Skin Game (a book review post)

Am I all caught up now? I think I'm all caught up now.
Actually, I know I am, because I checked. I'm so caught up there's not even a release date for the next book. And, my goodness, there are a lot of these now!
Butcher seems to be playing quite the long game with the series at this point, each book moving the over-arching story a few inches closer to wherever it is he's going with all of this, which may be feet or may be miles away.

My biggest criticism about this book remains the issue of Dresden and his association with pop culture. I get that it's part of Butcher's schtick with Dresden, but it's gotten beyond the stage where it makes any sense, if it ever made sense. I mean, come on, Dresden has been stuck on an island in a cave for a year (at least) when this book starts but, yet, Dresden is still up to date on the latest pop culture references. And, yeah, it's funny (to an extent) but, now that I've noticed that Dresden shouldn't be aware of any of this, I can't get it out of my head as I read. Plus, in this one, the parkour joke ran on a bit far. Running jokes should be more related to sprints than to marathons.

So, yeah, that's the biggest fault I found with this book. In fact, this is the first book in a while where I felt Butcher was really hitting his stride (and we all know how long Dresden's legs are, so that's saying something), again, with Dresden, pop culture aside. Maybe it was dealing with the Nicodemus and the Denarians again or, maybe, it was having Michael back. Maybe, Butcher was just hitting the right beats. Maybe it was the absence of vampires, not that I don't like Thomas, but there have been a lot of vampires for a lot of while in these books, and there wasn't anything like that this time. No stuff with the council, either.

Oh, wait, there was one other thing:
A clever author will hide a twist in a story in plain view by giving you the pieces of the puzzle but in such a way that you don't really know what you're seeing or how to put them together. A good example of this is The Sixth Sense. When the reveal happens, you kick yourself and realize you should have seen it the whole time.
A not so clever author hide the twist by hiding the pieces so that you can't figure it out at all. Sure, I suppose you could guess the twist, but that's just guessing. A good example of this is The Illusionist, a movie which has, like, 10 minutes of flashbacks during the reveal to show you all of the things it didn't show you during the movie.
And that's what Butcher does here, stops and almost literally says, "Oh, here's what I didn't tell you about that happened earlier in the story." There are ways you can make that work but probably not in a first person narration where the narrator is the one holding stuff behind his back.

Anyway... I suppose I got over that bit fairly easily because I almost forgot to include it at all despite the fact that I was quite annoyed at that point in the book.

This book feels like it has a lot of significant events in it. Little events. Not huge things like when Dresden died or when Dresden became the Winter Knight but lots of little things, all of which would be spoilery, so I'm not going to mention them. And there's one thing that happened that the un-happening of is never mentioned, though it's kind of implied that the un-happening happened, but that also seems like it should be more significant than to mention that it happened, or un-happened, and I don't know if it's significant or not! And it's kind of niggling at me and I want to know what it means!

Damn you, Butcher!

Well, as I'm sure I've said before, if you're a fan of the Dresden books, you're almost sure to like this one. If you're not a fan, it's probably because you haven't read any of the books. Or... well, I'll just say it: There's probably something wrong with you.

Cold Days (a book review post)

Wow! It has been a long time since I read one of these! More than three years according to the date on when I reviewed Ghost Story. Looking back, I remember that I had really wanted to get started on Cold Days pretty much right away, but, well, I didn't have the book yet, and, then, I continued to not have the book for, well, three years. heh I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Besides, I've been reading other things.

Which I finally needed a break from, evidently, because most of what I've been reading has been on the heavier side, and the Dresden books, in my mind, are still categorized as "light reading." I may have to re-think that after this one, though, and probably actually should have begun to rethink that several books ago. These books are not so "light and fun," anymore, though I suppose I still would not call them heavy.

Anyway...

Obviously, Harry didn't stay dead. Or, well, wasn't quite dead. At any rate, he's back in the land of the living. Although I would guess that we haven't seen the end of the ghost world based on the way that Butcher tends to bring things back around. This book is another example of that, bringing threads back in from all over the place from earlier in the series. It keeps it interesting. You can't ever just be done with one of the books, because it all seems to matter.

That's a good thing, by the way. At least it is in my book.
heh

Maybe it was the long break I had from the Dresden books, but I feel like I enjoyed this one more than I did the last few, though, looking back at my reviews and ratings and things, that's probably not actually true. Except for Turn Coat; that one was definitely the low point of the series so far for me.

Although I will admit that the pop culture references did begin to wear on me after awhile. I don't think there were than in previous books, but it felt like he was trying too hard with them this time. I felt myself being reminded of the Xanth novels and how the quality of the puns went down as the series progressed; the quality went down as the frequency increased. It wasn't quite that bad, here, but I do have to wonder how Harry is able to draw on all of this pop culture seeing as how he can't really watch television and movies. Sure, I get some of it's from his childhood but, really, he's way too current for an isolated wizard. And, no, this isn't a big thing, just something I noticed this time.

The last book, kind of obviously, dealt with how Harry's friends dealt with his death. This book deals with how they deal with him still being alive after thinking he was dead. Who's moved on and who hasn't, so to speak. It's good stuff. Real emotions and all of that. Mostly, it doesn't skimp. Except maybe with Thomas. That seemed a little rushed.

Overall, great addition to the series. He got me with the ending again. I'm a pretty savvy reader and am not frequently surprised at endings, but this two in a row where Butcher has managed to squeeze somethings in that I didn't anticipate. At least one of those things, I probably should have, but, then, all you of you probably should have, too, but I bet you didn't see it coming either. He did a good job of setting that up. I'm looking forward to the next book, Skin Game, and, this time, I already have it!

Ready Player One (a movie review post)

First, I have not read Ready Player One.
I've thought about reading it for a while, now, because, evidently, it made a big splash in certain circles. It's one of those books that I would read for the sake of seeing what the big deal is as opposed to having any real interest in the genre or the subject matter. HOWEVER...
After seeing the movie, I have lost all desire to read the book.
And that is a failing on the part of the movie. If an adaptation is good, it will give you a desire to seek out the source material, and this movie killed the desire I already had in reading the book.

