Tag Archives: movies

The best thing I’ve read all week

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I might be biased thanks to my line of work but this spoke to me:

“The women are also dressed in period threads, and many have big Afros. I am happy to say it brings back an element sadly missing in recent movies, gratuitous nudity. Sexy women would “happen” to be topless in the 1970s movies for no better reason than that everyone agreed, including themselves, that their breasts were a genuine pleasure to regard — the most beautiful naturally occurring shapes in nature, I believe. Now we see breasts only in serious films, for expressing reasons. There’s been such a comeback for the strategically positioned bed sheet, you’d think we were back in the 1950s.” – Roger Ebert, “Black Dynamite”; Chicago Sun-Times

John Hughes in five paragraphs

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“Few filmmakers define an era, a genre and a place like John Hughes did with his ’80s comedies often set on Chicago’s North Shore.

He may not have been a critic’s darling, but his name became synonymous with a brand of comedy in which young, rebellious, yet good-at-heart characters battle an establishment that seemed to rankle the filmmaker as well. Films such as “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Home Alone” took on an iconic status, all while his productions revitalized the local film industry and launched scores of careers.”– Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune

That about says it all. But one more thing:

John Hughes created adventure. Joss Whedon was left only with metaphorical vampires and monsters to explain high school, as Hughes had already had his way with the setting several times over. He created fantasy adventures where a young man could fool an entire town, then cut a broad swath through one of the largest cities in America, leading a literal parade. He created romantic adventures born in 50’s mythic Americana where the boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets the most popular girl in school to fall for him, just before he realizes he’s in love with his best friend. And he created wartime adventures, where a ragtag group of soldiers with few common bonds unite against more than a few common enemies to escape a prison of society’s making. I could go on but…

In short, John Hughes created superheroes. For someone like me who spent his childhood idolizing comic book heroes, the heroes of Hughes’s films were there to hand me the baton as I entered the second leg of life’s race, better known as adolescence. And they made it that much easier to sprint my way through adulthood, where reuniting with your family at the end of the day can be as heroic as leaping a tall building in a single bound.

GOP: Please re-watch Star Wars

Politics, , ,

I realize I am a few days late in commenting on this, but I just realized something.

You know all those unnamed sources who are spreading rumors about Sarah Palin not knowing that Africa is a continent, or which countries are in NAFTA, etc. I realize they’re thinking that besmirching her reputation will somehow help cauterize the gaping, profusely bleeding wounds the GOP has been nursing since Tuesday. And that any populist movement that’s formed behind her will be dispelled thanks to these comments.

In fact, it’s more like that scene in the middle of Star Wars: A New Hope when Obi-Wan Kenobi fights Darth Vader. Specifically, what Obi-Wan says at 0:57 in this clip:

I’m no fan of the governor, but come on, guys: Think.

(I’m surprised this didn’t occur to me earlier, what with all the holograms CNN was sporting all Election Night.)

UPDATE: So apparently the Africa thing was a hoax by this guy. Which uh…still makes it like Star Warsin that this dude is Darth Vader telling Princess Leia he won’t blow up her home planet if she tells him where the rebel base is. Or something.

Still the best thing I've ever done in any workplace ever. *

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This has been a stressful week at work, due largely to a big online project I’m working on in conjunction with next week’s issue. Look for it on the site on Wednesday.

This package has a lot of video components to it, so I needed to grab a piece of code we used when I created the Indiana Jones vs. Megatron video over the summer. I ended up re-watching that clip, and decided to post the embedded version here. Enjoy.

http://tony.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/tony-pub01-live/current/toccenter1/tocCenter01/client/embedded/embedded.swf

Sometimes I think I have everyone fooled.

* Er, when I used to work on a crisis hotline that helped runaway kids get home to their parents? That was probably better in terms of making the world a better place. But this probably wins in the “Best Use of Video – Wanting Not To Laugh But Being Unable To Stop Yourself” category.

