Comments

Oh man. Not to be an Avatar fanboy, but the gap between Tron: Legacy's storytelling and Avatar's is immense. Cameron is no Aaron Sorkin/David Mamet, but he knows how to tell a story, cares about characterization, and establishes alternate reality rules that his scripts stick to. Tron: Legacy had no rules nor internal logic. Consider: everyone's about to die in an elevator crash (hahaha) but Jeff Bridges saves them by typing fast on a wall? They get out of the elevator and Jeff Bridges says, "Ever jumped a freight train?" And that gets you thinking: whoa boy, we're about to get an exciting, high-speed freight train-jumping sequence (one of my favorite kinds of scenes), but then they calmly walk from a platform to a "freight train" that spins on a beam of light? Sure.
I liked this movie (no 1010)! The writing was terrible and made no sense. It acted like it had big ideas (isomorphs) and those big ideas came with big stakes (isomorphs will change the human world?), but no they weren't (big ideas) and no they didn't (change the world). When I left the theater I heard three people say "the graphics were amazing." GRAPHICS. As if this is 1998 and we're discussing how many hundreds of polygons our Sega Saturns can do! Still, I got excited when the motorbikes blew up and when Wesley Snipes shot light bullets out of his cane(?). Two thumbs up.
What do you think the chance is of getting Kevin Smith to shut up? FAT chance, I'm sure.
I forgot all about Parker Lewis, his awful shirts, and my undying (vampires) love for him. Thank you!
This video was so good, but is it really THE best dancing in the rain video? http://cinemalopram.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/singin_in_the_rain.jpg
Not to nitpick you guys, but The Last Airbender isn't exactly a failure financially (though some have called it a crime against art). It has almost recouped its production budget costs domestically, and it hasn't even opened widely in the overseas market. My guess is the film will be profitable in the long run. Sad to say, but Shyamalan will continue to make films, im-probably.
This is why you're the official videogumshoe!
Tea-soaked madeleine high-fives!
I like Sophia Coppola's films (and Phoenix!). Where else, besides her, am I going to get my fashion girl ennui kicks?
Did you guys see the second place entry? No? http://tinyurl.com/22s3vx2 She is all of our girlfriend, and instead of a "Good morning," she wakes us up every day screaming "POSITIVITY!" To quote: "I'm videoing from my car. It was very, very noisy in my house, and I thought we needed [beat; scrunches her nose] a more intimate experience." Yikes, love is blind. The BEST thing about Zach is that he's ostensibly an amalgam of the Oprah package--the overcomer of hardship, the believer in positivity, the unlikely candidate, &tc.--but also a subversive unwrapping of said package. His brand of pomo, almost-uncomfortable-because-he's-poking-fun-at--the-minor-human-tragedies-we-aren't-supposed-to-find-funny humor doesn't really mesh with Oprah (I'm a regular Oprah watcher, no Harpo, and I can't really explain or justify this except to say I find Oprah, in all her contradictions, endlessly appealing). I'm genuinely curious to see what comes of this! If Zach has to face off with all of our girlfriend, in a sleekly edited reality show where I foresee a lot of his brand of humor not making it out of the editing room, what do you think will happen?
Did they let him into the country on an artist's peesa? I'll go home now (because it's FRIDAY!!).
I have some problems with this argument, which seems to kick around the idea of authenticity: 1. What does "actually living" mean? I think it's presumptuous, generationist, classist, hegemonist, agist, whateverist, to claim ownership of authenticity. And untenable. How do you argue you're more authentic than someone else? 2. Do you believe people were more authentic prior to the plastic surgery nightmarescapes of Heidi Montag or the cocaine-fueled odysseys of Lindsay Lohan? 3. The struggle to feel authentic isn't a new phenomenon. As one example of many, you see it in the ideological mess of Othering (one group claiming another as different, less real), used to justify the worst atrocities in recorded history--slavery, the Holocaust, imperialism, the Rwandan genocides, etc. 4. These kinds of arguments, the ones that purport the destruction of authenticity to a newer, rising ideological tsunami, strike me as reactionary and nervous. I understand the impulse to look at something new and not like it, to feel endangered by it (I sometimes picture Heidi Montag's many-surgeried, disembodied head floating just over my shoulder, and every time I turn around she moves out of the way just enough so I can't see her, but I know she's still there, and this is awful), and to want to yell at it to scare it back under the porch. And I agree that the TOTAL implications of the Internet, social media, 24-hour news channels, constant connectedness, etc. are poorly understood at best (and recent studies show that our brains ACTUALLY rewire themselves based on the way we consume information, and the way we consume information has changed dramatically, unbelievably, in the last decade), but I think we could all stand to relax a little. People aren't going to become any more real, any more authentic, because of dire warnings like this. I don't even know what it means to be REAL, or AUTHENTIC, and sometimes I see the cat lick his paw the same way twice and wonder if I'm in the middle of a Matrix reboot. That is the incomprehensible muddle of contemporary life. I think a lot of theory asks important questions, and I'm sure these Situationists DEFINITELY think the work they did/do was/is important, but I'm tired of other people (generally, but not always, white male academics) deciding how real or authentic I am. No pomo.
That's Your JanSport Backpack Name Stitching: D'Kitten Wolfram Lupus.
