A while back, I happened upon a card in my mailbox that allowed me one free month of Netflix. I finally got around to starting it up, and I have to say, it's been a great way to get caught up on a bunch of movies and TV shows I've been wanting to see. Apart from watching every episode of Dollhouse, a few snippets of the X-Men cartoon, and the entire first three seasons of Breaking Bad, I also got around to watching 31 movies I hadn't seen before. Let me tell you, it was immensely refreshing to be able to watch a free movie online that didn't have obnoxious Korean subtitles taking up two-thirds of the screen.
Anyway, two of those Netflix movies are what I'd like to talk about today: a pair of action-driven, Michael Bay-helmed epics called Bad Boys and Bad Boys II.
What piqued my interest about these particular movies was the fact that everyone seemed to really like them, especially the second one. I remember the first one coming out and just being a quiet hit, but once the sequel released...everyone everywhere was talking about Bad Boys II. Friends, neighbours, fellow movie buffs, & casual movie fans alike all said it was a total must-see movie. I'd never seen either of the Bad Boys, but I love Will Smith (who doesn't?!) and I can tolerate Michael Bay films (mostly). I thought Armageddon was decent and I enjoyed the Transformers series. So I thought, hey, let's give Bad Boys a shot. From what I gathered through popular opinion, this franchise took a page from Chris Nolan's Bat-book, i.e., the first movie was a big success, but the twice-as-long, twice-as-hyped, twice-as-big, twice-as-expensive sequel was the true star of the series.
Fair enough, I thought. I'm all yours, Mr. Bay. Let's see what you've got.
Upon finally viewing these two movies, my verdict is...confused. Maybe I'm dyslexic and I've been horribly mixing up all of the hype surrounding this series, but Bad Boys II was way, way, WAAAAYYYYY worse than its predecessor.
The first Bad Boys had a really clever and cute little plot twist whereupon Martin Lawrence's character Marcus (a jittery, straight-edged family man) has to pretend to be Will Smith's character Mike (a smooth-talking, oversexed playboy) in order to secure a witness in a very important police case involving stolen heroin. That was neat, and totally not something I expected to see in a Michael Bay movie. It was fun to watch these characters struggle uncomfortably out of their element. It reminded me of the classic mistaken identity farces of Hollywood's Golden Age, and it really helped put an emphasis on the second half of that "action-comedy" nametag this series likes to wear proudly on its lapels.
Bad Boys II, on the other hand...well, I can actually review that movie without using a single word, simply by rolling my eyes and scoffing. But since you can't exactly see me doing that, here are some words.
Everything that made the first movie cool and funky and different and fun is gone. Bye-bye. Instead, prepare yourself for two hours and twenty-four minutes of non-stop, groan-inducing action movie cliches that are so in-your-face that I kept thinking I was watching a Wayans Brothers parody of a cop movie instead of the genuine article. It left we wondering if Bay and his writers had ever even seen The Last Action Hero. Literally every cop movie stereotype that The Last Action Hero makes fun of is in Bad Boys II, and they're not even being used ironically. Hero cop gets shot, but it's just "a flesh wound"? Check. High-speed car chase filled with explosions where a lot of innocent people get hurt but the cops don't seem too bothered by it? Check. Cops using flashy sports cars instead of standard-issue police cruisers? Triple check. Mismatched partners getting in silly arguments? Check. A police station that looks nicer than the main lobby of a Ritz-Carlton hotel? Check. A chief who spends every second of his screen time yelling at the two lead cops about how the Mayor is up his ass? Check. A lame, stock villain whose only character traits are "evil" and "drug lord"? Check. Slow-motion hero shots of the main characters firing their guns in a way that isn't practical at all, but it's okay because it makes them look "badass"? Check check check check che...well, you get the idea.
Are those cliches bad? Absolutely not. They're fun and exciting and delightful...in moderation. But considering that the first Bad Boys broke the mould a little bit and gave us something with a neat little spark of originality, you can understand how disappointed I was that the sequel decided to just take a shit all over that and play their safe cards from The Overused Buddy-Cop Stereotype Handbook for Dummies. What's especially puzzling is how everybody said they loved it so much more than Part 1.
Remember how I said that almost everyone loves Will Smith? Well, this movie doesn't just love him...this movie takes every single opportunity to get down on its knees, grab Will Smith by the balls, suck him off until he's satisfied, and then says, "Thank you, Will Smith, may I have another?" It was almost embarrassing to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if Bad Boys II's official movie poster was just Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam with the Fresh Prince's face superimposed over God's.
What, then, should Bad Boys II have been? Well, if you ask me, I think it was the perfect opportunity for a classic role-reversal. Take another popular movie series for example: in Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear had to deal with the fact that he was a toy. Woody kept trying to explain to him exactly what that meant, and was constantly reminding Buzz of his responsibility to Andy. In Toy Story 2, Woody was the one dealing with an identity crisis, and it was up to Buzz to bring him back. Buzz even went so far as to echo Woody's famous line from the first flick: "You are a child's plaything! You. Are. A. TOY!" If the first Bad Boys was about Martin Lawrence struggling to pretend that he was a man-whore bachelor, then Bad Boys II absolutely could have worked if it was about Will Smith struggling to pretend (for similar reasons, perhaps) that he was a happily-married suburbanite with three kids. And if they really wanted to stick to the Toy Story formula, then Bad Boys III could be about them being transferred to a different precinct, and then somehow they end up in a giant furnace room holding hands and accepting their inevitable fate, only to be pulled out of harm's way at the last second by Joe Pantoliano.