Well, Ernest Cline probably played a part in that, too. I heard an interview with him where he goes on and on, basically, about how great he is and how original his novel is and how no one had ever done anything like that before...
Wait a minute! Original? Does he actually think his idea about a virtual world is original? Because that's what he said.
But, maybe, he comes from an alternate Earth where Snow Crash and the Otherland series and a plethora of other novels were never written so he thought he was first. Except I'm sure that's not the case. He's just one of those guys who is full of himself. Maybe it was because his book was a smash hit, but, honestly, he's probably been like that his whole life.

The lacklusterness of the movie didn't do anything to convince me otherwise.

Yes, I just called the movie "lackluster," which is not to say that it wasn't full of luster. It's shiny and sparkly and full of sheen. It is, after all, Spielberg, and the man knows how to make a movie. So, if you just want to wallow in the visual extravagance of it all, this movie will do it for you. It's like a reflecting pool.

Which is to say that it's shallow.
Shallow as heck.
It has one message: People spend too much time online.
It has one message, and the movie isn't really subtle about its presentation of it: People spend too much time online.
It has one message that they are so worried you won't get that they slap you in the face with it at the end of the movie: Get the fuck off your computer a couple of days a week!
Okay, so they're not quite that aggressive with it, but it's close. It is a PG-13 movie, after all.

Part of the draw for me for seeing the movie was the supposed 80s pop culture theme. I mean, I grew up in the 80s so, of course, that was a draw. The problem, then, is that this is just not true. Which is not to say that the movie doesn't have 80s pop culture references; the protagonist does, after all, drive a DeLorean. But it's misleading to say that the movie is a tribute to the 80s. Actually, that's an outright lie. It's not the 80s that the movie is a tribute to but pop culture itself. Sure, the 80s gets plenty of screen time, but the movie opens with a nod to Minecraft and soon follows with a twister reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, neither of which have anything to do with the 80s. The Atari and D&D references are more appropriately attributed to the 70s.

There's nothing wrong with all of the other pop culture references -- I think it's better, in fact -- I just find the misrepresentation, mostly on the part of viewers from what I can tell, to be interesting. Maybe people seeing the movie are missing the non-80s references? Or, maybe, because there are a lot of video game references, they have no context at all for getting those? Or maybe they're placing other references they're familiar with into the 80s because that's when they became familiar with said reference. Like Willy Wonka, also from the 70s. I don't know.

People are weird.

To be clear, it's not a bad movie. The movie is thoroughly enjoyable in a cotton candy kind of way. It's visually exciting and won't tax your brain by giving you any thoughts or asking you to figure anything out. It's also totally forgettable, which I find unfortunate. Like cotton candy, it's going to melt in your mouth before you ever get a chance to swallow; I just find myself preferring things with more substance these days. Or all of my days, actually, I suppose.

No stand out performances, either. They're all adequate, but no one worth mentioning, not even Simon Pegg, though he's as enjoyable as ever.

Ninja Mutants: An Extended Review -- Part Three: A Cultural Phenomenon

Does it come as a surprise that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started out as a joke? I bet it doesn't to some of you. I think the joke was aimed mostly at Frank Miller, since much of the concept was based off of Daredevil, which Miller was doing at the time, and Ronin, which was Frank Miller's. There are other influences, but, really, those seem to be the biggest. The whole Foot Clan thing was a play on Miller's The Hand, which he created for Daredevil.

I thought it was a joke but not a particularly funny one. I had just started collecting comics seriously around the time TMNT first came out, not that anyone really heard about it at the time, since the first issue had a print run of only around 3200 copies. As Peter Laird said, "It was a goof." It was, they thought, a one-off. A gag. The evidence of that can be seen in that they, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, published it as an oversize issue, larger (much) than the standard comic book.

TMNT #1 is currently valued at around $4000.

But the first issue sold out, which lead to a second issue... and a third... Within a year, the Turtles, the gag, had become something so much bigger than Eastman and Laird could ever had imagined. It had taken over their lives. Three years after the debut in 1984, the Turtles were on TV, and Eastman and Laird were busy trying to run a multi-million dollar company, something neither of them had ever dreamed of. Or were exactly happy with. Laird quit drawing, the one thing that had always been a source of happiness for him. Eventually, Eastman sold his rights in the company because he wanted to do things not related to the Turtles.

That's an interesting irony, that Eastman sold his share, because he's the one that has ended up keeping his fingers in the Turtles pie, so to speak, although it's Laird that owns the company and all of that.

By the end of the 80s, the Turtles had become a thing. A rather big thing, in fact, spawning all sorts of copycat titles about things like Radioactive Hamsters and who knows what else. I was busy trying to avoid them. All of them. Rather unsuccessfully since I did a lot of working with kids during the summers. The Turtles were everywhere!

But I didn't have my first real encounter with them until my freshman year of college. I was doing a lot of painting miniatures for money at the time

and someone approached me with a request to paint a set of Turtles miniatures. [I wish I had pictures of those, but, alas, I do not.] They were pretty cool, actually, and it was $$$, so I took the job. Which required research. No, seriously! I had to know how to paint the various characters, not all of which were the Turtles. The miniatures were based off the original comics and had figures I was unfamiliar with. Even April was unfamiliar since, originally, she was a lab assistant (to an Evil Genius), not a reporter.

Which is kind of the point. Eastman and Laird didn't have any plans for the Turtles when they created that first issue of the comic series. When it took off, they made stuff up as the went, just trying to keep up with demand (and failing). What happened was that the Turtles underwent many, let's say, "creative re-boots." When they licensed them out in the mid-80s for the cartoon series, the origin was re-done and April became a reporter. When the work became (quickly) too much for Eastman and Laird to keep up with, they allowed other creators to put their own spin on the Turtles which resulted in many alternate stories and ideas (like one with the Turtles set in medieval Japan). They even had to bring in another creative team at one point to do a completely separate series just to fill in the gaps in the continuity of their own series.

The end result of all of this is that any time the Turtles have changed formats, they have been re-imagined. There is no definitive origin for them, not any more. Maybe not ever. Probably, though, the one most people are familiar with is what came out of the hugely popular cartoon, the one I thought was too dumb to sit through. [I'm just glad my kids have never wanted to watch it!]  In fact, most of the negative reaction to the current Bay movie is that the movie owes more to the comic books than it does to the 80s TV show. Perhaps that's why it didn't bother me. The movie, despite having 6' tall, talking turtles, is not cartoonish, and I liked that.