I agree with Manohla Dargis and admire her POV, so I wonder if you're fairly reporting what she says in her Kick-Ass review, or if you want to misrepresent her because she didn't like Kick-Ass. 1. The "unsettling image" of the kilted school girl is worth critiquing. Don't we all know the image? And isn't it fair to say Kick-Ass, Kill Bill, etc. "quote" this fetishized image for their own means? And that Kick-Ass, even if it is critical of school girl fetishism (and I'm not sure it is, since I haven't read a powerful argument on what Kick-Ass is criticizing, satirizing, or parodying), is culpable in engaging said fetishism? Dargis, like Ebert, argues that Kick-Ass lacks a coherent grasp on its message: is it critiquing or exploiting its schoolgirl murderess? Or is it doing both? And if it's doing both, does that pull the rug out under the critique? 2. Dargis' review of Slumdog Millionaire is extremely reserved put into context. The meat of her criticism is that she enjoyed, while feeling horrible that she enjoyed it, the exoticization of horrible poverty. In her words: [W]hat gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale). Dargis admires the effects of Danny Boyle's "calculation" as she wonders about the film's honesty. I'd call that mixed praise.
I think the Kick-Ass nerds (and video gamers, but that is an argument for videogamesgum) need to relax a little about Roger Ebert. The man is a LEGEND, as we at Videogum know (I will always, always, love the man who, responding to Vincent Gallo wishing cancer on his colon and calling him fat, said, "[A]lthough I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of The Brown Bunny." He's got a ZINGitzer on a shelf in his library.). Ebert criticizes by this dictum: It's not what a movie is about; it's how a movie's about what it's about. The distinction is crucial for Ebert, and we can cite examples ad nauseam where he positively reviews movies that show horrible things happening to children, but we'd be missing the point: Ebert argues that Kick-Ass doesn't know how it's about what it's about. Yes, this is a subjective call, one that the Kick-Ass nerds on Ain't It Cool News (you guys are in very cool company!) disagree vehemently with Ebert about, but can we relax with the Ebert-directed vitriol? Ebert didn't like Kick-Ass! He makes a valid, supportable argument! I have liked movies before and been disappointed when Ebert does not like them (c.f., The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which Ebert dismissed as archetypical, superficial, and juvenile, and which made me cry--cry!--every time I watched Gandalf the Grey slip from the bridge of Khazad-dûm). That is a regularly occurring part of life, don't you think? I'm always disappointed when people don't love the things I love, but that is the hodgepodged complexity (and beauty!) of life. Let's all just hold hands and jump into life, OK?
"Bet'cha on land they understand That they don't ____ their daughters. Proper women, sick of ____'n Ready to stand."
You've given yourself away as non-white, CUFK. White people don't have brunch. They brunch. It's definitely a verb these days.
But I loved "You've Got Mail"! And it's not THAT white, after all: Dave Chappelle plays a comical sidekick friend, at hand whenever Tom Hanks needs to bitch about Meg Ryan being a "pill." Chappelle also works for Hanks, so their friendship has a (racially, socially, etcly) awkward employer-employee dynamic, meaning we can't trust if Chappelle likes Tom Hanks or thinks he's the worst, if he resents his white boss' boo-hooing about falling in love with a pre-plastic surgery nightmare Meg Ryan or enjoys it in a benignly middle-class way specific to ALL Nora Ephron stories. It's an interesting relationship!* Well, maybe you are right. *It isn't an interesting relationship
I loved when Dorota referred to Poland as "old country," because that is how people steeped in the culture, history, and traditions of a place casually dismiss the culture, the history, and traditions of said place. Ugh, this show! The only realistic thing about this nineteen year old SLICE OF LIFE is how terrible and self-centered everyone is. Season 4 needs to flash forward sixty years to all the fictional funerals of these awful, fictional people.
It's my fault! No one else's! I am just bummed I didn't even get the chance to have a social anxiety attack and not show up!
Where'd you monsters party in Chicago? I can make out an "Irish" sign, so that narrows it to 100+ bars? Why didn't I know about the Chicago party?!
Ellen DeGeneres keeps a mystical "seer stone" in the heel of her left Chuck. She uses it to help Portia find lost earrings.
It's fake, no duh. The kinda hot blonde guy at 1:22 who gets up, disgusted by "naked" improv-ers, has his pants off at 2:17. Nice try, Improv Everywhere, but no kinda hot blonde guys get past THESE eyes. I'm nonchalantly angry I paid attention to an Improv Everywhere video, especially a fake Improv Everywhere video. April Whatevers.
Whoops, Jack Bass: always being back in town. I could use an edit button like the Gossip Girl writers could use edit (control + a + delete?) buttons?
Favorite quote of the night: Chuck: "Jack Bass is back in town." Chuck's Dead Mom from Mulholland Drive: "That sounds like him." Haha, yes! Chuck Bass: always being back in town.
I'm no chucks historian over here (Vans, Laces, and Hegemony thesis focus), but I think Stewart wearing a suit with chucks was a 'quotation' of Glenn Beck wearing suits with chucks. Just another important detail in the demagoguery/image control of Glenn Beck.
There aren't any cultural universals! Calling someone a "full retard" in Juggalo subculture is like calling Mr. Miyagi "sensei" in Karate Kid subculture. It IS about respect.
Could've used more shitty stacked chairs scattered in the background.
I loved finding An American Patriot's comment on Ebert's journal: the enigmatic capitalizations, the breathlessness of it. It was like running into a friend in a different city: unexpected and heartwarming.
This is like a weepy scene in a TV-movie where the dying dog tries to play one more game of catch with the little boy to make him happy, but keeps falling over. Don't give up, Werttrew!