Disney's Frozen

So I went to see Frozen the other day.  The Snow Queen (which Frozen is very loosely based on/inspired by, and I am linking it because surprisingly most people I've tried to talk to about the movie have never actually read or even heard of Hans Christian Anderson's longest and one of his most famous stories) has always been my favourite fairy tale, ever since I was a kid.  When I found out a few years ago that Disney was making a film based on it I totally geeked out and I've been waiting for it in eager anticipation ever since.  At least until I saw the first trailer and lost all hope in a just and fair world.  I mean, look at this crap:

Oh joy, obnoxious non-human sidekicks, how original.  I can't wait to watch a movie full of that snowman's horrible voice squawk out gag-worthy one-liners while the big dumb caribou tries to eat his nose and they have horrible unfunny slapstick scenes all over the place.  The other trailers did equally terrible jobs of selling the film, because I just looked some up and they made it look like utter crap.  I'm really glad now that I only saw the one above and not any of the others, because aside from looking awful, they spoil some great jokes and some neat scenes in the film.  If this had movie bombed, I'd blame the trailers completely fucking over a good thing, not the movie itself.

Anyway, I went to see it anyway (because there was no way I was passing up any version of The Snow Queen, especially a Disney version, no matter how they butchered it), and was very pleasantly surprised.  It was actually pretty fantastic!  Not like the trailers at all!  There's still some stuff that I think could have been done better, but a lot of it really exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.  I'm probably going to start going into spoilers while I write this, by the way, just in case anybody is worried about that stuff.  I forgot to mention it earlier -- sorry!  At least I remembered before I actually said any spoilers.  Anyway, movie talk.  Pleasant surprises!  Go!

There's the music, for one.  I didn't realize this would be a musical.  Well, I figured that as a Disney princess movie there would be a few songs thrown in, but Frozen was a real straight-up musical.  How do I know it was a real straight-up musical?  Well, it's because musicals are the only movies I can watch once then immediately have to watch again.  I downloaded the soundtrack when I got home, but it wasn't really the same because while the songs are still good, it's also a really, fantastically visual movie.  For example, when I went looking for that godawful slapstick trailer to post above, I found they'd also posted Idina Menzel's show-stopping number that I felt was really the centrepiece of the film's soundtrack.  Listening to it alone on the soundtrack has a very Wicked feel (because duh, Idina Menzel), but I didn't notice it quite so much in theatres because of how fantastic I thought all the snow and ice stuff was, plus I was thinking of her more as the character of Elsa and not as the actress Idina.  Watch:

How great is that?  It's a good song, I really liked it on its own, but the song paired with the visuals of Elsa blossoming into the Snow Queen, finding the beauty in her powers by sending gorgeous works of snowflake art spinning around, creating a swirling staircase of frost, and raising a massive palace of aurora-gleaming ice from the mountain and the air itself.  It's one of my favourite scenes in the movie, because it's just such a spectacle.  Mind you, not all the music was great.  I found some songs to be a little grating; for example, Anna's first song, where she is asking Elsa if she wants to build a snowman like she did before.  It's very cutesy, a bit too much so, and some of the lyrics are rather uninspired and don't make the characters all that impressive; for example, "Do you wanna build a snowman?" "Anna, go away!" "Ooookay byyyyyye."  The way the two words were dragged out sounded pretty bland, and it made Anna seem like the least determined person ever.  She desperately wants her sister back!  But as soon as her sister is all, no go away, she's like gosh ok what else can I do.  And growing up with siblings, let me just say I wish it was that easy to get an obnoxious kid to scram.  

