Are you people punishing me with no comments or have I truly lost what extremely small readership I had? Am I just talking to my wife now? If that's the case, how's it going dear? What's for dinner tonight?
So god help me but I watched the Karate Kid remake this past Saturday. I woke up at 8 on Saturday morning and couldn't get back to sleep 'cause my back was hurting me so I went downstairs and put it on (baby had stayed overnight at Grandma's). I take some solace in the fact that the time I spent watching this film was just replacing time where I should have been unconcious. Makes it seem like less of a waste that way. Anyway, I really don't know how to review this movie other than to recommend that anyone who has ever seen the original shouldn't watch it. But if you've never seen the original, then I think it's probably a halfway decent film. Basically every place where the new one strays from the original, it was better in the original. And everytime the new one copies the original, it was waaaaaaaay better in the original. Probably the single biggest problem of the new one has to do with Jaden Smith. Notice that I say "has to do with" because it's not actually anything to do with his performance that's the problem - he actually does just fine. It's the fact that he's 11 (playing a 12-year-old). All the "teens" in the original were in their early to mid 20s playing 16-year-olds. Seeing a relationship between two 16-year-olds (who are really 23 and 21) is a lot more believable and relateable than one between two 12-year-olds (who are really 11). Second, the bullying of the enemy gang just doesn't carry the weight that it did in the original. What are a gang of unarmed 11-year-olds gonna do to you? Give you a cut lip? This leads to easily the most absurd scene in the movie. In the original, Daniel is literally getting the crap kicked out of him by a bunch of thugs in scary-looking skeleton makeup and Mr. Miagi comes and saves him. It works because 1) you feel like Daniel really might be in some legit danger, 2) Mr. Miagi looks like a frail old guy that you'd never expect this from and thus 3) you believe that he is actually putting himself in danger as well. The new one tries to recreate that scene but now you have Jackie Chan taking on a group of pre-teens. That's right; Jackie f'n Chan, martial arts god, taking on 6 11-year-olds. Feel the drama! That's like asking the audience to cheer for Bruce Lee as he beats up the Partridge Family (ok maybe I would have cheered for that).
I've gone off on tirades before about Hollywood running out of ideas and resorting to remakes and reboots, so I don't want to repeat myself too much. But I think what really gets me is when they decide to do so with blatant disregard as to why the original was a success. Or they do something equally absurd like the shot for shot remake of Psycho. Um, if I wanted to watch the script and shots that Alfred Hitchcock created, why I don't I just, you know, watch the film he already made? To me it just says that studio heads are wishing they could get away with just rereleasing the original films but they know they can't so they're just trying to repackage them and call them new. "Remember the Karate Kid? Big hit for us. But Pat Morita's dead and Ralph Machio's old, so do we have an old asian and a young actor that audiences will recognize? Great, go!"
Sometimes, remakes and reboots are a good idea: Batman Begins and the new Star Trek come to mind. Both of them took very popular icons that had run out of steam and tried to take elements of what made them a success in the past while putting a new spin on them. Even if you didn't like the results you can at least appreciate that there was some effort and imagination involved. Of course, you probably need look no further than the director to tell if a remake's going to be any good or not. Those two were directed by Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams, two of most imaginative directors out there. The new Karate Kid, on the other hand, was brought to us by the legend-in-his-own-mind Harald Zwart, director of such monumental testaments to cinema as The Pink Panther 2 and Agent Cody Banks as well as the epic films (I am not making these up) Long Flat Balls and Long Flat Balls 2.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Another Exciting Chapter of 18th Century Fights Waged in the 21st Century!
So hot on the heels of a big blowup about whether or not you have the right to build a church wherever you want (you do) and whether or not you can burn a book or not (you can) we now get the faux controversy of whether or not you should be able to sell a book that the vast majority of people find objectionable (you do).
I'm talking, of course, about this. I struggle with how much to write about this because (much like religion) to those that agree with me there's not really anything I can say that they haven't already thought of and those who don't agree with me will not be swayed by any type of logical argument.
So I'll try to take a slightly different tack on this. All but the most extreme individuals aren't saying that the author doesn't have the right to publish this book. It seems to more come down to whether or not Amazon should be selling it. Personally, I view stores (whether online or brick and mortar) as markets, and the consumer wins when the selection is as unlimited as possible. Even though it's not what often happens, I want supply and demand to be the only things dictating the price and availability of a product. For Amazon or any other business to spend time, money, and energy in deciding what is appropriate for the consumer to purchase just hinders my ability to get a commodity at the lowest price possible. When deciding whether or not to sell something like a digital book (which carries $0 procurement and production cost) the only relevant question for Amazon to ask is "is it legal?".
So now Amazon has removed the book from their website, and I don't really know why. Those leading the boycott charge are certainly not (and weren't going to be) satisfied with just this. A lot of them have lists of other books they also want to see removed, and this "success" just eggs them on further. So in the last 24 hours they've managed to outrage the religious and moral right-wingers by selling it and now they've pissed off the left-wingers by caving and taking it down. That's kind of impressive when you think about it. I guess they are counting on the American public having an extremely short attention span. And they couldn't be more wrong about . . . SQUIRREL!
