Nothing to do With Goats... This Time...

The more observant among you may have noticed that we have been in something of a creative slump. I can't really speak for Brian, but for me this is partly a matter of inspiration and partly a matter of sloth. The sloth bit is pretty self explanatory, I'm a lazy fuck and writing about something would require giving fucks that I frankly don't possess 90% of the time. Inspiration is trickier.

For me, writing without impulse is trying enough to provoke apathy. Now, I'm working on that, I want to care, the prospect of being creatively constructive is exciting to me. But a blank page is a daunting foe even without an blank head to accompany it. I've tried writing about current events, successfully demonstrating to myself that I'm not really capable of maintaining interest in pretty much any specific information for longer than it takes to convert that information into its general themes. Not that I don't care about the individuals involved in any particular "newsworthy" event, I'm just less concerned about them then I am about the likely root causes of whatever situation they inhabit. Most of which I've either thoroughly and frustratingly examined or about which I have nothing to say.

I've tried writing short fiction on here, and that was fun but largely aimless and so difficult to maintain. So in response to this aimlessness and apathy I've decided to write about being aimless and apathetic, because while I don't approve of self indulgence I am a firm advocate of masturbation.

I'm working on a D&D game, so I'll probably wander off and work on that soon. Hopefully, some good ol' world-building will refill my reserves and give me something to work with. Probably going to see a lot more random short fiction and Mounting Mythical Monsters from me in coming weeks. With any luck we'll all have some fun.

I Dare You M. Night

I goddamn loath M. Night Shyamalan. Not like I hate J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon, for genius abused. No, I hate Shyamalan for genius avoided. M. Night has the potential to be the greatest B movie director of all time. Its something that Brian and I talked about a little while ago that has stuck in the deepest place in my craw, because I kinda love B movies and his premises are perfect for the medium. So I've taken it upon myself to right this wrong and set the world right... re-imagining his movies as intentionally bad, instead of just depressing. Starting with The Village

The actual premise of this movie is an 18th century village is accosted by weird fucking werewolf monsters. The twist is that the monsters are really the village elders in costumes who founded the village to escape modern life and exercise their creepily elaborate history professor social experiment. In my version its an 18th century village being accosted by weird fucking werewolf monsters, but the twist is that the werewolves are actually the village elders in bad wigs, who founded the village to escape actual werewolves and exercise their creepily elaborate history professor sexual fantasies. Then at the end M. Night could get torn apart amidst a poorly choreographed werewolf/ history professor blood orgy. Actually, the whole movie could just be Shyamalan being slowly torn apart by people in tweed jackets and furry gloves and I'd pay to see it.

Rabble Rabble Rabble

So I've been having a hard time landing on topics to write about lately. At least partly because, like the German baby, I don't have much to say when things are acceptable. I mean yeah the world is on fire and the idea of justice is more of a novel hypothetical then a social imperative; but my shit is going pretty alright. Which is kind of an interesting phenomena, I care that bad things are going on in the world, and I'm still all about fixing those problems, it just isn't something I feel the need to get all frothy about anymore.

I don't see the point in getting outraged because outrage is a worthless commodity these days. We all know about, if not acknowledge, the big problems that we face as a species. There is no point in spreading awareness. I would rather enjoy the opportunity to help people where I can than stress out about all the people being predictably disappointing. And since so much of what I do is either pop culture (which I'm way behind on) or social ills you can see how I might have hit a dry spot. I'm going to try to do more YKWFA in the coming months as I exercise my developing giveafuck gland. Meanwhile Brian is still holding strong as ever and Weekly Cinemeh is on the docket for the foreseeable  future.

A Lot of People Watch American Idol, That Doesn't Make It Good.

Being the type of person I am I like to listen to people discuss a lot of topics. I believe that there is a lot of uncertainty in our world so I try to give multiple sides of an argument at least some credit. I am a firm believer in evolution, but I still listen to the reasons that creationists have problems with it. hearing dissenting opinions is a good thing because it forces you to justify why you believe what you believe.

Evidence is the key here. Statements alone don't hold a lot of sway for me. You can say that creationism is laughed out of academic circles before being examined, and that might be true, but unless I see evidence of this, I don't know if you are bullshitting or not.

My point is that evidence is the best way to make an argument. This makes the common practice of appealing to the popularity of an idea so fucked up. Instead of offering evidence people will say some number of people can't be wrong about something because so many people believe it (this is known as the bandwagon fallacy by the way). Its used a lot in commercials for restaurants or other subjective products, which might be the only place such rhetoric belongs. It is also used as evidence for moral or scientific beliefs, which is where I get frustrated.

