Well friends, I spent the afternoon of my Memorial Day at the movies. It was either that or go to my unit's Bar B Q, and as much as I love those folks, I see plenty of them without spending my days off with them.
Well friends, I spent the afternoon of my Memorial Day at the movies. It was either that or go to my unit's Bar B Q, and as much as I love those folks, I see plenty of them without spending my days off with them.
Posted at 06:00 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
So, there's a new GI Joe cartoon out there. As a cartoon loving child of the 80's, I'm pretty excited about this.
Now, I know I should really be using this as opportunity to talk about how American culture glorifies war and violence, cleans it up and sells it to children with colorful, safe-seeming toys, but you know what? I really enjoyed the old GI Joe cartoon. The GI Joe movie was pretty fantastic, what with the giant mutants and all. Also, the bit where Cobra Commander gets turned into a snake? Beautifully weird and creepy.
But the new GI Joe cartoon... I'm about halfway through the first episode, and I felt like I need to take a break and write something about this.
Seriously, what the fuck is this? <Get read for some spoilers>
The cartoon starts out by killing to main characters from the 80's cartoon. Major Bludd and Bazooka, they're just dead. What is that? GI Joe's supposed to be kind of ridiculous, kind of comic. There's suppose to be some possibly unintentionally hilarious sexual tension between Bazooka and Alpine.
No one is suppose to be killed right off the bat. If someone does get killed, you damn well better have a big lead in to it, you better make it mean something. I don't like the idea of main characters getting used like cannon fodder.
Oh, also, what the hell, Cobra kills ten million people? In the first episode? Really? Cobra? The guys who thought Cold Slither was a good idea?
I don't know how much I like this... I mean, I get it. Their trying to present a realistic version, a version that communicates some of the hard, ugly truths about war that America has learned in Afghanistan and Iraq. They're trying to undo thy myth of the safe, fun, adventurous war.
And that's probably a good thing.
But fuck man, they better not kill Shipwreck, Tunnel Rat, or Roadblock. They just better not. This show's already a little to hard to watch.
Posted at 05:33 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's always a little hard on me when a long running, somewhat tightly plotted science fiction series comes to an end. All too often, a smart, beautiful story gets summed up in the stupidest, tritest way possible. The story just feels like it ran out of gas, ran out of ideas. It can be a real scar on the story. You just know that no matter how good the work was to begin with, well, it's not leading anywhere pretty.
Posted at 10:27 AM in Books, Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Before I left for basic training, the last movie I watched was Forest Gump.
Posted at 05:00 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So, lot's of folks seem to be unhappy with this week's new episode of BSG. "It's too melodramatic" they moan, "Too much exposition" they cry, "It's a little ridiculous" they grumble.
Posted at 02:52 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So, Super Bowl commercials, eh? I didn't actually see them, but instead of watch the Big Game, I was making a Hnefatafl set for a friend of mine who was hurt falling on the ice. Also, I thought it was next week. Me and calenders... not so much.
Posted at 01:15 AM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So, Battlestar Galactica is possibly the finest television show I've ever scene. It's hard to put it in front of M*A*S*H, The Simpsons, Gargoyles, I, Claudius, and so many others, but... BSG is up there. It is thematically braver than almost any other piece of scifi I've looked out.
Posted at 07:10 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So dear reader, Christmas movies. Or rather, Christmas time movies. As everyone exposed to the evils of marketing knows, a film came out on Christmas day called The Spirit. It's the movie version of Will Eisner's master piece. Now, I've read a little of the comic, and it's a good comic. I haven't read enough of it to talk to you about it, but you know what I can talk about? Frank Miller.
Posted at 01:55 AM in Books, Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So, I heard an interesting question earlier tonight. I was at a sort of informal question and answer session over at Venerable University here in Liberal Icebox. The person being questioned was a famous trans academic, and one of the students asked her who her queer heroes were growing up. She spoke about the characters on the show Bewitched, the student asking the question talked about Tim Curry in Rocky Horror, and I tried to think of what characters that were important to me growing up might have also been queer heroes.
Posted at 01:05 AM in Film, Television, Trans | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So, I tend to compare everything to one of my five or so
favorite movies. With the Presidential campaign raging, well, you might think I
could find a way of relating it to Casablanca, maybe with a beautiful
Libertarian girl walking back into the life of a sullen, cynical Democrat in a
deep South state controlled by the Republicans, but meh,
I haven't really seen anything like that.
And of course, I could try to compare the undecided vote to that
black enamel painted statue in The Maltese Falcon, imagine John McCain as the rotund Casper Gutman, and Palin as the deceitful
Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and Sam Spade, as played by Bogart, as the
intrepid undecided voter. The problem with that of course is, well, where’s
Obama? He’s certainly not Peter Lorre. No, Lorre’s character would be Lindsay
Graham. Both of them are weasely, worthless henchmen.
See, the problem is that you need a movie with two fairly equally match sides, one good, one evil, both full of colorful, ridiculous characters. So ridiculous in fact, that they could be described as cartoonish.
Where am I going with this?
Transformers: The
Movie. Not the live action, CGI heavy piece of
Let’s look at the opening scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EpwGaJbZq0
Now imagine is instead of a vaguely Japanese looking robot, the fellow shouting and running from the ships was Chairman Bernanke, and instead of “Unicron” he had shouted “Look, it the Financial Crisis,” and instead of a planet getting eaten, it was out economy.
Next time, we’ll talk about the characters.
Posted at 11:47 AM in Current Affairs, Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)