Who talks like that? [Clarification]

Am I the only person who thinks it's ridiculous when a character in a book or movie or tv show says, "Blah de blah, [name]. Blah de blah." Nobody talks like that in real life. Nobody says something, then says the name of the person they're talking to, then says the thing again. I've never heard that in real life, reader. I've never heard that in real life.

**Clarification**
Ben suggested I post an example to explicate what I mean here. The best example I have is from Futurama, where they've just watched an episode of All My Circuits. (I can't remember the dialogue exactly, but I'll paraphrase as accurately as I can.)

Amy (crying): Will Calculon's evil twin ever come out of his coma?
Hermes: I don't know, Amy. I just don't know.

Hermes's line is an example of what I'm talking about. Another might be, after a trip to the grocery, "I'll bring in the milk, Jane. I'll bring in the milk."

Buy stuff. DO IT!

"Product placement" - a nice little euphemism for "advertising disguised as something else" - has gotten so pervasive, and it's really starting to annoy me. I suppose it's inevitable in a society of the money, by the money, and for the money, but at what point do people say "ENOUGH!"? (I am intrigued by Adbusters, but what impact have they had?) I doubt I can just stop buying everything that annoys me with its marketing. (Although A-1 steak sauce is off the list, and I won't really miss it. I actually don't even like the idea of subjecting you, dear reader, to that ad, but I must share the annoyance!)

I've bitched about this before - ads in menus, 3 minutes of ads ahead of the trailers at a movie, name dropping on TV programs (e.g., T-Mobile (regularly) and Home Depot (recently) on The Closer - otherwise one of the best shows that's ever been on TV), designed into clothes, ads being transmitted into our dreams - oh, wait - that one's not real...yet.

I'm surfing the internets and the TV is tuned to the Science Channel. And there's this show about building stuff - they're talking about roller coasters tonight. The show starts out with the host doing a voice over about how after he graduated from college, he wanted to "learn the stuff you don't find in books" or some such. During this voice over, wherein he uses words that connote rugged masculinity, they show him walking across a desert landscape backed by towering mountains, toward his black Toyota Tundra. Then he takes off, leaving a trail of dust, and the camera zooms in on the Toyota emblem on the grille.

Ben pointed out: Hey, at least Toyota's sponsoring a program about science/engineering, rather than some "reality" tripe. Which is a valid point, yes. But why can't they say "This program is sponsored in part by Toyota blah blah blah"? Why the conceit of an ad, with all its psychological bs? (Is it ironic that Toyota is also listed as a sponsor for The Closer?)

Oh, then, just to piss me off a little bit more, he comes to Minnesota, to look at some bigass roller coaster at Valley Fair... IN A SNOWSTORM. WTF?!? COME ON!

Date night = marketer's dream

I mentioned that we saw Stardust over the weekend (by the way - if you are thinking about seeing it, do!). I forgot to say that we arrived about one minute after showtime, during an ad for Dell computers. Then we sat through three more ads, including one for Verizon and a REALLY annoying one for gum. Why are ticket prices still so high (6$ for a matinee) if I'm having to watch all these ads too? It makes me think of this scene from Futurama. Fry doesn't mention "menus" though. "Dinner and a movie" is apparently the perfect time to try selling people stuff.

Stardust

This weekend, Ben & I went to see Stardust, the movie based on a Neil Gaiman novel. As Ben said, it was the best film we've seen in quite a while. Good story, well-acted, no dull patches. Robert De Niro & Michelle Pfeiffer played great supporting roles.

Today I was looking at the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and came across a really bizarre comment by Jules Brenner at Cinema Signals. He said, "They might have saved something for a sequel but the sorcery of the enterprise is the three-ring fun of the showy inventions and Pfeiffer's merry milking of the villainy cow." WTF!? A sequel? Why are people so obsessed with sequels? Why can't the movie stand on its own?

Win Ben Stein's Brain!

