I know I've already written a lengthy rant about this, but I want to make it clear. I don't hate Lady Gaga because she is a bad singer. I hate her because she is an amazing singer. Because she has a Liza Minnelli voice and a Paris Hilton personality. Because she can do this:
... but chooses to do this instead:
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 2, 2011
The Three Musketeers 2011
People who didn't spend their primary school years carrying around Alexander Dumas' novel everywhere they went, can probably let this year's cinematic adaptation pass without comment. I am not such a person, and also I'm not a person who likes to let things pass without comment. And so, here we are.
From this point on, this post contains spoilers for both the book and the movie. The movie, of course, cannot be spoiled, and if you haven't read the book by now you have only yourselves to blame.
The creators of this film obviously found some of the book's elements too vulgar for their tender tastes. For example, all the nasty extramarital affairs, and unsightly female deaths. So they took them all out - the gentle queen Anne, of course, did not have an affair with Buckingham, and the sweet young Constance was not, of course, married. How could she be? She was waiting for the love of her life to ride in from the sticks on his orange horse. And of course she survives all the dangers on the way to have her kiss at the end of the movie. Even the wicked wicked Milady gets to live - and why shouldn't she? Her worst crime in the film was loving her career more than her moody boyfriend Athos. Surely spoiling her outfit with a little salt water is enough to sort her out. Also gone are the captain of the musketeers De Treville - one of my favorites characters, the musketeers themselves - apparently disbanded just before D'Artagnan shows up due to double-dip recession, and most of the plot, especially everything that happens after the diamonds adventure.
Strangely, after cleaning the storyline of these nasty nasty things, the writers found that they needed to add some vulgarities of their own - as big and vulgar as they could think of. So they turned the musketeers - the only three they had left (hey, the title only calls for three after all) into some kind of Mission Impossible secret scuba squad (I'm not kidding, they scuba!), added flame-throwing air ships (they make the annoying trip to and from London so much easier), turned the Duke of Buckingham into a total douchebag (that way the queen couldn't possibly like him), crash-landed into the roof of the Notre Dame, and, of course, had D'Artagnan kill Rochefort in a long and boring rooftop sword fight. At the end of the book, of course, D'Artagnan and Rochefort become friends, but that would've just confused today's tender-hearted viewer. Oh, and Rochefort had an eye missing. Scars are so subtle.
Having said all that, I need to insist that there were several excellent things in this movie, which made it almost worth watching:
All of the production design was breathtakingly beautiful, as was Milla Jovovich (what the hell is that woman made of?!). Most of the casting was spot-on, in ways that it hasn't been in previous adaptations. D'Artagnan was an adorable young goofball (the kid leading the horse), and so was the king - excellent! It was very smart to make them so much alike, in fact in all their scenes together they look like they're about to collapse into each-other's arms.
Usually the Cardinal and Athos (feather hat guy) are the sexiest men in the story, but this time Athos was totally flat, and Christoph Waltz as the Cardinal was good, but unexciting. This made room for two very sexy actors to take the parts of Porthos and Aramis (the big one and the one with the cross). I dare any hot-blooded woman to watch this film and not fantasize about a threesome with those two!
The fact that they made Buckingham a strutting douchebag bugged me, but on the other hand Orlando Bloom as a strutting douchebag was great, and it's about time for him to lay off the elf stuff.
In conclusion ... oh hell, I don't have a conclusion. Long live the king, long live Paris, long live the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Musee d'Orsay!
From this point on, this post contains spoilers for both the book and the movie. The movie, of course, cannot be spoiled, and if you haven't read the book by now you have only yourselves to blame.