I'm talking, of course, about this. I struggle with how much to write about this because (much like religion) to those that agree with me there's not really anything I can say that they haven't already thought of and those who don't agree with me will not be swayed by any type of logical argument.
So I'll try to take a slightly different tack on this. All but the most extreme individuals aren't saying that the author doesn't have the right to publish this book. It seems to more come down to whether or not Amazon should be selling it. Personally, I view stores (whether online or brick and mortar) as markets, and the consumer wins when the selection is as unlimited as possible. Even though it's not what often happens, I want supply and demand to be the only things dictating the price and availability of a product. For Amazon or any other business to spend time, money, and energy in deciding what is appropriate for the consumer to purchase just hinders my ability to get a commodity at the lowest price possible. When deciding whether or not to sell something like a digital book (which carries $0 procurement and production cost) the only relevant question for Amazon to ask is "is it legal?".
So now Amazon has removed the book from their website, and I don't really know why. Those leading the boycott charge are certainly not (and weren't going to be) satisfied with just this. A lot of them have lists of other books they also want to see removed, and this "success" just eggs them on further. So in the last 24 hours they've managed to outrage the religious and moral right-wingers by selling it and now they've pissed off the left-wingers by caving and taking it down. That's kind of impressive when you think about it. I guess they are counting on the American public having an extremely short attention span. And they couldn't be more wrong about . . . SQUIRREL!
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Dem You! Dem You All to Hell!
Ah, nothing like a good Planet of the Apes reference on a Wednesday morning!
Yesterday I chose not to watch most of the election night coverage. And no it wasn't sour grapes on my part (I'm actually fairly pleased about it, which I'll get to in a second). It's just that there really weren't a lot of surprises or excitement, and the few that there were (like Quinn potentially beating Brady) are still being decided now. So instead I made another attempt to get through the 4-plus hour Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. Now, I consider myself to be of at least reasonable intellect, I already know the story of Hamlet, one of my favorite films of all time is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is certainly not Hamlet but does feature a lot of dialogue from it), and I even read Hamlet in high school. Nevertheless I have to admit that watching it is akin to watching a foreign film without subtitles. More specifically, for me it's like watching the French dubbed version of a movie I've seen a couple times before. I took a couple years of French, so I can pick out a few words here and there, and since I've seen it before I know what's happening and is going to happen, but the vast majority of the actual conversations sail over my head. But perhaps the truly weird part about it is that I'm still enjoying it! I guess it is true what they say - that 90% of conversation is not what you say but how you say it and how you look when you do. In any case, I've been watching it in roughly 30-40 minute chunks and I'm 2 and a half hours in right now.
But back to politics. It looks like the Republicans are going to pick up about 65 seats in the House to take firm control of that chamber and cut the Democratic majority in the Senate to ~53 to 47 (pending a couple close races and counting the two Independents as Democrats). First of all I think it's important to put this in some historical context. Although this is certainly larger than most times, this is what happens in mid-term elections. Going back to 1934 (now encompasing 20 midterms), guess how many times the party of the sitting President has gained seats? 3 in the House, and 5 in the Senate. That's a record of 3-17 and 5-15 (respectively) so this is by no means shocking. And if Democrats are looking for some good news today, it's the fourth time that control of one or both houses of Congress has changed in the mid-term of a President's first term. All 3 previous times, the President has been re-elected (Truman, Eisenhower, and Clinton). And that's exactly what I see happening here. As of today, the Republicans still do not have a viable challenger for the White House in 2012. And they're also somewhat trapped in how to position themselves for that Congressional election: if things improve between now and then they can't take complete credit for it (since the Presidency and Senate are still under the control of the other party) and if things don't they can't continue to simply be the party of "no" since they now have a responsibility to join in the governing process.
Speaking of which, here's one person who is hopeful that the Republicans finally do actually believe in their own rhetoric of restoring financial responsibility. To this point, all we've gotten is vague promises of "across the board spending cuts", which never happen. In fact, I'd like to also point out to the Republican banner wavers out there, that the prospective new Speaker of the House John Boehner is the same guy who said in a position paper on 2001 that (and I'm paraphrashing here) "it turns out that the American people didn't care about balanced budgets, and it's unrealistic to think that we can actually shrink the size of the government. The best we can do is limit the rate of its increase." Mind you that this is the same guy who was part of the 1994 Republican sweep into power that promised, well, pretty much the same thing they are promising now. Hmm, the Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again" comes to mind. By the way, that quote appears in Alan Greenspan's book (and it is properly cited) and after reading it 4 years ago I was so surprised that I sought out the source document and found it. But upon looking for it again in 2009 I noticed that it now can no longer be found anywhere on the net. Literally. I can find as much trivial info about Blake's 7, an extremely obscure and low-budget British sci-fi show from the 70's, as I want but apparently a position paper written 9 years ago by a sitting U.S. Representative is now lost to us. I'm sure it's just coincidence though. I'm sure it wasn't intentionally removed or anything like that. In any case, I'll be the first one to cheer if the Republicans really do decide to concentrate on their fiscal responsibility crede rather than going on social crusades to please the religious right.
