Saturday, June 18, 2005
Automated sloth triumphs over manual labor
Several weeks late, I just finished archiving the last of the
daily updates, going through
April and as far into
May as I got before Malaya helped me set up the blogger software. The archiving was tedious and slow, as always, since as always I got distracted and ended up reading most of the updates I was supposed to be skimming in order to refresh my memory for the quick archive page blurbs. As always, my first reaction was "Christ I write a lot." immediately followed by my second reaction, "Christ there are a lot of typos in these."
I never really realize it at the time, while my fingers are tapping away trying to keep up with my rambling thoughts, but damn do them words pile up. The sheer amount of amateur pseudo-sociology dumped into the endless
May 2nd update rather boggles the mind. The funny part is that while I remembered the events described once I reread them, I have no memory of actually writing them down. Honestly, I could not pass a lie detector to prove that I wrote most of the blogs on this site, since they seem to vanish from my head the minute they're transferred to the computer screen. Every time I look in my own archives I'm like, "Huh. I don't remember that at all."
Anyway, my point in posting about this was to announce that all of the old daily archives are now complete, and to celebrate the fact that I will never, ever have to skim updates and type out archives again, now that blogger is doing that for me. Sure, it's worthless to the surfer since there's no handy and concise summary of what was in the update, but did I mention that it requires absolutely no effort on my part to create it? Above all, you can be sure that I will put the time saved to the best possible use.
Just as soon as I wander around the apartment for a bit and poke at the cats. And maybe get a snack.
Misc Kali Bruises, Part 01
While it's not the most impressive photo ever taken, I wanted to get started on this project at some point, and this'll do. At least for a couple of days, until the forearm bruises Malaya got Friday night have begun to purple nicely.
This is my right bicep (it's flipped since I took the photo in the bathroom mirror) and those yellow blotches are bruises, as if you hadn't guessed that already by the post title. These were created Tuesday night (3.75 days before the photo was taken, and they were much darker yesterday, when I
should have taken the photos), by a kali stick, as part of the exercise we were working on. It's sorta hard to explain, but the maneuver was to block the other person's stick as they swung at you, slide your stick around their wrist and shoot it through their armpit. As you do that you seize their right wrist with your left hand and bend your stick hard against their back, with the end of it (where you're holding it) against their bicep.
The point is to press the stick down into their upper arm, hitting a pressure point below the bicep, while pulling their arm forward with your other hand to make a leverage point. It sounds complicated, but can actually be done against a full speed swing, in maybe .5 seconds, and if you get the spot right, or even near right, the other person will absolutely, without any doubt, no matter how big or strong they are, go down to their knees. It's very easy to work in a disarm with it too, as you bend their wrist back while crushing their pressure point with your stick.
Anyway, as this scattering of bruises attests, finding just the right spot can take some practice; most of these are actually too low, and the good spot is up higher, more in the armpit. I was working with a guy who was attending his first class ever though, so his accuracy and technique were actually pretty good, for his first time. He certainly had no problem being strong enough to dig the stick right in there and lever me down, which is a good sign, actually. Some people are all "I don't want to touch or be touched or hurt or be hurt." when they try Kali, and that's just an impossible attitude to have while practicing the martial art.
All in all, these are fairly unimpressive bruises, but as I said I wanted to start documenting them for posterity, and I had to start somewhere. I guess I could retroactively include a past entry that detailed
my various facial contusions, and perhaps I will, when there are enough entries in this subject to warrant their own articles page.
Cool Optical Illusion
I see links to this sort of thing all the time, but
this is the first one that impressed me enough to motivate a blog post. It's an optical illusion, but one that moves, not just one of
those types of gifs where the wheels appear to be turning if you focus on the one in the middle. I'd describe it but it's more fun to look, and the page has very short instructions on how to make it work. I didn't think it would, but when I stayed focused on the + for a moment, and watched the pink dots vanish one by one, I was truly impressed. Hence the link.
Perhaps I should save up these sorts of interesting quick view links I see, and add a "quick link of the day" entry to my ever-growing Things of the Day posts?
Saturday Things of the Day
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men."
--John Stuart Mill, English philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
Soul-Devouring Worry:Not being richer than other men.
Answer of the Day:Because the clutch is your speedy little friend.
Curse of the Day:May you plan too far ahead.
Books Lying Open: Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin
L is for Lawless, by Sue Grafton
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
Movies to-see list:Land of the Dead, June 24th
War of the Worlds, June 29th
Fantastic Four, July 8th
Batman BeginsMr. & Mrs. SmithProps to Lanth for the movies list addition idea.
Friday, June 17, 2005
And One Million New Punchlines are Born...
...most of them involving comparisons to Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. And remember, it's
gay marriage that's a danger to society. This sort of farce is just fine.
Late Night Thoughts: Writing and Kali
As good as I feel on the days that I get a lot of writing done, it's amazing how seldom I do so. I enjoy doing it, I need to do it for my career dreams, and I feel good after I do it. So why is it so hard to find the time? Even tonight, with the happy glow from some good writing time this afternoon still discernible over the horizon, I've spent an unacceptable amount of time toying with the cats, screwing around surfing, playing
.BMX Ghost, and so on. All enjoyable, and all a waste of time with no long term benefits of any kind. (Well, setting a new personal best on BMX Ghost and knowing it would drive
Donnie crazy was kind of worth it.)
I've got an hour or two left of consciousness though, and I'm now going to get some editing done. Just as soon as I finish blogging about how much happier I'd be if I were writing, that is.
...
In other news, Kali is going well. I don't think I've mentioned it since I returned from San Diego, which just goes to show the benefit of blogging whenever I want, rather thrice a week, with two of the writing times situated immediately after Kali class.
