Immortals

In continuing with the theme for starting columns with music appropriate to the subject matter, the above video is The Immortals by Two Steps from Hell. It fits perfectly in with the movie. I don’t know why the studio didn’t licence it, except for the fact that very few people know the song is called The Immortals, making any tying in pretty useless. For the rest of us, it’s just “that epic song by Two Steps from Hell” fitting it neatly into about 70% of what 2SfH makes.

As stated above, this week Evan and I saw Immortals. For the trailers, I got one (the Avengers) while Evan got two (Tin Tin and Underworld: Awakenings). We also saw a trailer for Act of Valor, a movie that’s supposed to be based on Navy SEAL work and weapons and what-not. But I could spot several unrealistic things about the explosions, so I’m not sure how realistic it will actually turn out to be. I almost want to go to it to point out all the physical impossibilities. “That wouldn’t happen. That wouldn’t happen. That would happen, but not like that.” I like knocking realistic movies down a peg, because their claim to fame is realism, which is not why I got to movie. But maybe I shouldn’t be such a kill-joy.

The movie itself is financed and-or produced by Relativity (fairly common) and Virgin (Whaaaa? They’re in movies now?) which was unexpected. After the logos, we get a voice over explaining that immortals beings actually found out they could die when they got into a war. The victors called themselves Gods, and banished the losers to the bowels Mt Tartarus (Holy Place of Fish Stick Sauce) and called them Titans, to boot. In actual Greek Mythology, Mt Tartarus is said to be alive, making its bowels somewhat literal (you know, in a figurative sense). Also, we get a nice little text saying: “All men’s souls are immortal. Good men’s souls are immortal and divine.” No word yet on women’s souls.

Next, we get a cube. It’s apparently hollow, and we slowly pan in and around to get a look inside. There, we see the imprisoned Titans, held in such a way as to make them nearly immobile (chains around necks, mouths around a bar). We see a figure outside the cube, raising a bow, and firing a magical arrow at the top of the cube. An explosion, a giant release of energy, and the ending of a nightmare. The oracle who dreamed the preceding scene wakes up in a panic, but is calmed by her handmaidens (they’re also decoys to protect her identity).

Soon, though, their shrine is invaded by Hyperion’s forces. Their priest is dowsed in alcohol and set ablaze, but not one of the monks will betray the oracle, who’s escaped with her decoys. (Hmm, it's about time for another 2SfH video).

Next, we get to meet Theseus, who’s doing chores and getting life advice from an old guy. The old guy isn’t his father, just his trainer and friend. He’s trained Theseus to be an impressive warrior, and then tells him it’s not enough to protect the ones he loves (pretty much his mother and the old guy, at this point), but he must also protect the ones who cannot protect themselves. Theseus doesn’t really get it.

Anywho, the next morning, a warning bell rings. Hyperion’s army is nearby and ready to invade. The village needs to evacuate, and Theseus gets into a scuffle when his peasant status prevents his mother from leaving with the well protected other people. He ends up humiliating a soldier, who gets kicked out of the company. Valuing his pride and ego more than anything else, the soldier heads off to Hyperion’s army to switch sides.

Hyperion’s army invades, and Theseus’ mother isn’t able to get out. She’s about to be killed when Theseus shows up and tries to save her (he’s really good at fighting!) but he’s subdued and has to witness his mother’s death. He’s then sent to the salt mines to work.

There, he meets up with a few other slaves and the oracles, who’ve apparently been tracked down and captured. At night, they stage a jailbreak, with the three oracle decoys staying behind to cover the escape and to kill any guards who might come after them. They’re brave, but not billed on the movie poster, so you can guess what’s going to happen to them.

Anyway, the plot ensues. Hyperion is after the oracle because she knows where the Epirus bow is. He wants to use it to free the Titans from their cage to get revenge on the Gods for not coming to his aid when his wife and child were dying of sickness. As a secondary goal, he wants to stop every bloodline that isn’t his, either by killing pregnant mothers or by vicious castration of all men (the one scene of this depicted in the movie made everyone instinctively cover their groin). It’s actually a different goal than most villains have. He wants to impregnate a lot of ladies, so that every child on earth will be his. That way, his legacy will live as long as humanity does.

So Theseus and Hyperion must face off, and the Gods and the Titans must face off, and awesome battles must happen. And lo, it was so! The battles are actually very well done. The choreography is amazing, and Henry Cavil is really fast, which makes his fighting even more awesome. And when the Gods fight, everyone else tends to move in slow motion, making those scenes both spectacular and full of special effects (and exploding heads. Lots of those). Really, the only bad thing about the action was that there wasn’t more of it. The climax had a ton, and there were bits and pieces scattered here and there, but not nearly enough to satisfy me.

The music was alright, but it was used wrong. It would build up into this grand phrasing, with a lot of clashing chords, and end with a “Duh Duh … DUUUUHHH!” only instead of that happening as someone important was getting stabbed, it would be some guy checking out his sword, or scratching his pits. Or the external shot of a wall, that didn’t change from before the epic score to after it. The music coordinators didn’t really do a good job on this one.