The creators of this film obviously found some of the book's elements too vulgar for their tender tastes. For example, all the nasty extramarital affairs, and unsightly female deaths. So they took them all out - the gentle queen Anne, of course, did not have an affair with Buckingham, and the sweet young Constance was not, of course, married. How could she be? She was waiting for the love of her life to ride in from the sticks on his orange horse. And of course she survives all the dangers on the way to have her kiss at the end of the movie. Even the wicked wicked Milady gets to live - and why shouldn't she? Her worst crime in the film was loving her career more than her moody boyfriend Athos. Surely spoiling her outfit with a little salt water is enough to sort her out. Also gone are the captain of the musketeers De Treville - one of my favorites characters, the musketeers themselves - apparently disbanded just before D'Artagnan shows up due to double-dip recession, and most of the plot, especially everything that happens after the diamonds adventure.
Strangely, after cleaning the storyline of these nasty nasty things, the writers found that they needed to add some vulgarities of their own - as big and vulgar as they could think of. So they turned the musketeers - the only three they had left (hey, the title only calls for three after all) into some kind of Mission Impossible secret scuba squad (I'm not kidding, they scuba!), added flame-throwing air ships (they make the annoying trip to and from London so much easier), turned the Duke of Buckingham into a total douchebag (that way the queen couldn't possibly like him), crash-landed into the roof of the Notre Dame, and, of course, had D'Artagnan kill Rochefort in a long and boring rooftop sword fight. At the end of the book, of course, D'Artagnan and Rochefort become friends, but that would've just confused today's tender-hearted viewer. Oh, and Rochefort had an eye missing. Scars are so subtle.
Having said all that, I need to insist that there were several excellent things in this movie, which made it almost worth watching:
All of the production design was breathtakingly beautiful, as was Milla Jovovich (what the hell is that woman made of?!). Most of the casting was spot-on, in ways that it hasn't been in previous adaptations. D'Artagnan was an adorable young goofball (the kid leading the horse), and so was the king - excellent! It was very smart to make them so much alike, in fact in all their scenes together they look like they're about to collapse into each-other's arms.
Usually the Cardinal and Athos (feather hat guy) are the sexiest men in the story, but this time Athos was totally flat, and Christoph Waltz as the Cardinal was good, but unexciting. This made room for two very sexy actors to take the parts of Porthos and Aramis (the big one and the one with the cross). I dare any hot-blooded woman to watch this film and not fantasize about a threesome with those two!
The fact that they made Buckingham a strutting douchebag bugged me, but on the other hand Orlando Bloom as a strutting douchebag was great, and it's about time for him to lay off the elf stuff.
In conclusion ... oh hell, I don't have a conclusion. Long live the king, long live Paris, long live the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Musee d'Orsay!
Sep 13, 2011
Fat lies and the fat lying liars who make us fat.
Al Franken once wrote a book named "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them". It's hard to think of another title for this post, when I think about how millions of people in the world torture themselves with low-fat and low-calorie diets.
I was lucky enough to be exposed to most of this information in my early twenties, when I developed some blood sugar problems, but I didn't have a good enough tool to pass the information on to others, until now.
The first three parts explain how there really is no connection between cholesterol and heart disease. Weird, right? Well, it has been known for decades, and still they keep lying to us. The last two parts explain why eating low-fat food and counting calories will not help you lose weight, but will in fact make you miserable and fuck up your metabolism. Sound a little more familiar? I should hope so.
P.S. The documentary Mr. Naughton keeps mentioning is called "Fat Head". It's his answer to "Super Size Me", and it covers all those issues and many more, but in kind of a "talk to the audience as if they were kids" way that I don't approve of. Still, it's an hour and a half well spent, if you want to check it out.
I was lucky enough to be exposed to most of this information in my early twenties, when I developed some blood sugar problems, but I didn't have a good enough tool to pass the information on to others, until now.
The first three parts explain how there really is no connection between cholesterol and heart disease. Weird, right? Well, it has been known for decades, and still they keep lying to us. The last two parts explain why eating low-fat food and counting calories will not help you lose weight, but will in fact make you miserable and fuck up your metabolism. Sound a little more familiar? I should hope so.