Another good surprise was the characters.  The obnoxious sidekicks from the first trailer aren't obnoxious at all in the film!  In fact, they're pretty endearing.  The reindeer doesn't do any slapstick bullshit, as far as I remember, and while the snowman -- I think his name is Olaf?  Or Oglaf, but I hope it's not, for any google-happy kid's sake -- is goofy, sure, but it's not the grating in-your-face goofy that it was in the trailers, it's more...I dunno, I want to say understated but it's really not.  And instead of just being dumb one-liners he's actually got some really funny bits!  And a lot of the time he's not supposed to be funny himself, really, but more setting up for someone else's funny.  For example, when he's singing his I Want song, the song's a joke, sure, but the real joke in the scene belongs to Kristoff, at the end.  I won't spoil it here because I liked it, even though I think one of the trailers might have done already.  Neither of them get as much screen time as the trailer I saw seemed to imply, and what time they do spend onscreen they usually act as actual comic relief, bringing a bit of lightness and humour to an otherwise heavy part of the movie.  Compare Jar Jar Binks, one of the most famously annoying Adorable Non Human Sidekicks In A Kid's Film characters, who had long scenes of him being unbearably annoying and dragging the film down.  No, Frozen did it absolutely right.

Of course, the characters were also one of the things I didn't always agree with.  For one thing, the original fairy tale had such good side characters!  I was so looking forward to meeting the clever Princess, who has read every book in the world and when she decided it was time to get married, she turned down every suitor until she found someone who was only interested in her mind and knowledge and not her face or her riches or anything.  Or the robber girl!  She was just so rad, she's basically just the hero of another story; she shows up as a kid with her mother and the rest of their band of thieves to kidnap Greta (the girl in the original story, I'd say she's Anna in this but she kind of isn't, the Disney version is hugely changed), and steals her horse and her clothes and everything, and she's kind of like an anti-hero; she sleeps with a knife and threatens her pet reindeer with it for a laugh, and threatens to kill Greta, but then when she hears Greta's story she's all "Well that sounds like a pretty awesome adventure! You know what, you go and get on with your bad self, go save your boy if you really think he's worth it" and gives her back her fancy warm clothes (but keeps her fancy muff and instead gives Greta her mom's bulky old mittens, because she's amazing and takes what she wants) and lets her reindeer free on the condition that he will help Greta get to the Snow Queen's palace, and off they go.  And then at the end of the story she shows up again, riding Greta's stolen horse all grown up with a pair of pistols strapped to her hips because she'd decided to wander the world and find her own way, and she's just like "You did it!  You go girl, if I'm ever in your town I'll stop by for a visit" and rides off into the sunset.  But I guess the story was so changed in Disney's version that they couldn't fit them in, or didn't think they suited the tone of the movie or whatever, I don't know -- the point is, they weren't there and that makes me sad because I loved them so much when I was younger.  The Snow Queen was really just full of awesome ladies, and it bums me out that Disney's version didn't have them.  There was a lady for everyone!  There was the good but sad magic woman who wanted to keep Greta, so she tricked her into staying in her garden out of loneliness.  There was the aforementioned genius Princess and the badass robber girl.  There was the Snow Queen herself, who I always loved; she wasn't really a villain, not really.  At least I never got a sense of evil from her in the versions I read.  She was impossible and otherworldly and had a completely different set of morals; she invited Kay to come with her out of loneliness, I thought, and I don't believe it ever would have occurred to her that it was wrong.  After all, she's an ancient and powerful fairy queen who sees mortals live and die in misery all the time, who would miss the little boy who caught her eye?  But whatever.  The story I remember wasn't the story Disney was telling, and that's okay even if I'm sad I never really saw it, because the original story really was just too religious to go over well now.  Let's talk about the character problems that are in the story Disney was actually telling.