Based on his latest project, it must be floating around out there somewhere. I should check ebay. The movie purports to prove that some conspiracy of Darwinists is out to suppress the science of creationism. By interviewing scientists under false pretenses, the producers were able to collect statements that can be selected, spliced, and used out of context to "prove" their point.

Is that "I" as in "International," or "l" as in "clam"?

A while back I mentioned this blog dedicated to the inappropriate use of the lowercase "L". Today I went to Ask.com and entered the search term "CIAM" - an acronym for Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (or, auf Englisch: the International Congress of Modern Architecture).

Ask.com has done a lot of advertising lately (some creepier than others - does anyone else think those Kato Kaelin impersonators look like the kid from Mask?) touting their algorithm that helps you precisify your search to find exactly what you're looking for. My question is this: What do "Clam Chowder" and "Clam Anatomy" have to do with the cold, dehumanizing steel and glass of Modernist architecture?

A day in the City

Yesterday Ben & I drove up to Minneapolis to see the movie Sunshine. (Naturally, it's not playing in Rochester, because our local Cinemonopoly thinks it's better to have two theaters (12 screens in one, 14 in the other) showing the exact same films.) I enjoyed the movie, on the whole. However, like most of the reviewers, I found the last act disappointing, and definitely not up to the standard of the first part.

==== SPOILER WARNING (highlight to view) ====
Introducing a crazed zombiesque monster to stalk and kill the crew during the last 25 or so minutes completely shifted the feel of the film. It began as more cerebrally and psychologically focused, drawing tension from the characters themselves and how they coped with decisions and obstacles. As act three began, it kept that feeling: five crew members remained - four conscious, one doped up and suicidal. To save oxygen and ensure they make complete the mission, do they kill the 5th guy? The grand question is, Is the fate of humanity worth ending his life now (thereby sacrificing your own "humanity"), knowing that you lack oxygen for the return to Earth, and you'll all die anyway?

Suddenly, the captain of the previous mission (lost 7 years earlier) is on board, insane and intent on stopping the crew from rebooting the sun. He plans to kill them all to achieve his goal. Oh, and I should mention that apparently we can't look directly at him, but we can see that he is covered head-to-toe in burnt, blistery skin. At this point the movie mimicked a simple slasher flick. Instead of focusing on how this crew was going to work through obstacles to accomplish their goal, we suddenly had to wonder who was going to be next to get hacked to death with an electric scalpel.

Personally, I think the role of crazed saboteur would have been more believable had it been given to Trey (the suicidal character). We still gain the added dimension of danger that a willful antagonist creates, but we don't have to suspend disbelief to the degree that we accept unblinkingly that the captain of Icarus 1 hung out for 7 years without disturbing any of the dust that coated every surface of that ship.

What could have been a 9+ stumbled in the end to a 7ish.
==== END SPOILER ====

After the film we took a look through the Uptown Art Fair, under intermittent rain. We even got mini-donuts! Woot!

Then we headed for the Linden Hills Bibelot store to pick up some soap. (After getting lost in the Kenwood neighborhood. Yes, I know that Kenwood isn't between Uptown and Linden Hills. I don't want to talk about it.) They have this nice Orange-Ginger soap that smells like candy - or rather, they did have - we bought their entire stock. (We really like the soap!)

While we were there, Ben asked the clerk if she could recommend any good restaurants nearby, and she directed us to a place called Cafe Twenty-Eight. I strongly recommend this place to anyone looking for a great meal at prices only slightly above those of a dive like Applebee's. Not only is this a nice locally-owned place, but they support local producers and businesses (their ground beef is ground at the butcher shop half a block away). The only downside was the handful of screaming brats, but I can overlook that when they serve their burger on a bun that might be mistaken for a croissant.