At the end of the day, what I'm most curious about is: why? Why was Bad Boys II so universally acclaimed while its superior predecessor goes largely unmentioned? Why does this mediocre sequel overshadow the better work that came before? Jaws 2 didn't overshadow Jaws. Terminator 3 didn't overshadow T2. The Return of Jafar didn't overshadow Aladdin (thank fucking Lord). Is Bad Boys II a "bad" movie? On its own, not at all. As part of the series that the first one started, though...yeah, a little bit.. What do YOU think of Bad Boys II? Perhaps this is one of life's mysteries that simply wasn't meant to be solved. Or maybe we're just better off not knowing, because the answer might turn out to be "People prefer dumb stuff". And that would just be sad.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Dimension Dimension Dimension
So the other day, Underworld: Awakening came out and a friend and I made plans to go and see it (I'll wait 'till the laughter stops on that one before I continue). Much to our chagrin, though, the movie was only playing in 3-D, which neither of us wanted, so we had to end up settling on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Despite the comically enormous size of Gary Oldman's glasses, that movie was about as entertaining as watching people do paperwork for two hours. Honestly, for a movie about spies and secret double-agents and British espionage, it wasn't very intriguing. Just a word of friendly advice to the writers: when it comes to mysteries, having CLUES that the audience can identify is exponentially more interesting than just having Gary Oldman solve the whole thing himself by reading files.
But to get back to the point here, I want to talk about 3-D. Everyone who knows me already knows how I feel about it, but I think I should just lay all my cards on the table now. You see, Hollywood is a dear friend of mine. I've known him since I was a baby. I don't just care about Hollywood; I love the heck out of him. But I can't sit idly by and watch him kill himself any longer. So, Hollywood, old friend, consider this blog entry your intervention.
As always, Hollywood, the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
Hollywood, I want you to think back to the good old days, and by that I mean any day prior to 2009. Do you remember all of the fun we used to have together, you & me? We used to do everything: we'd play baseball with Tom Hanks, we'd take a 12-hour trip to Middle Earth, we'd run from killer cyborgs and go sneaking through the Temple of Doom. We blew up the Death Star, and then we blew up the second Death Star, and then we drove Miss Daisy around for a bit. We had a lot of great times together.
But then you changed.
I don't know what it was. Maybe you felt pressured. Maybe you spent too much time hanging around that psycho James Cameron. But whatever the catalyst was, the results were undeniable: you started using 3-D. At first it was just enough to make us concerned, but now...now, Hollywood, we're scared for you.
A couple of years back. I wanted to watch the last Saw movie with you, remember? But...you were on 3-D. And just this past Christmas, when the Tintin movie came out, I was overjoyed! I used to love the Tintin cartoon when I was a kid! I couldn't wait to see it on the big screen with you! But...you were on 3-D.
I understand that addictions are hard to kick, Hollywood. But the fact of the matter is, you need to quit. Maybe some unpleasant people want to be around you when you're on 3-D, but those people aren't your real friends. You may think you're more "fun" and "hip" when you're "using", but I'm afraid it's the exact opposite. I don't like wearing clunky glasses over my normal glasses. I don't like paying five extra dollars for a migraine. I don't like things popping out at me, Hollywood, because...that's not what our friendship is all about.
Let's say you have a baby, Hollywood. And you decide that you want to entertain that baby. You have a set of plastic Fisher Price keys that jingle and jangle in a very pleasant way. Now, you have two options here. Option 1: you can set the Fisher Price keys down in front of the baby and let her pick them up, let her rattle them around in her hand, let her inspect them and discover them and examine them with the sense of newfound wonder that babies have with everything they touch. Let her make connections and feel the keys beneath her fingers. Option 2: you can wave the keys back & forth obnoxiously in front of her face, saying, "OOoOoooOohhh, look at the keys! Look at the keys! Look at the keys! OOooOoOooOoOooO! Look at the keys! Look at the keys!" There's being entertaining, and then there's being patronizing.
Hollywood, remember back in the seventies when we went swimming together at that beach off of Amity Island, and then that crazed killer shark started attacking people? That was amazing! Everybody had so much fun that day! And remember how we went back to that same beach after a few years, and even though nothing new or original happened, we still had a ton of fun swimming around and running from that shark again? Good times were had by all! But when we went back a third time...you were on 3-D. And nobody had fun. Absolutely nobody. We all hated that day, Hollywood. You ruined it by being high on your stupid addiction. We just didn't tell you to your face because, well, frankly, we loved you too much to hurt your feelings like that. But we're afraid that if everything doesn't come out in the open now, it could do some serious damage. In hindsight, it's just as much our fault for not bringing it up sooner.
Trust us, this isn't the first time something tragic like this has ruined peoples' lives. Remember our old friend Amusement Park Rides? Even he struggled with a bad 3-D addiction. He was so stoned out of his mind on the shiny 3-D keys jingling in front of his nose that he didn't realize that good old-fashioned roller coasters and tilt-a-whirls produced a natural, healthy high that was ten times more exhilarating than anything you could buy off the streets. Slowly but surely, though, Amusement Park Rides is learning to kick his addiction. He knows that he doesn't have to rely on a synthetic substance to have a good time.
Our actions have consequences, Hollywood. You need to understand that, as cool or hip as you may think you are, your behaviour is having an extremely bad influence on your little cousin, Television. We walked into a Best Buy just the other day and...well, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but...we caught Television using 3-D, too. When we took the 3-D away and asked him why he was doing it, Television started crying and yelled, "It's because of Hollywood, okay?! I learned it from watching Hollywood!!!" I think that pretty much speaks for itself.
Frankly, we don't want to hang out with you anymore, Hollywood, because, in all honesty, what's the point? Why should we go out of our way to see you when you're so stoned off your mind that you treat us like toddlers? Why should we keep lending you money if you're just going to spend it on more 3-D? And don't try to lie to us, because we know that that's exactly where our money is going, isn't it?