I returned from my week and a half away last Thursday afternoon, and after spending some reunion time with Malaya we went off to Kali together. I didn't feel very good that night; slow, non-flexible, unadaptive, lacking in touch, and so on. I don't even remember what we worked on now, but it was something requiring finesse and touch, two things I had virtually none of that night. After that, I felt a bit down, and over the weekend I was sort of iffy on the whole thing. I don't mind that other students are better than me, but I mind a lot when I'm worse than I used to be.
Tuesday's class was more fun though, with two brand new students who didn't know much of anything, and some stick work that was mostly about finesse and technique and submission moves and disarms and such. The kali wasn't real demanding and it helped ease me back into the swing of things, and I worked all night with the new guy (the new girl worked with someone else) and complete noob though he was, I got a bit of an ego boost from being infinitely better than my opponent/fellow student.
Feeling more into Kali after that, I did some stick work in the house Wednesday and Thursday, and though I wasn't feeling very hyped up, I really enjoyed Thursday night's class.
We worked on open hand parry/check stuff, which is my favorite thing to work on other than stick combat. There were six of us there, including Malaya, and the other four guys all had at least a year more Kali experience than me. Time served doesn't mean everything, but it's not meaningless either, (I'm certainly far far better at everything than I was just 3 or 4 months ago.) and when I go in knowing that my partner in every exercise *should* be better than me, I enjoy it a lot. There's no pressure to teach them, I can soak up their technique and learn while we spar, and any shots I get in are a bonus. It's also fun since I've been working with/against all of these guys the whole time I've been doing Kali, and I know how much better than me they used to be. They're still better, but the gap has narrowed a great deal, and knowing that I can defend most of their shots, while landing some of my own, when before I was pretty much helpless in any sort of free sparring exercise, is definitely satisfying.
What we do in Kali is often hard to describe with words, but in this case it's pretty simple. We were trying to punch each other in the ribs, throat, solar plexus, or head, and we were using both arms, and throwing every sort of hook and jab and uppercut we could think of. Pretty simple, eh? We're doing this all without any gloves or pads, so control is needed since no one is trying to put anyone else into the hospital, but we're still hitting and being hit quite often, though most of the blows land on the arms and wrists and shoulders, as we block and weave and dodge. Oh, and we're kicking too, all the time, though mostly as a distraction since no one is going to land any hard enough to break anyone else's ankles; at least not during friendly sparring sessions in class. I'm better at kicking than most, so I got in a lot of kicks. Lucky for them I was also wearing soft rubber shoes and my control is good enough that I can kick fast, and hit, but pull the speed just before impact so they feel it, but aren't (usually) bruised.
Going into every variation and permutation of the sparring is way beyond the scope of this post, at least without videos to link to, but trust me when I say that it's a complete blast to punch effectively with either hand, to block with both hands, and to move your head and body well enough to avoid most of the shots that get past your hands. It's almost like a dance, and I'd think an uninitiated observer would find it hard to believe that two people can stand at arm's length from each other and punch at every height and angle, as fast as possible, without landing a solid hit for 20 or 30 seconds at a time. When both people are blocking well, that is.
I enjoyed getting in my hits, but found that I enjoyed successful defense even more. No one can turtle and take flurries indefinitely, at least not unless they've got four arms and a tower shield to defend with. You've got to punch to keep your opponent honest, and the best time to land a hit is with a counterpunch, since they've got at least one arm extended if you parry it and slide into your own attack before they can pull back. But that said, it is possible to fend off three or four fast shots, and it's very possible to end their flurry with a successful counterpunch of your own, after which you slide back with a smile on your face, knowing that you took the best they had, and beat it. Especially when they were nailing you with at least half the punches in that combo not five minutes earlier, and looking damn smug about it at the time.
It's also interesting switching partners, which we did every 15 minutes or so during the two hour class. People fight so differently, even when they've all fought together regularly, and are all, in theory, learning the same martial art.
I started off going against the most senior student there. He's very good at punching but not so great at the Kali aspects of it, I.E. moving, flowing, taking the energy of a punch and returning it with a flourish, etc. He's also very good high, but tends to be vulnerable down low. So in the time we spent sparring he hit me at least 3x as often as I hit him, and I never once got a good throat or head shot in, but I could nail him in the ribs or solar plexus just about any time I wanted to, especially if I sent one high to distract him, before aiming low with my next punch. He's also very hard with his arms, strong, and he uses his weight to lean a lot, so going from him to the next guy, a 2 year student a little shorter and heavier than me, was an odd experience. Especially since that guy is much more Kali in his movements, but not as good at channeling it yet.
So he looks good, much like the Gura when she demonstrates, but he's not able to use his newly-learned form to land very many hits yet. He also keeps his hands much lower, and doesn't commit to attacks very often. He likes to parry and parry and parry, sliding his hands around and waiting for you to strike, so he can slide it off and nail you with his counterpunch. He's not fast enough at that yet to be deadly though, so I got a lot of head and throat shots in on him, though he usually got me low in the exchange. I hardly ever touched his ribs though, and he got me all over, usually with a counter punch but several times by taking the initiative himself. It's such a fun dance of the arms and bodies, as you spar with your hands, both of you looking for an opening and thinking how to get it without getting nailed in the process.
After him I went up against the biggest guy there, and the best puncher. He's odd to spar with empty hand, since he's so big and strong that he's very soft and gentle in Kali, likely because he's had to be careful his whole adult life to avoid simply killing someone with a light shove. He's a guy I really enjoy doing empty hand against though, since he's a good partner, and since he's so good at it that he can go half speed and still dominate. He's strong, he's fast, and he's got great reach, so half the time he just leaves one or both hands out in front of him, bent a bit at the elbow, and touches your head or throat any time he wants to, while just eating up every punch you throw at him. It gets frustrating, so you try to hit faster or harder, and once you're leaning he effortlessly lands flurries and sends you reeling. The worst part is that he can get hits without seeming to really try, and he just leans his big bear paws out and smacks you in the head casually, while still remaining able to block your counters.