==== RANT ALERT ====
As we were leaving, we both thought that Linden Hills would be a nice neighborhood to live in. It's funny when a place like Arbor Lakes (or Arbor Fakes, as some accurately name it) in Maple Grove claims to offer "a distinctive shopping experience" and "a home town atmosphere with uptown attitude." In reality, it offers none of them. It's a strip mall atmosphere, populated almost entirely by national chain retailers, and embedded in big box, auto-friendly parking lots with nearby shopping. Comparing it to the 43rd and Upton commercial district in Linden Hills makes its absurdity painfully obvious.
==== END RANT ====

Harry Potter and the Movie Review

Friday night Ben & I went to see the latest Harry Potter flick. Unlike the vast majority of the audience, I have not read any of the books, and have no desire to do so. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed all of the films. People have complained about the loss of content, and shallow character development. At least one user said that if you hadn't read the book, you wouldn't be able to follow the plot. Completely untrue. I had no trouble with the plot, and while the movie may have focused excessively on HP, isn't that the point of the story? Isn't he the central character throughout the series?

Simpson's movie pre-post

We just saw an ad for Burger King, wherein the premise is the recording of an ad for Homer eating a Whopper(TM). Multiple takes are involved, and Homer botches them all, of course.

Ben looked over at me and said, "It's sad that originally the show was a satire of the American condition."

Break out your shades, cuz the future is blazin'

The other night I saw this show - well, part of it - on the Science Channel called "2057." Actually, it was three shows. There was one about "The Body" (which I didn't see) and one about "The World" (which I also didn't see) and one about "The City" (which I saw in part). I was intrigued by this concept of the future of the city. Given my studies in landscape architecture and my leaning toward urban design, I wonder what the future of the city holds. So I thought, This should be interesting.

Do I need to say at this point that I was disappointed? Apparently the city of the future is defined entirely by technology. I did learn a few things from the 20 minutes or so that I watched.

1) In 50 years, everyone will have a personal holographic pet that follows them around and apparently keeps children safe via its GPS module. Or something. It didn't make a lot of sense at the time, and makes even less now that I see it written down.

2) In 50 years, bipedal robotic assistants will be common. They will exhibit basic human form (a torso, head, two arms, and two legs). Everyone will have one, and old people will still cherish their 35-year-old models of these devices. Really? Given the rate at which technology becomes obsolete in the year 2007, I'm finding it hard to believe that a dusty old manbot from 2020 will still be around 37 years later. Also, which would we restrict them to the limited humanoid form? Why not give them 4 or 6 legs, so they'll be more stable? And throw on 6 or 8 arms, to increase their capacity to carry our groceries.

3) In 50 years, some fogey will build his grandson a souped up holographic cartoon shark buddy, and then run away from home (but leave his archaic robot friend behind). The kid will proceed to hook up grampa's 50-year-old laptop to the 2057 version of the internet (which, by the way, will be EVERYWHERE), and put his new pal into the city-wide internet, where it will swim from one gigantic holo-billboard to another. With it, unbeknownst to the annoying brat, it will carry an ancient computer virus that will cause the entire urban network to crash. (This reveals a couple of things: again, it appears that within the next 10 years or so, technology will stop being obsolete, and backwards-compatibility will extend so far into the past as to make obsolescence ... obsolete. With any luck, they'll be able to read those 5-1/4" floppies I've got in the bottom of my desk drawer.)

4) In the ensuing chaos, traffic jams will reappear for the first time in 40 years, because automated cars and networked roads and GPS satellites will make sure that the traffic is always flowing smoothly (up to that point, at least), and there will never be any technical glitches that cause that system to fail. Thankfully, this seamless flow of traffic has also eliminated traffic accidents and related fatalities, and, as previously noted, there are never any major malfunctions in the system. Looks like Microsoft will be losing the contract on that one. (Note to self: Invest accordingly.)

5) The police force will oversee all manner of things, including the city-wide network. In the ultimate irony, the kid who brings down the city (in a performance reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum's character in Independence Day) turns out to be the son of the Chief Inspector of Integrated City Network, or whatever title this apparent police state will bestow on the person in charge.

