In Time

This week, Evan and I watched In Time. The previews this week weren’t much (Immortals, The Grey, Contraband, The Darkest Hour), but the interesting thing was that I can’t remember a single studio logo before the movie started. That may be the first time I’ve never seen that.

The concept of In Time is fairly simple. People have been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. Once they hit that magic age, a clock on their wrist starts counting down from one year. Once it hits zero, they die. I think we should implement it in real life, only instead of counting down peoples lives, it would count down peoples 15 minutes of fame. That was I’d learn how much longer I’d have to put up with the Kardashians (63 years? Son of a bitch!) In the movie, people pay for things using their time, so rich people can add far more to their year and live for millennia, while poor people literally live day-to-day (ouch! I’ve been hit over the head with an allegory).

The movie opens with a Will Silas (Justin Timberlake) voice-over explaining these things to us. Normally I don’t like voice-overs, because they don’t explain much, tend to get in the way, and hurt our willing suspension of disbelief. But this one I liked for a couple reasons. JT doesn’t have the low, bass-y voice of other action stars, but that doesn’t make it sound whiny, just vulnerable. And that raises the stakes and makes us care about him, all before seeing him and within 30 seconds of the movie opening. So a good choice on that.

Anyway, after the voice over, we get a nice morning scene where Will explains to his mom (Olivia Wilde) he worked overtime to buy some champagne, to celebrate her 50 birthday, which is today. She has to work extra to pay off a loan, but when she gets home the next night, they’ll celebrate.

Will goes to work, giving a few minutes to the neighbourhood street orphan, and going the last few minutes with his friend (Johnny Galecki! He’s … fat, and dishevelled, and … dramatic). Anyway, the day ends, but Will doesn’t get paid as much as usual since the quotas went up. He goes to a bar, where there’s a guy with over a century on his wrist (Matt Bomer), buying drinks for everyone.

The bar clears out when the local gang shows up (it’s the slums, but apparently there’s only one gang) called ‘the minutemen.’ They try to pick a fight with the centurian, but he’s smuggled out of the bar by Will, and they flee to an abandoned warehouse. The Centurian introduces himself as Henry Hamilton, and has a frank discussion about the dirty details of society. It seems that for some people to live forever, many must die. So the cost of living increases, and the poorer die off, and the rich get richer (and older).

They stay in the warehouse for the night, and Henry gives a sleeping Will all of his time, leaving only five minutes for himself. Just after dawn, he goes to a bridge to time out. Will runs after him, but arrives seconds too late (ironic, considering the 116 years on his wrist).

Will goes back to his town, and gives his friend a decade of time. Then he plans on celebrating with his mother, but there’s a hitch. His mom has just paid off a loan, but the cost-of-living increases have made it impossible to take the bus, and the walk takes more time that she has.

When she doesn’t come off the bus at the stop, Will gets suspicious and runs to where she was working, while she runs in the other direction. Time does not favour them, and we get a scene of Justin Timberlake grief that can only be described as what TVTropes calls Narm. And I wholeheartedly agree. People in the theatre laughed.

Anyway, Will’s determined to make the rich people pay for all their stolen time, so he sets out to the rich part of town. There, he meets one of the richest people on earth, as well as his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). She knows there’s something wrong with society (even though she’s not the one getting the shaft), but doesn’t know how to do anything about it. Together, Will and Sylvia kick off the plot of how to bring normalcy back to society, so that everyone has the time, and no on can hoard it. They’re time communists!

I liked the concept of this movie. I even liked most of the plot (despite some plotholes, like where Will learned to drive), and most of the actors (but when everyone’s 25, they’re all attractive, so that may have affected me). The biggest problem I had was with the director.

He just seemed to fall victim to too many tropes. He called back a lot of things (notice that orphan girl at the beginning? She’ll play a small part later one). Hey look, it’s the grizzled detective (well, he would be grizzled if he didn’t stop aging at 25) played by Cillian Murphy. As the grizzled detective, he’s allowed to investigate by intuition, give orders without explanation, and he’s always right. He doesn’t want to bring Will in, but it’s his duty. I could find out he’s 3 days from retirement and not be at all surprised.