We sparred for a good half hour, and I don't think he threw more than four or five punches at speed in that time, and he still got me far more than I got him. And virtually all of my hits were shots I threw as fast as I could, shots that just barely slipped past his defense, and mostly shots that hit him in the ribs, at best. Meanwhile he could have knocked out all of my teeth ten times over, all without really trying. I actually wanted him to throw faster some of the time, since I'd adjust to his speed, get half a dozen hits (and lots of kicks) in a row, and start to think I was good. I was hitting faster and more accurately than he could defend, true, but only because he was not counterpunching much and not very quickly when he did.
Of course I can get in hits when I'm going full speed and he's going half speed, but what would it have been like if he'd been going fast too? Probably pretty ugly, and when we next get around to doing parry/check, I'll have to ask him to go full out a bit, just so I can see how far I still have to go. He's got enough control to hit me without killing me. I hope.
There was other sparring too, and Malaya and I ended up going for a while at the end. I landed more hits since I had reach and speed, and I'm better at punching, since it's more naturally a male motion and she hasn't practiced it much. She's got far better Kali form in her movements than I do though, and so the question of who was "better" is very open to debate. I landed more hits, but given my strength and reach advantage, how could I not? The question is how many hits did I land vs. how many should I have landed? If my technique were better the percent would go up, so I can certainly learn and improve going against her, and she can learn against me since she's giving up so much size. Hopefully we can work on that some more at home, and keep it friendly. We often do stick work and I let her practice knife on me, but we don't really spar very much, since tempers and frustration tend to boil over when the opponent is the one you love.
(Did I mention that I totally popped her in the forehead when she got way too devoted to trying to land a kick on me and lowered her eyes, after I'd been turning her shins red for several minutes? *cough*)
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Oil-Based Science?
Speaking of people who lack common decency, the news about the latest guy in the Bush Administration to slink out of office in disgrace
just about defies parody.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Opposition Democrats criticized the administration of US President George W. Bush after it emerged a former top White House advisor on environmental issues, Philip Cooney, has taken a job with oil giant ExxonMobil Corp.
The news that Cooney had secured a job with the oil giant came days after he resigned as the chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality on Friday.
Prior to resigning his White House post, Cooney was involved in a controversy over the deletion of dire climate change warnings in US government reports.
"This is just one more example of how the Bush White House is bought and sold by the very industries it is supposed to regulate," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement.
Cooney has no scientific background and prior to taking up the environmental post at the White House he served as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, an association of oil and energy firms.
Really, what more can you say that Howard Dean didn't? The guy was not a scientist; he was purely an oil industry shill who was was editing environmental reports to take out hard facts about global warming and links to the burning of fossil fuels. When news of this finally broke he resigned, and immediately went back to working for Exxon. Seriously, imagine you're Bush's spokesperson... what do you say? What lie can you possible concoct that will be even remotely-believable? I'd be stumped, though I might try to link it in some way to "terrorism" or "9/11" or "national security," knowing that the easily-frightened portion of the US population (about 51%, apparently) would hear those words and completely shut off the logic centers of their brain.
Sadly, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan didn't even try.
Asked about Cooney's case, McClellan told reporters: "That's a pretty absurd question that you just raised."
The White House has said Cooney's resignation was "completely unrelated" to the release of documents last week that showed Cooney had edited US government documents on global warming in what appeared to be an effort to water down climate change warnings.
Remember when lying was a bad thing, and that public figures who did it blatantly and repeatedly were castigated and shunned? Me either.
Schiavo's Parents Unrepenant
Following yesterday's news that their daughter was indeed a thoughtless, blind, shrunken-brained vegetable, one would think that Terri Schiavo's parents would make the apologies and crawl back into the hole that the right wing media machine so vociferiously propelled them out of.
Think again.
LARGO, Fla. - An autopsy that found Terri Schiavo suffered from severe and irreversible brain-damage has done nothing to sway her parents' position that she deserved to live and may have gotten better with therapy.
The long-awaited report Wednesday found that the 41-year-old woman's brain had shrunk to about half the normal size for a woman her age when she died March 31 after her feeding tube was disconnected. The autopsy also determined she was blind.
Bob and Mary Schindler disputed the results, maintaining that their daughter interacted with them and tried to speak. Their attorney said the family plans to discuss the autopsy with other medical experts and may take some unspecified legal action.
"We knew all along that Terri was profoundly brain damaged," said Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler. "We simply wanted to bring her home and care for her. It all goes back to this quality of life."
Remember when people had the decency to admit when they were wrong and to try and make amends? Me neither.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a surgeon who had questioned Schiavo's diagnosis during the intense national debate on whether to remove her feeding tube, said the autopsy brought "a very sad chapter to a close."
"She had devastating brain damage, and with that the chapter is closed," Frist said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
...
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the autopsy did nothing to change President Bush's position that Schiavo's feeding tube should not have been disconnected. He had signed a bill, rushed through by Congress in March, that was a last-ditch effort to restore her feeding tube.
As Malaya said while I was nuking my breakfast this morning, "I just want her parents to admit that they expected a miracle." Exactly. It was faith-based medicine for them, and it doesn't matter what the facts were, they saw what they wanted to see and never let reality slow their rush to judgment. I've also got to chuckle every time I see a quote from Terri's brother. Hope you're not riding a motorcycle or taking any heavy drugs, dude, 'cause you know mommy and daddy will keep you twitching on the slab with the help of every medical machine yet invented.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Movie Review: Batman Begins
Batman Begins is the latest batman movie, and the first in nearly a decade, since the
debacle that was Batman and Robin. This film, as the title indicates, is not a sequel to the previous series, but a fresh start to the character and the mythology. In this one we see Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, and learn about his childhood, how he developed a fear of bats, how his parents were killed, how he found himself as a man, where he got his combat training, and see the idea of Batman germinate in his mind and watch as he figures out how to fight, assembles his utility belt from useful items (nothing cheesy like a bat-arang), finds an image and becomes known to the people of the city, and learns to fly and climb around the city while avoiding criminals and corrupt police.
