Category: screen

This thing was big. Just huge. I never got bored, despite it’s length and girth. The opening scene with the air hijacking was just the beginning of some crazy special effects. I think this was easily the best Batman movie ever and maybe the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen. I’m not a big fan of superhero movies though, so don’t put too much stock in that last comment.

The only drawback was that the voice manipulation for Bane and Batman was a little distracting. It was just hokey. I don’t get it, it sounded like Sean Connery talking with James Earl Jones. It seems to have served them right though so who am I to knock it.

There were two sitings of actors formerly from The Wire, if I’m not mistaken. Carcetti was the CIA guy in the opening scene and Bunny Colvin was a random army guy late in the movie. That’s cool.

How cool? Let me explain.

I saw a great article the other day called Screensavers from a publication called Prospect Magazine about a couple who watches TV together. The moral of the story is that they find the experience quite constructive. It was interesting because G and I do TV kind of like the people in the story, just in much smaller quantities. It was also cool because the author mentions this fascination with identifying characters from The Wire in other movies and TV shows. I do that.

Glad to hear I’m not too strange.

Is this the future of sports? If you ask my brother, you’ll get a big yes. He cajoled the whole crew into watching the finale during our family vacation a few weeks ago and it was quite special. Gail and I found it very inspirational. These dudes are doing some serious training for basically no money.

I gotta tell you, I’m getting sick of big time sports. I don’t know what it is specifically – the raping, the cheating, the drugs, the drama, all of the above, I’m not sure. I’m formulating a plan to detach from aspects of major sports beginning as early as September 1st when ND plays Navy in Ireland. I’m considering taking a year off from college athletics. Operative word: considering.

Think about it, that time I waste on Thursday night and Saturday (all day) could be spent getting in shape for American Ninja Warrior, or at least trying to simulate it. Heck, maybe I should take up a non-competitive sport like parkour.

CYNICISM ALERT! Isn’t that where our priorities should be? …taking care of the self before watching so-called college students get their brains scrambled so wealthy donors can brag about their football team.

That’s a dangerous pact though, football does a lot of good. How do you support men’s golf or women’s rowing without football money? I don’t think you do, period, which is sad. But what’s the point of college sports anyhow? Do they drive participation in general? Does participation, in turn, drive a healthier society? I think not. Participation in sports has been growing for decades but we continue to get more obese. The TV ratings for the Olympics this year were bigger than ever, growing just like our collective waist lines. Our sports culture has had the opposite of the intended effect, we aren’t getting stronger, leaner, and faster like our sports heroes, we’re becoming expert TV watchers.

And what about the community aspect of watching football with friends and family members? It’s a shared experience that has the power to bring friends closer and cement tighter bonds between siblings. Are we, am I, ready to forsake this for some juvenile act of civil disobedience? How do I handle it if my friends get together for a college football game watch? Do I miss out on all of the non-sports discussion and relationship building that goes on at these events?

These are hard questions, I don’t have answers.

Oh well, I gotta bat those around, in the mean time, I need to clear the decks for getting ready for the end-of-days. If you’re a ninja, you really don’t have to be too concerned about being a survivor.

I’m purchasing more of this comedy stuff and really starting to enjoy it. Twitter seems to be the main portal for alerting me to new, DRM-free, independently produced comedy, but I wonder if there’s some other method of discovery that I’m missing out on. Twitter is so powerful in the areas of sports and comedy, which remain my primary uses of the app, but I haven’t seen anything new despite following a pack of comedians.

So, to Mr. Universe – Gaffigan is hilarious. Much like Louis C.K., Gaffigan preys on human shame. He’s ashamed because he didn’t like Disney World, ashamed when he looks at Facebook, and especially ashamed when he goes to McDonald’s instead of working out. The McDonald’s stuff is really cool. He says:

It’s all McDonald’s!

By that he means that we all have our fast, simple, dirty pleasures. That person the other day who told you they don’t go to McDonald’s, probably just spent the whole weekend in bed watching five seasons of Lost on Netflix. The dude who turned his nose up at the Big Mac the other day probably just spent all day Sunday horizontal on the couch eating a huge bag of Lay’s potato chips and watching twelve hours of football.

It’s all McDonald’s!

Do you eat Subway, stay in hotels, or make fun of whales? Then you’ll like this.

The whale stuff had me laughing so hard in the Charlotte airport that the people in my bank of chairs were getting visibly annoyed. I’m only a little bit self-conscious about laughing in public. It’s cool to see strangers laughing. I always want to ask them, “What’s so funny?” but I never do. I guess that’d be weird huh?