A lot of people smoke crack, that doesn't mean its a good thing, it just means that a lot of people have a reason for smoking that crack rock. Dave Foley (one of my favorite comedic actors/comedians) makes this point rather well in his stand up act. The only thing that gives any sort of credence to religion is that a lot of people believe in it. If only one person believed in something like that they would seem crazy.

I am not saying that you should immediately assume that if a lot of people believe in some thing that they are all wrong, just don't except that alone as proof. If a lot of people believe something and all provide studies and evidence of why their beliefs are justified, and especially when its the job of the group of people you are talking about to know about the subject, then they would have a very strong argument (kinda like this).

Eating 20 Chicken McNuggets isn't normal, but on McDonalds it is.

The world is a fucked up place. Its not fair, there are unreasonable expectations placed on people, jobs are almost universally fucking terrible, and the world doesn't often give people breaks (I mean the metaphorical world, not the planet). To make this weight a little lighter people indulge in a vice.

When I say vice I am sure most people think of drugs, sex, and alcohol. These are the traditional vices that oppose "virtues" but the idea that an action is inherently good or bad is stupid, so for my purposes I am hijacking the word. I would argue that this can be used to describe anything that people use to comfort themselves in the face of reality. I would include as vices food, video games, playing sports, watching sports, movies, and anything that takes away stress. Everyone indulges in something, which is why I find it fucked up that people judge others on that shit.

I am not a fan of sports, but I don't judge people negatively for being a fan of a team. It doesn't affect me, so why should I care. As long as your vice doesn't effect others, people shouldn't care. Porn made with people who didn't consent, that's fucked up and shouldn't be supported. Porn made with consenting adults who weren't coerced into consent? That's fine. Smoke weed? Don't drive and I have no problems with it. People who try to legislate against any kind of vice because of its misuse also legislate against proper use. This is a problem.

I know what some people will say about addiction, that's its a bad thing. I agree, but treating it like a crime, and not a health issue is a problem. I would bet money that people who get addicted and know they need help won't look for it because they are afraid of judgement about what they are addicted to. I am not saying that we should legalize all drugs (though if you want to end the illegal drug trade it would hurt them spectacularly) but at least don't stigmatize addiction and try to make a way for people to get treated without worrying about going to jail or facing charges related to it.

That's a topic that deserves its own post, so I will try to get back to my original point. Judging people for doing something that makes them feel better in general is fucked up. Everyone does something, the people who try to moralize it just like to feel superior about their chosen vice, be it God, the NFL, or McDonald's. We are all in the shit together, maybe stop trying to judge people for how they cope. It's only hurting people. 

Industrial Waste

I always feel a bit weird when I don't like a movie. Eshi mentioned that we watched The Stepford Wives a couple days ago, and it left me with a feeling of despair. When I see a movie and don't like it I feel like I must have missed the point of it. That it is somehow my fault that the movie is bad, like my perspective is wrong somehow. Regardless of my selfhate-y shit, this particular movie had me on this bend a little more than usual and it made me think more on what a good movie is.

TSW had a lot of jokes that I have seen in other movies that worked well in those movies. All of the actors are good actors I have seen do amazing work. The director Frank Oz has a good list of work (He directed The Dark Crystal and Little Shop of Horrors. Also he was Yoda!). This movie has all of the ingredients of a good movie "should" have and I think that is the problem. I feel like a group of people got together at a studio needing to make a movie and picked an old movie to remake. Then they decided to make it a comedy because it would reach a larger audience. They decided to make the movie a summer blockbuster movie that had a ton of big name actors in it so that it would grab even more people. How could a movie with all of these big name actors be bad?! And then it was (Welcome to the basement has a term for this: Talent Bomb.)

This movie had no soul.  I think this is one of the many things that makes bad movies bad. I feel bad for shitting on this movie after Eshi did on Monday, but this is a problem that's not just from this movie. A good movie is something made with some kind of passion, not just shit out as a money making scheme. Hollywood is an industry though and unfortunately sometimes that side wins out over artistry and or originality.

So Bad It's... Nope, Just Bad

I was coerced into watching The Stepford Wives yesterday, and boy was that not good. Christopher Walken didn't save this movie. Matthew Broderick was just as affectless and baffled as ever, Nicole Kidman's character was completely loathsome regardless of which completely different personality is presenting, and easily half the cast was superfluous. Glenn Close is in this fucking movie, and it doesn't seem to appreciate that.

The overall theme in this thing is probably feminism. I say "probably" not because I feel in any way ambiguous about it but because the way they handled feminism in the movie is so shit-fingered and pigeon-holey as to be insulting, and I say that from the depths of my pasty white, middle-class penis. Undeterred by circumstance or consequences, Kidman's character is kind of a cunt through the entire movie, only at the end does she seem to actually change. Not that she stops being a cunt, just that now she appreciates her manipulative, bitter, cowardly shit-pile of a husband.