He fights enemies also, those of Gotham and elsewhere, and struggles to save the city that killed his parents and made him the hard man that he is. To the scores:
Batman Begins
Script/Story: 8
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 7
Humor: 4
Horror: 5
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 6
Overall: 7.5
This film is definitely the best Batman movie thus far. That's not saying very much from me, since I wasn't a fan of the previous four, and I only saw the first two that Burton did; I was smart enough to bail out before they turned cheese-meister Joel Schumacher loose. It's a good movie though, by any standard, and may be the best comic book film yet made.
It's not a fun movie, and it's not a comic romp; it's very dark and serious, with convincing performances and genuine human tragedy. There's even some scary stuff, and not just for people who are afraid of swarms of CGI bats. I think it would have been greatly improved by an R rating, since that would have allowed the bad guys to be much nastier, the action to be more violent and bloody, and the perversion and hinted at sexual elements to be convincing. It's an effective PG-13 though, with very hard-hitting action and many deaths hinted at, if not actually shown. And there are marketing and box office considerations behind the teen-friendly PG-13 rating, of course.
Saying it's dark doesn't mean it's grim and joyless though. I enjoyed it a great deal, and the dark elements just made the heroism and triumph that much more enjoyable. The villains are evil and despicable, but have a bit of a wacky edge to make them comic book, and the main plot to destroy Gotham City is realistic enough to believe, while being too crazy to belong anywhere outside of a comic book world.
More on the scores:
Script/Story: 8This is the strongest element of the film, and while it's not perfect, it's pretty good. The flashbacks to Bruce Wayne's childhood and young adult years are very well done, both in of themselves and in terms of how they are integrate into the film. You could see this movie having never heard of Batman in your life, and it would all make sense, in a comic book sort of way.
The film opens with Bruce Wayne incarcerated in some sort of Tibetian prison, fighting for his life against a gang of prisoners, and as the plot unfolds we see why he was there, what sent him off on his world-traveling, soul-searching path, why he decides to return to Gotham City, and how he tries to live up to his father's memory. From there we see him picking his weapons, training in their use, and deciding what sort of public and private life he's going to lead. In short, this one has all of the "how" and "why" stuff that superhero movies usually skip, and that's exactly what bothers me about most of them.
For example, I couldn't sit through
Batman 2, the one with Danny DeVito as the Penguin, since it was just too much disbelief to suspend. Baby Penguin washed into the sewers as a deformed baby, and the next thing you know it's decades later and he's this hideous beak-nosed thing with jagged teeth, a vast fortune, and hundreds of costumed henchmen. How did he survive? Where did he find the henchmen? Who makes their clothing? Where did he get hundreds of penguin backpacks to outfit his animal assassins? And so on. I also always wonder how Batman got his vehicles and costumes, how he built his huge Batcave beneath his mansion without any workers talking, and so on.
This all goes for other movies too; I can't watch X-men without wondering who built all of those massive underground rooms, how Xavier has the most advanced aircraft on earth, etc. Just the fact that almost none of this stuff marred the quality of Batman Begins would have earned it a high score in this category. That it's got a good plot otherwise, good dialogue, and so on, is gravy.
Acting/Casting: 7No one is exceptional in the film, but everyone gets the job done. Michael "30 years ago I'd have carried this film and now I’m the fucking butler!" Caine as the Alfred was perfect in his role, and I liked Policeman (not yet Commissioner) Gordon too. Christian Bale as Batman is acceptable, and the young guy who plays the psycho Scarecrow is suitably creepy, while Morgan Freeman plays Morgan Freeman, in a role that's well-written for him. Liam Neeson is also good in his mentor role, and the only one who really stuck out in sore thumb fashion was love interest Katie Holmes. She's not horrible, but she just takes up space and is surprisingly not-attractive throughout. Honestly, the only memorable thing she does comes at the end of the film, when she wears a thin white silk blouse in a chilly outdoor scene with a stiff breeze, apparently wanting to make up for the lack of nipples thus far seen on the new batsuit. If not for her ongoing Tom Cruise-related circus I'd have had no idea who she was and not have given a thought to finding out afterwards, except to wonder why they didn't get a beautiful woman for the role.
Action: 7It's not really an action film, not with all of the story and acting, but what action there is rocks. It's hard-hitting and realistic and intense, and while the fight scene editing is all of the fast and tight and frantically-edited type, it works pretty well. True, there's no way to tell what's happening, especially with almost every fight featuring a guy in a black bat suit against other guys in black uniforms, but it's fast-paced and intense. Most of the scenes of Batman in action are shot from the POV of the bad guys, as they look around in terror and shoot up at shadows, and these work since we just see Batman as he appears and knocks someone out and vanishes. Go watch a Jet Li movie if you want to see long shots of fight scenes featuring people who can really do it. This film is much more stylized and brutal, and you've got to like Batman's bone-crushing attacks. He swoops in, hits some thug hard enough to knock him through a wall, and vanishes. The technical nature of the fighting is remedial at best, but it's not a martial arts film, so don't expect
Crouching Tiger style fight scenes and you won't be disappointed.
Other than physical combat, there's other quality action. The Batmobile chases are fun, due entirely to Batman's Hummer-on-steroids vehicle, "The Tumbler." It rampages through Gotham, cornering with hydraulics, running right over police cars, crashing through walls, firing missiles, and going into stealth mode, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch. It's probably even more fun to drive, but that privilege is not given to us, the viewer. Coming soon to a Six Flags near you, perhaps. There's also a truly-glorious train crash that goes on and on in a series of explosions and collapsing buildings that I greatly enjoyed.