Dear, sweet Hollywood: you have a serious, serious problem. But we're not here to attack you. We're here to help you. Next month, when Ghost Rider 2 comes out, I want to be able to enjoy it with you like we used to, without your addiction ruining the experience. You CAN have fun without resorting to 3-D, Hollywood: we used to do it all the time, remember? We can do it again. But this is a two-way street. Kicking this addiction is not going to be easy, but we'll be there for you every step of the way, as long as we know that you are actively trying to get better. We care about you, Hollywood. So please, PLEASE...start caring about yourself.
A NOTE TO THE READERS: If you or anyone you know is struggling with a harmful addiction to 3-D, there are ways to get better. You can visit the 3-D Addicts Anonymous website at www.3daa.org, or call their hotline at 1-800-321-HELP.
But to get back to the point here, I want to talk about 3-D. Everyone who knows me already knows how I feel about it, but I think I should just lay all my cards on the table now. You see, Hollywood is a dear friend of mine. I've known him since I was a baby. I don't just care about Hollywood; I love the heck out of him. But I can't sit idly by and watch him kill himself any longer. So, Hollywood, old friend, consider this blog entry your intervention.
As always, Hollywood, the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
Hollywood, I want you to think back to the good old days, and by that I mean any day prior to 2009. Do you remember all of the fun we used to have together, you & me? We used to do everything: we'd play baseball with Tom Hanks, we'd take a 12-hour trip to Middle Earth, we'd run from killer cyborgs and go sneaking through the Temple of Doom. We blew up the Death Star, and then we blew up the second Death Star, and then we drove Miss Daisy around for a bit. We had a lot of great times together.
But then you changed.
I don't know what it was. Maybe you felt pressured. Maybe you spent too much time hanging around that psycho James Cameron. But whatever the catalyst was, the results were undeniable: you started using 3-D. At first it was just enough to make us concerned, but now...now, Hollywood, we're scared for you.
A couple of years back. I wanted to watch the last Saw movie with you, remember? But...you were on 3-D. And just this past Christmas, when the Tintin movie came out, I was overjoyed! I used to love the Tintin cartoon when I was a kid! I couldn't wait to see it on the big screen with you! But...you were on 3-D.
I understand that addictions are hard to kick, Hollywood. But the fact of the matter is, you need to quit. Maybe some unpleasant people want to be around you when you're on 3-D, but those people aren't your real friends. You may think you're more "fun" and "hip" when you're "using", but I'm afraid it's the exact opposite. I don't like wearing clunky glasses over my normal glasses. I don't like paying five extra dollars for a migraine. I don't like things popping out at me, Hollywood, because...that's not what our friendship is all about.
Let's say you have a baby, Hollywood. And you decide that you want to entertain that baby. You have a set of plastic Fisher Price keys that jingle and jangle in a very pleasant way. Now, you have two options here. Option 1: you can set the Fisher Price keys down in front of the baby and let her pick them up, let her rattle them around in her hand, let her inspect them and discover them and examine them with the sense of newfound wonder that babies have with everything they touch. Let her make connections and feel the keys beneath her fingers. Option 2: you can wave the keys back & forth obnoxiously in front of her face, saying, "OOoOoooOohhh, look at the keys! Look at the keys! Look at the keys! OOooOoOooOoOooO! Look at the keys! Look at the keys!" There's being entertaining, and then there's being patronizing.
Hollywood, remember back in the seventies when we went swimming together at that beach off of Amity Island, and then that crazed killer shark started attacking people? That was amazing! Everybody had so much fun that day! And remember how we went back to that same beach after a few years, and even though nothing new or original happened, we still had a ton of fun swimming around and running from that shark again? Good times were had by all! But when we went back a third time...you were on 3-D. And nobody had fun. Absolutely nobody. We all hated that day, Hollywood. You ruined it by being high on your stupid addiction. We just didn't tell you to your face because, well, frankly, we loved you too much to hurt your feelings like that. But we're afraid that if everything doesn't come out in the open now, it could do some serious damage. In hindsight, it's just as much our fault for not bringing it up sooner.
Trust us, this isn't the first time something tragic like this has ruined peoples' lives. Remember our old friend Amusement Park Rides? Even he struggled with a bad 3-D addiction. He was so stoned out of his mind on the shiny 3-D keys jingling in front of his nose that he didn't realize that good old-fashioned roller coasters and tilt-a-whirls produced a natural, healthy high that was ten times more exhilarating than anything you could buy off the streets. Slowly but surely, though, Amusement Park Rides is learning to kick his addiction. He knows that he doesn't have to rely on a synthetic substance to have a good time.
Our actions have consequences, Hollywood. You need to understand that, as cool or hip as you may think you are, your behaviour is having an extremely bad influence on your little cousin, Television. We walked into a Best Buy just the other day and...well, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but...we caught Television using 3-D, too. When we took the 3-D away and asked him why he was doing it, Television started crying and yelled, "It's because of Hollywood, okay?! I learned it from watching Hollywood!!!" I think that pretty much speaks for itself.
Frankly, we don't want to hang out with you anymore, Hollywood, because, in all honesty, what's the point? Why should we go out of our way to see you when you're so stoned off your mind that you treat us like toddlers? Why should we keep lending you money if you're just going to spend it on more 3-D? And don't try to lie to us, because we know that that's exactly where our money is going, isn't it?
Dear, sweet Hollywood: you have a serious, serious problem. But we're not here to attack you. We're here to help you. Next month, when Ghost Rider 2 comes out, I want to be able to enjoy it with you like we used to, without your addiction ruining the experience. You CAN have fun without resorting to 3-D, Hollywood: we used to do it all the time, remember? We can do it again. But this is a two-way street. Kicking this addiction is not going to be easy, but we'll be there for you every step of the way, as long as we know that you are actively trying to get better. We care about you, Hollywood. So please, PLEASE...start caring about yourself.