The gay "wife" is, to quote Brian, "The gay version of a minstrel show," and that is apt. And where he is flashy and dramatic his partner plays the equally cliché constervative power-top. Actually, there is no subtlety in this movie at all. At all. Even if somehow the whole thing were some layers deep meta-cross-commentary arthouse fucking pretension, that would still be a shitty, shallow cliché.

You've Got Red On You

So Eshi and I watched a movie a couple weeks back that we didn't end up doing a weekly cinemeh entry. Since we have been trying to keep to a theme we don't always talk about all the movies that we watch, which in this case it was kind of a shame because its a good scapegoat for a major problem in action movies in general. Fake Blood.

Centurion could have been an OK action movie. It was a run of the mill "people on the run from a force that is better prepared to deal with the environment and situation than they are". Its a lot like the movie The Grey (some of the scenes are exactly the fucking same), which also fell into this category. Nothing to write home about. What kept it from being just OK and made it kind of terrible was the fake blood. We have talked about special effects and how practical effects can look far more real than CGI, but CGI also has its place. Both are necessary for realistic looking scenes in big action-y movies. The fake blood in Centurion detracted from the movie. It looked like someone was making a youtube video.

Did you see that shit? It looks like it was added in by someone who had better things to do. Shit, it might have been, I don't know.

This might seem like a dumb thing to be upset about, but it seriously pulled me out of the movie because it was so fake. They spent a lot of time and money making this movie, but this was just lazy. They could have left the blood out and the movie would have been better. I swear, I have seen cracked videos that used the same effects. John Wick, a good dumb action movie, suffered from the same problem. Its a disappointing effect that only hurt the movie, and its sad that it does because action movies are thought of as cheap and dumb by a lot of people, but they have the potential to be good (maybe even great) movies.

Adaptation

So movie adaptations of books have been around since the beginnings of film. My favorite movie, The Maltese Falcon, was even the third adaptation of the book. From 1994 to 2013 58% of the top grossing movies were adaptations, so it has been a pretty big chunk of the industry for a long time. I don't think that everything needs a movie adaptation. The fact that we got a rock em' sock em' robots movie and a battleship movie is depressing. Especially because we already got the best board-game to movie adaptation in 1985.

People have weird feelings about film adaptations and I really get why. People put a lot of investment into books. When you read a book, you are not just comprehending words on a page. Books require far more input form the reader, which is something a lot of people love. Rue from the hunger games movie wasn't what I was expecting after reading the book because I had an image in my head of the character I read about. The problem arises from what a movie is and what a book is, and how its hard to distinguish the two when they are based on the same thing.

If I wrote a book I could be vague about some details, forcing the readers to interpret somethings on their own, but in a movie you can't do that easily. Movies need to be more subtle in different ways because they effect different senses. My favorite example of this is from an adaptation that I loved: "Shutter Island". Spoilers Ahead: In the movie the guards are visibly nervous at the fact that Daniels has a gun and is walking around freely. This was not something that was easily shown in the book because the narrative didn't focus on the background characters in a way that films can.

I think the only time a movie version of a book gets "bad" from a narrative perspective (bad acting and directing can happen to original IP movies too) is when it looses what makes most books important. The message. All in all I don't have a problem with an adaptation as long as it stays true to the reason the book was written.That being said, if you make the movie all about the special effects and flare and big name actors and less about the story being told it will be bad, regardless of the source materials origins. Examples of failure: The Golden Compass, The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Examples of Success: No Country For Old Men, The Maltese Falcon, and an Honorable Mention to Jeeves and Wooster (because fuck yeah Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie).

The Man In The Mountain

I came to an interesting and depressing realization this morning while I was taking a walk. There is no land anywhere (that is reasonable to get to, I doubt that real estate agents have Antarctica mapped out for sale yet) that isn't already owned by someone.

I know this seems obvious, but its depressing, isn't it? If I wanted to go into a forest near where I live now and mark out an acre for myself to subsistence farm, I would have to spend a bunch of money to do so. If I wanted to go live in a small area by myself and just be alone I can't. There is no option for people who want to opt out of society.

Its not that I want to go live by myself in the woods forever, but every once in a while I get the desire to abandon society and go live as a hermit. This comes from a large amount of self loathing, introvertedness, and a general weariness that accompanies existing in a society. It is a shame that you can't do this legally anymore without the cost being somewhat prohibitive.

It seems oddly constricting that something as simple as becoming a hermit can get you in trouble because you don't own a chunk of a mountain/have the money to pay for camping permits you can get fined or go to jail. If you want to live as a hermit, someone who generally eschews money and property in general, how could you pay those off? There is something sad about this to me. Every person on the planet could own an acre of land and still 75% of the land would be free for public use, but still all of the land is owned/controlled. Something seems off there.