Best of all, the action is there for a reason, and it's more or less realistic. It's not video game silliness, like
Mr. & Mrs. Smith, or
Charlie's Angels, or
the last few James Bond films. The action in Batman Begins is not only part of the story, it actually advances the story, and when it happens it seems necessary, rather than pointlessly inserted for its own sake.
Humor: 4Don't read too much into this score, since it's not a comedy. The scenes that try to be funny are, but there aren't many of them. It's not an action/comedy by any stretch of the imagination.
Horror: 5Much like the humor score, this film isn't trying to be scary. That it was in any way was a surprise to me, and I liked that surprise a lot. I'd talk more about it, but I don't want to be spoilery about something I didn't know about going in, and enjoyed all the more for my ignorance.
Eye Candy: 6The movie looks exactly how it wants to look. That most of the scenes are in the dark, dirty slums of crumbling Gotham City is intentional, and while these are not pretty things to look at, they look perfect for the story. Some of the early scenes of the wilds of Tibet or Nepal (or wherever) were gorgeous in their harsh and frozen grandeur, and I loved a few of the long shots of Gotham City too; with the steaming ugliness transformed by aeriel photography. Gotham is basically New York, but bigger and far more stratified between the gleaming high rises and the festering, third world slums that surround them. Ugly though it was, I wanted to see more of the city, and that's not something I felt about any of the perfectly manicured and computer-generated fantasy lands in the three Star Wars prequels.
Fun Factor: 6It's not a very fun movie, but it's not exactly meant to be fun. It's meant to be gritty and dark and tough, and it is all of those things. It's not quite noir, not with a PG-13 rating and a heroic superhero good guy, but you feel for the characters, rather than laughing along and knowing everything will turn out alright.
Replayability: 6I'm torn on this score, since while I'd like to see it again tomorrow, that's more out of admiration for the quality of the film than because I had such a fun time watching it. I didn't enjoy it as much as appreciate it, but I can imagine it growing on me once I've seen it a couple of times on DVD.
Overall: 7.5I've no hesitation in naming this the best of the Batman films, and it's probably the best superhero/comic book film yet made as well. I'm only including modern ones in this, since the genre has progressed so much, and since I can't fairly-evaluate films I saw when I was a kid. I always thought Superman was pretty boring and far too goody-goody to be of much interest, but I remember thinking
Superman 2 was pretty good, with his fights against Zod.
Spiderman was a well-made film, but Tobey Maguire is a splash of water compared to the solid presence of Christian Bale, and that movie was all too jokey and consumed with an un-involving love affair to do much for me. The
X-men movies have both been passionless and fallen far short of their potential, and various other films like
The Punisher and
Underworld and
Blade (reviews of all those in my
reviews section) have had their moments, but haven't really worked on the whole.
In retrospect, the only comic book movie I'd put up against this one is
Hellboy.
My initial review only gave it a 6, but it's really grown on me after seeing it several times on DVD, and right now I'd say it's a better and more enjoyable film than
Batman Begins. Admittedly, I also love the Lovecraftian mythology of
Hellboy while I'm pretty neutral towards the world of Batman, so factor that into my score if you must. Whether
Batman Begins will grow on me once I've seen it again on DVD, especially if there's an unrated version with more intensity, remains to be seen.
All in all, it was done about as well as it could have been. I'd have liked a bit more light on and technique in the fights, but that's just my martial arts eye talking. I think most people will like them just as they are, and better frantic editing and close ups and style than unconvincing long shots of some guy in a bat suit. The female love interest could have been a better role and definitely a better actress, but all of the male characters were well written and acted, and when you get down to it, this is very much a man's movie. Or a boy's movie, at least. I'm looking forward to part 2.
Minor Site Updates
Prompted by the new blog format, I spent some time today going over various old site pages and making updates, and in one case making a deletion. Updated (modestly, in most cases) are the
Feedback page,
Cast of Characters page,
Design Notes page, and
Contact page. Updated (at the bottom) and then purged from the navbar for redundancy is the
Mission Statement page. This is the last time you'll ever see a link to it from anywhere on this site, so click and see why, or ignore it and miss nothing.
Things of the Day
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights."
--Kahlil Gibran
Soul-Devouring Worry:Deceptive matinee pricing.
Answer of the Day:Because I just had to get back into the swing of things.
Curse of the Day:May the yin/yang of your sleeping pets shatter with consciousness.
Books Lying Open:Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin
L is for Lawless, by Sue Grafton
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
Unnecessary Reviews
So here's my quandry. Before and during my recent Chicago trip and San Diego "
vacation" I read three books, none of which were very good and one of which was actually quite awful. Sunday night, while in a mood to write but not a mood to fiction, I typed out reviews of all three. I kept the reviews relatively short, and tried to talk about why the books worked or didn't work, but all the same, all three books are old, two of them are hardly even in print anymore, and the oldest and least-known was by far the worst of the three.
The quandry is, why should I post those reviews when they're about mediocre titles no one is likely to ever read again anyway? It's ironic too, since as I was reading two of the books half the reason I kept going was so I'd be able to write a review about them. And now I feel like I've got to post the review since after all, I sat through the whole stupid book before I could write it.
Anyway, here's the first and the worst of the three, a cheesy attempt at a horror romance by the previously-unknown Barbara Michaels. Her stunningly-original title?
Prince of Darkness. To the review, which you can
also read here, in my
reviews section, though I can't really imagine why you'd want to.