For the record, spoilers are going to start here, for reelzies.  I really did like all of the characters in the movie, at least for the first half.  I didn't have any real problems with the characters themselves.  My problem was really where they paired them up or dealt with them at the end.  For example, Anna and Hans, her prince.  They meet in the beginning of the movie and over the course of an evening fall in love and decide to get engaged.  Everybody gives them crap over it, though; Elsa refuses to give her blessing because they'd only just met (which upsets Anna, who grabs her glove off and accidentally reveals her hidden powers to everyone, setting the main drama of the film in motion), and later on Kristoff gives her a hard time over it too and is all, I don't trust your judgment!  Who gets engaged to someone they only just met?  Well...Disney princesses do.  That's why it worked for me.  In the context of a Disney film, especially one of this style, meeting cute and falling in love and knowing you are truly Meant To Be is the norm.  And Anna and Hans were really adorable; he was a super-cute dude, they had a chemistry-filled song about falling in love with each other, he was responsible and helped her kingdom and tried to save her sister after the whole snow thing went down.  So I was really surprised when Hans turned out to be a bad guy in the end.  It really felt like more of a cop-out than a twist, not least because it made a lot of his earlier actions not make much sense.  For example, his plan all along was to marry Anna and have Elsa die in an accident so he could inherit the throne through Anna.  But if that's the case, why try to save Elsa from the Weaseltown dudes when they invaded her palace in the mountains?  If he never loved her, where was all that chemistry coming from in their song together?  And if he's so brilliant he can just come in and take over the kingdom as easily as he did, why was he so dumb as to leave Anna alive in a locked room in her own castle, just assuming she'll drop dead, then wander out and be all "Oh yes, she died (just don't go to look at her ok) and we totallly got married without any witnesses and I have no proof but that's so totally how it went down you guys, and again she is just so very dead in that locked room over there, no need to check and please ignore all knocking or cries for help."  The apparent moral of "you probably aren't really in love with that dude you just met at a royal ball who sang a love duet with you" doesn't really work out very well in a Disney film.  It feels like a last minute change they made in order to set up Anna and Kristoff as the main couple, since they spend most of the film together.

And I realize I'm getting into very shippy territory here, but I don't think they really work out all that well together, either.  Well, they're cute, I guess, and the romance is very light.  But they seemed more like friends for most of the film, with a few ham-handed "he totes has feelings yo" scenes here and there, and I really thought Kristoff would meet and fall for Elsa, the Snow Queen.  It makes sense; his immediate reaction to seeing her beautiful ice stairway and palace is to shed a tear, because as he says, ice is his life (he sells it for a living).  Of course his reaction would be one of admiration before one of fear; he is very well aware of the beauty of ice and snow, and is struck speechless by it the first time he sees anything she's made.  I was really looking forward to them meeting properly for the whole film, and it...it just never really happened.  I don't think they had a single conversation.  Bummer.

But there was another thing I liked!  They kept the shards of ice in the heart/eye from the original story.  Well, the original story actually had shards of glass made by the devil to make things ugly, but I've seen the ice version before too so it works out ok.  And they didn't keep it completely true, but they had the "ice in heart freezes it" thing, and part of the drama at the end is Anna trying to find an act of true love to thaw her freezing heart.  The characters went looking for true love's kiss, and I was sitting in my chair going, "Man, wouldn't it be great if the act of love wasn't romantic?  Elsa loves her sister, she could give herself up and risk being locked away and losing her newfound freedom in exchange for a chance at saving Anna."  And the movie subverted both itself and my expectations; the act of love came from Anna herself, sacrificing herself at the last minute by running away from kissy Kristoff in order to save Elsa from Hans' blade and turning to solid ice right then, so his sword shatters on her frozen hand.  I really liked the idea of the act of love coming from within rather than without, because it shows how powerful love can be.  I kind of liked how Anna saved herself, but then I was like, can it really be "she saved herself" if she did it by sacrificing herself?  There are a lot of narratives out there about how women need to be loving and self-sacrificing, I'm not sure if this one needs fanfare.

Another problem I had with the films were the character designs.  Don't get me wrong, everything was very pretty!  But seriously, everyone looks identical.  Elsa, Anna and their mom have completely interchangeable faces (which, it has been pointed out to me, look basically like Rapunzel's face in Tangled, because Hollywood is only interested in having pretty white girls around and can't figure out how to make them both pretty and look like individual people at the same time.) and it's kind of dull to look at.  If you saw them without the hairstyles or colouring to distinguish them, would you be able to tell them apart?

