The Princess And The Frog

I rewatched The Princess And The Frog last night.  I turned it on and was like, man, I forgot how fun this movie is, why'd I delete it from my computer in the first place?  Then they got to the bayou and I went, oh, now I remember.  It's a really great movie, except for all the annoying parts.

   Yeeeah.

It feels like every time I watch it I start thinking about things that are actually kind of awful.  Like, for example, Tiana's mom.  That poor, poor woman.  Her daughter vanishes from a party, nobody sees or hears from her for like a week, and can you imagine the conversation when she finally makes it home?  "Hi Mom!  Sorry I was gone, but this guy turned me into a frog and I only changed back after I married him.  Meet my new husband!"  I wonder how long it took to convince her that Naveen was really a prince and not just a freaky abductor/rapist.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Guess what movie I saw the other night!  And will now blog about in an unstructured and random and not-even-a-little-bit-thought-out way!

As you may have guessed from the title of the post and the spectacular gif, it was the new Star Trek!  It was...good, I guess?  No, it wasn't nearly as good as the first one, but I still had fun watching it.  I think part of the problem is it felt somehow smaller than the first one, which is rarely a good thing with a sequel.  Though still, fun to watch.  I admit I did laugh my ass off when they pulled that Wrath Of Khan flip-ending thing.  That was pretty goofy, it felt almost like a parody (that scene was supposed to be funny, right?).  Also I didn't entirely get the point of making Kirk no longer captain for all of...what, ten minutes?  Seemed like pointless drama.  The death of Pike was pretty rad, though, and I really liked Spock mind-melding with him to experience his death.  I gotta wonder how that could have fucked him up, though, because for serious that is some traumatizing shit.  There will be good fanfic to read, I am sure.

I'm sure the entire internet has already lost its collective shitstack over this, but what was the deal with making Khan white?  The character was like, Indian or something, wasn't he?  And a Sikh, if I'm remembering right, it's been a while since I've seen the original series.  How the hell did they get away with casting Sherlock Holmes instead of somebody who looked the part?  Yeah, Sherlock did a good job in the acting department, I guess, but it seems kind of shitty to replace a dark-skinned character with a super-pale-skinned character for no reason, especially when it makes absolutely no sense; even if you wanted to use the argument that this is an alternate reality, it's only alternate from Kirk's birth or so, it wouldn't have any effect on the people who were frozen hundreds of years ago and only just got thawed out.  I guess maybe the movie was trying to avoid the possibly unfortunate implication of having the villain be a dark-skinned person.  That sort of makes sense, but you'd think that in interest of not looking like they're whitewashing the series they'd make one of the good-guy characters a minority, to make up for the switch.  Like, the new girl could have been Indian or something.  Speaking of her, what was with the random stripping scene?  And while we're on tiny little nitpicks, why didn't Spock ever give away the conn?  He constantly runs out of the bridge while he's acting captain person.  I am not entirely sure on the rules here, but shouldn't he hand off the conn to the next highest-ranked person in the room before dashing off?

I know that me going on about all these little flaws makes it sound like it was a terrible movie, but I did have fun watching it.  Not nearly as much fun as I had watching the first movie, though.  I'd say it's probably about equal to the newest Die Hard film, or one of the Hugo episodes of Bob's Burgers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to track down some original-series Star Trek to watch.  It's been far too long.  Also eventually I have to start buying TNG dvds, because that seems to be the only way I can watch some shows.  Drama-ish shows especially, I am far too easily distracted to have internet tabs in the other window when there's a slow or quiet scene.  Next Gen was a good show but I couldn't even get halfway into the second season while trying to watch it on my computer.

Rise of the Guardians

Yeah, I watched that tonight.  Rise of the Guardians was actually somewhat better than I was expecting.  I vaguely remember seeing the trailer in theatres.  I don't remember my exact reaction, but I remember being pretty unimpressed and convinced that it was a must-miss.  I gave in today after a few friends recommended it, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't mind-blowingly amazing, but it was okay.  And that's way better than I thought it would be.

I'm not gonna go into any detail explaining the plot here, by the way.  I can't be bothered, really.  It was a good plot, so there's no fun to be had in really mocking it, but it wasn't an incredible plot so there's not a lot of gushing I could do either.  So if you're curious, either watch the movie yourself, look it up on Wikipedia or resign yourself to a life of never knowing.  I really don't care.  This isn't a review, all I'm doing is rambling about a few of the reactions I had during the movie.

