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Chris Versus The Movies: Is Battleship the Worst? (Yes.)

Posted in Action Movies, Braak, crotchety ranting, reviews with tags , , , on May 24, 2012 by braak

Man, you guys.  I wasn’t even going to write about this, until Charlie Jane Anders posted up this article from The Wrap, which is about how The Hunger Games and The Avengers are doing so well that there’s no money left for Battleship, and it contains a quote from Universal’s domestic distribution chief Nikki Rocco in which she says:

In my heart of hearts I feel ‘Battleship’ would have fared much better if in its third week ‘Avengers’ wasn’t doing $55 million.

This is basically the same thing as saying, “I believe that if pizza weren’t so successful as a food product, more people would be lining up to buy my turd sandwich,” in that yes, duh.  Of course people would rather see The Avengers nine times than see Battleship.  I would rather watch The Avengers nine times, and I hate watching anything twice.  I would rather watch no other movies for the rest of my life, and watch The Avengers every single day until the Four Horseman annihilate the world at the front of a wave of radioactive space sludge than watch Battleship.

Because Battleship is a turd sandwich.

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Genre Fiction, Literary Fiction, The Revolution of Brains

Posted in Braak, crotchety ranting, reviews on May 23, 2012 by braak

I was going to write a long piece about this thing here, by Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, which is a book of which I liked about 60%.  The piece is about how genre fiction is more than just escapism, there’s psychological merit to fantasy fiction et cetera and so forth.

But the more I think about it, the more I don’t get why anyone would bother.

GUYS.  Genre distinctions are for librarians and bookstore clerks.  You use them to group together books that are kind of like each other so they’re easier to find.

If you READ books, then the only two distinctions that matter are:  Interesting Stuff and Dumb Stuff.  And really, there’s no hard distinction; books that challenge you, that improve your intellect in some way, that give you new perspectives and ideas…those are Interesting Stuff.  Interesting books have a large apportionment of Interesting Stuff.  Dumb books don’t.

Up, down, period, the end.  Everything else — fantasy (and its distinctions:  epic, high, urban, &c), science fiction (likewise hard sci fi, space opera, space cowboy TV shows that probably would have dropped off in their second seasons), mystery, horror, “Young Adult” novels, Books by Michael Chabon, ET CETERA AND SO FORTH, it’s all hokum.

The thing of it is, the reason that Epic Fantasy — for example — the reason that people think that’s a dumb genre that’s not improving in any way, or whatnot, it’s not because there’s something implicitly not interesting about Epic Fantasy.  It’s because it’s all the fucking same.

What the hell is this, oof, nevermind, I don’t even care that much.  Lev Grossman, sometimes I don’t even KNOW man.

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Dramaturgery: The Avengers

Posted in Braak, comic books, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , on May 5, 2012 by braak

In my last post, I suggested that I had a number of questions and problems with The Avengers, despite generally having a pretty good time while watching it.  I don’t know if other people, ordinary humans with their inferior movie-watching abilities, are capable of both simultaneously enjoying something and engaging with it critically, but I am.

ANYWAY, when I declared that it was possible to make basically the same movie but also fix all of the problems that I had, Moff (author of Moff’s Law) admitted that he almost believed me.

Almost.  Believed.  ALMOST.

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Chris versus the Movies: The Avengers

Posted in Braak, comic books, reviews with tags , , , , on May 4, 2012 by braak

Look, I’m not trying to give anybody a hard time here.  The  Avengers was a fun movie, and I was committed to liking it.  Hulk smashed, Thor knocked some stuff around with his hammer, Captain America threw his shield at guys.  You know, the stuff that happens in The Avengers.  Every moment of the movie was an exciting and dramatic moment — people were falling out of things or into pits or whatever, getting zapped by stuff, things were going wrong.  There were a lot of jokes, which were great.  All in all, A+ time, would watch again.

But.

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Avengers Ramp-up! ‘Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD’ is Also Hilariously Awful

Posted in Action Movies, comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on May 2, 2012 by braak

To get psyched (well, more psyched) for this weekend’s Avengers, I’ve been spending a little time catching up with the previous films. Y’know, Iron Man 2, Incredible Hulk, Nick Fury…

Oh, have you not watched Nick Fury? Because son, you are in for a treat.

Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD is what happens when a not-all-that-bad-actually script by David Goyer meets the two things that can utterly destroy it: Soap opera actors and a mid-90’s TV-movie budget of I’m assuming about five hundred bucks.

I imagine Goyer’s initial enthusiasm upon hearing his script had gotten picked up (“Oh man, first Blade and now Nick Fury? Things are finally looking up for ol’ Lucky Dave! What’s next, BATMAN?!”) was crushed pretty completely fairly early on, but I’m not sure which piece of information would’ve really done it:

“Well Dave, it’s gonna be on Fox. And even though this format hasn’t worked for Doctor Who or Generation X, they seem to want to keep on trying.”