Gaffigan uses the repeat tactic pretty effectively. I’m not sure what the official comedy term is, but he’ll be in a piece and keep repeating a phrase or sound during natural breaks in the comedic action. It works for me. I’ve already mentioned the “It’s all McDonalds” repeat example, which I loved and find myself using occasionally. He does the same with “What room are you in?” and with a whale sound. I’m smiling just thinking about it.

I’ll buy more of this comedy stuff for $5 if I can find it. Send tips to me via Twitter if you’re so inclined.

This is a creepy show man. It’s just creepy stuff. Yes, I’m talking about a BBC cop show, and I think I’m about ready to lose Gail on this show if it gets much more intense. The nail through the hand in episode two may have put her over the edge.

Luther is cool, but there are plenty other cool characters. That Alice Morgan woman is strange and her relationship with Luther even stranger, but still cool. London has the creepiest serial killers ever and it’s nice to have a smart, creepy nutcase on your side (like Selina Kyle, actually, in relation to the Dark Knight).

So Luther has a new boss – it’s the internal affairs dude from season one. He’s also got a new civilian partner – his ex-wife’s boyfriend from season one. Former adversaries turn into friends/supporters because Luther usually gets things right. There’s also a new detective who’s struggling with Luther’s morality and a young civilian woman in a spot of trouble who Luther is trying to save.

There’s just a lot of plot stuff going on, almost too much.

Additionally, there’s a lot of manipulation going on. I’m talking about people doing dumb, implausible things for the sake of tension and anxiety. It’s only four episodes and two big crimes, each spanning two episodes, so they have to develop this stuff quickly.

It’s warped. Just warped. And sick at times. But it’s also slick, with big, intense, climactic scenes that make you go, “Wow.”

It’s a miniseries. They are supposedly doing a season three that will be another four or so episodes. Who knows. These BBC people don’t seem to conform to TV norms. They seem to take the type of liberties that HBO does with schedules and release dates an such.

Elba really rocks Luther. And the music kicks also. Much like The Wire though, it’s not for the feint of heart.

My bro-in-law cracked out this hoops documentary from HBO Sports during a family vacation one night. It’s a tearjerker; I didn’t expect that man. I outlasted everybody and thankfully I was alone when the HIV portion of the story came on. It made me sad. I remember where I was when Magic made the HIV announcement, that’s how big he was in my life.

Magic and Bird were influential because they reigned from 1979–1992, my formative years, when I was between 12 and 25 (when the male species is at the peak of his sports fandom). I never liked either the Lakers or the Celtics, hated them in fact, but I couldn’t help but notice them. These guys cast a huge shadow over the NBA and over my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers (only to be surpassed by the shadow Jordan cast over the Cavs).

Basketball, the NBA, Bird and Magic, Dr. J and Moses Malone, and the Cavs comprise the root structure of my love for sports. The joy I felt this Saturday morning watching the Men’s Bicycle Road Race in the Olympics may not have been so joyful had Magic and Bird not clashed in the NCAA final in 1979. Had these two men been born decades apart, I may have been reading the newspaper or working instead of watching sports.

This love of sports; it’s their fault. They are to blame.

We have some real sports issues in this country. Our athletes, and coaches, and managers, and owners, and administrators, mostly just lie, cheat, and steal. That I continue to consume this crap in such massive quantities is such a horrible statement on my life that I’m kind of embarrassed. I can’t help myself though. You can understand why I do it when you consider Earvin and Larry. They did things right.

Did Magic and Bird lie? Yeah, probably. Did they cheat and steal? Never. Never.

The fans were the biggest winners from the Bird/Magic years. These guys had a love for the game and respect for competition that is unheard of in this day and age. Don’t get me wrong, I love the NBA now and I think it’s in great hands, but there is nothing like Bird and Magic – no rivalry as big, no interviews as honest, no stories as compelling.

Were they the best ever? No. Jordan was better than both for sure. LeBron could certainly shut both of them down. Who cares. The greatness of Magic and Bird transcended speed, agility, court savvy, and skill. This documentary captured that beautifully.

Bryant Gumbel, Arsenio Hall, Cedric Maxwell, and a pack of newspaper columnists discuss this rivalry and its impact on basketball and on American culture. The story was uplifting at times and gut-wrenching at others. Mostly uplifting. Magic is just an unstoppable positive force of nature. He’s like this huge tornado of optimism and good cheer that squashes anything negative or salty in its path. Bird is the complete opposite; private, quiet, surly.

The most emotional aspects of the show were when Bird was talking about Magic. The interview with Bird shortly after the HIV announcement was one of the most honest and heartfelt interviews I’ve ever heard. And near the end, during the Dream Team segment, when Larry talked about how different he is from Earvin, and how sometimes he’d like to be more like Magic, it was genuine and sincere. If you don’t get a little choked up you aren’t human.