Courtesy of this tumblr...I think.  I really don't understand how tumblr works, tbh

Another thing I regret about the film is how little I feel like I know the characters.  Compare other movies; in Beauty and the Beast we know Belle spends all her time reading and being a weirdo with her inventor dad.  In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is obsessed with the human world and spends all her time collecting human artifacts and being a weirdo about boys with legs.  Tiana in The Princess And The Frog has a hell of a work ethic and spends as much time as she can working and reading cookbooks and being a frog, which is pretty weird.  In The Aristocats, the kittens spend their time studying high-class stuff like painting and music, but are still kids and would rather play.  The kitten Marie likes to be very feminine and thinks of herself as a lady, while her older brother Toulouse wants to be big and tough like an alley cat.  In Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's main character trait is what a weirdo she is, doing strange things like making weird dolls and practicing voodoo, and she loves to hula dance and take photos of random tourists.  My point here is that I don't get anything like that from Elsa and Anna.  Elsa spent years alone in her room -- what did she do in there all that time, aside from "have magic ice powers"?  Anna ran around the castle....talking to paintings, pretty much.  She rode her bike down the stairs once.  I have no idea what their lives are like or what they do.  What are their personalities like, how do they change once they aren't all alone any more?

One thing I really took away from this movie was, I want more.  Like I was saying earlier, I'd love to see what Elsa did when she was locked alone in her room most of her life, afraid of herself and of what she could do.  Did she become the well-read princess of the original story?  I can imagine her room full of shelves upon shelves of books as she tried desperately to lose herself in fact and fiction in order to distract herself from her hellish, lonely life.  Or what about Anna?  Did she read too, or did she run around bothering the servants all the time?  Did she go outside?  She must have, because she had a horse when the movie started.  Why would she have a horse and know how to ride if she wasn't allowed to leave the castle?  Or how about what happened after the film; did Elsa ever tell Anna that the reason she hid her powers was because she hurt her?  Did Anna ever remember?  How did they deal with suddenly having so many people around; after all, they aren't used to social interaction after being kept shut in for most of their lives.  Does Elsa retreat to her ice palace when she's feeling overwhelmed?  Did Kristoff ever mention that he saw them that night when they brought Anna to the trolls for help?  Basically, I just want all of the fanfic ever, pretty much, because I just didn't get enough character interaction in the movie, and the stuff that I did get was good enough to show me that it would be worth seeing more of.  It might be a little early to say this (and I might be jinxing it, considering Disney's past track record with the subject), but I'd like to see a sequel where we get to know everyone more.  And maybe Elsa and Kristoff will get together in the next film....ah, I kid, I know that a Disney princess is paired for life.  Still though.  It'd be neat.

If You Love Musicals....

Give Jekyll and Hyde a miss.  Specifically the David Hasselhoff version, which is the only one I've seen, but I assume they're all varying degrees of terrible.  I literally just finished watching it in the past five minutes, and already I can't remember a single tune from it.  I watched it thinking, "Okay, so this isn't great, but so far I've been able to find something to enjoy in every musical I've seen.  Surely sooner or later I'll hit that one guilty-pleasure song that makes the whole thing worth it, right?"  Nope, never happened.  Once or twice a song would start with one or two notes that would make me pay attention because hey, that's sort of good! Except then it would immediately go terrible again.  The lyrics were really lazy (at one point they rhymed "doorstep" with "your step," how the hell did they get away with that), and the performance was....well.  I did enjoy the first transformation scene, but not because it was good.  I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy watching clips of The Room on Youtube.  Which is not a compliment, to say the least.