Or

“And we’ve got David Hasselhoff attached. He’s got some interesting ideas on how to play Fury. Something about ‘crazy, sweaty, a bit drunk, and walking around in this weird bowlegged crouch like he’s got a load in his pants.’”  Read more »

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The ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot is hilariously awful (Part 2)

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on April 26, 2012 by braak

Previously, on Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman stole a dude’s blood, scorned due process, got weepy watching The Notebook, publicly accused someone without any evidence to back up her claim, read her board the riot act after Wonder Woman dolls came back with boobs that were too big, and then I’m pretty sure Elizabeth Hurley made a fellatio pun. ONWARD!

Here we come to part two of “Wonder Woman’s Vigilante Reign of Terror,” where, after stopping in to check on the ill black teen, she pops over to another hall of the hospital, where the Perp From Act I is being kept under guard.

First, she threat-flirts with the tiny police officer. “Do you like my outfit, officer? This outfit opens doors for me.” I don’t even know what her goal is there.

Then she’s grudgingly let in to see the guy by a hilariously bedraggled (oh, how loosened in frustration his neck-tie is!) detective, who literally tells the little cop to “Beat it!” and gives Wonder Woman her “just ten minutes” with the bed-ridden, arrested Perp.

This is where shit goes from a 50/50 hilarious/awkward ratio to full-on 100% Are-You-Kidding-Me.  Read more »

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The ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot is hilariously awful (Part 1)

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , on April 25, 2012 by braak

I was having a bad day. So oh man. It’s a good thing tonight was the night I decided to track down that Wonder Woman pilot that NBC passed on.

Tracked down…oh, I’ve grown wistful of the days you’d actually have to dig around comic-cons for a bootleg VHS of that awful Justice League pilot, or hope to catch a screening of Roger Corman’s  low-budget Fantastic Four movie. Now, failure is so easily accessible.

The geek-kids today have it too easy, is what I’m saying.

Anyway, yes, there is no greater pick-me-up than the Wonder Woman pilot, which almost plays as a parody of superhero TV shows in how Totally Wrong-Headed it all is. And while there are many, many problems, and oh, I will get to them, but the biggest one is this:

David E. Kelley seems to think Wonder Woman is Batman, if Batman was an attractive young woman in a shiny halter-top.  Read more »

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Why ‘Alcatraz’ Deserves a Second Season

Posted in Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , , on March 30, 2012 by braak

I’ve had the good luck lately to be on the winning team, pop-culture-wise. I don’t have to worry about other people liking The Hunger Games, and ABC seems to have found a genuine hit in Revenge, so I don’t have to be an advocate there, either.

Which means I might’ve gotten a bit lazy, since I figured the mix of J.J. Abrams’ name, the post-House time slot and the 50/50 combo of cop-procedural/time-travel mythology would’ve been enough to get people to stay with Alcatraz, without me constantly banging a drum in a vain attempt to get people to tune in again.

Of course, I figured wrong. And so Alcatraz wraps up its first and potentially only season, with a ton of unanswered questions, because people aren’t generally trained on how to watch television these days. Which is to say, the rule is: “You gotta power through the first six episodes, because they’re probably not gonna be all that good, but there’s potential, which usually only gets reached in season 2, so please be patient.”

(With the caveat: “…If you liked the pilot at all.” Which is my way of saying, “You don’t have to support every damn thing just because you hope it’ll get better than crap.” Which is really just my way of saying, “Grimm is stupid.”)  Read more »

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John Carter, Sad Hero of Mars

Posted in Action Movies, Braak, crotchety ranting, reviews with tags , , , , , on March 23, 2012 by braak

Well, word is that John Carter (of Mars) isn’t going to do so well – certainly not enough to make back its budget, or merit any sequels. This is kind of a shame, because I think it was pretty much a lot of fun, but at least now I can talk about what I think was a kind of a glaring problem with the story that I’d have felt guilty talking about before.
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Curse of the Starving Class at the Wilma

Posted in reviews, theater with tags , , , , on March 20, 2012 by braak

I’ve got to admit, I don’t know whether those Wilma Theater cats are really happy with the theater that they’ve got. It’s a great big cavernous space, with, I don’t know, three hundred seats or something like that. It can’t be mixed around the way a traditional black box can, though it doesn’t have that weird grandeur that proscenium spaces sometimes have. I don’t know, do you think they like it? Was this is the idea when they built the new theater? “Let’s do a bunch of plays in a space where we can’t rearrange the spacial arrangement between play and audience.”

“Let’s do a Sam Shepard play!”

[Read the rest at the SOE blog]

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