Prince of Darkness, by Barbara Michaels. I picked this one up for free at a library giveaway and read it on vacation when all of my other books were exhausted; time that would have been better spent in virtually any other pursuit. I have not read anything else by this author, so perhaps this is her style, but I thought this was one of the most poorly-written novels I've ever read. The prose is weak, the descriptions are cursory, and the dialogue is barely serviceable. The worst thing though, is the deception practiced by the author, in order to attempt to create some suspense, purely by withholding information from the reader.
To the scores:
Prince of Darkness, by Barbara Michaels
Plot: 3
Concept: 6
Writing Quality/Flow: 3/5
Characters: 3
Horror: 2
Humor: NA
Fun Factor: 2
Page Turner: 3
Re-readability: 3
Overall: 2
Deception, you say? Yes. I shall try to explain.
The book opens with a man being hired to do a job, and the events are presented in such as way that we think he's going to kill an innocent woman, or at least drive her insane in some sort of plot to get her money. The book is from his POV for the first 2/5 or so, and then just as his plan is going well he makes a huge discovery that we don't share with him, one that changes his entire outlook on things -- at which point the book's POV changes to that of the woman who he was trying to drive crazy with cheap ghostly parlor tricks. The novel then proceeds from her POV, while the initial male character starts behaving completely differently, with no explanation given. We get the thoughts of the female lead from then on, but never enough to answer the basic mysteries of the tale. The author simply had to switch to her POV since if we'd stayed with the man's we would have learned what was going on, instead of having it drawn out for another 100 pages.
This book is not a mystery, since there aren't any clues given that would let you figure things out in advance. Rather, it's cheaply-deceptive because the suspense is generated entirely by the author withholding information from the reader and switching the POV around to keep us on the outside. On top of that, the final reveal is melodramatic and cheesy to the extreme; think of every bad twist you'd see in a soap opera, and you'll see it in this novel. Dead characters coming back to life, secret identities, hidden relationships between characters, and so on.
Great writing and characters might have redeemed this, at least partly, but there is none to be found. The main male lead is just some English guy with no particular distinguishing traits, the woman is skittish and uninteresting, and when basically every other character in the novel suddenly turns out to be a murderous demon, it's not believable and is just silly. We didn't care about the other people, nor the main characters, so why should we care when the ridiculous events of the climax begin to take place? The book also cheats on every bit of potential gore, sex, confrontation, etc. Just as something passionate is about to happen, the narrative skips to another POV, or forward in time until after the events have already taken place.
I was hoping for a good suspenseful tale with some horror, occult, or even romance, and I was disappointed to find nothing but cheap thrills and obfuscation by a mediocre novelist. Really, the author should have realized she didn't have enough plot to support a novel, and rather than going forward with the cheap tricks required to eek out 220 pages and barely qualify as a novel, she should have put this on the back burner and given it more thought. Some more plot twists and another few scenes with the townsfolk would have fleshed out this tale and might have given it enough meat to pass.
As it is, I can't recommend this book at all, and no, it's not good enough to bother going into further detail about the individual rating categories. I am willing to quickly summarize the plot, if anyone cares enough to ask. Just so you'll gain even greater insight into why it sucked.
The best news about this? We're going to see Batman Begins this afternoon, so with any luck I'll get to wipe away the taste this one left in your mouth with a review of something fun and enjoyable.
Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage
In
news that's not news to anyone who didn't have a huge cross to grind on the issue, Terri Schiavo's autopsy results have been released, and it turns out that she was just as much of a vegetable as everyone but her parents and their religiously-motivated supporters contended.
LARGO, Fla. - An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.
...
Her parents cling to their belief that her condition could have improved, in spite of the autopsy report, their lawyer said.
She died from dehydration, Thogmartin said. He said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death. He said that after her feeding tube was removed, she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth, as her parents requested.
"Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters. He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead," and that her brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days following the feeding tube's removal.
It's times like this when I almost wish I read some of the nuttier right wing blogs, just to see what they say when they're proven completely wrong on one thing after another. Perhaps they could begin combining conspiracy theories, and prove that Osama met with Saddam and they hid the WMDs in Terri Schiavo's brain, just as Dear Leader Dubya foretold?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Maybe there are some good rides at DisneyWorld after all?
Disneyland/world's reputation is that they are family places with wimpy rides, and that adults who want real rollercoaster-style thrills should head to Six Flags. The reputation is true as far as I know, but it looks like Disney is working to change that.
To the news:
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - A 4-year-old boy died after a spin on a Walt Disney World spaceship ride so intense that some riders have been taken to the hospital with chest pain.
Daudi Bamuwamye lost consciousness Monday aboard "Mission: Space," which spins riders in a giant centrifuge that subjects them to twice the normal force of gravity. The boy's mother carried him off the ride, and paramedics and a theme park worker tried to revive him, but he died at a hospital.
The sheriff's office said the boy met the minimum 44-inch height requirement for the ride.
That sounds impressive, until you notice it's a whole 2g. You get more than that stomping on it at a green light! Besides, 4 year olds aren't exactly reknowned for their hardiness and difficulty killing, what with all those drownings in buckets of water and from taking a bite of a peanut butter sandwich and such.
A more interesting aspect of the article comes in later, when the state of safety regulations at DisneyWorld is briefly discussed.
Florida's major theme parks not directly regulated by the state, and instead have their own inspectors.
It's a good topic for a much longer blog post at some point, but if you hunt around and find some info about how Disney has basically bought off the entire state of Florida, it's a fascinating topic. My dad's favorite author
wrote a book about it, and if you can find
fascinating stuff about Disney online, for free. For instance, did you know Disneyland and Disneyworld are two of the very few locations in the US that were
permanently designated "no fly zones" by the Homeland Security Act?