I would continue with other vaguely-reviewish-words, but I don't have much else to say.  Like I said, I only just finished watching it, so I haven't had time to dwell on anything or come up with fancy reasons why not to like it.  Just...it's bad.  That's all I got.  The Hoff's acting is ridiculous, everybody else is bland, flat and forgettable, the "romance" sub plots between Jekyll, the orange lady and that stripper chick are completely lacking in...everything, really.  And I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief.  Like, I'm familiar enough with the story, as everyone is, to know that Jekyll's potion thing will work, but while he was petitioning the...medical board, I guess?  To let him begin human trials, it sounded so ridiculous that even I was going, what the hell are you on dude, this is not science. I would have agreed with the medical board that he's off his rocker and shouldn't get to do his experiment, but they were all like "You're going against God's will, you're crazy!" instead of "This is the most ridiculous theory I've ever heard, I thought you were a doctor for goodness sakes, what half-rate hotel of a school would give you a medical degree?"  I didn't care about any of the characters.  Not the stripper lady who got killed at the end, not the bride lady who...didn't?  I don't think she did, I was pretty bored by then so I wasn't watching all that closely.  Overall, it might have been the worst musical I've ever seen.  Even worse than West Side Story.  Even that had one or two songs going for it, this thing was just completely forgettable, all the way through.

Well, that's it, that's pretty much all I can think of right now.  Maybe in a day or two when I've had a chance to let the experience stew in my brain for a bit I'll have something more clever to say, but it's all I've got for now.  Bad musical, did not enjoy, do not recommend.

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.

The Mob Doctor was cancelled? It can't be!

I simply cannot believe that The Mob Doctor has been cancelled.  What the hell, Fox?  It's impossible.  It's inconceivable!  Why on Earth did it take them so long?

To recap: The Mob Doctor is (was) a new medical(ish) drama(ish) that Fox trotted out this year.  When I first heard about it, I really, really, really wanted it to be good.  And on paper it has so much going for it!  It's about a woman who's a resident at a prestigious hospital, but by night moonlights as a Mob Doctor to pay off her debt to the mafia.  How rad is that!?

Unfortunately, it was not good.  At all.  It was kind of terrible, actually, and it was pretty obvious from the first episode that it wouldn't make it to a second season.  And it made me  so sad.  Not only did this show that sounded like it could be awesome turn out to be not-awesome, it wasn't even entertainingly terrible.  It was just really bland and boring.  When I realized that it was not the cool show I wanted it to be, I decided to watch it anyway, hoping that it would be bad enough to be fun ranting about on my blog and to friends.  But it didn't even have the decency to do that!  It was just....boring.  And bland.  And everybody was stupid.  And so even though I wanted to watch it despite not liking it (I had not realized how ridiculous that sounds until just now) I couldn't even do that.  I don't think I managed to get past the fourth episode.

So in short, The Mob Doctor was a vaguely terrible TV show that was impossible to enjoy no matter how hard you tried and I am kind of impressed that Fox let it go on for a full thirteen episodes.   The pilot made it clear that it was barely watchable.

In short: bad TV show is cancelled to the surprise of no one ever and I still need to find a good show to watch. Or just a bunch of good movies.  Whatever.  Maybe I'll finally get around to watching Reservoir Dogs, I've been meaning to check it out ever since I finally saw Pulp Fiction a month ago.

True Grit

Just watched the original John Wayne version of True Grit.  One of these days I should read the book.  The 2010 Cohen brothers film was rad as fuck, I saw it in theatres and I've watched it a few times since then.  I should buy the DVD one of these days, instead of just watching the pirated version.

I guess I could go into some sort of film-review compare-the-versions deal, but honestly the Nostalgia Critic already did that and he's the professional (or was) so go watch that instead.

I just wanted to share an observation I made about the end of the two films.  Spoilers!  In the remake, the one I saw first, it ends with a flash-forward where Mattie is all grown up as a one-armed spinster lady, and when she finds out that Rooster has died she has his corpse dug up from where it was and interred in her family plot.  Very touching and poignant.  In the original film (and possibly the original book?  I really gotta read it) this is not in the future.  It's right after the whole catch-Tom-Chaney adventure, where Rooster brings Mattie home and she's all "This is what I wanted to show you!" and shows him her family's little graveyard.  And is all, "This is my dad's grave, Mom will go next to him, that's where my sister and her family will be buried, this is where my brother and her family will be buried.  I'm gonna be buried right here when I die, and when you die I'd like you to be buried here too!"