A NOTE TO THE READERS: If you or anyone you know is struggling with a harmful addiction to 3-D, there are ways to get better. You can visit the 3-D Addicts Anonymous website at www.3daa.org, or call their hotline at 1-800-321-HELP.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
If TV Shows Were People...
If TV shows were people, 24 would be that paranoid redneck with a Confederate flag perched triumphantly on his front lawn, who owns more firearms than he does towels. He would have been quiet & reclusive up until 9/11 happened, at which point he could often be found on the streets shouting things like, "I never trusted them dang Eye-rak-ee-stannies, no sir, I did not!" He's probably one of the people who thought that the colour-coded terror alert system was a good idea. He's also the kind of man who wears camouflage attire to paintball twice a week, and smugly gloats to all of the other players when -surprise! -he just so happens to win every match.
Entourage would be that sharp-dressed white fellow who inexplicably talks like he's a young urban thug from the wrong side of the tracks, even though he grew up in a relatively nice suburbia with upper-middle-class parents and a good education. He puts on the allure of being this sexy, well-to-do, in-the-know kind of guy, but (aside from a few cryptic hints that he may be a deep-in-the-closet homosexual with serious commitment issues) he never really has anything interesting to say.
Two & A Half Men would be the charming, extremely charismatic politician whom everyone seems to really like. One day, though, he suffers a frightening nervous breakdown and is hospitalized for a few weeks. He eventually returns, trying his darndest to pick up his campaign where it left off, but he just doesn't feel quite like the same man anymore and sooner or later everyone just stops voting for him, regardless of how good his tax cuts would have been.
Lost would be that bizarre conspiracy nut who sits in a corner quietly muttering to himself while wearing a tin-foil hat. At first glance, you're a bit put off by him, and you may even feel a swell of fear whenever he's around. But the more you listen to what he has to say, the more intrigued you become by his wild fascinations, and before you even realize what's happened you're crouched in another corner with a tin-foil hat of your very own, hastily unscrambling the letters in your alphabet soup on the off-chance that they might end up spelling out the words "EIGHT-FIFTEEN" or something.
CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York would be that set of identical triplets whose mom thinks she's being cute by dressing them up in matching outfits. The triplets are constantly aching for independence and trying to assure you that they have individual thoughts and desires. You don't want to be rude, so you just smile and nod at them, even though inside you're laughing your ass off because they're basically clones.
The Simpsons would be that slightly nerdy though incredibly clever & insightful child everyone loved, because of how gosh-darned cute and smart he was. But eventually, he hit puberty and started getting acne, so his mom went ahead and had a new baby, whom she named Family Guy. The baby is not quite as clever as his big brother, but he's the cute new toy in the house, so everyone makes cooey faces at him and lavishes him with attention, while The Simpsons sits quietly up in his room continuing to do well on his homework assignments, his only crime being living past the age of thirteen.
Incidentally, Family Guy grows up into a loud child with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. He occasionally spouts a funny remark or two of his own, but then he goes and ruins it with unnecessary non-sequiturs such as "I like pants!" or "Fuzzy farts!" He then proceeds to run around and around in a circle like a rogue tetherball until he collides painfully with the nearest wall.
Community would be that beautiful and extremely intelligent young woman who captivates everyone she meets. Her friends & family are relatively wealthy, so one day she is kidnapped by agents of a greedy corporation (oh, let's call them, the Nasty Bastard Corporation) who lock her away somewhere in a dark room. The kidnappers then inform all of Community's family and friends that if they ever want to see her again, they're going to have to give the Nasty Bastard Corporation all of their money and attention.
Jersey Shore would be the drunken frat boy who stands on a bench in the middle of a crowded shopping mall and proceeds to make a fool of himself by stripping down to his birthday suit and rambling about god-knows-what. Everyone in the mall pauses, hypnotized by this train wreck of a human being. This goes on for about 15 minutes before Jersey Shore falls off the bench and passes out in a puddle of his own vomit. All of the people who stopped to watch turn away, wondering why they stopped to watch in the first place and conveniently decide to never speak of it again to anyone.
American Idol would be that 350-pound man who is, quite literally, everywhere. He is munching loudly on popcorn in front of you at the cinema. He is occupying both of the seats next to you on an airplane. He is breathing down your neck in the line-up at the bank. He squeezes himself into the same small elevator with you before proceeding to break wind. There is no escaping this horrifying, bloated man. He is everywhere, all at once, always. He is legion. If left to his own devices, this man will inevitably consume the earth and everything in it.
Starting with your house.
And of course, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would be Betty White. She may be outdated, and some of her jokes might not have aged well, but damn it, I can't think of a single person on the planet who doesn't like her.
Entourage would be that sharp-dressed white fellow who inexplicably talks like he's a young urban thug from the wrong side of the tracks, even though he grew up in a relatively nice suburbia with upper-middle-class parents and a good education. He puts on the allure of being this sexy, well-to-do, in-the-know kind of guy, but (aside from a few cryptic hints that he may be a deep-in-the-closet homosexual with serious commitment issues) he never really has anything interesting to say.
Two & A Half Men would be the charming, extremely charismatic politician whom everyone seems to really like. One day, though, he suffers a frightening nervous breakdown and is hospitalized for a few weeks. He eventually returns, trying his darndest to pick up his campaign where it left off, but he just doesn't feel quite like the same man anymore and sooner or later everyone just stops voting for him, regardless of how good his tax cuts would have been.
