Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Three Musketeers

This week, Evan and I went to see The Three (D) Musketeers. The D isn't in the actual title, but Paul W.S. Anderson liked filming Resident Evil: Afterlife in 3D so much he decided to make this one with an added dimension as well. Which seems to make him about 6 months behind the times. If you take a look at the amount of 3D movies we've seen in the past three months versus the amount of 3D movies we've seen in the past year, things have tailed off. Right at the beginning of summer, there was Thor, Priest, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, and Harry Potter. Then a wait until Conan the Barbarian. Then this.

Anyhow, we paid the extra money and went. We got to the theatre during the preview for Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Evan got the next preview, and I got The Hunger Games after Evan kept saying things about it, but couldn't remember the name. Then there was a preview for John Carter (looks interesting) and Immortals (looks fun).

The movie starts with three company logos (about normal), and then a flyover of a model of Renaissance Europe, settling on Venice, where we're introduced to our heroes. Athos kills a guard from underwater, then pops out and kills 4 more that rush in. He's met with a gun and a kiss by Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich, married to the director). She's stolen a key from a priest of some sort.

Next, Aramis does his best Ezio impression (if dressed in black) by leaping off a bridge onto a boat (it is Venice, after all), knocking nearly everyone overboard, and taking a second key.

Porthos is introduced in chains. A high muckety-muck comes in to question him, at which point Porthos break free, subdues all the guards, and takes the third key from the muckety-muck.

They all meet together in very nice building, and put the three keys into slots to open the fabled Vault of Da Vinci (Sure, why not). Milady avoids the traps at the entrance and leads the rest of them into a room with a bunch of schematics. They find the one they want, flood the rest of the room to escape the guards that have discovered them, and escape. However, during the celebration, Milady betrays them, leaving them poisoned and paralyzed on the floor while she makes off with the Duke of Buckingham (a very hammy Orlando Bloom. Seriously, saying he's a ham is like saying the ocean is wet, or outer space is big. Sure, it's true, but it doesn't quite convey the proper sense of scale).

A year later, and we meet our final and youngest hero, D'Artagnon. He's finishing up a fencing lesson with his father. Dear old Dad used to be a Musketeer, so he's training his son to be one as well. Pleased with the results, he sends D'Artagnon to Paris to join his old squad.

All is not well, however. He manages to pick a fight with Rochefort, who's quite evil and not at all honourable when it comes to duels. He shoots D'Artagnon instead of fighting sword-to-sword, and the lad is only saved when Miladypasses by and commands Rochefort to spare his life.

In Paris, D'Artagnon sees Rochefort and chases after him, determined to fight on the fields of honour (or something like that). During the chase, he manages to insult or offend each of the three (ex-)Musketeers, and arranges to duel them all in the same place consecutively. Before they can get to that, their surrounded by the Cardinal's guard, led by Rochefort and lieutenant-ed by Cagliostro. Seeing his chance to get at Rochefort, D'Artagnon begins fighting the guards, and the rest of the Musketeers join in.

They win (it's 4 on 40. "An off day") but are summoned to the royal palace for "punishment" where the king is impressed at their moxie and buys them clothes (the king's a mix between a dufus and a metrosexual). Anyway, they also meet the Cardinal, and the plot kicks off from there. The Cardinal wants to take over France, so he engineers a war, and it's those machinations that the Musketeers have to stop. Along with D'Artagnon's love interest (of course), a handmaiden to the Queen whom he clumsily and awkwardly hits on. Repeatedly. It works. I'm pretty sure I'd get laughed out of the room if I tried those lines, but then again, I don't look like Logan Lerman.

This movie is what Tyler might call a Trope-nado. And not the good tropes either. The bad tropes. No one's really big on subtlety, so if there's any chance the audience might miss something the characters are emoting, they'll say it anyway (I'm looking at you, Athos).

The king and Buckingham get into a smarm off that made me laugh and made Evan want to vomit. It's a little silly, but that's not out of place in this movie. The whole thing is a little silly, and you really have to give it the benefit of the doubt or you'll just be watching a bad movie. Like Evan. Me, I was watching a delightfully campy movie, and I thought it was awesome, in a Mortal Kombat type of way (and yes, the director did those, as well as Resident Evil).