The important thing, though, is something that began as a joke 30 years ago is still here. And not just still here like it's over moldering in some corner somewhere; it's still a pop culture force. I have to say, that first issue, which I did finally read, was pretty brilliant. All of the early issues were. It was a great parody of comics, the same container of radioactive goo that created Daredevil also giving rise to Splinter and the Turtles. It wasn't quite as silly as I thought it was, after all. Okay, the cartoon was silly, but that comic series was... well, it was something new.

Obviously, people liked it, because the Turtles are still here.

Kids' Clothes Were Never This Cool

Have you seen the clothes they make for kids these days? They're amazing. Kids' clothes were never this cool when I was a kid. It was all like tiny grownup clothes. I mean, they didn't even have Star Wars t-shirts! Well, okay, they did, but it was only every once in a while. And they were made with those big iron decals, basically, so, once you wore it about three times, the image was all cracked and peeling off. Well, not when you wore it; once it was washed a few times, it looked like it really came from a long time ago from a galaxy far, far away. Of course, the answer to that was to never wash it. Right?

One of my friends... Hold on; let me really emphasize that: ONE of my friends had a Star Wars shirt with R2 and C-3PO on it. He was the envy of every boy in our class. I was in my 20s before I had my own Star Wars t-shirt. Unless you count Underoos. Yeah, that was about as cool as it got when I was a kid. You could get underwear with stuff on it but not actual clothes. I had the Boba Fett Underoos

which were cool if you wanted to run around the house pretending to be Boba Fett (a Boba Fett with no pants), but you couldn't really wear the shirt out in public without every other person asking you what was on your shirt. Saying "a chest plate" really didn't help. Yes, I know.
I also had the Yoda Underoos

which were better, because you could wear that shirt out in public. Even if someone didn't know who he was, you could just say, "He's Yoda. He's from Star Wars."

When I was a kid, you couldn't even get band t-shirts (not that I wanted any) unless you actually went to the concert and bought them! It wasn't really until the late 80s and U2 that you could actually go to a store and buy a band t-shirt. Other than Spencer's, I mean. You could get that stuff in there, but I wasn't allowed in that place. Regular department stores and clothing stores had regular clothes, and that was it. Cool was not allowed.

All of that has changed now. Pop culture is everywhere. Any brand of cool you can think of, you can find. And you can find it virtually anywhere.

So, yeah, I've been back-to-school shopping with my kids, and it's always envy-making. Well, clothes shopping in general with my kids is envy-making. Even with my daughter. Not that I want all the pink, sparkly stuff she has, but they have cool Star Wars clothes for her, too! She's got the one shirt with... wait, I'll show you!

I love that shirt! And she even picked it out. I'm not sure what that says about how she thinks about me, but I don't think I really care. And clothes shopping with my daughter always makes my wife depressed. She's always, "I want one of those," or, "I want those colors," but they don't make that kind of stuff for adults.

I just have to say: These days, kids have it good.

And it's not just with clothes; it's with books, too. When I was in middle school, there were no books being written for kids my age. Or, well, there were, but they were all romances aimed at girls. The "YA" section (or whatever they called it then) didn't even get a full-sized bookcase. The entire section was located on one side of a bookcase that was only waist high. And it was all romance like Sweet Valley High, which had just come out. Things like The Chronicles of Narnia were stocked in the sci-fi/fantasy section because Harry Potter was still more than a decade away and the idea that you could actually write mature(ish) books aimed at teens and young teens was still a foreign concept.

I'm not even going to talk about Lego. Because, oh my gosh, THAT is just so unfair.

Anyway...
Kids have it good. And they don't appreciate it.
But, then, what kids ever do?

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.

What Your Blog Says About You: Part One -- Personality

As with many writers I know, I was advised that starting a blog would be a good way to gain readers for my recently finished book (this was back in 2011), but I had no idea how to go about doing that. Basically, the one thing I did know was that I couldn't have a blog that just said "buy my book" every time I posted something. I mean, I wouldn't read that blog, and I was pretty sure that no one else would either. Heck, I don't actually think I could even write that blog if I tried.

Which left the question: If I'm going to have a blog, what do I blog about?

The obvious answer, as a writer, was writing. But that seemed to me, on an ongoing basis, to be boring. I mean, I wouldn't read that blog. Well, maybe occasionally, if there was an interesting topic, but it's hard to make gerunds interesting. Still, writing seemed like a good starting place. And things related to writing. And reading. And, well, you can see what I decided on by looking up at the top of the screen.

Still, having content is not the same as having personality, and it's the personality (or the way that you talk about the content) that's important. Why? Because, other than when you're talking about yourself (which you have to do if you want to sell your book), there is no topic that you can choose to talk about that someone else isn't also going to be talking about. If I did (and if I ever do, please smack me) want to do a post about gerunds, it would not be a topic that some other blogger hasn't already done, so the only thing I can bring to that is, well, me.

Of course, when I was first starting out, I hadn't thought about it like that. I hadn't thought about the personality of my blog at all at that point. I had just kind of gone with it. The most I knew was that I would talk about the things that I like to talk about, and, to that extent, it would convey my personality.

About a year into blogging, I was confronted with it, though. I'd decided to do the a-to-z thing, and they were pushing short posts. I get the whole short post thing; I really do, and that wasn't the first time I'd seen people saying that the best way to get followers is to have short posts, but, see, that's not me. For one thing, I don't tend to like short posts. Either they don't say anything to begin with or, about the time the blogger is beginning to say something, the post is over. Why would I want to write in a style I don't like? But, more importantly, I felt it would be like lying. If I was going to have a bunch of new traffic to my blog, I wanted them to see the way that I blog, not some false front for the sake of pulling in followers only to go back to my actual style once a-to-z was over.

To put it another way, I realized that I had established a particular personality with my blog, and I wasn't willing to subvert that temporarily just to gain followers. Who I was on my blog was important to me.

And the blogs that I like most are all ones that have a particular personality that comes from the blogger. Maybe, it's a total facade for the sake of the blog, but that's okay, because the blog is the interface, so it's the personality presented through that interface which is important. I find more and more that I have no interest in blogs that are devoid of any type of personality. And, specifically, I like best those blogs which promote thought. Thoughts. I like what I read to make me think. And that's the kind of blog I try to have, too. So, even when I'm talking about writing or reading or even pop culture, I try to do it in a way that will make people think. Or see things from a new perspective. I'm just not a bandwagon kind of guy.