Dammit, Larry Bird had to shorten his career because he hurt his back shoveling gravel while putting in a driveway at his mother’s house. Earvin Johnson had to shorten his career to concentrate on beating the AIDS virus. But that wasn’t the end. These guys are still killing it.

This was almost as compelling as The Fab Five. Damn close.

I wanted to see this thing straight away but didn’t get around to it until the weekend after July 4th. That’s about a month in so it was relegated to a very small theatre in the AMC 21 in Chicago, which resulted in me sitting closer to the screen than I have in years. I think it added to the effect.

This is horror sci-fi. Star Wars is sci-fi. The Shining is horror. Prometheus is both, with a somewhat shallow back story on the origins of life and failings of human beings. Screw the back story. This is an awesome futuristic action flick with tons of monsters, space ships, and evil humans.

The star is Noomi Rapace, from TGWTDT fame (Swedish version). She’s turned in to a must-see actor for me; anything she’s in from now on, I’ll see. Period. She plays scientist Elizabeth Shaw, who’s trying to find the origin of human life.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Rapace thrives in jarring, intense, uncomfortable scenes. The rape scene(s) in TGWTDT are such, but she went above and beyond in this movie for what I’ll call the semi-automated alien C-section. Yeah man, she had had to do some light programming via a touch interface to have an operating machine cut an eight inch incision in her abdomen, pull out a slimy, wriggling alien thing, and staple her back up.

** REALLY SERIOUS PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This was difficult for her for various physical and emotional reasons. First of all, she couldn’t just pull up “C-section” from the menu because the machine was built for a man. Even in the future, I guess there are system constraints that prohibit having the whole surgical catalog in one app. It appears the current trend of declining memory chip pricing stops (or regresses) some time before 2080, making it cost-prohibitive to dump both male and female medical procedures on the same chip.

So there’s that. Then there’s the fact that Shaw was infertile up to this point in her life, so the joy of finally having a baby was quickly squelched by figuring out that it was an alien thing. That takes some emotional toll, which Shaw focuses on saving humanity.

Great stuff. I loved it.

It’s foreshadowed and hinted at, but you don’t really verify that this is an Alien prequel. It kind of slaps you in the face, though, when the man-squid creature rises out of a dead pre-human right before they roll the credits. Assuming it is a prequel, I’m not sure where Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley comes in. It would have made it too easy to give Rapace’s character the name Ripley, but Ridley Scott didn’t go there.

I’m torn. Part of me wants to re-watch the Alien franchise, but that kind of puts things out of order huh? I’m going to sit tight until I find out what they are going to do with the sequel to Prometheus.

Idris Elba rocked The Wire. Who knew he was a British stage and screen actor? Not me. But G and I are stuck on the watch it now content from the BBC with our streaming only Netflix plan so we are slowly discovering this stuff. Elba plays Luther, a London cop with anger management issues and a general disdain for authority.

I’m baffled a little by the pop-culture norms of the UK. I think of the BBC as something akin to PBS: Not-for-profit and devoted to education and the arts. Clearly I’m wrong about that education and arts part because this is a graphic, violent cop show that feels more like something you see on HBO or Showtime in the US, sans naked people.

It’s full of nasty, twisted murderers and intense action scenes. Oh yeah, and they’re not afraid to kill off key characters. I don’t watch any current network TV shows in the US so I’m not that informed on what’s out there, but this doesn’t feel like free TV in America. These BBC people are doing whatever they want and they’re doing it with taxpayer dollars. Aren’t they? Maybe not. When you’re looking at things from a global perspective, BBC America may be for profit. I don’t get it, but I don’t really care.

The first season was six episodes and the second season is four episodes. They’re more like miniseries than they are serialized shows. The last episode of season one ended with quite a cliffhanger so G and I are fired up to get this going again.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Luther, much like Stringer, is an imposing force. Both characters know what the end result should be and are not afraid to buck the system and embrace new methods. Stringer was a drug dealer who went to business school and tried to use Robert’s Rules of Order to run meetings with drug kingpins. Luther is a cop who’s not afraid to team up with sadistic murderers if it’s the quickest method to crack a case. Same but different. Both badasses.

Elba may be the only way I’ll be able to get G to watch The Wire. She seems smitten with the guy’s screen presence.

This is funny stuff. It’s cool, funny stuff. It’s so wry and obtuse and, dare I say, edgy, that you can’t help but feel like you could hang out with the cool people who constantly spew out quotes from cutting edge comedies. Of course you can’t, but you can still watch this cancelled show, a decade after it was cool, on your iPhone, during stolen 22 minutes blocks of your life.