Never Neverland
So, Michael Jackson was somehow found
not guilty on all charges in his latest child molestation ordeal. I'd say something clever about it, but since I hadn't worked this hard to ignore a celebrity trial since the OJ farce, I don't know enough about it to comment. I'd assumed he would go up the river, but apparently the DA did a shitty job, and the mother of the allegedly-abused kid was a complete money-grubbing bitch who alienated the jury with her rambling and accusatory testimony.
I'd especially assumed he was screwed when Johnny Cochran dropped dead earlier this year (and fell straight through the earth's crust on his non-stop journey to hell). But Cochran wasn't working for MJ anyway, and apparently there's more than one lawyer out there with a knack for getting nutty celebrities out of trouble of their own making. If the sequined glove don't fit, you must acquit?
In fact, there's
a glowing article today about Jackson's lawyer, Tom Mesereau.
"He is probably the best cross-examiner I've ever seen in a courtroom," said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, who sat in on the trial. "He is tenacious and he knows the evidence regarding the witness he is questioning better than anyone else in the courtroom."
Yes, it's all quite fascinating. If only the media could spend a little more time reporting on celebrities? After all, there's not any more important news out there. It's not like we're not losing a war in Iraq right now or anything.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Movie Review: Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (John and Jane, respectively) is a relationship film masquerading as an action movie. It starts Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and the bleeding, dying ghost of Jennifer Aniston's love, and is a fun little romp propelled almost entirely by snappy editing, bright colors, and the tremendous chemistry between the two leads.
The plot, if you're somehow unaware of it at this point, is that Pitt and Jolie are a married couple who have grown very bored of their safe, plain lives. Each believes that the other has a normal job, when in actuality they are both super assassins, jetting around the world to pull off hired murders before returning home just in time for their next banal dinner party. Eventually and inevitably, they discover each other's secret identity and turn their guns on each other. Will they rediscover their love through near death? Will they join forces against the anonymous forces who are now after both of them? Will there be lots of gunplay? What do you think?
To the scores.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 9
Action: 7
Humor: 6
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 7
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 5
Overall: 6
This one was tricky for me to score, since so many of the totals were very mixed. For example, the action was very good, for what it was. By that I mean what you saw on the screen of the gun play, driving, fighting, infiltration, etc was pleasing to the eye. At the same time, 90% of the action was completely ludicrous, in terms of whether or not it could actually happen like that in any dimension even remotely like our own. I'll go into more detail in a moment, but the action, like so many other aspects of this film, will work better the less thought you give to the logic behind it. Since quite often, there is none.
I don't have a "chemistry" score on my ratings, but if I did this film would earn a 9 or 10, and it would be the only thing that kept this one afloat. Malaya made the point after we saw it, and I think it's fair to repeat, that this movie would have been a complete train wreck had it starred virtually any other pair of actors.
I'm sure some other male and female leads could have pulled it off, but none leap to mind, and since almost the entire plot requires you to suspend your disbelief with a crane, it's essential that you believe that Pitt and Jolie really are in love and really are half crazy as they consider killing each other. The whole movie does not work, but what does work would not work at all if it were not for the two leads meshing so well. Pitt and Jolie are great together, and even the scenes where they're just suffering through a miserable suburban dinner together have a sort of crackle to them. This film is probably the best evidence yet that all romantic leads should have an affair during filming, for the good of the project.
Further comments:
Script/Story: 6The first of my very conflicted scores. The script for the dialogue and actions of Pitt and Jolie was great. Lots of nice comedy bits, lots of nice relationship touches, realistic in their actions and reactions to most things, etc. The rest of the script, in terms of the overall plot, the actions of other characters, the way the fight scenes worked, etc, was completely absurd. Plot holes everywhere, physical impossibilities in every action scene, completely stupidity in almost every scenario, and so on. I can't discuss it further without going into major spoilers, but there's just no way not to spend the last hour of the film thinking, "Why didn't they just do _______." and "No one would ever do ______." and so on.
Acting/Casting: 9As I've been saying, this is what makes the film. Pitt and Jolie are both nearly perfect in their roles, and while either of them would have been good on their own, they are just electric together. As good a romantic pairing as I've ever seen on screen.
Action: 7Another mixed one. As I briefly alluded to above, the action is fun and lively and visually-pleasing, on that level. If you want it to make sense and be logical and realistic, you're out of luck, since it's nearly as full of physical impossibilities as cartoonish films like
Charlie's Angels.
I read a bit in Entertainment Weekly that there were initially two head bad guys, directing the plotting against the Smiths. They tested poorly though, and were completely axed from the final film. I can't say whether or not that improved the movie, but test audiences seemed to think it did, and we might as well trust their judgment. I can speculate that their removal is a large source of why so little of this film makes sense, though. As it is the bad guys are about as real and grounded as the enemies you blow away in a computer game. There are hundreds of them, all anonymously clad in black, all wearing masks, all driving black cars or flying in black helicopters, and they pop up as needed, die bloodlessly, and are instantly replaced by dozens more, just in time to be mowed down by the Smiths as they trade innuendo-laced banter and look cool reloading their guns.
Did you ever see
Commando, the Arnie film? Think about the last half hour of that, during which he blows away maybe 150 soldiers, most of them at point blank range, while simply ignoring the thousands of machine gun bullets and dozens of grenades that blow up all around him. Arnie is basically playing Command on "god mode" and that's pretty well what the Smiths do in their film as well, though at least Arnie made some effort to duck and hide from time to time, as he took cover behind such bulletproof objects as rose bushes and chain link fences. You get the idea.
Humor: 6This all comes from the clever dialogue and character treatments in the script, and it's all predicated on the Smith's chemistry. Several people were laughing aloud during the entire film, I mean like non-stop, and while I didn't find it that funny, I was amused and appreciative of the dialogue. It was somewhat reminiscent of the best of
Moonlighting, where Bruce Willis and Kathleen Turner had some cracklingly-sparring dialogue and chemistry going.