I also realize that the personality of my blog is not what anyone could say is a popular one, but I'm okay with that. I'm not, after all, trying to fit in.

All of that to say that I think the first thing you should do as a blogger is to figure out what kind of personality you want your blog to have. Yes, you can choose that, because the personality of your blog doesn't have to be related to your own personality. That's the fascinating thing about blogging. And, if you have more than one blog (which is CRAZY, but I know some people do), each blog can have a different personality. Amazing, I know.

But, wait, you say, "I've been blogging for three years, and I've never given my blog a personality!" Well, actually, you have, because you can't get away from that. Your blog projects some kind of image about who you are; it just might be that it's not an image you would have chosen if you'd thought about it. The good thing about it is that you can always make that decision and implement it. And, if you plan for your blog to be interactive in any way, I'd say that it's a necessary thing.

So, sit down with your blog today if you haven't already done so and help it to figure out who it wants to be. The overprotective big brother? The crazy, inappropriate uncle? The insane aunt with too many cats that wants to pinch your cheeks? The grandfather that slips money to the grand kids when no one is looking? Oh, no, wait, the class clown! [Yeah, that's so not me, even though I wish it was sometimes.] Personality is the first step toward a successful blogging career.

Oh, and, yeah, go buy my book!

The Men in Black

Well, it's been a while, but it's finally time for another big, whopping bowl of pop culture! Evidently, my pop culture diet has been lacking, lately, and it's been making me irregular. (okay, no, I don't know what that means, but it just... you know what? never mind! It's my blog, and I can say those things if I want to)

I like movies. Let me re-phrase that: I'm really into movies. There was a time, once, long ago, when I was actually thinking about going into movies. Special effects, specifically. I even got accepted into some programs, but... yeah, there's always a but... money and distance was an issue. In other words, the distance was an issue because of the money. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, I used to really do movies. Especially during the summer. I'd see a dozen easy, and some of those I'd see more than once. However, time and money are an issue these days, so I don't really make it to the movies the way I'd like to be able to. I mean, it's one thing when it's just me, and I can hit a matinee for $8.00, but, when you're trying to coordinate an entire family, even for a matinee, $40 per movie adds up pretty quickly. It means choices have to be made.

Every summer, we have to really look at the movies coming out and decide which are the ones we most want to see. This past summer, that was Avengers and Brave. I also managed to go see Spider-Man with my younger son (because no one else cared to go see it) and Batman (by myself). [All of those links go back to the reviews I did of those movies.] You may see a comic book theme here. One movie, a comic book movie, that got missed, because everyone wanted to see it and we just couldn't squeeze it in and several members of the family cried "foul" when I suggested that I would just go see it alone, was Men in Black 3. I was pretty bummed about missing it in the theater, but that's just how things are some times.

I'm even more bummed, now, about having missed it in the theater, because I finally saw it. Wow! What a great movie.

I'm already a big Men in Black fan. It's based on a comic book, Jones and Smith (or should that be Smith and Jones?) are excellent and excellent together, and the first two movies were just so much fun. Say what you want about the second; it was still a lot of fun, and I like it. So do my kids. Well, MiB3 did not disappoint.

Smith and Jones were just as excellent as they always are, but it was Josh Brolin that really stole the show. He was amazing! He was as much Agent K as Tommy Lee Jones was. I mean, my kids thought it was some kind CGI magic and didn't realize that it was some other actor playing the character until we told them. That's some amazing stuff right there, and the movie is worth seeing just for his performance. Facial expressions, voice, everything.

It was nice to see Emma Thompson in the movie, also, although I was disappointed by the lack of Rip Torn as Zed. Of course, there was also Will Arnett in a small but hilarious role. He's great in those kind of walk on parts. And there was Bill Hader who is also just SO funny, and just the fact that he was playing Andy Warhol was a laugh all by itself.

On top of the great acting, the story was well done. The time travel stuff was handled well, and that's always an issue with any movie with time travel. And there was an emotional aspect to this one that was really lacking in the other two, and that was fabulous. It actually, literally, brought tears to my eyes, and, when a movie can bring tears to my eyes, well, that's saying something for the movie.

If I could retroactively go back, I would much rather have seen MiB3 in the theater than the Batman release, and Rises was just such a huge theater movie that that's actually saying a lot, because I would give up the theater experience of Rises to see MiB3 in the theater instead. That's how good it was. [And to give you some perspective on my belief in the theater experience: I hated Independence Day. It's one of the worst movies ever. But I'm glad I saw it in the theater, because it was, without doubt, a theater movie. I just don't ever want to see it again.] If you haven't seen Men in Black 3, you should definitely take the time to do it. It's a movie I'll be purchasing at some point, because I already want to see it again.

I hope you've enjoyed this bowl of pop culture. Remember, eat it while it's still crunchy, because no one likes a big bowl of soggy culture!

[Note: Tomorrow, the Showering Beer Guys will be having a vote to see who threw the best party for Slim. My party is here. I'd like to just ask for you to go vote for me (tomorrow) just because, well, you know, it's me, BUT they will have a list up of all the parties people threw in case you want to go read through them and vote for the best. That's the most important thing after all, voting for the most deserving. Stop by tomorrow and pop over to their post and vote! Thanks!]

Let Me Know If Ultimate Power Needs A Magazine

It's time for another great big bowl of POP culture! And when I say great big, I mean GREAT BIG, so go get your biggest bowls and pour yourself some milk, and let's get to it.

For those of you not living under rocks, the news of the week is AVENGERS! It's actually, really, a double dose of pop culture, because it's not just Avengers; it's also Joss Whedon, who is a pop culture phenomenon all by himself. However, I'm sure that everyone is going to be going on about Joss, so I'm not going to dwell on that aspect of the movie. Much.

Before I get into it, though, I'm going to point out that Avengers broke the record for top grossing opening weekend. Not just broke it, ground it into tiny particles. If you look at the weekend records, generally a new record has only been within a few million of the previous record; in fact, 3 or 4 of the previous records fall in the $150-160 million range. However, Avengers topped the previous record by more than $30 million (also becoming the first film to have a $200 million opening weekend)! That's considerable. (Sorry, Harry.) On top of all of that, Disney released the film to nearly 40 international markets (not including Japan (the second largest movie market)) a week earlier than they released it here, so the 10-day gross for the film stands at $650 million worldwide. I'm pretty sure it's going to be the fastest movie to the billion mark.