First off: the character designs.  Some of them were really cool.  Santa was awesome.  The Tooth Fairy was really neat as well.  I loved Santa's Naughty and Nice arm tattoos, and his very Russian-badass portrayal.  His outfits were way cooler than the traditional red-with-white-trim santa suit -- the red-with-black-trim coat was quite striking, actually -- and I liked how he wasn't really fat, just big.  It was an interesting portrayal of a very classic, iconic character.  The Tooth Fairy was adorable, really birdlike and enthusiastic, and she had just the prettiest eyes.  Her little fairy helpers were cute too!

I didn't realize until after the movie was over and I was discussing it with my sister exactly how offensive the Easter Bunny was.  During the movie all I thought was "Oh, he's....not very interesting.  Kind of boring, really."  And then later on I'm like, "Holy shit, was that racist?  Or something?  Is there a world like racist that refers to countries and cultures rather than race, or does it all fall under racism?"  But yeah, it was something, all right.  The Easter Bunny had an Australian accent, and tribal tattoos or something, and, you know, he's a rabbit.  That super-invasive species that ruined everything in Australia and is still causing hella problems.  Man, that was a bad choice, Dreamworks.  Shame on you.  Think better next time.

Jack Frost's design was...ehhhh?  Overall I guess I liked it -- I mean, I liked his face and his staff and mostly I liked his movements, even if they weren't always as creative as I would have liked.  But his outfit...ugh.  So boring.  He starts out with an interesting enough outfit, right in the beginning -- it's like a cloak that reflects light rather interestingly in the moonlight, and reminded me of frost.  Clever!  But then fast forward a few hundred years and he's running around in...a hoodie.  Okay, fine, a hoodie with frost on it, but still.  How dull can you get?  That's part of the reason I never liked the trailer, I think, the character just looked too bland to be interesting, and his outfit was too modern and casual to make any impression about his personality.

And the Boogeyman, or Pitch Black.  Wait that's a terrible name, I'll just stick with Boogeyman.  His character design was baaaaaaad.  Like, really bad.  Well, more like really boring, but for a villain that's baaaaaaad.  Come on! The guy is darkness itself, he moves through shadows and controls nightmares -- you could have had so much fun with that!  Like the evil lady in Sinbad, that was a kind of dull movie but she was just so cool, her movements and actions and everything, it was just wow, you know?  You could have channeled some of that for the boogeyman here.  His body could have shifted with the shadows, changing shape and size, slipping away one minute then towering above everyone the next.  Or he could have stayed perfectly still most of the time and the scenery would move around him, how neat would that look?  And even without the change in movements, he looks so dull.  Just a plain black robe, plain black hair, nothing distinctive about him.  Why not clad him in shadows, so his robe melts into the scenery around him, or make his facial features subtly change depending on who he's talking to and what he wants?  He could have been made so much more creepy than he turned out to be.  I find that usually it's the villain that makes a film for me, and the Boogeyman being such a let-down was really part of why I found Rise of the Guardians a little lacking.

Another thing that bugged me during the film was how the children's belief in the Guardians worked.  As a kid I never really believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or anything, and if I ever did it would have been when I was very young, too young to remember.  But it seems to me that a child who really believed wouldn't immediately dismiss those beliefs as soon as one little thing happened.  One night of teeth not being picked up led to the Tooth Fairy immediately losing her powers -- what?  Wouldn't the kids' initial reaction be more "What, why didn't she come, what happened, why?" rather than "Oh, no quarter, guess she was never real!"  Or no eggs in an egghunt, or no presents at Christmas.  Either the non-believing parents would have put out at least a few eggs or presents of their own, so the kids wouldn't immediately lose faith, or the parents would realize that eggs and presents and tooth money shows up without fail and thus the Guardians are kind of undeniably real.  Also, a single night of bad dreams led to children everywhere losing all their faith in the Guardians?  My god, what sort of idyllic fantasy world is this?  Oh no, I had a nightmare last night!  Time for an existential crisis.  IS THERE NO GOD?!?!?!

And finally, the barefoot thing.  Jack Frost is barefoot through the whole movie, even in the parts that show his life as a normal human.  At one point some kids run outside in the middle of the night, stopping to grab coats and hats but for some reason not shoes -- the one thing you really, really need when you're running out into the snow.  What is the deal?  Movie, why do you not understand cold?  Well, maybe not.  Early on it shows kids celebrating a "snow day" when there's maybe a light sprinkling of snow -- not even enough to cover the grass!  If a city thinks that less than an inch of snow is significant enough to shut down schools, why would the kids have sleds?  They clearly don't get enough snow to use them. You are weird, movie.  All of this?  This is why you are only pretty good instead of awesome.  Try better next time, okay?