I don't really mind the director, except that he really fetishizes his wife, which is kinda uncomfortable. But besides that, I had a lot of fun. I think it's a Blu-ray movie, but I must confess that some of that enjoyment came out of watching the physical reaction it had on Evan. So maybe you should watch it with a critically discerning friend, and watch his brain try to crawl out his ear and escape.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Pilot Season

It's pilot season! Or it was, about a month ago. Sorry, I'm not on the ball. Anyway, this doesn't mean it's the season for flying people. Or the yoga-like exercise. Or the guy who killed Jesus. Just so you know. Also, as a fair warning, most of what I'm about to say comes from Wikipedia, TVTropes, and my own conjecture of how the world should run. So it'll be mostly wrong. As a sidenote, I probably should have put that warning up when I first started this blog, because I make a lot of assumptions based on how I'd do things or common sense, most of which gets thrown out in Hollywood.

Pilot season actually starts way back nearer to the beginning of the year, but then it's only for TV executives. Basically, someone has a meeting with the executive and pitches a show. "I have this great idea about ..." and the executive will say "that's terrible!" In which case the pitcher will either give up or go find a different executive to bug. Sometimes the executive will make some changes and it'll go from there, and sometimes no changes will need to happen. Then what happens is the pitcher gets some money to shoot an episode, called the Pilot. It's an opportunity to see how actor fit into the show, how characters fit into the show, but mainly it's a chance to see if the concept of the show actually works. And typically, they only have 20 minutes (for a half hour show), 40 minutes (for an hour long show), or twice those lengths if the network is generous and lets them double the time.

After the pilot is shot, the executive, pitcher, and what I can only assume are a room full of other people all watch it to see how it went. Generally it'll only be a rough cut. Special effects might not be filled in, or the sound might not be redubbed in studio. The room full of people want to see how the concept works.

If it doesn't, the pitcher might give up entirely, and try to come up with a different show. They might take it around to other networks (although I'm not sure if they can actually take the film around, since it was paid for by the one network). If the show does work, they might reshoot the pilot with a different cast, or with one or two added (or subtracted characters), or they may simply polish up what they already have. For instance, Castle's original pilot didn't have Detective Ryan in it. He was only added when the pilot was reshot, because they show ran short. And frankly, he's a great addition, providing a foil for Esposito.

Anyway, once the pilot is reshot, it's ready to air, and that's what happens around September or so, in what TV people call Pilot Season. It's because the reshot pilots are aired as the first episode of the TV show, and used to draw viewers into the series. So a whole bunch of them air around September and October, when TV networks are trying to get an audience for all the new shows they've agreed to finance.

Since pilots are (usually) the first show in the series (Star Trek didn't use its pilot for the first episode, but did reused the plot of it later), they come in one of two varieties. Either the Welcome to the Neighbourhood, or A Day in the Life. Both of these are my titles, and I'm going to change them as often as I want to.

In Welcome of the Neighbourhood, all the main cast are brought together by something (or someone) new. A good example for this is the show Leverage. All the leads are hired to steal something. They all meet up for the theft, then backstabbing and more thefts occur, and the show concept is explained.

In A Day in the Life, the show plops down in the middle of the action, with nothing or no one new. The concept of the show is generally shown (not explained), and the viewer might have to be a bit smarter to pick up on some subtleties. Good examples of this are The West Wing, Human Target, or Better Off Ted (if you look carefully, you'll notice none of these shows are on the air).

Most pilots take a combination of the two. Some cast members are already in place, but the main, or one of the main characters, is introduced to the rest, kicking off the series. It's good because things can be explained to the new guy(s) while also to the audience. Here's a rundown of a bunch of examples.

In Firefly, Mal, Zoe, Wash, Jayne, Kaylie, and Inara are crewing Serenity and have been for a while. Simon, Book, and River show up and tag along for a while.

In Friends, almost everyone is in place, but Rachel shows up and starts off a romantic plot arc with Ross that lasts the whole series.

In White Collar, the FBI team is in place, but Neal gets out of jail (and into a swanky apartment), letting them solve nifty crimes together.

In Burn Notice, everyone but Michael's in place, but they don't have a relationship with each other. Mike arriving in Miami brings everyone together and off they go.

The same idea happens in Royal Pains. Jill and Divya are in The Hamptons but don't know each other. Hank and Evan show up and the medical practice is on.

In Eureka, almost everyone is in place, but Jack shows up and suddenly the amount of dangerous situations skyrockets.

In Warehouse 13, Artie and Leena are in place, but Myka and Pete are ordered to the eponymous location and things get going.