Lost would be that bizarre conspiracy nut who sits in a corner quietly muttering to himself while wearing a tin-foil hat. At first glance, you're a bit put off by him, and you may even feel a swell of fear whenever he's around. But the more you listen to what he has to say, the more intrigued you become by his wild fascinations, and before you even realize what's happened you're crouched in another corner with a tin-foil hat of your very own, hastily unscrambling the letters in your alphabet soup on the off-chance that they might end up spelling out the words "EIGHT-FIFTEEN" or something.
CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York would be that set of identical triplets whose mom thinks she's being cute by dressing them up in matching outfits. The triplets are constantly aching for independence and trying to assure you that they have individual thoughts and desires. You don't want to be rude, so you just smile and nod at them, even though inside you're laughing your ass off because they're basically clones.
The Simpsons would be that slightly nerdy though incredibly clever & insightful child everyone loved, because of how gosh-darned cute and smart he was. But eventually, he hit puberty and started getting acne, so his mom went ahead and had a new baby, whom she named Family Guy. The baby is not quite as clever as his big brother, but he's the cute new toy in the house, so everyone makes cooey faces at him and lavishes him with attention, while The Simpsons sits quietly up in his room continuing to do well on his homework assignments, his only crime being living past the age of thirteen.
Incidentally, Family Guy grows up into a loud child with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. He occasionally spouts a funny remark or two of his own, but then he goes and ruins it with unnecessary non-sequiturs such as "I like pants!" or "Fuzzy farts!" He then proceeds to run around and around in a circle like a rogue tetherball until he collides painfully with the nearest wall.
Community would be that beautiful and extremely intelligent young woman who captivates everyone she meets. Her friends & family are relatively wealthy, so one day she is kidnapped by agents of a greedy corporation (oh, let's call them, the Nasty Bastard Corporation) who lock her away somewhere in a dark room. The kidnappers then inform all of Community's family and friends that if they ever want to see her again, they're going to have to give the Nasty Bastard Corporation all of their money and attention.
Jersey Shore would be the drunken frat boy who stands on a bench in the middle of a crowded shopping mall and proceeds to make a fool of himself by stripping down to his birthday suit and rambling about god-knows-what. Everyone in the mall pauses, hypnotized by this train wreck of a human being. This goes on for about 15 minutes before Jersey Shore falls off the bench and passes out in a puddle of his own vomit. All of the people who stopped to watch turn away, wondering why they stopped to watch in the first place and conveniently decide to never speak of it again to anyone.
American Idol would be that 350-pound man who is, quite literally, everywhere. He is munching loudly on popcorn in front of you at the cinema. He is occupying both of the seats next to you on an airplane. He is breathing down your neck in the line-up at the bank. He squeezes himself into the same small elevator with you before proceeding to break wind. There is no escaping this horrifying, bloated man. He is everywhere, all at once, always. He is legion. If left to his own devices, this man will inevitably consume the earth and everything in it.
Starting with your house.
And of course, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would be Betty White. She may be outdated, and some of her jokes might not have aged well, but damn it, I can't think of a single person on the planet who doesn't like her.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
SOPA Opera
Thought I'd kick us off with a relevant if not a bit heavy topic of discussion. Forgive me; I'm sure you were expecting something a little more entertaining, this being touted as an 'entertainment' blog and all. I promise next week's entry will be full of more lasers, explosions, and good-looking people with exotic skin tones saluting the American flag (kind of like a Michael Bay movie, only in text form). But since this blog is pretty much only accessible via the Internet (until the next format comes along, whcih will probably involve VR touch-screen eyeballs, or something), I felt it would be in the best interests of the site to give a wee bit of input on this SOPA business.
The geniuses behind SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act to those of us with a crippling fear of abbreviations) set forth a few months ago on an epic quest to rid the world of the horrific things happening online on a daily basis. To put it in their perspective, the Internet is bad. Badder than bad, like a virtual city full of street-corner drug dealers, gang-bangers, and over-excitable hockey fans carrying pocket knives. Like so many misinformed authority figures before them, SOPA supporters are essentially under the impression that every 8-year-old who watches clips of Dora the Explorer on YouTube without paying for them is somehow going to become the next Bin Laden because of it. This alone is a sad state of affairs, but it's made even sadder by the fact that this isn't the first time some idiot decided that "free speech is bad".
Way back in 1954, which historians will remember as the year before the year that George McFly finally grew some balls and took Lorraine to the dance, a fellow by the name of Charles Murphy decided it would be a good idea to start censoring comic books. What followed was the foundation of the Comics Code Authority, a tool that could have only been devised by the same kind of crusty old white people that usually serve as the villains in movies about boarding schools. Murphy felt that comic books, particularly the 4-colour horror comics published by E.C. like Tales From the Crypt, depicted far too much blood, gore, and frightening images for his liking. In Murphy's opinion, if it wasn't about wholesome apple-cheeked cherubs serving sugar-free lemonade to one another in a poppy field, then it was far too violent to be subjected to our oh-so-impressionable children.
What followed was the foundation of the CCA, which censored comic books to such a ridiculous degree that it basically ripped the 1st Amendment right out of the Constitution, violated it in the arse a few times for good measure, and then stomped on its face with a pair of cleats. It was effective, too. For almost a decade, the comic book industry (which had been quietly thriving before then) basically died. And I mean died: from that point on, up until the early 60s when the Fantastic Four would burst onto the scene in all their stretchy, Jessica Alba-free glory, there essentially WERE NO COMIC BOOKS.
Going even further back, in 1922 (which historians will remember as two years after the first episode of Boardwalk Empire) a man called Will Hays was enlisted to start censoring cinema. He put together a censorship code known as the Motion Picture Production Code. It became an enforced rule in Hollywood starting in 1934, all the way up to 1968, when someone with a shred more common sense took over and established the MPAA ratings system that we're more familiar with today. You know the one I mean: there's G for "By all means, bring the little ones"; PG for "Bring the little ones if you want"; PG-13 for "You can bring the little ones, but don't blame us if they have nightmares later"; R for "We really recommend you get a babysitter for the little ones"; NC-17 for "If you brought the little ones, you are an idiotic twat"; and X for "This is how little ones are made".