P.S. The documentary Mr. Naughton keeps mentioning is called "Fat Head". It's his answer to "Super Size Me", and it covers all those issues and many more, but in kind of a "talk to the audience as if they were kids" way that I don't approve of. Still, it's an hour and a half well spent, if you want to check it out.
Labels:
carbohydrates,
film,
me vs the world,
teachings
Aug 29, 2011
We live in a world where good men are murdered and mediocre hacks thrive.
Jesus - murdered; Martin Luther King - murdered; Malcolm X - murdered; Gandhi - murdered; John Lennon - murdered; Reagan... wounded.
Thus spoke Bill Hicks (Him again? Oh alright then...) back in the 80-s. Well what about our hellish decade, in which Amy Winehouse is dead and Lady Gaga gets to perform with Brian May and be cheered by millions? How lucky is Bill not to have lived to see it, and how sad the world without him.
Thus spoke Bill Hicks (Him again? Oh alright then...) back in the 80-s. Well what about our hellish decade, in which Amy Winehouse is dead and Lady Gaga gets to perform with Brian May and be cheered by millions? How lucky is Bill not to have lived to see it, and how sad the world without him.
Jun 27, 2011
The most interesting thing I learned this year about sex and people.
I'm not sure how much "Game of Thrones" - the book or the TV series - has to teach us about life. Probably something about how winter is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Whatever.
The one thing I learned, not from the show but from looking up stuff about it on the internet, is that there's an unbelievable amount of people out there who think that if a sexual act is performed from behind, in necessarily means that it is anal sex. I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me about it, but the number of times I've read something like "...and how come they all only do it in the butt?!" is staggering. To me, all these people are repressed virgins and/or perverts.
I'm not sure why the citizens of Westeros choose to do it from the back 90% of the time - perhaps the rocks are cold and the ground dirty, or their seven gods don't approve of eye contact, or maybe that's the more practical way if you need to keep an eye out for dragons. Either way, if it was all anal, there wouldn't be so many bastards walking around, now would there?
The funniest comments are the ones accompanied by some deeply pseudo-intelligent analysis of the literary and/or cinematic qualities of the book/show.
The one thing I learned, not from the show but from looking up stuff about it on the internet, is that there's an unbelievable amount of people out there who think that if a sexual act is performed from behind, in necessarily means that it is anal sex. I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me about it, but the number of times I've read something like "...and how come they all only do it in the butt?!" is staggering. To me, all these people are repressed virgins and/or perverts.
I'm not sure why the citizens of Westeros choose to do it from the back 90% of the time - perhaps the rocks are cold and the ground dirty, or their seven gods don't approve of eye contact, or maybe that's the more practical way if you need to keep an eye out for dragons. Either way, if it was all anal, there wouldn't be so many bastards walking around, now would there?
The funniest comments are the ones accompanied by some deeply pseudo-intelligent analysis of the literary and/or cinematic qualities of the book/show.
Jun 14, 2011
The Anmation Professional's Circle of Life
1. Study animation
2. Work in animation
3. Work in animation some more (applies if lucky)
4. Become unemployed
5. Get a job teaching animation to new generation
6. Celebrate 35-th birthday
7. Pick new career
8. Watch Disney classics with your children
2. Work in animation
3. Work in animation some more (applies if lucky)
4. Become unemployed
5. Get a job teaching animation to new generation
6. Celebrate 35-th birthday
7. Pick new career
8. Watch Disney classics with your children
Jun 9, 2011
Waking Life
Me, a couple of days ago: "It's, you know, like when you're trying to dial a phone in a dream, and you can't see the buttons and can't get the numbers right..."
Me, last night while dreaming: "Man, this is just like when you're trying to dial a phone in a dream and you can't see the buttons and can't get the numbers right..."
Me, last night while dreaming: "Man, this is just like when you're trying to dial a phone in a dream and you can't see the buttons and can't get the numbers right..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