But now that I've blasted away at Republicans for a while let me blast away at Obama too. Yesterday he was out trying to get the disenfranchised and disillusioned out to vote. Fair enough. But he was quoted as saying that his "whole agenda was at risk" if Republicans swept into power. Excuse me, Mr. President, but I seem to recall that your message in 2008 was "Yes we can" but apparently that was just the truncated version. I guess the full version was "Yes we can, provided that once you bring me into power you also give me sweeping majorities in both houses of Congress and keep them there for my full first term". Guess I should have read the fine print on those yard signs.
Yesterday I chose not to watch most of the election night coverage. And no it wasn't sour grapes on my part (I'm actually fairly pleased about it, which I'll get to in a second). It's just that there really weren't a lot of surprises or excitement, and the few that there were (like Quinn potentially beating Brady) are still being decided now. So instead I made another attempt to get through the 4-plus hour Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. Now, I consider myself to be of at least reasonable intellect, I already know the story of Hamlet, one of my favorite films of all time is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is certainly not Hamlet but does feature a lot of dialogue from it), and I even read Hamlet in high school. Nevertheless I have to admit that watching it is akin to watching a foreign film without subtitles. More specifically, for me it's like watching the French dubbed version of a movie I've seen a couple times before. I took a couple years of French, so I can pick out a few words here and there, and since I've seen it before I know what's happening and is going to happen, but the vast majority of the actual conversations sail over my head. But perhaps the truly weird part about it is that I'm still enjoying it! I guess it is true what they say - that 90% of conversation is not what you say but how you say it and how you look when you do. In any case, I've been watching it in roughly 30-40 minute chunks and I'm 2 and a half hours in right now.
But back to politics. It looks like the Republicans are going to pick up about 65 seats in the House to take firm control of that chamber and cut the Democratic majority in the Senate to ~53 to 47 (pending a couple close races and counting the two Independents as Democrats). First of all I think it's important to put this in some historical context. Although this is certainly larger than most times, this is what happens in mid-term elections. Going back to 1934 (now encompasing 20 midterms), guess how many times the party of the sitting President has gained seats? 3 in the House, and 5 in the Senate. That's a record of 3-17 and 5-15 (respectively) so this is by no means shocking. And if Democrats are looking for some good news today, it's the fourth time that control of one or both houses of Congress has changed in the mid-term of a President's first term. All 3 previous times, the President has been re-elected (Truman, Eisenhower, and Clinton). And that's exactly what I see happening here. As of today, the Republicans still do not have a viable challenger for the White House in 2012. And they're also somewhat trapped in how to position themselves for that Congressional election: if things improve between now and then they can't take complete credit for it (since the Presidency and Senate are still under the control of the other party) and if things don't they can't continue to simply be the party of "no" since they now have a responsibility to join in the governing process.
Speaking of which, here's one person who is hopeful that the Republicans finally do actually believe in their own rhetoric of restoring financial responsibility. To this point, all we've gotten is vague promises of "across the board spending cuts", which never happen. In fact, I'd like to also point out to the Republican banner wavers out there, that the prospective new Speaker of the House John Boehner is the same guy who said in a position paper on 2001 that (and I'm paraphrashing here) "it turns out that the American people didn't care about balanced budgets, and it's unrealistic to think that we can actually shrink the size of the government. The best we can do is limit the rate of its increase." Mind you that this is the same guy who was part of the 1994 Republican sweep into power that promised, well, pretty much the same thing they are promising now. Hmm, the Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again" comes to mind. By the way, that quote appears in Alan Greenspan's book (and it is properly cited) and after reading it 4 years ago I was so surprised that I sought out the source document and found it. But upon looking for it again in 2009 I noticed that it now can no longer be found anywhere on the net. Literally. I can find as much trivial info about Blake's 7, an extremely obscure and low-budget British sci-fi show from the 70's, as I want but apparently a position paper written 9 years ago by a sitting U.S. Representative is now lost to us. I'm sure it's just coincidence though. I'm sure it wasn't intentionally removed or anything like that. In any case, I'll be the first one to cheer if the Republicans really do decide to concentrate on their fiscal responsibility crede rather than going on social crusades to please the religious right.
But now that I've blasted away at Republicans for a while let me blast away at Obama too. Yesterday he was out trying to get the disenfranchised and disillusioned out to vote. Fair enough. But he was quoted as saying that his "whole agenda was at risk" if Republicans swept into power. Excuse me, Mr. President, but I seem to recall that your message in 2008 was "Yes we can" but apparently that was just the truncated version. I guess the full version was "Yes we can, provided that once you bring me into power you also give me sweeping majorities in both houses of Congress and keep them there for my full first term". Guess I should have read the fine print on those yard signs.
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