Of course, none of that says anything about whether the movie is any good. The fact that the average audience rating is an "A+" does, though. Of course, that doesn't say anything about what I thought of the movie, which is what all of this is about, right?

So... what did I think of The Avengers? Well, to answer that question, let's take a few steps back (this is where I take some of the focus off of Mr. Whedon, because, as good as his writing was, he had an excellent foundation to work on, and what he did would not have been possible without it).

Last summer, I did a series of posts comparing Marvel's movies to DC's. In the third post, I talked about vision (not The Vision) and how Marvel has it and DC doesn't, which explains the (much) higher quality of Marvel's movies as compared to DC's (overall). The Avengers is evidence of this.

See, way back in 2008 when Marvel released Iron Man (and, then, The Incredible Hulk), it wasn't just about making an Iron Man movie. Iron Man was actually a pretty big risk for Marvel (yeah, I know, it's hard to believe that, now). Outside of comics, Iron Man was fairly unknown character. Sure, he'd had his own series for decades, but it was rarely a top selling series. Never before had a super hero movie been made featuring a character that was, basically, a second stringer. A B-lister. Could they pull it off? Most people didn't think they could. And, really, why would they even bother? They had many other better known heroes, right? But it was all part of the plan.

Marvel's goal was never to make an Iron Man movie. Or a Hulk movie. Or any of the other Marvel Studios produced movies. Their goal was to make an Avengers movie. Yes, it all started with the Avengers. Their plan, then, became to make a series of movies each featuring one of the heroes that would make up their beginning Avengers team. Why do it this way? Origin stories. The difficulty with any super hero movie is establishing the origin story of the character. Especially for a character like Iron Man who isn't all that well known.

They very carefully established the central heroes in their own stories before bringing them all together for their team movie. Yeah, I know... Hawkeye and Black Widow. Maybe, I'll do a post on them later, but let's just leave it at they didn't think they could pull off solo movies for those characters, especially with the changes (for the better) they've made to Hawkeye. [It's also why they left out Antman and the Wasp (because they did, actually, have an Antman film planned, but, currently, that project is on hold.] What they did, what Marvel did, was really quite ingenious. They've lent the same since of continuity to their movies that their comic books have (something they "invented" back in the 60s when Marvel first became Marvel Comics).

All of that to say that Marvel really very carefully laid the groundwork for this film. Making The Avengers was always the goal, and everything they've done for the last six years has been to bring about this moment.

Bringing Joss Whedon on board for this movie was, perhaps, the most natural thing in the world. After all, he is the expert in writing teams for TV and movies. There's not really even anyone else you can point to other than, maybe, the guy responsible for Stargate: SG-1, but, then, that guy has no experience with comic books. On top of the fact that Whedon is responsible for the team shows Buffy, Angel, and Firefly; he's also has movie experience and he's written for Marvel. Basically, he knows everything. He knows the characters, he knows writing teams, he knows making movies. And he's possibly the best writer in Hollywood today. There was no other logical first choice. Just be glad he said yes.

Mr. Whedon pulled all the strings together and tied them perfectly together in a beautiful little bow.

I loved The Avengers. I saw it twice over the weekend, and I'd go again if I could (but that's really the whole movie budget for May, so I'll have to wait till the DVD to see it again). Even my wife (who re-watches movies in the same way that I reread books (which is to say, she doesn't)) wanted to go see it again. It was so good that I have no favorite scene. I have no favorite line (not even the title of this post. I just thought it fit best (no, don't ask me why)). I have no favorite anything about that movie. There are too many moments to choose from. It was all great.

However, I will say that Mark Ruffalo was especially good as the Hulk. Not that he was better than anyone else, necessarily, but it was good to finally see someone nail the part of Bruce Banner. He really pulled off "nerdy scientist" in a way that Bana and Norton were just unable to. From his slouched posture to his baggy clothes to the glasses... everything was just right. I hope the do another Hulk movie with him in the lead.

Also, I think the movie set up perfectly for a solo Nick Fury movie along the lines of the Nick Fury VS. S.H.I.E.L.D. series. I don't know of any plans that they have for that, but it would be cool.

Bottom line is that The Avengers is great. It has great action. It has great humor. Yet, it never loses the seriousness of the situation nor does it sacrifice the individual characters' stories. Unless you just don't like super heroes, you should go see it. Seriously. Go now.

Defending the Creator

Somewhat recently, CNN ran an article about Steven Spielberg and his part in the most recent Indiana Jones film. I could link it for you, but I feel the article was fairly worthless. It began something like this, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was not a very good movie." I disagree with this approach (even if I sometimes make similar statements about various... things). I especially disagree with it from a source like CNN which should confine itself to objectivity (except in editorial sections). And especially since the article was not actually about the movie but about Spielberg's role in one particular scene.

My kids are... difficult... when it comes to food. Well, the oldest isn't quite as difficult as he used to be. Now that he's entered his I'm-a-teenage-boy-and-I-will-eat-anything stage, he does, pretty much, eat anything that's put in front of him. It's a nice change from when he was younger and ketchup was too "spicy" for him (anything with any flavor was too "spicy" for him). My younger boy loves spicy food as long as it's meat. Trying to get plant life into him is like trying to put a cat into a toilet (no, I've never actually done that, but I know someone who did). And my daughter... well, my daughter is a carb hound. Trying to get protein into her is almost as difficult as trying to get plants into my son (except that she'll eat almost anything if there's a "treat" on the other side of eating it). We've spent a lot of time teaching them the proper way of saying they don't like particular foods. Especially when they are guests in other people's homes.

Here's a hint: the proper way is not to say, "This food isn't very good food."

The proper way is to say something like, "I don't care for this." Let me change the emphasis a little: "I don't care for this."

I'm not here to defend Indy 4. People didn't like it. However, if people could be objective about it, I think they would realize that, pretty much, Indy 4 is just like the other 3 Indiana Jones films. I rank it #3 out of the 4, and I can even get more behind the nuked fridge than I could Indy stopping the mining cart with his feet and then evaporating the water in the puddle because they were so hot. That always struck me as cartoonish, and Temple of Doom has always been the least of Indiana Jones to me.