Super 8

I just finished watching Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abram's movie Super 8 with my dad and brother.  I saw the trailer for it before it came out in theatres a year or two ago and went, "Oh, that looks really neat, I should check it out!" then completely forgot about it until my brother put it on tonight.

I'm not actually sure if I liked it much or not.  It started off pretty strong, I was having fun with the kids and their movie, and the whole witnessing a freaky train crash thing was cool, if a little excessive -- seriously, what was with the Michael Bay explosions there?  That train was crashing and exploding for like, five minutes.  It stopped being awesome and started being just awkwardly hilarious less than halfway through the explosion.  But the child actors were all pretty good, and it was a fun watch for the most part.

But the movie sort of lost steam as it went on.  It's still good overall, but it isn't consistently awesome.  The really strong beginning became a decent middle and a kind-of-eh end.  I went from being really interested and entertained, to kind of disappointed and only watching to see if it really would be as predictable as it seemed.  I'd say I'm trying to be vague in order to avoid spoilers, but I honestly can't think of any spoilers for this movie.  Everything just starts running in a straight, generic alien-invasion-movie line.  Apparently the movie was originally two different movies, one a movie about a bunch of kids making their own movie in the 70's and the other just, you know, it's an alien invasion movie.  Summer blockbuster stuff.  But they were worried that the first one wouldn't attract enough of an audience, so they combined them.  Which is kind of really disappointing, because the blockbuster-alien-invasion part of the movie is really weak in comparison to the kids-making-a-movie-then-stuff-happens part.  It's just, oh look it's an alien, he crashed on Earth and the military held him captive and torture-experimented on him and now he hates humanity and he's on the rampage.  How inspired.  I've never seen that a million times before.  Whereas a bunch of kids making an adorkable zombie movie in the 70's, that's cute!  I really haven't seen that movie before, no sarcasm this time.  And stuff is happening around them and they gotta find out what's up and it's a totally nostalgic adventure!  I'd watch the shit out of that.

The movie passes the Bechdel test, but only barely.  There's only one actually important female character, and that's Alice who goes missing in the middle of the movie and the rest of it's about rescuing her from the alien so she's not in a lot of the movie, but instead is off being the damsel in distress.  There's a short scene where one of the kid's mom argues with his sister over how she's not allowed to wear that outfit to school, missy!  Then the sister comes back later to use her sexy sex appeal to convince a dude to do the main kids a favour. Why can't she do the favour instead of just convincing somebody else through her feminine wiles?  Hey, who'd want to watch a girl drive the car, let's just add another male character instead!  And both of the two main characters, Joe and Alice, have missing moms, more female characters that have conveniently vanished from the story so we can focus on the all-important male characters instead.  Joe's missing mom is kind of plot-related in that she died because she was covering Alice's dad's shift and there was an accident.  Alice's mom is just not around, her dad saying she "left" in one scene but the movie never really pays attention to it.  So most of the movie is about a bunch of guys running around.  I know there are people out there who'd get all bent out of shape that I would ever have a problem about a movie being mostly guys with just a few female characters, because GEEZ NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO CATER TO YOU FUCKING FEMINISTS 24/7 WHO CARES IF GUYS HAVE ROLES IN MOVIES WHAT I GUESS YOU WANT TO BAN ANYONE WITH A DICK FROM EVER SHOWING THEIR FACE IN HOLLYWOOD IS THAT IT BITCH?!!?!?!!!?!!!1

No, that's not it.  I wouldn't have a problem with a movie being mostly guys with one or two female characters, or even no female characters -- there are lots of spectacular movies with an all-male cast.  But seriously, every movie is about a bunch of guys running around with maybe a couple of love interests or token chicks.  Movies are about dudes.  Movies about women never get made unless they're romances or something, in which case they're still usually about dudes, just from another perspective.  What would change in this movie if say, the arsonist kid was another chick? Or if the mostly-ignored sister Jen was the one who the kids went to for actual help and got more character development instead of just being "the sexy plot device to trick a guy"?  Hell, let's look at other movies, not just this one.  What if one or two of the Ghostbusters were women?  Why were there so few women in the Star Wars movies?  Why did it take Pixar thirteen films before getting around to a female protagonist?  Think about it.  Women account for fifty percent of the population.  Yet in 2009, women only recieved 33% of speaking roles.  Isn't that a little messed up?

Anyway, feminist rambling aside, I'd probably recommend this movie, I guess.  It's charming when it's not being a generic summer blockbuster, and when it is doing the generic summer blockbuster part it's doing it well enough.  The monster looks pretty neat, there are big explosions to keep you reasonably entertained despite the lack of twists or surprises, and the child actors are surprisingly talented.  Just don't let the movie fool you into raising your expectations during the really good parts, and you'll like it fine.