Eye Candy: 7Another mixed score. The two leads are undeniably gorgeous, regularly being voted the #1 most beautiful man and woman on earth in those completely-scientific tabloid mag polls. There is some lovely architecture too, as each of the leads inhabits their James Bond-styled secret offices and plays with their hardware. Other than that though, there movie isn't much to look at. Most of the action takes place in the suburbia of upstate New York, or else in a distant and dry desert, and neither of those locations, or the various interior sets, are anything special to look at. So give this one a 9 for the people, and a 4 for most of the sets, and average it out with weighting applies to the human aspect.
Fun Factor: 6If the plot had made a bit more sense and hadn't forced me to overlook so many totally illogical things, I'd have had more fun. As it was I enjoyed the film, but was always aware of the disbelief I was working to keep suspended, and that's never much fun.
Replayability: 5Another mixed score. Right now I've got no desire to see it again, since I mostly remember the dumb stuff and figure I'd fixate on that during a second viewing. Malaya's eager to see the unrated director's cut version though, with the PG-13 edits removed and some much hotter sex included, and I can envision this one really growing on me once it's on DVD, and I have come to terms with the plot holes and can begin ignoring them and just enjoying the other aspects of the film.
Overall: 6While I admire the acting and some of the action, there are simply too many gaping plot and logic holes for me to give this one a higher score. The romance and relationship stuff is very solid and extremely well-acted, and the action scenes themselves are fun. If the plot had even made a hint of sense and hadn't been constructed in intentionally-illogical form to keep the scenes flowing, I'd have been happy to give this one a higher score. As it is I can't really recommend it, unless you're confident that you'll be able to overlook all the silly stuff and just enjoy the acting and romantic chemistry.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Trying way too hard
Batman Begins is opening this weekend, and shockingly, after the
unwatchable fourth installment of the series, it's getting
very good reviews. One of them is from Walter Chaw, one of my favorite film reviewers (
more on him here), who is in fine form in this review, as he does everything possible to tell you nothing useful about the film while convincing you that the money his parents spent sending him to grad school
was well spent. A quote:
More than appreciably darker, Batman Begins tackles the story's essential Freudian/Jungian mooring, returning over and over to the dank, vaginal tunnel that a young Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has tied inextricably to the death of his parents until the moment that a grown Bruce, after a self-imposed exile of seven years, penetrates the black pit of his divorce from his parents to find himself reborn, as it were, underground.
Uh huh. He gives it four stars by the way, though you'll need patience and a thesarus to figure out why. We'll be seeing it opening weekend, I suspect. Malaya's in quite the lather for this one, and I'm willing to go too, even though I wasn't impressed with any of the previous batman films; not even the two Tim Burton ones that most people seemed to find enjoyable.
The Family Dog
Here's
another heartwarming pet pit bull story, with a bonus quote from the stupidest mother on earth. Well, ex-mother.
SAN FRANCISCO - The mother of a 12-year-old boy killed in his own home by one of the family's two pit bulls says she had been so concerned about one of the dogs that she shut her son in the basement to protect him.
Maureen Faibish said she ordered Nicholas to stay in the basement while she did errands on June 3, the day he was attacked by one or both of the dogs. She said she was worried about the male dog, Rex, who was acting possessive because the female, Ella, was in heat.
"I put him down there, with a shovel on the door," Faibish said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. "And I told him: `Stay down there until I come back.' Typical Nicky, he wouldn't listen to me."
...
"It's Nicky's time to go," she said in the interview. "When you're born you're destined to go and this was his time."
Well, mom's real broken up, but hey, you can't fight fate. Man, her god must be a cocksucker, huh? So that kid was born 12 years ago, a perfect beautiful baby boy, but nevertheless had "Die by June 10th, 2005." stamped on his head in celestial ink. Do you suppose the method of death was preordained? I mean did it also say, "Mauled by dog." or was that left open, and if Rex (nice original name there, lady) hadn't torn him to pieces would a stray bullet have gotten him, or a car crash, or a blood clot?
Unbelievably, the article also includes the requisite quote about how she never could have expected this from her loving pets.
Despite her concerns about Rex that day, Faibish told the newspaper: "My kids got along great with (the dogs). We were never seeing any kind of violent tendencies."
Of course you weren't. This quote appears in every article you ever read about someone's murderous pit bull or akita or doberman or whatever, and while I usually just laugh at their oblivious ignorance, in this case I'm almost left open-mouthed. Honestly, she's either a scheming liar trying to avoid prison on child endangerment charges, or a complete idiot. Given that she actually locked her kid in the basement (a dangerous act in of itself) to keep him away from the dogs before they murdered him, how on earth can she seriously say they weren't dangerous? This reminds me of all of the asshole children you see; bullies, druggies, disruptive brats, or whatever, and then their frequently-clueless parents. "Oh no, my son/daughter is a perfect angel and never acts up at home." People have an amazing ability to see only that which they want to see in other people, especially when they've given birth to said other people.
Lastly, the scariest thing in the whole article is mom's plural use of the word "kids." She's got more! Survivors? Can I at least hope that they'll take them away from her before they lock mom into a basement with several vicious animals? After all, it's probably about her time to go too.
Things of the Day
Quotes and other things of the day will be posted in this fashion from now on, for reasons elicudated in the previous post. Quantities will vary, but you should definitely take my use of the word "day" with a non-literal grain of salt.
Quote of the Day:"I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change."
--Jim Rohn
Soul-Devouring Worry:A playful cat whose claws are in desperate need of a trim.
Answer of the Day:Because an answering machine would just complicate things.
Curse of the Day:May your iGimp remain cordless.
Books Lying Open: Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin
Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
L is for Lawless, by Sue Grafton
Prince of Darkness, by Barbara Michaels
(Books with a strike through them await their just review.)
Archives
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