There was no talk of the actual city of the future. Will suburbia continue to dominate the urban landscape of the industrialized world? Will multi-nodal cities spring up around present metropolises? Where will people work, relative to where they live? Will the concepts of New Urbanism finally be implemented in an effective way, or will we continue to see contemporary suburbia dressed up in ever-fancier tuxedos? Will "urban sprawl" - however you define it - be curtailed? What about poverty and race? Will segregation of the poor, blacks, and poor blacks continue to be de rigeur? What about environmental and ecological issues? How will cities of the future address the problems associated with massive impervious surfaces and the urban heat island effect? Will green space be recognized as a valuable sociocultural and physical component of the city, and will metropolitan areas be planned accordingly? Will urban planning itself become a more holistic and proactive discipline?

What about the fact that the vast majority of the world's population is (and will continue to be) located at the meeting point of water and land? What effect will rising sea levels have? What about climate change? Signs point to more frequent and severe tropical storms. Will New Orleans be remembered as the first of many coastal cities destroyed by storms?

And we havent' even looked at developing countries. What of the inconceivably massive slums that accompany so many major cities worldwide? How will continued population growth and urbanization in the developing world affect the quality of life in Bombay and its ilk?

Apparently, these are not questions that matter. Apparently, in 50 years, the city will continue to be defined as it matters to middle- and upper-class Caucasian Americans, and how technology will make their lives easier and safer.

I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a show on the Science Channel.

Less than meets the eye

So, I was kind of interested in seeing Transformers: The Movie, and I thought Ben had expressed interest as well. Ben told me that he'd heard that it had little plot (no surprise there) but that it was fun to watch. It also received a relatively high rating from Rotten Tomatoes (57% among critics, and 84% among the rest of us).

(The following may contain spoilers. I mean, assuming a movie with so little plot can be spoiled.)
My expectations were suitably low. So low, that it ought to have been hard to not meet them. Somehow, this film failed to meet those low expectations. At about 2 and a quarter hours long, it was too long by an hour and a half. Portions of the film dragged by. When the kid and the girl go to his house to recover his great grandfather's glasses, upon which is etched the secret location of some cube thing that the Decepticons are after (to destroy the human race, of course), was it really necessary for us to spend 25 minutes while he looks for the backpack in his room, and the Autobots destroy his parents' yard? You know how most movies, when they are released on DVD, include deleted scenes? This one won't, because I don't think there were any. Every appallingly dull, sophomoric moment of cheese was crammed into this turd, and the action, while decent, didn't keep me interested. As for the the high quality CGI, ... seriously, who goes to see a movie based on how non-fake a robot-car looks when it pees on John Turturro?

[Interesting sidebar: I previously posted about the Transformers movie. That reference to the Ponies of the Apocalypse? Check this out, and try guessing who one of the producers is....]

I did learn a couple of things, though:
1. If you want a hot blonde to pass for smart, give her a foreign accent.
2. Every mechanical device on earth is just waiting to be turned into a Transformer so it can beat the crap out of humans.
3. Trite lines like, "Bumblebee is a brave soldier" don't sound at all ridiculous when (a) delivered by a talking semi and (b) the character has a stupid-ass name like "Bumblebee."
4. For maximum impact, a film ought to have a strong philosophical underpinning, and close with a voice-over monologue by Optimus Prime in which he states that "humans, like us, are more than meets the eye."
5. Nobody found a way to fit the phrase "robots in disguise" into the script. Come on people. You've got over two hours of screen time, and nothing is happening. Try harder in the sequel. (And oh yes, there will be a sequel. One of the Decepticons escapes, and will no doubt return in the summer of 2009 with more evil robuts, and Optimus Prime has broadcast a message out into space, telling any remaining Autobots that they are welcome on Earth.)
[**Update: just looked at Michael Bay's entry on IMDB, and Transformers 2 is slated for 2009. Interestingly, he is also directing a remake of The Birds. Yes, the Hitchcock film. If you want a bit of hilarity, check out this thread on the IMDB forums.]
6. A hot slutty chick with a criminal record will dump her jock boyfriend the instant he makes a denigrating comment.
7. How do you tell a good Transformer from a bad one? The good ones are American made vehicles, and the bad ones are military assault vehicles.
8. Comic relief will only get you so far.

