasers in World War II or in the movie. After he said that, though, I realized that they didn't make it entirely explicit in the movie that the Hydra weapons were being powered by the cube. They do show what they're doing, but they never actually explain what's going on, so, to him, it was blue lasers. Of course, he does live in a Star Wars house, so, perhaps, that mistake is to be expected. After I explained to him what was going on with the cube, he was okay with the "lasers," but I probably shouldn't have needed to explain it to him. I mean, he's a smart kid (in fact, we just found out that he's going to be skipping 5th grade (school starts next Wednesday, and they're just letting us know this) and going right into middle school a year early), and, if I had to explain it to him, I'm sure there are other people out there that missed what was going on there, too. Other than that one snag, though, it's a pretty near perfect adaptation.

For this year, at any rate, if you line up the Marvel offerings of movies against the DC offering, Marvel is clearly dominant. Marvel delivered two excellent movies while Warner Brothers dropped a turd. Warner Brothers' desire to challenge The Avengers with their own Justice League is beginning to look absurd. They failed to pull together a Wonder Woman movie and decided to make a television series instead. The reviews for the Wonder Woman pilot were so abysmal that they're not even getting that. The re-boot of Superman is being re-booted. And, to top it off, they're losing Nolan (and, probably, Bale) after The Dark Knight Rises. Things for DC don't look good. However, Marvel's prospects keep looking better and better.

Pop Culture Class featuring the X-Men!

Yes, it's that time again. Time for another lesson in pop culture, so put on your pop culture hats and let's get started. Oh, and remember; it always stays crunchy in milk!
Before we get into the movie itself, let's talk about some trailers. I'm a big fan of trailers. My wife frequently gets upset with me for wanting to watch them on DVDs. She wants to just go straight to the movie, but I like to watch the trailers. Today, two trailers I hadn't seen before.

First up is the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now, I've been seeing blurbs for this  one for a while, but I've been ignoring them. I still remember the disaster that was Tim Burton's attempt to revive the Apes franchise, and I couldn't keep the bad taste out of my mouth whenever I saw anything about this new one. I haven't been interested in checking out the trailer for it, so it took having it shoved in front of a movie that I was watching for me to pay attention to it. The first hook was James Franco. I can't help it; I like the guy. I'm not saying he's the best actor ever, but, my gosh, he's impressive. He took over 60 hours of class in one semester (and I thought I was impressive when I did 24 hours one semester). The next hook is that this isn't simply another ape movie. It's a morality tale about what we're doing to our world and the irresponsibility with which we use technology. I went from having less than zero interest in this film to really wanting to see it.

I have only thing to say about the other trailer: Hugh Jackman. Okay, well, Real Steel, surprisingly, looks like it may prove to be a decent film even without Mr. Jackman. However, Hugh being in it almost makes it a must see for me. Which, actually, is surprising, since, when I first heard they were making a movie based on Rock'em Sock'em Robots, I was aghast with disbelief. I mean, what's next Operation: The Movie? Or, maybe, Monopoly? Wait, I know! Battleship! The producers have, wisely, done away with any ties to the toy, at this point, and, what's left, is what looks like a genuinely good movie.

At this point, have you forgotten what movie we're here to see?

X-Men: First Class gets the opening exactly right. It returns to the same scene that opened the first X-Men movie, so we see, again, young Erik Lehnsherr being dragged away from his parents in a Nazi concentration camp. We get slightly more of what happens to Erik, this time, though, and we also get to meet Sebastian Shaw, played expertly by Kevin Bacon.

However, from there, the movie bounces around and forward through time and feels a little rushed. Like there was more they should have been showing but had to cut it all out. That's always difficult when they're trying to provide enough back story and introduce several characters all at the same time, and they almost pulled it off smoothly, but not quite. Things (mostly) smooth out when we get to the present day of 1962. Oliver Platt gets a role, and, I have to say, I love Oliver Platt, so it was a joy to see him in  the movie. Rose Byrne, of Bridesmaids, is in as Moira MacTaggert, and she is also quite good.