Quantum of Solace >= License to Kill?

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Me3dia tipped me off that the trailer for the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is online:

Is it just me or does this seem like License to Kill redux? In that one, a lousy Timothy Dalton outing that’s distinguished only by the presence of Carey Lowell, the wife of Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter is killed and Leiter himself is mauled by sharks (not sure if they had lasers on their heads or not but they were certainly ill-tempered). Bond goes off on a revenge mission, to MI6’s displeasure, his license to kill is revoked, etc. etc.

I’m not hating, just saying. This kind of plot device wasn’t really new when Bond got around to it either, and they’ve managed to freshen up other long-gone-stale aspects of the franchise, so I’ll still see it.

Incidentally, here’s how much solace a quantum provides:

“At the small scales studied in particle physics, energy often occurs in discrete packets or units called quanta. The amount of energy in a quantum depends on the frequency of the radiation carrying the energy; it is equal to the frequency (in hertz) multiplied by Planck’s constant, 6.626 069 x 10-34 joule second (J·s). The word “quantum” is also used in other contexts where physical quantities occur as multiples of a discrete unit. For example, the quantum of electric charge is e, the charge on a single electron. Via

Wikipedia puts it much more simply (as it often does): “The smallest possible, and therefore indivisible, unit of a given quantity or quantifiable phenomenon.”

Which would have been a worse title: Multiples of a Discrete Unit of Solace or The Smallest Possible, and Therefore Indivisible, Unit of Solace? Also, doesn’t the last one sound like one of those movie titles translated from the Chinese?

Best thing all week

Media, Uncategorized, , ,

Most of you probably saw the Create Your Own Simpsons avatar activity on The Simpsons Movie website. The site allowed you to create a Simpsons character that supposedly looked like you. I came close, but it was never quite right.

Today my co-worker Margaret sent me a link to Simpsonizeme.com, which allows you to do essentially the same, but with a picture of yourself, thereby offering a more lifelike depiction of yourself as…er, a cartoon.

I ended up with this:


Seriously, how much does that look like me? The eyebrows aren’t quite right, and my normally lantern-jawed chin is given short shrift, but otherwise: damn. You probably have a picture of me (drunk) making that exact face.

And if you’re saying to yourself “Say, I don’t remember you looking quite that way,” then perhaps you ought to show up here:

It’ll be fun, I promise. If not, you’ll get a beer for your trouble.*

* Offer good only for Old Style

Transformers: Significantly less than meets the eye

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Regular readers of this space may have noticed that this week’s installment of Oblivious Living was not posted in its regular Monday slot. The reason for this was, in part, because I was busy preparing for a guest co-host appearance on Filmspotting, the weekly film podcast and radio program, regularly hosted by Adam Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren. I’ve been a fan of the show ever since I interviewed them for Chicagoist a couple years back, and was honored to be asked back a fourth time. I understand that if I make it to five, I get a special badge.

You can hear this week’s show here. Adam and I discuss Sicko and Transformers. I gave Sicko a generally positive review, though I expressed reservations with Moore’s style. I maintain he’d be a better filmmaker if he dialed back some of the shtick. As for Transformers, I really disliked it, as did Adam. During one of the breaks, he predicted that the show would get a lot of mail from people claiming that we didn’t get it or that we expected more out of a film that features giant robots fighting each other before turning into cars. Yet I expected little more than that, and even with that relatively simple premise, Michael Bay still managed to fuck it up.


The biggest problem is that there isn’t a single memorable character in Transformers, though Bumblebee comes close to having a Herbie-The-Love-Bug-style personality thanks to the constant sound bites issuing forth from his radio. (Explain to me again how a car radio would be able to broadcast movie clips?) Of the Autobots, Optimus Prime’s a stiff, Jazz is a shuck-and-jive caricature, and Ironhide…likes guns. We’re also never given a decent villain since Megatron doesn’t show up until very late in the film along with most of the other Decepticons who all look the same in robot form. They might as well be wearing t-shirts with their names on them like the bad guys in the old Batman TV series.