Also, the dead mother. They’re like the new black. Immortals uses it. In Time uses it. Colombiana uses it (and father). It just seems like a common theme to get people to fight, or get revenge. So a note to people in action flicks. If you’re cast as the mother, watch out.

All in all, I think this is a Blu-Ray movie. While the action was awesome, it was a bit too lacking to be a theatre movie. And there weren’t enough other things to make up for that (TRON: Legacy had music and special effect). Still, it was a good flick, and probably worth your time. Plus, it’s always nice to see Stephen Dorff again. Ha! You didn’t even know he was in this movie, did you?

Tower Heist

The above video is “Hold On, I’m coming.” A few months ago, I had it in my head, and had absolutely no idea how it got there. I knew it was from a heist or con movie of some sort, so I checked the soundtrack to all three Ocean’s movies, but no luck. Finally, I connected it to the pilot of White Collar. Anyway, it’s the best song to put over a montage of heists or cons, so I figured you could listen to it while reading about Tower Heist.

That’s the movie Evan and I went to see this week. We dragged Mel along with us (technically, she volunteered, but I’m not sure this movie was worth her time. My time? Oh yes). I won the preview game this week, thanks to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Evan didn’t know that was the name of the movie, so when I called it ten seconds into the preview, he just thought I was being a dick about a 9-11 movie. Thanks a lot, Evan. He got The Avengers, I got Haywire and a few others I can’t remember. There were a lot more action previews than I would have thought for a movie like Tower Heist.

Anyway, the movie opens with two studio logos (Relativity Media didn’t get a logo, can you believe it?) and then starts in on the ordinary day of Ben Stiller and Alan Alda. Stiller is the day manager of The Tower (I think. He’s the one in charge of all the staff, but he also has a superior that’s not the owner. Maybe his boss is the general manager, and can trade the doorman for a first-round draft pick and two prospects to be named later – he’s a really good doorman). Alan Alda owns the building and starts his day by swimming on the pool on the roof, which is inlaid with a giant $100 bill pattern. Anyway, they play online chess against each other, and have a closer relationship than typical employer-employees, but that might just be because Stiller is very competent at his job. The day goes for about 20 minutes, and it shows him putting out fires, dealing with all kinds of problems, and impressing upon the new guy the importance of not bringing his cell phone to work.

The next day, things start to go wrong. Alda is seen speeding off in a van. Stiller gives chase, thinking it’s a kidnapping and he'll heroically save his boss. Instead, he’s tackled by the FBI (Téa Leoni), who arrest Alda for securities fraud and what-not. Basically, he’s a movie stand-in for Bernie Madoff.

Stiller gathers the staff together afterwards and explains that people are innocent until proven guilty. He also admits that he asked Alda to invest their pensions, and that it may be gone. They’ll have to be patient until it all gets sorted out.

That evening, Lester (a doorman who had given Alda everything to invest and now has nothing) tries to commit suicide. Stiller confronts Alda about why he would take someone’s meager savings so late (it was just to keep up appearances) and comes to realize what sort of person Alda is. He smashes Alda’s prized possession (an old Ferrari once owned by Steve McQueen) and promptly gets fired, along with the two other staff members who came with him.

He’s now determined to make Alda pay, and to recoup the money for all the staff. He tries to hand over evidence to the FBI, but they already have everything he can get his hands on. He ends up getting drunk with Leoni, who admits that Alda must have a safety net in cash somewhere hidden. Stiller vows to steal it.

To that end, he bails Eddie Murphy out of jail, an acquaintance whom he now avoids. Murphy teaches him and his gang how to be thieves, and eventually they bring in another staff member to help them crack the safe Stiller’s convince is hidden in a wall in the penthouse suite. There’s only one problem – Alda’s in house arrest in the penthouse suite, with two FBI agents guarding him at all time.

So the movie goes from there. The heist doesn’t go quite right, and some people flip loyalties, and more problems develop. Stiller’s character can actually think quite quickly on his feet, so maybe he should’ve turned to a life of crime rather than become an apartment concierge.

The movie takes a lot of time to set everything up, and to execute the heist. I guess that’s alright, because they don’t really have a lot of other things to pad the movie with. But it does make the movie seem to drag in places.

There aren’t a lot of incredibly hilarious moments, but I thought it was pretty consistent with chuckles. There are some absurd moments, and there were a few people in the theatre who were clearly having the time of their lives. So maybe it’s who you watch it with that counts.

I’m not quite sure how Eddie Murphy got to be a huge star, if what he did in the movie is classic Eddie Murphy stuff. He’s like Chris Tucker, only with a less annoying voice. Maybe they should pair him up with Jet Li for a wacky buddy comedy (hey, Brett Ratner has experience with this sort of thing).

We compared it to the Ocean’s movies (as a lot of people are wont to do), and it wasn’t as good. Mind you, it’s hard to stand up the collective charisma of the Ocean’s cast. So Tower Heist did the best it could, and was mildly funny throughout. The music wasn’t great, and the romance was tacked on so hard that the script writers probably hurt. All in all, a DVD movie. And now you all can go watch White Collar.

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.