The main failing of the movie may just be a failing in me, although I'm not convinced. It might be one caused by the studio, in  this case Fox, not Marvel, not really knowing what audience they want to target. Marvel seems to have worked this out, for the most part, in  their own movies, but the X-Men franchise seems to be struggling with it. The conflict lies in how to deal with fans of the actual comic books. If you stray too far from the comics, the fans get into an uproar, but, sometimes, if you stay too close to the comic, the broader audience won't go see the movie at all (I could be wrong, but I think Warner Brothers is about to have this problem with Green Lantern (which is not to say that the movie's not going to have a big opening, but I think that may be where it ends)). When movies adapted from comics first started getting popular, that's how the studios approached it, balancing fans against people that never read comics, people who only knew of the characters peripherally. I'm finding my issue lies in a third area, that group of people that at one time followed comics but has been away from them for an extended length of time. This is the audience, the nostalgia audience, that Fox keeps messing up with. And it's a much larger audience than the audience of current fans. These are the people with the kids who, if the movie is good, will take their kids back to the same movie over and over again.
All of that to say that one particular character in the movie really bothered me. Bothered me to the extent that it was distracting to me. For someone currently following the X-Men comics, this character shouldn't be an issue, but, as I watched the movie, not having even looked inside an X-Men comic published in the last decade, I couldn't see Azazel as more than a cheap Nightcrawler rip off. That character, in particular, decreased my enjoyment of the movie, because Nightcrawler has always been one of my favorite X-Men.

Of course, I came home and did my background research before I started this post and discovered Azazel is a character that's been introduced since my sojourn in the comic book world ended. And he's such a Nightcrawler rip off because he's, yes, Nightcrawler's father. I won't go into my issues with that, since they have nothing to do with the movie. Most people, though, aren't going to go home after the movie and look up the character and find out there's a (unspoken) reason he's in the film. Again, maybe my reaction is just mine, but I would be surprised.

The only real failing of the movie is that it succumbs to that long held movie tradition of the crash course training event whereby a completely untrained individual or group becomes expert at what they're doing in a matter of moments. In this case, the training of the X-Men lasts an entire week, and they actually comment on it during the movie, "Look at what we've accomplished in just a week..." For a movie that spans 18 years, you'd think they'd have worked out a better way than to cram all the training into that last week of the storyline, but no... It's unfortunate.

Other than that, it's a good movie. Fox seems to have learned from its mistakes with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, although they may have also created some continuity issues between the two movies. Maybe they'll work those out at some point, but I doubt it. Now that I know Azazel is a real character, I'd actually go see it again. There's a lot to absorb in a movie like this, and it would just be nice to watch it without getting prickly every time Azazel pops onto the screen.

As for the cast and characters, as I already implied, Kevin Bacon made an excellent villain. He's undervalued as an actor, so it's good to see him in a high profile role, again.

January Jones is perfectly cast as Emma Frost, the white queen of the Hellfire Club. She goes from the role of the ice queen Betty Draper (Mad Men) to embodying that image literally. She doesn't show a lot of range, but, then, she doesn't need to.

James McAvoy is a pleasure as Professor X, or, really, just Charles. There are glimmers of the character as performed by Patrick Stewart in McAvoy's performance, and, really, what more can you ask for than that? The only issues with the character come from the writing and not the acting. The issue stems from the desire to create a more basic conflict between Charles and Eric than one just of method. They play Xavier not just as wanting peaceful co-existence between mutant and human but as wanting the humanizing of mutants. Not that he wants them to not be mutants, but he wants them to be indistinguishable from humans. He sort of comes off as a bigot in this respect.

The purist is, of course, Magneto. He believes in embracing mutantness, and, well, if you've seen the other X-Men movies, you know where this goes. Michael Fassbender does an admirable job in the role. Once he dons the helmet, he even rather looks like Ian McKellen.

It was nice to see Banshee included. He's another of those X-Men that I really like that's often overlooked. He's an interesting character that they're really never delved into enough, so it was cool to see him in the mix. Caleb Jones did an adequate job in the role, but, honestly, I just kept seeing Rupert Grint superimposed in the role.

Which brings us to Jennifer Lawrence. I'm sure all of you fans of The Hunger Games have been wondering when I'd get to her. Unfortunately, I don't have anything really positive to say about her. No raving about her performance. There's also nothing bad to say about her performance; it just wasn't anything that stood out. Possibly, the role didn't require anything of her other than to stand around and be herself, look pretty, but Mystique never really came into focus. There was a lack of emotional intensity that should have been present.

Oh, and there's an awesome Wolverine cameo. That alone is almost worth the movie even if it had been horrible. Since it wasn't horrible, the Wolverine cameo really is icing on the cake. Not awesome cake, but good cake. With awesome icing.