Summer Vacation, Part 4

Aaaah, summer. That magical time of year when temperatures rise to WTF and humidity makes the outdoors all but unbearable.

Here I am basking in the cool of Central Air, trying to get focused on school work. The dog occasionally pesters me, and the cats love the laptop, and I need to start writing a paper. Meanwhile, laundry tumbles in the washer and dryer, and I consider the pros and cons of going to the grocery store (pro: get more food; con: have to leave house).

We've [redacted] the most recent episode of [redacted], but haven't watched it yet - it's the middle of a [redacted], and I am trying to hold off watching until we have both parts. Can I make it? Place your bets!

A disrupted sleep pattern adds to the complexity of my life. Wow, it's tough being an unemployed American.

Last weekend, Ben & I went up to the Twin Cities. I did a little homework, and we went to see Daywatch (based (mostly) on the book Nightwatch, and sequel to the film of that name), then we had dinner with friends Melissa & Shane & Jessica & her husband Gabe, then a couple of drinks. Mmmm... drinks.

The new math? That's so 10 years ago.

Just saw an ad for a special about the 100 greatest movies. Its title: "100 Years, 100 Movies." Then I saw the subtitle: "10th Anniversary Edition."

It's showtime!

Ben and I went to see Spiderman 3 this afternoon. Based on the first two of the series, my expectations were fairly high.

==== SPOILER WARNING (highlight to view) ====
We paid the matinee price of $6 a piece, and I still feel ripped off. For a movie that runs nearly 2 and a half hours, it lacked a lot. I was looking at my watch shortly after the first hour elapsed. I'm no film critic, but I can be critical of a film, and I sure am in this case. It was moderately entertaining, but had no clear focus. I haven't read any reviews, but my understanding is that one of the main criticisms from the pros is that there were too many villains. I can't argue there: three separate nemeses in one movie? Also, what kind of movie was it? At a personal level, Peter Parker had to deal with his romance with Mary Jane, his friendship with Henry, his ongoing drama over his uncle's death, and a competitor for his job at the Daily Bugle. In the final analysis, all of these threads were necessary to the ultimate "moral" of the film, about friendship and responsibility for one's actions, but without Peter's voice-over pounding that lesson in near the end, it gets a bit lost in the shuffle.
==== END SPOILER ====

Do I want my $6 back? Yeah, I do. If your community is lucky enough to have a cheap cinema where you can see a film for a buck or two, you could go see it then. Or you could rent it. Or, really, you could just skip it. There wasn't anything particularly compelling about it.

Next stop: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. My expectations: Very Low.

Lamest. Post. Ever.

A post to another blog's post? Are you even trying?

An afternoon at the movies

This afternoon Ben & I went to see Hot Fuzz at the local cinema. We were literally the only two people in the audience for the 4:25 show. It was kind of nice - not having to worry about yelling out "He's right behind you!" or something. That happened to us once before - we were up in the Twin Cities, and went to see Spirited Away, and nobody else was there. Kind of nice, feeling like they're playing a movie just for you.

Hot Fuzz was hilarious. A definite 9.5/10 stars. It loses half a star for running a bit long. At around the 90 minute mark, it was starting to feel like it was time to wrap things up - but the remaining 30 or so minutes were totally worth it. If you haven't seen it yet, either go to it, or plan to rent it when it hits the rental market.

I want a pony!

This week's Tolerability Index at The Onion begs that we not see the upcoming Transformers movie, citing the potential for "$150 million, Michael Bay-directed, action-movie version of My Little Pony." But really, think about it - that could be fun:

In a world ... powered by rainbows and puppy dogs ... one little girl ... is about to find out ... that it's not always good ... to get what you want.

The title could be My Four Little Ponies of the Apocalypse, and its tagline could be something like "Be careful what you wish for."