But at least they’re consistently – if lamely – written. The human characters fare much worse since their dialogue serves only to move the plot ahead. So you end up with characters who act as if they’re suffering from multiple personality disorder or, at the very least, have forgotten to take their meds. I know I’m supposed to be happy that the characters played by Megan Fox and Rachel Taylor are the smartest people in the movie, but when I’m constantly reminded that they are Really Really Hot, how can I be expected to notice anything else? (Note to Michael Bay: it’s kind of overkill to have your actors AND THE CAMERA giving elevator eyes to your actresses.)

The plot’s flat-out confusing, which is really a depressing thing to admit for someone with a college education. I’m still not sure if The Cube/Allspark was supposed to bring life back to Cybertron, give ultimate power to whichever robot contingency captured it, or make julienne fries. Plus, Transformers seems to borrow elements from several other (better) movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Independence Day, Signs, Men In Black, and Terminator 2. (credit where credit is due: the alternate explanation for Hoover Dam was original and clever.)

But I could leave all my reservations aside if the action sequences rocked. And they didn’t.

Look, I’m 32 years old now. But I own an Xbox that gets regular use. On my desk is a Flash action figure along with several plastic miniature ninjas. To my right is a James Bond calendar. On my DVD shelf, along with some high-brow picks, are genre movies and shows like Raiders, Buffy, Star Wars, Goonies, The Incredibles, Superman and many Dude Classics like Old School, Tombstone, Swingers, and almost every Kevin Smith film. In short, though I’ve grown up, I still enjoy things that are the province of people half my age. I want – nay, I long – to see giant robots fight each other, turn into very fast cars and then turn back into robots again before throwing each other into buildings throughout downtown Los Angeles. But Michael Bay couldn’t even give us a final well-staged action sequence that brought the dreams of every 14 year-old in the 1980s to life. Instead, he gave us muddled set pieces with characters so badly drawn that when one of the Autobots dies, we don’t even care (I’m still not entirely sure who bites it and neither does Optimus Prime as he intones “We lost a comrade today, but gained many others.” Way to shed a tear, bro. I know he’s a robot but damn, that’s some cold shit.)

So I don’t need to be told that I’m too old to appreciate this film or that my expectations were way too high. My expectations were pretty low, and Bay managed to subvert them by flubbing the basics. I’m all for explosions, as long as I know and care about what’s exploding.

Disbelief, unsuspended

Media,

Here’s my problem with most Adam Sandler movies:

It isn’t the plot. I can buy the idea that a guy whose father has a lot of money could convince a school system to let him repeat kindergarten through high school. A former hockey player becomes a golf pro? Sure, why not. I don’t really play sports, but I remember how Bo Jackson used to be really good at baseball and football, so that seems plausible. A waterboy could be a football player? Saw it in Lucas, and I believed it then, too. Moreover, it makes total sense to me that someone could earn a living as a wedding singer, or that Christopher Walken could invent a remote control capable of controlling everything in the world. I even buy that DCFS would let him hold onto a kid for more than five minutes without calling Dateline NBC.

Where my cognitive dissonance kicks in is on this point: how does fucking Adam Sandler have incredibly hot women falling in love with him in almost every film? I mean, come on. Patricia Arquette and Fairuza Balk, sure. They both seem kinda crazy. But Marisa Tomei? Kate Beckinsale? Bridgette Wilson? Hell, in Spanglish he has two hot women after his ass. That’s just nuts.

The most intelligence-insulting part of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – and this includes all the weird gay panic crap that substitutes for a plot – is that I’m expected to believe that there is any chance in this world or any other than a woman that looks like Jessica Biel would be dating a guy like Adam Sandler.

I think the reason that I enjoyed The Wedding Singerso much is because I felt like Drew Barrymore got the better end of the deal in that one.