In Castle, no one moves anywhere (all the previous examples have someone moving, usually to a different city. Sometimes to a different planet) but a crime links up Castle and Beckett, and suddenly Beckett is unable to solve crimes without Castle's input (and she's supposed to be one of the best. Um, right).

Chuck had Chuck and Morgan in place, but Chuck got a computer in his head, and then Sarah and Casey showed up to either beat it out of him or look after him (after the first episode, it wasn't so clear).

This year, I have no idea about the new shows, since I usually don't watch them until they get rave reviews, or show up on USA (it's probably my favourite cable network ever. Too bad we don't get it in Canada). But I'm betting almost all (except for reality shows) will follow on of the two formats listed above, or a mix of both.

There are advantages to either option. In Welcome to the Neighborhood, the concept of the show is easily explained to the new character(s) and through them, the audience. For instance, in the pilot of Eureka, Alison (already in place), explains Global Dynamics (in all it's wacky glory) to Jack (the new guy) so the audience can understand how advanced its science is supposed to be.

A Day in the Life doesn't have to spend the time expositing the concept, and can therefore spend the time doing cool things (See: Human Target). It might be confusing for the audience, but networks are starting to have a bit more faith in the intelligence of their viewers (See: Lost). Better Off Ted broke with that by having its main character explain the concept directly to the camera. But it was short, and mostly funny.

The other advantage of A Day in the Life is flashbacks. Dropping the audience into the middle of the story allows the creators to show the beginning of it later. So we can get stories of how each member joined the crew. Firefly did this halfway through season 1, Human Target had this as the season 1 finale, and The West Wing had this to open season 2. A lot of shows have flashbacks, but you can't show characters together in flashbacks unless they have some sort of history (Friend skirts this by having Rachel as a part of Monica's - and thus Ross and Chandler's - life, then exiting it when she moves to a different social circle). Leverage can show quick flashbacks to each character's lives, but we don't get them together because they didn't know each other until the pilot (Although they did play with it in an episode titled The Roshamon Job).

The other thing I noticed about pilots is they try to have some romantic tension in the first episode, as if audiences will not tune in to the rest of the series unless it gets all Ross and Rachel for at least two characters right off the bat (and yes, Friends totally had this. In the first episode, Ross asked Rachel if it would be alright to ask her out). Firefly didn't really do this, but it developed it quickly in later episodes between Simon and Kaylee. Burn Notice had it (Besides, Mike and Fiona are ex's), Royal Pains had it (one of the reasons Hank stays in The Hamptons is because of Jill), Eureka hinted but didn't go overboard until later, Castle had it (but mainly in one direction. Which was hilarious). Warehouse 13 has bucked tradition and through 3 seasons has done its best to avoid any romance between the leads. To which I say "Kudos!" I'm always once to applaud non-comformity. Human Target waited until season 2 (when they finally introduced a female cast member), The West Wing hinted but waited (SPOILER ALERT - Josh and Donna - END SPOILER ALERT), and Better Off Ted had it in spades. But played it nicely.

So yeah, that's pilot season. New shows, with new people in new locations, and the start of enough new will-they-won't-they relationships to drive us all up the wall. Here's a hint, Hollywood: RELATIONSHIPS DON'T WORK THAT WAY!!! Now go away and give us more Firely.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Worst Survivor Ever

We didn’t see a movie this week. There was talk of going to see Real Steel, but I put my foot down for a few reasons. First, it looks like perfect fodder for MST3K, and I don’t intend to pay (much) money for that. Maybe when it comes out on DVD, we’ll sit down and mock it relentlessly. Second, it’s about boxing robots. Now, normally robots would be my thing. I’ll take Terminator any day, and I’m a giant fan of the Transformers movies (but that might just be because I’m also a giant fan of Michael Bay). But boxing? Boxing doesn't do it for me, and doesn’t really do it for the rest of the world, either. The only reason that boxing is in the public consciousness is because 40 and 50 year old sports writers grew up with boxing, and refuse to believe that it’s had its day. So they keep writing about it, despite the shadow that MMA casts over it. So in the near future, people won’t care about boxing robots. People will care about MMA robots. If they had made the movie about robots that do martial arts, I’d be all over that. But they went back to Rock’em Sock’em robots for nostalgia’s sake, and lost my interest.