Love Never Dies: embarrassing but fun

I'm gonna be honest, Love Never Dies is a guilty pleasure of mine.  It's a little embarrassing to admit that I love it as much as I do.  I mean, objectively, I get why a lot of people dislike it.  It's certainly not equal to Phantom of the Opera.  The story is exceedingly silly, the music isn't as good, and honestly PotO didn't need a sequel.  In fact, there's a reasonable argument that the sequel actually detracts from the fantasticulosity of the original.  Well, not really original, the actual original Phantom of the Opera is Gaston Leroux.  Which if you've never read it is still pretty good!  Not least because of how often the Phantom calls people "a great booby."  Hahaha, boobies.  Classic.

Not what he meant, but still. Boobies. Heh.

But still, LND.  I just can't help but love it!  I know it's got pretty glaring flaws, but it's got enough good bits to make it genuinely enjoyable despite them.  For example, the music being not-as-good as in Phantom doesn't mean the music's actually that bad.  That's the problem with comparing decent things to awesome things, the decent starts looking crappy because of how awesome the awesome thing is.  And the silly story....well, it's very silly.  But I've read sillier fanfic that I still enjoyed.  And that's basically what LND is, live-action musical fanfic that just so happens to involve the original(ish) creator.  After all, it is partially based on Phantom of Manhattan, which is in fact published fanfic.  When I went to the movie theatre to see the screening of the Sydney production of Love Never Dies, I didn't go in thinking "At last! The long awaited second half of the Phantom's story!"  I went in thinking "This is going to be amazingly ridiculous and I am going to love it for that."

Amazingly ridiculous.

I already knew the general plot beforehand, because Internet.  Spoilers: Raoul had become a drunken gambling loser who lost all his money, he and Christine and their son Gustav go to America to make money singing, and Erik the Phantom hires Christine through deceit and trickery to sing at his carnival because he has a carnival now.  Surprise!  Turns out Christine had an affair ten years ago right before getting married to Raoul, tracking down the Phantom for a sexy night of sexy sex (a moonless night btw, because dude's ugly remember?  hot ladies can't sex ugly dudes if the light's on!) and then the Phantom ditches her because somehow he didn't realize she loved him?  So Gustav is actually the Phantom's son, to the surprise of nobody watching because it wasn't exactly subtle before the big reveal.  You mean the ten year old child who's uncommonly gifted with music is actually the son of the genius musician Christine knew ten years ago?  Never!  So Erik the Phantom and Christine have their happy ending where Raoul fucks off and they get to be all sweetly in love because nobody actually remembers all the evil stuff the Phantom did in the first movie, may the shippers rejoice, but then Meg accidentally kills Christine when she kidnaps Gustav and tries to commit suicide.  By the way Meg is a crazy person now and has fallen in love with the Phantom, despite all her excellent don't-be-in-love-with-an-evil-opera-ghost advice to Christine in the original.  So yeah, very silly.  But fun-silly, in a way that works!  No, it doesn't all make sense when you look at it next to PotO.  But it's like, it could make sense in a fanfic-universe, because that's how fanfic works.  It takes canon and sort of bends it just enough that, say, Christine could leave Raoul right before the wedding because she's realized that she truly loves the Phantom despite, you know, everything.  The same way that so many people find Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy slash fic to be adorable and possibly realistic.  Or Draco and Hermione, if you aren't a slash fan.  Doesn't make much sense, isn't everybody's cup of tea, doesn't really work with canon at all.  But still fun, and still almost possible with the right bending.  The right fanficcy universe-bending, I mean, not sex-type bending.  Or element bending, that's a different series.

universe-bendy.

Of course, it's only fun-silly in a way that works in my personal opinion, because the show does have a lot of legitimate haters.  LND does kind of ruin the plot of PotO a teeny bit, what with the Phantom suddenly not being crazy and evil any more and Christine apparently developing amnesia after running away from the evil scary man who tried to kill her childhood sweetheart, did kill several un-hot people over the course of the musical, and tried to imprison her and force her to become his unwilling wife, and also, possibly his worst crime, destroying the beautiful and historic Paris Opera House.  But it's a silly musical with decent though not PotO-amazing music, pretty incredible effects, and fanfic-like shipping.  No, it's not equal to Phantom of the Opera, but if you were expecting it to be then you are also very silly.  Nobody expects a sequel to live up to the original.  Have you never seen any of those direct-to-video Disney sequels?  

What did you expect from these?