Yeah, and there’s a missing father, too. Dead for being a good guy and trying to give away time. Oh, hey, look. His son is trying to do the same thing. Will the son succeed where the father failed? It’s a movie, what do you think?

I’d really like to give this movie a Blu-Ray rating for the concept and beautiful people, but I can’t. Too many tropes were used, and the action itself is rather bland (and there’s not a lot of it to begin with). The music is functional, but only during the credits did I hear something I liked. So despite its original concept, the movie uses too many conventions to be anything but a DVD movie for me.

Also, like zombie movies, we're plunked down amid the problem once it’s been going for quite a while. But getting that system implemented would’ve sparked riots. I don’t see how they could have started it. So the director assumes that it already been going for a while, and the movie starts from that. Just like a zombie movie. Can you imagine a film that takes place right at the beginning of the outbreak? One or two zombies, shuffling slowly towards their intended victim. A shotgun blast to the face, movie over. There’s a reason zombie flicks start with the horde in place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Killer Elite

About a week ago, I decided to find out who the official actor of the Mindless Movie Marathon is. To do that, I took the list of movies we’ve seen (in theatres, or together on Blu Ray or VoD. Movies I saw by myself don’t count) and made a list of the top billed actors in them. Usually I went down to major supporting characters, sometimes minor ones. And I found out the actor who’s appeared in the most mindless movies has only appeared in three. I was a bit surprised, because I thought it would be four or five. There are a lot of people at two. Jake Gyllenhall was in Source Code and Prince of Persia. Gemma Arterton was in Prince of Persia and Clash of the Titans. Sam Worthington was in Clash of the Titans and Avatar (although I’m not sure Avatar counts, what the all the CG making it almost a cartoon). Zoe Saldana was in Avatar and Colombiana.

Prior to this week, there were actually two actors who’ve appeared in three mindless movies each. Oscar Isaac has had minor roles in Drive, Robin Hood, and a supporting role in Sucker Punch. But the other one is … go on, guess … alright, it’s John Malkovich. He was the villain in Jonah Hex, had a major supporting role in RED, and a minor role in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

But that all changed this week with Killer Elite. Jason Statham stars in it, as well as The Mechanic and The Expendables, making him the Official Actor of the Mindless Movie Marathon (to the surprise of absolutely no one).

Evan won the preview game this week with Battleship and one other one. We pushed on the Ides of March, and I got Haywire. Haywire’s being pushed as the female Jason Bourne, but it gives me bad vibes. Maybe because it’s been pushed back several months even though it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh and has a host of good actors (Michael Douglas, Ewan Macgregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Fassbender). We’ll have to wait until next year to find out if I’m right.

Anyway, Killer Elite opens (after three studio logos) with an assassination of some official in a car. Statham does the actual kill, but is thrown off by the presence of a child in the car as well. He tells his mentor (Holy Frick! It’s Robert DeNiro!) that he’s out, and then retires to Australia.

A year later (1981, according to the timeline I have in my head), he gets the mail and discovers plane tickets and a picture of his kidnapped mentor. Well, there go his summer plans. Statham jumps on the plane and rendezvous with a middleman who takes him to the kidnapper. The kidnapper (a sheik) wants three SAS members killed, but not before confessing to killing his sons. Statham’s to get the confessions, then kill the men to make it look like an accident.

After a failed escape attempt, he gets right on that, flying to Paris to meet up with his team. This is pretty much two brothers, including a wonderfully mustached Dominic Purcell (seriously, that thing is glorious).

Anyway, the rest of the movie is spent finding these targets, then planning out ways to kill them to make it look like an accident. Their methods are pretty ingenious, actually. One, they hit in the back of the head with a hammer that’s been coated in bathroom tiles, so it looks like the target tripped in the bathroom and fatally hit their head. Some drugs fake hypothermia for another target. Carefully manipulated car accidents happen. Good times all around.

Unfortunately, trying to find the SAS people raises some suspicions, which are reported to Clive Owen’s character, an ex-SAS officer himself. (Is half of England ex-SAS?) He’s part of a little known club that exerts light control on events to help shape their country. He figures out who’s being targeted, but his club gets word that they need to die for certain conspiracies to take root, so he goes rogue because his people’s lives are more important than whatever goals his club has (usually money).