We can thank our lucky stars we're not still living under Will Hays' authority. the guy banned bare chests, for God's sake; if that rule was still in effect today, people like Ryan Reynolds and Matthew McConaughey wouldn't even have jobs.
Then, of course, there's Jack Thompson. For those who've never heard of him, let me put it this way: if videogames were to suddenly take human form as ethnic minorities, Jack Thompson would be the first person in line to drape a white sheet over himself and lead a pickup-truck convoy of "holy cleansing" throughout the red states. In a nutshell, Mr. Thompson felt that the abundance of blood, sex, and violence in videogames is solely to blame for the existence of all the nasty things in the world, including but not limited to: alcoholism, substance abuse, sexual harassment, crime, obesity, and Columbine. So according to his logic, every time in recorded history that someone has fired a gun at someone else prior to the release of Grand Theft Auto III was just some kind of inexplicable fluke. Thompson made it his sworn goal to cleanse videogames of inappropriate conduct...until July 2008, when he was premanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court for, strangely enough, inappropriate conduct.
So what do all these tired examples have to do with SOPA? Well, not too much, to be quite honest; all of what I've described above involves unfounded suspicions blown out of proportion by paranoid nut-jobs whose first reaction was to take away freedom of expression and replace it with the very kind of thing George Orwell probably had nightmares about as a child. SOPA, on the other hand, focuses more on protecting the interests of independent properties. However, that doesn't make it any less of a step in the wrong direction. They already want to censor what we can and can't do online; the next logical step would be to take it one notch further. If watching movie clips of Driving Miss Daisy without paying for the actual DVD is going to become punishable by law for up to 5 years in prison, you really think it's going to be long before the people responsible for this act decide that they don't like swearing, sex & violence, either? And let's be honest, if you remove every last bit of swearing, sex, & violence from the Internet, you're not going to be left with very much. That's like removing cheese, sauce, and toppings from a piece of dough and still expecting it to taste like pizza.
And at the end of the day, you'd think those past 3 examples would have been learning lessons for the people behind SOPA, the lesson being: censoring certain aspects of a freely-expressive media defeats the purpose of even having a freely-expressive media.
Besides, just becuase you wave your magic wand and declare something officially "against the law", that doesn't mean people are going to stop doing it. You know what else is against the law? Speeding. Boy, good thing the courts made speeding illegal, otherwise everyone might end up doing it from time to time!
The SOPA bill hasn't been passed yet, just postponed, but they're still considering legislation. Maybe you agree with SOPA and think the whole thing is just the cat's restrictive pajamas, but personally I'd have to vote otherwise, if only because it takes us one step closer to the outright removal of our freedom of speech. I'm not supporting piracy or anything, but if I was facing down the barrel of a gun, I'd definitely choose the ability to listen to a Beatles song on YouTube for free over the ability to...well, not. Sorry, Paul McCartney, I love you and everything, but if you were thick enough to not sign a pre-nup before you married that one-legged woman whom your children hated, then frankly I don't think you deserve to charge blue-collar, hard-working folk a fee for your 50-year-old music.
The geniuses behind SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act to those of us with a crippling fear of abbreviations) set forth a few months ago on an epic quest to rid the world of the horrific things happening online on a daily basis. To put it in their perspective, the Internet is bad. Badder than bad, like a virtual city full of street-corner drug dealers, gang-bangers, and over-excitable hockey fans carrying pocket knives. Like so many misinformed authority figures before them, SOPA supporters are essentially under the impression that every 8-year-old who watches clips of Dora the Explorer on YouTube without paying for them is somehow going to become the next Bin Laden because of it. This alone is a sad state of affairs, but it's made even sadder by the fact that this isn't the first time some idiot decided that "free speech is bad".
Way back in 1954, which historians will remember as the year before the year that George McFly finally grew some balls and took Lorraine to the dance, a fellow by the name of Charles Murphy decided it would be a good idea to start censoring comic books. What followed was the foundation of the Comics Code Authority, a tool that could have only been devised by the same kind of crusty old white people that usually serve as the villains in movies about boarding schools. Murphy felt that comic books, particularly the 4-colour horror comics published by E.C. like Tales From the Crypt, depicted far too much blood, gore, and frightening images for his liking. In Murphy's opinion, if it wasn't about wholesome apple-cheeked cherubs serving sugar-free lemonade to one another in a poppy field, then it was far too violent to be subjected to our oh-so-impressionable children.
What followed was the foundation of the CCA, which censored comic books to such a ridiculous degree that it basically ripped the 1st Amendment right out of the Constitution, violated it in the arse a few times for good measure, and then stomped on its face with a pair of cleats. It was effective, too. For almost a decade, the comic book industry (which had been quietly thriving before then) basically died. And I mean died: from that point on, up until the early 60s when the Fantastic Four would burst onto the scene in all their stretchy, Jessica Alba-free glory, there essentially WERE NO COMIC BOOKS.
Going even further back, in 1922 (which historians will remember as two years after the first episode of Boardwalk Empire) a man called Will Hays was enlisted to start censoring cinema. He put together a censorship code known as the Motion Picture Production Code. It became an enforced rule in Hollywood starting in 1934, all the way up to 1968, when someone with a shred more common sense took over and established the MPAA ratings system that we're more familiar with today. You know the one I mean: there's G for "By all means, bring the little ones"; PG for "Bring the little ones if you want"; PG-13 for "You can bring the little ones, but don't blame us if they have nightmares later"; R for "We really recommend you get a babysitter for the little ones"; NC-17 for "If you brought the little ones, you are an idiotic twat"; and X for "This is how little ones are made".