What I will say is this, people don't like Indy 4 because they don't understand the history behind the movie. Lucas actually captures a fairly perfect snapshot of the personality of the 50s in Kingdom. It's great. You have the "Red Threat." You have experiments into telepathy and other mind control programs that both  the US and the USSR were heavily into during the 50s. You have aliens. Aliens were huge in the 50s and were a cultural metaphor for the coming communist invasion (like zombies are today for the loss of humanity to technology (which I've already done a post about)). It's really everything you could hope for in an Indiana Jones movie set in the 50s. If you know and understand the history.

As a complete aside, the article was about the fridge nuking scene which Lucas gets blamed for, because Lucas gets blamed for everything. The interviewer was really trying to get Spielberg to jump onto the Lucas-hating bandwagon. There was an exchange something along the lines of, "With all of the really great movies you've made, how could you be involved in a piece of crap like Indy 4?" To which Spielberg replied with something like, "I'd be involved in any piece of crap from Lucas because Lucas is my friend, and I believe in him." And, then, Spielberg revealed that the fridge nuking scene was his creation and that he's proud to have added the phrase "nuking the fridge" to pop culture. Yea, Spielberg!

Okay, so... now to the point:

People give Lucas a lot of crap these days over, well, everything he does. They don't like that he's made alterations to the original trilogy of Star Wars films. They don't like the prequels. They don't like The Clone Wars because it's a cartoon. blah blah blah
My response is pretty much "tough." Oh, and "shut up." I'm freaking tired of all the whining people do about Star Wars. And Indiana Jones.

Here's the thing: Lucas created Star Wars; he can do with it what he wants. It's like a house. Lucas' house. And he's invited us all inside for a visit. An extended visit. We got all comfortable in there, and we like it a particular way. But it's still Lucas' house. If he wants to add some new decorations to it, guess what, he gets to do that! If he wants to rip out some walls and rebuild parts of it, guess what, he gets to do that! If he wants to add new wings onto the house, guess what, he gets to do that, too! It's HIS house. We don't really get to complain about it, because he's sharing. Wait, let me say that again. He's sharing something that belongs to him, something that he made, with us. And he doesn't have to do it. And we don't have to participate. That's the key that people miss. If you don't like it, stop trying to keep living in Lucas' house! Go and create your own stuff!

Oh, wait... heh

I suppose this is a subject that's really close to my heart. I really believe in the right of the creator to create the way he wants to create. It's up to the audience if they want to participate, and it's up to the creator to decide how much he wants to... bend his creation to appeal to a wider audience. But, in the end, it belongs to the creator, not the audience, and the audience doesn't have the right to complain about changes the creator wants to make.

There's a difference between "I like the old version better," and "These changes you make suck." One is stating a preference, one is coming from a place of entitlement. The audience, the guests, have no entitlement. At any point, Lucas could say, "You know what? I'm tired of all of you people hanging out in my house and bitching and moaning all the time. Leave." So far, he's been a pretty nice guy, and he hasn't done that.

I hear some of you out there thinking about the fact that we have to pay to get into Lucas' house, and he's using that money to change things around on us. Still, you don't have to pay. That's your choice. Seriously. That's your choice. If you don't like the changes, quit paying the money and quit participating in the event. Just go home. Go home and create your own world/universe/whatever.

Oh, wait... heh

Part of all of this relates to how to be a good critique partner, too. See, there's a proper way: "I don't understand this part, right here." "This part doesn't do anything for me." "I don't feel an emotional connection to this character."
And there's a wrong way, "This part sucks." "You should re-write this part to be more like this." "You need to get rid of this character, because I don't like him."

As I said, it's up to the creator to decide how much he wants to bend his creation to appeal to an audience whether it's an audience of 1 or 1,000,000. The audience doesn't get to demand changes. As much as I dislike the whole Twilight thing and how silly I think sparkly vampires are, I don't get to tell Ms. Meyer how to write her books. I get to choose not read them and not to watch the movies. She didn't write "bad" books; she wrote books I don't like. And I'm not eating them. Um, reading them. Evidently, a lot of other people do like them, though, and that's okay. I don't like avocados, either, but a lot of people do.

In the end, it's about being civil. It's about making "I" statements (yea, popular psychology, too) and not trashing someone else's work. My wife and I spend a lot of time with our kids with this kind of thing, but, I think, it's not just kids that need to learn this stuff. And I'm not excluding myself here, because I love to rant about how stupid I think some things are (but I'm having to watch that, because I think my daughter might want to read Twilight, and, you know, if she wants to read it, I'm not going to tell her "no" (and it would just be rude of me to trash it if she decides she likes it (if she decides to read it at some point))). We can all learn to guard our words and make them safe for other people to hear.

Just a note:
No one has done this to me (recently), so this isn't me getting my dander up because of some bad critique I got. This all related to this CNN article and the cavalier way the writer of the article went about tearing into Lucas and his creation. This isn't about defending Lucas, either. He has more wealth than I can ever imagine (and I can imagine quite a bit), so he doesn't need me to defend him. This completely about the rights of the creator to play with their creation without other people getting pissy about it.

The Middleman and the History of Television

Okay, so I'm not really going to give you the history of television. I mean, how boring, right? Actually, I'm not sure if that would be boring or not seeing as how I know absolutely nothing about the history of that most predominant of items in homes. Did you know that on average there are more television sets per household than there are people? How scary is that? And that doesn't include computers which can serve a similar function. It's no wonder, though, that what we watch, how much we watch, has such a huge influence on the way we write. But that's another story.

TV wasn't a huge thing for me when I was kid. Except on Saturday mornings. I wouldn't do anything without my Saturday morning cartoons.The rest of the time, I was more interested in playing. And by playing, I mean playing outside. TV was only for when there was absolutely nothing else to do. The problem was that, as I got older, the times when there was nothing to do became more and more frequent. By the time I was in middle school, I ruled the television set from the time I got home until the news came on at 10. That was my cue to shuffle off to bed and read for a couple or few hours.