Which is just, like, sweet, I guess?  It was olden times so I guess nobody had much else to do but sit around and plan their death, since they didn't have the internet or anything fun to do.  But I can't get over how the version where one of the characters is actually dead is somehow less morbid than the one where they both live.  Like, what is up with that.

Princess Leia Hair

I should learn how to do Princess Leia hair buns.  I'm pretty sure I've got enough hair for it.  Especially if I can get my hands on some of those hair bun donuts.

It'll have to be a pretty big donut, though.  What the hell Chrome, why is donuts correct but not donut?  Either they're both ridiculous or they're both fine, make up your friggin' mind already.  Whatever, I like the doughnut spelling better anyway.

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?

Learning to make a gif, and also pirates

So I watched the four Pirates of the Caribbean movies over the weekend.  I'd seen the first two and the last one -- well, the last one for the moment, I hear a fifth is in the making.  I don't mind.  Some people online think all of them past the first one are awful, but they're not that bad.  None of the follow-ups turn out as well as the first one, but they're all fairly endearing.  Though I developed a sudden love of Davey Jones over the weekend and have always had an undying devotion to mermaids, particularly creepy/evil mermaids, so I may be somewhat biased.

SO GOOD 

Anyway, my sudden love of Davey Jones and his betentacled face (though not so much his bescrotumed back-of-head) started from him doing that one thing in Dead Man's Chest, where he's talking to Jack the first time and goes, "Price? (plupt)" and I replayed that scene like a dozen times because it looked just so hilarious.  I realized that I desperately needed a gif of that scene, just looping for eternity.

I looked all over Tumblr for ages (ok fine it was for like five minutes but on the internet that's a really long time ok) and couldn't find it, so I decided I'd look up a tutorial or something online and find out how to make my own gifs.

I downloaded Freemake Video Converter because I was pretty sure I didn't have a program on my computer to cut videos with.  I played around with it for a while and figured out how to do it easily, since the program is nicely simple and straightforward.  So when I had a few video clips to gif-ify, I went online looking for a tutorial on how to make it go from video to animated gif.

I found one tutorial that was supposed to be on how to make an animated gif with Windows Movie Maker.  I checked my computer and went, "Oh!  I have that! I didn't need to download the Freemake one at all!" and read on.  The first part was all about cutting the video -- it looked a little more complicated than it was on Freemake, so I figured it was still worth downloading.  "Okay," I thought.  "So the first half of this is all about cutting the videos to size, right.  But I've already done that...let's skip to the end and see how to make the gif in Movie Maker, not just cut the video."  Turns out, you can't make gifs in Movie Maker, despite the tutorial being "make gifs in Movie Maker."  Well that was annoying.  The last step was, "oh by the way you can't actually do this in this program, surprise!  But here's a link to a completely different program to download that will do it."  Kind of annoying but hey, whatever.  So I download the program, Movie to Animated Gif.  It was crap.  I tried to use it a couple of times and it kept crashing.  Thanks a lot, useless tutorial.

So I looked at an online program or two, but all of them put their website's logo on the gif.  One of them offered to remove the logo if you paid money.  No thank you, website.  I'll just find some software to download after all.  I ended up getting Free Video to GIF Converter 2.0 and it was pretty good.  Again, a very simple easy-to-use program and the GIFs I made work fine for the most part, but sometimes they seemed to delete the last frame or two which made a few GIFs not as complete-looking as I wanted.  But still, I am delighted!  LOOK AT ALL MY PRETTIES!!! Warning, a ton of GIFs.  Also, um, spoilers for Pirates, I guess?

I'd hide these under a cut, but I have no idea how to do that and am too lazy to look it up, so I guess you'll just have to deal with a dozen GIFs loading and possibly spoiling you for these films that came out a couple of years ago.  Sorry about that.

Edit: Looked up lj-style cuts for blogger, found some halfway promising ones, they turned out to be useless.  I'll just cut a bunch of gifs and post them on my tumblr or something later, I guess.  And make the ones posted here a little smaller.  Maybe that will help a bit.