We can thank our lucky stars we're not still living under Will Hays' authority. the guy banned bare chests, for God's sake; if that rule was still in effect today, people like Ryan Reynolds and Matthew McConaughey wouldn't even have jobs.
Then, of course, there's Jack Thompson. For those who've never heard of him, let me put it this way: if videogames were to suddenly take human form as ethnic minorities, Jack Thompson would be the first person in line to drape a white sheet over himself and lead a pickup-truck convoy of "holy cleansing" throughout the red states. In a nutshell, Mr. Thompson felt that the abundance of blood, sex, and violence in videogames is solely to blame for the existence of all the nasty things in the world, including but not limited to: alcoholism, substance abuse, sexual harassment, crime, obesity, and Columbine. So according to his logic, every time in recorded history that someone has fired a gun at someone else prior to the release of Grand Theft Auto III was just some kind of inexplicable fluke. Thompson made it his sworn goal to cleanse videogames of inappropriate conduct...until July 2008, when he was premanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court for, strangely enough, inappropriate conduct.
So what do all these tired examples have to do with SOPA? Well, not too much, to be quite honest; all of what I've described above involves unfounded suspicions blown out of proportion by paranoid nut-jobs whose first reaction was to take away freedom of expression and replace it with the very kind of thing George Orwell probably had nightmares about as a child. SOPA, on the other hand, focuses more on protecting the interests of independent properties. However, that doesn't make it any less of a step in the wrong direction. They already want to censor what we can and can't do online; the next logical step would be to take it one notch further. If watching movie clips of Driving Miss Daisy without paying for the actual DVD is going to become punishable by law for up to 5 years in prison, you really think it's going to be long before the people responsible for this act decide that they don't like swearing, sex & violence, either? And let's be honest, if you remove every last bit of swearing, sex, & violence from the Internet, you're not going to be left with very much. That's like removing cheese, sauce, and toppings from a piece of dough and still expecting it to taste like pizza.
And at the end of the day, you'd think those past 3 examples would have been learning lessons for the people behind SOPA, the lesson being: censoring certain aspects of a freely-expressive media defeats the purpose of even having a freely-expressive media.
Besides, just becuase you wave your magic wand and declare something officially "against the law", that doesn't mean people are going to stop doing it. You know what else is against the law? Speeding. Boy, good thing the courts made speeding illegal, otherwise everyone might end up doing it from time to time!
The SOPA bill hasn't been passed yet, just postponed, but they're still considering legislation. Maybe you agree with SOPA and think the whole thing is just the cat's restrictive pajamas, but personally I'd have to vote otherwise, if only because it takes us one step closer to the outright removal of our freedom of speech. I'm not supporting piracy or anything, but if I was facing down the barrel of a gun, I'd definitely choose the ability to listen to a Beatles song on YouTube for free over the ability to...well, not. Sorry, Paul McCartney, I love you and everything, but if you were thick enough to not sign a pre-nup before you married that one-legged woman whom your children hated, then frankly I don't think you deserve to charge blue-collar, hard-working folk a fee for your 50-year-old music.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Question Begins
Welcome to what I hope will be the first weekly (or daily or monthly or however long it takes me to keep remembering that I actually have a blog) entry at The Question Mark.
For the past few years, I've been unsuccessfully juggling both a boring blog of unsavory content that nobody read and a desire to share my taste (or distaste) on a wide variety of topics and concerns in either written or spoken form to anyone who will listen. This blog, therefore, is the result of me dropping both of those juggling balls in favour of a much easier-to-handle alternative.
For starters, let me address the surprisingly small elephant in the room: the blog's address. Believe me, tqmark.blogspot.com was NOT my first choice for a URL. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and it sounds like the email address of a boring, middle-management executive type who works at a company called TQ Mark & Co., who spends all of his time driving around in a bland silver luxury car with all the personality of a cardboard box that has a face drawn on it with magic marker. However, thequestionmark.blogspot.com was already taken...by some woman named Veronica whose one and ONLY blog posting was a one-word test on July 15th, 2002. Thanks, Veronica! I'm glad my blog has a name more awkward to pronounce than most of the countries in Africa, just so you could test out your fonts or whatever back before the general public knew who Iron Man was.
Anyhoo, if you're going to be kind enough to waste your own precious time reading my unsually structured run-on sentences and overuse of parentheses (like this, for example), I suppose it's only fair that I introduce myself to you first so at least you know what you're getting yourself into. You're still in the shallow end of the pool, kids; there's no shame in pussying out and calling for the lifeguard yet!
As mentioned in the bio at the top of your computer screen, I consider myself both a writer and an actor, in the same way that Schwarzenegger considers himself both an actor and a governor; I may not be the greatest at either, and most of the time I'm a punchline who thinks he's in on the joke, but at least I have fun doing both. Plus I can time-travel.
I call myself The Question Mark mostly because I like speaking the phrase "the question mark" aloud, and partly because I harbor a somewhat disturbing yet completely normal (and in no way homoerotic) fascination with The Riddler. Riddler & I actually share quite a lot in common: we both enjoy question marks, we both fancy puzzles and word games, we both look dashing in green, and every now and then we both get the shit kicked out of us by a man dressed as a bat (don't ask).
Because of my career choices, my passions tend to hover around the obvious: movies, television shows, videogames, books, and geek culture in general. And for the record, "geek culture" has become so mainstream thanks to this Inter-net thing that frankly I'm surprised that they haven't just changed its name to "everyone culture" already. But that's a topic for another time (wink wink ambiguity).