I’m channeling myself, sorry.

As far as comedic notes go, this hits them all for me. It’s not for everybody though. My wife gets bored fast. We don’t share many of the same tastes in comedy. Drama is another story.

When they played Taking Care of Business as the background music for burning down the banana stand or when Henry Winkler started to comb his hair in the bathroom mirror and pulled a Fonzy move, I got very satisfying chuckles. I didn’t get huge, uncontrollable laughs and I didn’t feel a burning urge to rush through this. Heck, it took my like six months to get through all 23 episodes.

But every episode was fun and inventive. It was very comforting to know that I had a stack of 20 minute time-wasters in my pocket at any time. Talk about an escape – a mental break – this was it for me in the first half of this year.

This Downton Abbey thing has wet my appetite for more Brit lit classic drama stuff, so Gail and I did Bleak House together. It’s different from Downton Abbey though, it isn’t some soap opera dramatized for modern tastes. It’s a dark, scathing indictment of the British legal system based on the book written by Charles Dickens. He’s famous.

Let me be clear, if you’re in the mood for this type of Brit lit tragedy, comedy, romance, drama kind of thing, you need to head straight for this BBC version of Bleak House, now. Period. Bypass Jane Austen, bypass Merchant & Ivory, bypass Downton Abbey; nobody involved with those is worthy of carrying Charles Dickens’ undergarments. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better way to blow your two-week free trial of Netflix than taking in the seven hours or so of Bleak House.

Esther Summerson is a fictional character to hang your hat on. And Gillian Anderson knocks it out of the friggin’ park in the role of Lady Dedlock. It’s also one of Carey Mulligan’s first roles and she nails Ada Clare. I want to consume more Charles Dickens stuff soon. I’m thinking Great Expectations next.

Twice this month I’ve been half way through something and said to myself, “Man, do I really have to keep going?” Wow, what a payoff in both cases (this and A Storm of Swords). Mark my words, I will never, ever, stop a work of fiction at the half way point. Ever. I’ll either stop it at 25% or 75%, never 50%. Hold me to that.

I’m not as familiar with Dickens as I should be. I read Oliver Twist in the 90s but can’t recall it all that well. I remember The Artful Dodger a little but that’s about it. I was a different person then and maybe a little brain dead or something. I just don’t think I’ll forget the characters from Bleak House. I’ve mentioned a few but there are so many; Snagsby, Krook, Tulkinghorn, Guppy, Smallweed, Skimpole, Bucket, … amazing crew.

I was a little put off at first by the camera work. It’s dark and scenes open with loud, sharp noises and distant camera angles, often multiple noise/angle scene openings. I got used to it though. Such a great miniseries. It’s complicated and you’re in the dark for a big chunks of it, but clarity comes in time and the ending is heart wrenching and victorious. Despite the Netflix/Apple TV problems we’ve been having (cutting out in the middle of shows, not available), it’s been paying for itself so far.

We officially have a trend in the stand-up comedy industry. Louis CK started it with his highly successful Live at the Beacon Theatre show that he released on his own and Aziz Ansari has followed suit. He released Dangerously Delicious for $5 a few weeks ago and I grabbed it after seeing an article in the NY Times. This trend shows no signs of stopping. Heck, I’ll buy the Jim Gaffigan show soon.

I buy these because I love the delivery model, which circumvents big media companies and eschews digital rights management. Oh sure, I also like stand-up comedy, but not really enough to actually go to a comedy club. In fact, I had never even heard of Aziz Ansari before that NY Times article. Evidently he’s on some TV show kind of like The Office, that’s all I know.

It was funny stuff. Not Louis CK funny, but pretty funny. It’s profane and rude, on par with Louis CK in that respect, so beware. It’s pretty sophomoric, Ansari is young and does a lot of self-deprecating stuff about dating and technology.

I do struggle with his method of incorporating other people into his routine. He uses his Cousin Harris, a friend named Brian, and miscellaneous unnamed people as a vehicle for some of his humor. This doesn’t always work for me. I keep thinking, are those people real? Did that really happen to him? Because it would be really funny if it did, but not so funny if it didn’t. He does mention his Cousin Harris in the credits, so maybe they are real.

Louis CK incorporates others, but not in the same way. It’s more about himself so it seems a little more genuine.

It’s still great stuff. Ansari mocks racism a lot and that makes for some really funny bits. That’s the best way to criticize racism I think, make fun of it with humor. He has this nailed.

Nice job. Definitely worth $5.