So to make up for that, we’ll be having a Harry Potter movie marathon this Saturday, starting at 8 AM, and watching every movie we can get a hold of. Breakfast will be provided, and Evan even found a recipe for Butterbeer. I have to wonder if it involves either butter or beer, so we’ll see about that. Anyway, because there are at least seven movies, it takes about 17 hours to get through them all. And because no one (besides us) wants to sit through all of that, we invite you to pick the ones you want to see, and only come for them. Start times are as follows:

Sorcerer's Stone: 8 AM

Chamber of Secrets: 10:30 AM

Prisoner of Azkaban: 1:10 PM

Goblet of Fire: 3:30 PM

Order of the Phoenix: 6 PM

Half Blood Prince: 8:15 PM

Deathly Hallows I: 10:45 PM

Deathly Hallows II: 1:05 AM (only if we get a good copy)

Because we didn’t see a movie this week, I thought I’d write about survival. It might be the wasteland movies I've seen recently (well, not recently). It might that I've just finished playing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (and Borderlands, which has a similar - if alien - setting). It might be something completely different. Regardless, I've been thinking (albeit occasionally) about a post-apocalyptic future, and my place in it. And let me tell you, it ain’t pretty.

My first thoughts are from the results of a minor car accident I had a few months ago. It knocked some things loose in my car, and so a few days later, some wires and their rubber holder slipped into the alternator belt in bar car. I heard a bang and felt bumps, so I pulled into a conveniently empty side street and bemoaned my fate. Then I popped my hood and took a look at what happened. There were loose wires trailing from the passenger headlight, and the aforementioned rubber thing wedged neatly into a belt of some kind (I only know it's an alternator because my dashboard lit up the Check Battery light when I tried to start my car. And the alternator has something to do with the battery. I think. To be quite honest, I know the names of roughly two things in my engine. Alternator. Radiator. Wait - Sparkplug. There. Three). I pulled it out and tossed it into my front seat, then called my brother and a (Volkswagon knowledgeable) friend for help. My brother came to help me out, and after listening to what my friend had to say, wrenched the belt back onto the wheels upon which it had rested. Me, I stood off to the side and let him work (partnership! It works).

It all made me realize I have next to no mechanical skills. Sure, I can put together an Ikea set (given a screwdriver and an inordinately long period of time), and I've even been known to use a screwdriver and NOT seriously injure myself. Hell, I'm downright semi-capable with a hammer (although filled with temerity. It's as if I'm scared the nails will break in half if I hit them too hard). But anything more complicated than that will wind up in someone else's domain to repair.

Which means that post-apocalypse, when survivors are expected to work things out with repair skills and duct tape, I'm pretty much doomed. I'd have to rely on friends, siblings, and roommates to get by.

Then, of course, there are many other things. When it got rather warm here, I decided I would take a walk (it was 27°C outside, but it was also 27°C inside as well, so I thought I'd get some fresh air before going back to World of Warcraft). It could only be a short walk, though, or I'd get a sun burn. So I didn't stay out that long, and I stuck to the sporadic shade my neighbourhood offers at 2 in the afternoon. It made me realize that unless I holed up in a drugstore or made off with all their nuclear-grade sunblock, I'd have skin cancer and melanomas within a year of the apocalypse, especially when all the trees have died and there's no shade.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I can't forage for food? For the past several months, I've been on a steady diet of Boost+. On a sidenote, Boost+ and meal substitutes like it would actually be a fairly good food source after the end. Just load a bunch up, and no worries about vitamins, minerals, or energy for a few days at least, possibly a few weeks if stretched. But anyway, I'm having a lot of Boost+ and not much else. I'm pretty sure that living off scrounged potato chips and raw/charred meat would be such a large shock to my system I'd be sick for several days. Wheee.

My skills are more math and computer related. But it's not like calculus will be useful in a post-apocalyptic society. Because frankly, it's not very useful in a pre-apocalyptic society. But it helped get me my degree, so I'm thankful. Computers might be better, but what will they run on when all the power plants have been nuked, hmmm? I might be really good at data entry, but I have serious doubts about how widespread its need will be after Armageddon.

So I'm pretty much screwed, but that's not even the worst part. I'd like to think I'm a pretty nice guy. My moments of ego are generally balanced by my self-deprecating jokes (though feel free to disagree). I tend to get along with everyone. So in our group of survivors, it's not like anyone's going to vote for me to be the sacrificial lamb. No one's going to say "Sure, let's get Benjy to carry the bomb into the zombie hordes. He's got no discernable skills." No, everyone'll vote for the jerk who's good with guns and fixing cars, and then our whole group will be screwed.