If you're wondering what kind of writing I do, it's pretty much anything, though I'm mostly focused on novels. I'm in the middle of a series of 20 books titled The Chronicles of Everywhere, of which I've finished 7. They're fantasy-action-comedy-adventure-first person shooters about the fantasy genre in general. I've also started work on some other novel series, one of which has to do with vampires (not the sparkly kind) and the other with a group of wacky globe-hopping demon hunters (definitely the sparkly kind).
And if you're wondering what kind of acting I do, I'm a lot like Christopher Walken or Morgan Freeman: I'm not as talented as them, hell no, but because I accept EVERY role I'm offered. You can see the work a friend and I did at www.watchstiffs.com. And now I'm going to stop plugging myself before this blog becomes nothing but a giant commercial wrapped in text.
So if you look to this blog in the coming weeks (or months or days or...oh, we've already danced this dance, haven't we?), you'll continuously find some new and exciting things for me to ramble about, and for you to comment on at your leisure. I promise you that, unlike with my first Blog-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (it was named Strawberry Toaster Oven), I will actually put more of an effort into updating and posting and whatnot.
So if you love movies, videogames, TV shows, videogames based off movies or TV shows, books, movie adaptations of books, TV spin-offs of movies, movie versions of cancelled TV shows, cancelled books adapted from spin-off movies, or everybody culture...then this is definitely the place for you. Welcome aboard.
And if you're one of those folks who's sniffling with disdain right now, your mouse hovering over the CLOSE button as you mutter, "Sorry, loser, but geek culture isn't for me! I'd rather read about socio-economics or watch YouTube videos of cats bumping into things!"...then this is still the place for you. Everybody's a geek once in a while.
Just don't expect me to post any videos of cats.
For the past few years, I've been unsuccessfully juggling both a boring blog of unsavory content that nobody read and a desire to share my taste (or distaste) on a wide variety of topics and concerns in either written or spoken form to anyone who will listen. This blog, therefore, is the result of me dropping both of those juggling balls in favour of a much easier-to-handle alternative.
For starters, let me address the surprisingly small elephant in the room: the blog's address. Believe me, tqmark.blogspot.com was NOT my first choice for a URL. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and it sounds like the email address of a boring, middle-management executive type who works at a company called TQ Mark & Co., who spends all of his time driving around in a bland silver luxury car with all the personality of a cardboard box that has a face drawn on it with magic marker. However, thequestionmark.blogspot.com was already taken...by some woman named Veronica whose one and ONLY blog posting was a one-word test on July 15th, 2002. Thanks, Veronica! I'm glad my blog has a name more awkward to pronounce than most of the countries in Africa, just so you could test out your fonts or whatever back before the general public knew who Iron Man was.
Anyhoo, if you're going to be kind enough to waste your own precious time reading my unsually structured run-on sentences and overuse of parentheses (like this, for example), I suppose it's only fair that I introduce myself to you first so at least you know what you're getting yourself into. You're still in the shallow end of the pool, kids; there's no shame in pussying out and calling for the lifeguard yet!
As mentioned in the bio at the top of your computer screen, I consider myself both a writer and an actor, in the same way that Schwarzenegger considers himself both an actor and a governor; I may not be the greatest at either, and most of the time I'm a punchline who thinks he's in on the joke, but at least I have fun doing both. Plus I can time-travel.
I call myself The Question Mark mostly because I like speaking the phrase "the question mark" aloud, and partly because I harbor a somewhat disturbing yet completely normal (and in no way homoerotic) fascination with The Riddler. Riddler & I actually share quite a lot in common: we both enjoy question marks, we both fancy puzzles and word games, we both look dashing in green, and every now and then we both get the shit kicked out of us by a man dressed as a bat (don't ask).
Because of my career choices, my passions tend to hover around the obvious: movies, television shows, videogames, books, and geek culture in general. And for the record, "geek culture" has become so mainstream thanks to this Inter-net thing that frankly I'm surprised that they haven't just changed its name to "everyone culture" already. But that's a topic for another time (wink wink ambiguity).
If you're wondering what kind of writing I do, it's pretty much anything, though I'm mostly focused on novels. I'm in the middle of a series of 20 books titled The Chronicles of Everywhere, of which I've finished 7. They're fantasy-action-comedy-adventure-first person shooters about the fantasy genre in general. I've also started work on some other novel series, one of which has to do with vampires (not the sparkly kind) and the other with a group of wacky globe-hopping demon hunters (definitely the sparkly kind).
And if you're wondering what kind of acting I do, I'm a lot like Christopher Walken or Morgan Freeman: I'm not as talented as them, hell no, but because I accept EVERY role I'm offered. You can see the work a friend and I did at www.watchstiffs.com. And now I'm going to stop plugging myself before this blog becomes nothing but a giant commercial wrapped in text.
So if you look to this blog in the coming weeks (or months or days or...oh, we've already danced this dance, haven't we?), you'll continuously find some new and exciting things for me to ramble about, and for you to comment on at your leisure. I promise you that, unlike with my first Blog-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (it was named Strawberry Toaster Oven), I will actually put more of an effort into updating and posting and whatnot.
So if you love movies, videogames, TV shows, videogames based off movies or TV shows, books, movie adaptations of books, TV spin-offs of movies, movie versions of cancelled TV shows, cancelled books adapted from spin-off movies, or everybody culture...then this is definitely the place for you. Welcome aboard.
And if you're one of those folks who's sniffling with disdain right now, your mouse hovering over the CLOSE button as you mutter, "Sorry, loser, but geek culture isn't for me! I'd rather read about socio-economics or watch YouTube videos of cats bumping into things!"...then this is still the place for you. Everybody's a geek once in a while.
Just don't expect me to post any videos of cats.
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