All of that changed my freshman year of high school. There's a story that goes with that (I have stories that go with pretty darn near everything), but, near the end of my freshman year, I discovered there was life outside of TV, and I gave it up. Not that I made any kind of declaration, "I'm giving up TV!" or anything like that, but I just lost interest in it, and I've never gone back. Which is not to say that I never watched TV again, but it's never dictated my schedule to me again. There was a period during college when my best friend and I were addicted to Stand Up Stand UP, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and a couple of other shows like that on the newly formed The Comedy Channel (yes, it wasn't Comedy Central, yet, in those days) which was difficult because neither of us had a TV, at the time, so we snatched viewings at my parents' house (a couple of times a week when we were there) or wherever we could.

You have to remember, this was before DVDs and the wide proliferation of TV shows available for purchase. If you wanted to watch something, you pretty much had to be there at the designated time slot on  the designated day. Or, you know, know how to program a VCR for which you had to take advanced courses in college to be able to do. Fortunately, at the time, I invested in those courses. Which are totally useless today. At any rate, it took an extra effort for any show to catch my eye in the first place, and it had to be pretty spectacular for me to bother myself with recording it. Like I said, I no longer bent to the whims of television schedules.

I bet you're wondering what kind of shows I would go out of my way to record, aren't you? I bet you're thinking that if I would go to such lengths as to program the VCR to record them that they must have been pretty spectacular. Are you getting your pad of paper and a pen to make notes about the incredibly sophisticated and deep viewing I'm about to lay out before you? Are you ready for it? The list isn't very long. In fact, there are only three shows that ever demanded such loyalty from me. Are you ready? They're Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (which I misplaced my dedication to after the second season), The Flash, and Animaniacs. Yes, I'm serious. Best cartoon ever. EVER!

The Flash was the first series that I loved that just didn't make it however much it deserved to. But a higher profile show keep using up all its blue screen time and forced delay after delay upon it so that it couldn't maintain its viewers because new episodes came out only about once every three weeks. However, Mark Hamill's two episodes as the Trickster are incredible, and it's unfortunate that the show couldn't sustain an audience.

Eventually, I moved out to CA and got married. At this point, my wife and I actually did make a premeditated decision that we weren't going to have TV in our house. It's one of those things that, if it's available, it's hard to control. It starts with just one show. I had avoided watching TV up to that point by never being home (or shut up in my room painting), but you can't really run a marriage that way, so we chose no TV.

For a long time, that really meant no TV. At all. The television set was, basically, a miniature movie screen in our house, because that's all it was ever used for. Later, there was the DVD player, and, later still, Buffy. And that's how we watch television. We hear that something is really good, so we decide we'll try it out. That's extremely easy to do these days with Netflix

My wife and I don't have enough shows to keep us viewing all year long (or even most of the year long), so, between DVD releases of the shows we follow, we try out new things. One of the disappointing things we've learned is that we tend toward shows that, for whatever reason, didn't make it. Like The Flash. And Deadwood (which may be my wife's favorite show ever). Firefly. The one we just discovered, and we knew it had been cancelled before we watched any of it, is The Middleman.

I don't have a good way of describing The Middleman in any concise sort of way. Yeah, I hear you thinking. Why would I bother with concise? When am I ever concise? Maybe, one of these days, I'll explore the genius of Kevin Smith, and, then, you will understand. Or, probably, not. Yes, I've always been this way.
Anyway...

The Middleman is about this super hero guy called the Middleman and his Middleman in training, who happens to be female. They work for an organization they refer to as O2STK (Organization Too Secret To Know), and that's just the tip of the awesome that is this show. The fact that the villains are continually saying, "My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity," as they monologue about their convoluted schemes to take over the world (or destroy it) is frosting goodness.

It's a tongue-in-cheek look at pop culture that pokes fun at it while simultaneously celebrating it. The far too few episodes tend to revolve around a specific theme and are full of references to the pop culture landmarks that inspired them. However, don't mistake my praise for the show as being any kind of suggestion that you should rush out and watch it. In all likelihood, you shouldn't. By the second episode, I was fully aware of why Middleman got cancelled.

It's not that it's too intelligent for the average viewer, although it is. Despite it's campy appearance (yes, it does wear camp clothes, dressing itself up to resemble the Batman series of the 60s with such things as the Middlemobile), it is, in many ways, too sophisticated for the average viewer. If you can't catch the subtleties, you'll just think it's silly. To make matters worse, if you're not pretty well grounded in your pop culture lore, the vast majority of the jokes will go right over your head. There's nothing worse than a joke you don't get in a show meant to be funny. And, if it's meant to be funny, and you're only getting every 3rd or 4th joke, you tend to, well, think it's not funny. It's like being the person in the room staring at Monty Python and the Holy Grail with a glazed expression while everyone else laughs uncontrollably.

So... it's not a show I can actually recommend, but I liked it so much, I needed to write about it. The sad part is that it did have some really interesting sub-plots developing, and we'll never know what was to come of them. The only real reason I could suggest watching it is if you really wanted to know how off center I am. Either you'd get the show, and say "oh, wow, this is great," in which case you would be revealed to be off center, too, or you'd make the yuck face and think (or, maybe, even say out loud), "He likes this? What's wrong with him?"

Of course, Middleman did get a fairly good critical reaction. Like Arrested Development. But, when everything comes down to how much money it can generate, the bits on either end of the bell curve (the great and the horrible) become indistinguishable to the profit gurus. Which is just too bad, because everything becomes the same old bland mass market crap. Whit rice, white bread, and white TV. Read anything you want into that statement. I'm sure you won't be wrong.

Zombies: A Cultural Metaphor

Society has changed in the last four decades. This is not to say that society isn't always changing, but the change that has occurred recently (recent being a relative term) is one that we've never seen before. Technological progress, throughout the ages, has always been seen as a good thing. I don't mean scientific discovery, which has not always been viewed positively, but the actual trinkets of technology that scientific progress has made possible. Mankind has always had an innate sense that he could do no wrong. That belief has dissipated like morning mist.

Four decades ago, a zombie was still just a zombie. A re-animated corpse. Slow. Stupid. No will of its own. It was something created by man that man controlled. The only exception to this rule was Frankenstein's monster, but the Frankenstein monster became a special case and has never really been viewed as a zombie. Even though zombies could be controlled, they were still dead things. Just animated. They had no more need of sustenance than does a marionette. They did not hunger. They did not want. They only obeyed.