So for anyone who's still around with me after Ragnarok, I want you to remind me of this post, and I'll be the one to carry the bomb. I'll sacrifice myself for the good of the group, as long as someone points to this points and said "See? You suck as a survivor!" Because it's true, I do suck as a survivor. So I'll carry the bomb, possibly with a song on my lips and joy in my heart. But only if you fix my car.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Moneyball

This week, we went to see Moneyball. In case you didn't know, Moneyball is based on a book called Moneyball, and follows the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season. It mainly deals with how they started using Sabermetrics to evaluate players, instead of relying on scouting (by the way, it's starting to spread into other sports as well. It's just that baseball is the one sport that can be most accurately be reflected by statistics besides wins and losses). "Finally" I thought to myself "A movie for me." I'm a math nerd, and a movie geek, putting Moneyball squarely in my dweeb wheelhouse.

Evan won the preview game (he's been beating me a lot lately) because he got Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Real Steel (terrible) and I only got The Rum Diary (hey look, it's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, redux). Anyway, after only one single, solitary company logo (Columbia Pictures), the movie starts with archival footage of the A's losing the decisive game of the 2001 American League Division Series (ALDS, which sounds more like some affliction I'd get when I'm older, as opposed to baseball playoffs). Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the manager, listening to the game on his portable radio and turning it off during critical moments (he's a bit superstitious). After his team loses, he takes a couple of days to regroup and come to terms with his losses (two of his best players are leaving for free agency. As a warning, this movie - and thus review - will probably have a lot of sports terms. Sorry). He tries to re-sign Johnny Damon, but Damon's agent (Scott Boras. Ha!) leverages their interest to get a better deal from Boston. Oakland can't match the offer because they just don't have the money (Why buy a baseball team if you can't afford it?) so they have to watch him walk.

Beane goes to the Indians to trade some players. He walks into the GM's office and tries to make several trades, the last one being for a substandard player. Even that’s rebuffed, because the GM listened to this really young guy named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill. Peter Brand is a renamed Paul DePodesta). After the meeting, Beane seeks out Brand, who explains to him that baseball scouts have been going about it all wrong. Batting Average, RBI's, and other "traditional" stats don't correlate that well with winning. Other stats, like OBP (On-base percentage), do a better job. It doesn't matter how a player gets on base (Walks, hit by pitches, or hits) as long as they do.

Beane hires Brand, and together they go after players that other teams have deemed expendable based on traditional scouting (too old, weird looking pitching - that's what submariners do, folks). So they assemble "An island of misfit toys" that their scouting department hates, but Beane and Brand like.

The regular season gets off to a rocky start, because the manager won't play the players how Beane expected (Hatteberg is supposed to be on first base, not Peña). Fed up with constant arguing with his manager, Beane trades Peña (and Jeremy Giambi, for good measure) after a 20-26 start to force Hatteberg onto first.

Things pick up from there. The team starts to play better. They swing some deals and manipulate managers at the trade deadline to get who they want. It sparks a winning streak that provides a lot of the tension at the end of the movie, because they have a chance to break the record for the longest winning streak.

I liked this movie, but that might be because I'm a sucker for baseball movies with SPOILER happy endings END SPOILER. Brad Pitt's good, but he's always good. He does Brad Pitt things, but with an underbite and a trace of an accent.

His daughter is cute and worries about her father, and sings a sweet song to make the SPOILER happy ending END SPOILER. The song is totally real, and it's called The Show by Lenka. And yes, I have it stuck in my head. It's still a good song, and the rest of the music sounds remarkably like Explosions in the Sky (who did the music for Friday Night Lights), by which I mean it's pretty good.

Other than that, there's baseball in it, and players learning to hate losing and love winning (really? Players still need to learn that?) and dealing with not having a bunch of money in Oakland. I guess it's a Blue-Ray movie. Not quite enough to make it a theatre movie, mainly because there's no real end to the movie - it just stops. Good beginning and good middle, though. Plus, it has Bobby Kotick (he's the head of Activision Blizzard) playing the owner. And it's hilarious thinking he's that frugal, because I can totally imagine Bobby Kotick being that way in real life. Only a lot meaner. And stealing peoples' souls.