So there are confrontations between him and Statham, between him and his club, between his club and Statham, and between Statham and all of his targets. And his team, just for fun. It’s a good thing Statham has such a hot girlfriend (Yvonne Strahovski) to make it all worth it.

A lot of people complained that this movie didn’t have a lot of action, but I disagree. It might not have the most action, but there weren’t that many long breaks from chases or fights. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and most of that time is spent doing some useful detective work. Cool stuff.

Another thing I liked was the music. Not extraordinary, but exciting when it had to be. And it's always fun when a character from a favourite TV show (Chuck) gets a role in a movie, however small.

The movie is long. It feels like it has a tacked on extra climax, but I can understand why they did that, even if I don’t agree with it. I guess closure is a powerful motivator for some people. Anyway, I liked it. It’s not a theatre movie, but definitely a Blu-Ray. Good stuff all around. Plus, DeNiro has a scene near the end that he just OWNS. It’s one of the rare scenes in a movie where everything comes together perfectly. Actor doing awesome stuff, perfect camera work, great set up, fantastic execution. Just all around Bad Ass-ness.

Drive

Evan and I saw Drive last night, along with a couple of Evan’s labmates. Evan got two trailers (Sherlock Holmes and The Ides of March) and I got one ( I can’t remember which one), but Immortals didn’t count. You hear me Evan? IMMORTALS DIDN’T COUNT!

Anyway, Drive opens with a heist in which Ryan Gosling is the wheelman. He explains the rules on the phone (why do getaway driving movies have rules?) then waits while the robbery’s in progress. Once the thieves are in the car, he sets off. It’s more tense than action-y (especially with the simple soundtrack behind it. More like an electronic pulse than a beat), and more about avoiding detection from the cops than evading them in a high speed chase. So it was more of a low speed drive than anything, ending in the parking garage of the LA Forum (or suspiciously similar building), where a basketball game was letting out. The members of the car blend into the crowd and escape. Nifty.

From there we see Gosling go about his life. He doesn’t say much. He works as a stunt driver in the movies, under a nice guy played by Bryan Cranston (finally allowed some hair). He also works in Cranston’s garage as a mechanic. Apparently, Gosling is just super-awesome at everything cars.

He seems to be drifting through life, until he helps his neighbour (Carey Mulligan – adorably cute) with her car. He’s drawn quietly into her life, and the life of her young son. Mulligan and Gosling spend most of the first hour casting longing gazes or sheepish grins at each other.

The plot starts going when Mulligan’s husband gets released from jail. He gets beat up when he refuses to do a ‘job’ with the members of the gang he owes protection money to from jail. After the gang threatens Mulligan and her son, Gosling gets involved as the driver for the job.

Things go wrong when the husband is killed by the supposed victim of the robbery. Things also start to get brutally violent. We see heads getting shot with shotguns, chests getting stabbed, skulls being beaten into paste, arteries opened, forks in eyes, and jugulars bleeding out.

So you’d think this movie would be violent enough for me. I’m not sure. It’s certainly violent, but the violence is also done very quickly. I mean, after one shotgun round, it’s not necessary to have a fight. It’s pretty much over after the trigger is pulled.

So the violence is blatant, but quickly over. And with a movie called drive, I expected a car chase. Nope. Just the beginning. Certainly, there is a lot of driving. But it should’ve been called Drive in the same way the Pride and Prejudice could have been called “Fancy Houses.” Yes, a large portion of the film took place while driving. But most of the important stuff was done outside of the car.

When I complained about the lack of car chases to Evan, he reminded me it was an indie movie (thus the three company logos at the beginning of the movie) and had probably spent the entire budget on blood packs.

The soundtrack was good. Some of the electronic pulse stuff. Some ephemeral music for happy times and longing looks. I know the perfect band for music like that, but I doubt that the makers have ever heard of the Faunts.

It’s not quite as disappointing as Faster, because having Gosling in a movie kind of points to a certain respectability (and thus, less action), whereas The Rock implies action and lots of it. Still, they both promised car chases and lots of guns, and left us with nothing but fake blood. So I’m going to give it a rating of cheap DVD, if only for the Ryan Gosling fans. He’s a good actor (watch The Believer and be blown away), so kindly stick to acting movies, and let me have my mindless back.