That all began to change in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. For the first time, the dead, en masse, rose up against the living to devour them. It was the first use of zombies to symbolize that man might, just possibly, be playing around with forces he didn't understand.

The 80s arrived and, with it, a culture of teenagers that didn't believe they would live to be adults. Post-apocalyptic literature/entertainment hit its stride. Not that it hadn't existed, but, prior to the 80s, (and I am now going to lump all of this together into the dystopian category) dystopians had really been isolated events.
And I mean it when I say we didn't believe that we would make it through high school without nuclear holocaust being thrust upon us. In middle school, for a Christmas door decorating contest, my homeroom did a whole Nuclear Winter theme. We even re-wrote several popular Christmas songs with lyrics like, "I'm dreaming of a nuclear winter."

However, the cold war ended, and we don't really believe an actual nuclear holocaust will happen anymore. No, now, we believe man will destroy the Earth in much more subtle ways. Like a zombie apocalypse. Zombies have become the representation of our fear that mankind will, ultimately, be unable to control the technology that he plays with. Zombies have evolved. They are no longer re-animated corpses. They're fast. They're smart. They're hungry. They want to destroy us. Destroy life. They're smart, but they are unthinking. Their intelligence is applied only to achieving their goal. Devouring us Destroying life. Hmm... somewhat like the single-minded way in which corporations pursue financial success.

In short, zombies have become a cultural metaphor for all the ways in which technology will destroy us.

However, that's only  the metaphor in its simplest form. The obvious one. The one that has to do with our nightmares over what secret things governments and corporations are doing in the dark. It lives off of our fears that we'll wake up, shivering and drenched in sweat, and find out that society has collapsed. No rules. Only chaos.

The deeper part of that fear extends down to where we believe that technology is actually turning each of us into zombies. Especially the generation that's growing up around us. The generation of technological zombies. You know it's true. People refuse to be detached from their technology. People that grew up without it and know it's possible to leave home without a phone and still survive refuse to go without, so how do we show the (little) people who have never known life without cells that it's possible to go without? It's with us everywhere. And it's scary. But, still, we embrace it. We can't help it.

Despite the data that the use of cellular devices, in whatever capacity, while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, we choose to believe that we can handle it, and we don't have the excuse of impaired judgement that intoxication brings. Despite the new warnings by WHO (the World Health Organization, not the Doctor. Or the band.) that cellular devices bring a greater risk of brain cancer, especially in children and adolescents, we will go on using our bits and pieces of technology and deal with any consequences later. Despite the continued statements of desire to connect with people in actual face-to-face contact, we will, more and more often, forsake physicalness in favor of a virtual reality that we can "control."

We are becoming the zombies that we fear. Soulless creatures walking through life but only seeing things through the tiny input devices we hold in our hands. And just wait till they can actually put that stuff right inside our skulls. Is it any wonder that we have become so incredibly fascinated with zombies? After all, vampires could be defeated. How do we defeat ourselves?

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.

Simon Pegg is brilliant!

Okay, folks it's time for another pop culture post, so strap on your special hats and pour a bowl of milk. Remember, pop culture always stays crunchy!
[Just as a note: my oldest son's pop culture hat looks like this:

Really, it does, but that has nothing to do with this post. And that's not my son in the picture, just his hat, but Adam, there, is already all over the web, so I'm sure he won't mind being in my little blog any more than he minds being in anyone else's. Not to say that he doesn't mind. He might. But I won't add to it, I'm sure, one way or the other.]

There hasn't been much time for movies in the last year or so. Or money. My kids will tell you about it if you mention the fact that they missed Rango and a whole slew of other movies they wanted to see. However, my wife and I did manage to make it to Paul, last weekend. We went with some sci-fi buddies of ours; otherwise, we might have gone to see something more "respectable." Actually, if we hadn't run into this other couple, we wouldn't have gone to see anything, as it was one of those "wow, we haven't seen each other in ages, let's go to a movie and sit in the dark and not talk!" kind of things. heh
But, hey, we did get invited to a party out of it.

Anyway...

So we went to see Paul. It's hilarious. Frequently, I laughed first and loudest. I think the movie was made just for me. However, the people sitting in front of us, what looked like a grandmother and her teenage grandson, didn't find the movie anywhere near as funny. I almost felt bad. Almost. If you like science fiction, especially Star Wars, you want to see this movie.

I'm not going to say anything about the plot, though. That's how I went into it. I knew it was Simon Pegg and it had something to do with a CG alien. But that was enough for me. It's pretty much enough for me to just see Pegg's name on something. It's like he (and Nick Frost, his writing partner and co-star) is pop culture. But, please, don't pour milk on him. I'm not thinking he'd appreciate it. Look, here's an example:
You MUST watch this if you like Star Wars
I will say one thing about the movie, it starts off at the San Diego Comic Con; alas, I've never been. >sob<

But it's not just Paul. It's also Shaun of the Dead. And Hot Fuzz. And it's Spaced. That was British television series he did. Yeah, I know; you've never heard of it, but that's kind of where it all starts. The beginnings of his pop culture brilliance. Go watch it. Right now. I'll wait. Okay, not really, but you can come back later. The blog will still be here. Probably.

Seriously, Simon Pegg makes movies out of the things that my friends and I used to joke about, and he's brilliant at it. Paul is under performing a bit at the box office, but don't let that stop you from going to see it. If you're a sci-fi fan, that is. If you're not, you're not going to get the movie at all. I think the lack of performance has more to do with the title than anything else. It doesn't scream what it's about like Shaun of the Dead. But the title is part of the joke. Paul. E. T. Simple. It fails to grab the imagination, though, so, unless you're actually looking for Simon Pegg vehicles, you're likely to miss it.

Which brings us to the writing section of our post: titles. The all important title. I one bought a horrible book because of the brilliance of its title. I'll even tell you which book: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. That is an incredible title. I wish I'd thought of it. I bought the book. One of the very few books I haven't finished. But a brilliant title. Last time I bought a book based on its title, too. Yep, learned my lesson. Both of them. Don't judge a book by its cover (title). And have a good cover (title).

Okay, yeah, maybe I didn't learn that lesson well enough, because the cover of my book sucks, but that's more to do with the fact that I haven't been able to afford any cool artwork for it, yet, than that I'm satisfied with it. One piece at a time...

Anyway, go see Paul. It's not deep, but it is a good time!