Sunday Innanity

Happy New Year!  Now that the holidays are officially over, so is my grace period.  I'm down in Florida, searching for as much part-time employment as I can, at least until I find full-time employment.  The search is crazy, filled with dozens of catch-22s.  For example: I need a car to get a job, but I need a job to get a car.  Etc, etc.  You don't want to hear these thoughts.  Every gorram adult finds their own workarounds, and I am no different.

This week on the blog, you can expect the return of your regularly-scheduled Topical Tuesday, and a proper full review of Green Hornet, which was probably my Favorite Film of 2011 That Nobody Liked.  If I see any movies in theaters this week, you'll hear my thoughts on those, too.

--Serge

The Weekend Meme

Behold: ten movies I didn't get to see in 2011 that I really, really want to see:





















And a bonus eleventh guilty pleasure, absolutely free!



Who saw these? Tell me what you thought of them in the comments, lemme know what's worth seeing. And have a happy new year!

--Serge

(Some of) the Worst Films of 2011

My Year in Film post for 1939 is taking a while to finish, so today we're going to continue with our inventory of the films of 2011 instead.  Yesterday we got through (some of) the good.  Today we go through (some of) the bad.

Insidious -- A horror movie about astral projection (which is passed on genetically, if you can believe that), what makes this film so lame is its watered down scares and its twist ending which makes the efforts of the main characters all for naught, which is to say, the efforts of the audience all for naught.  Introducing a new problem in the last thirty seconds is not a proper twist; it just means you left out an act.  There was stuff in this movie that I liked, but my opinion was hanging by a thread in that final act when whoever wrote the damn thing nullified all that I had just watched and lopped it off.

Source Code -- Again, there were good things about this movie, but the whole thing never gelled, and by the third act, I had very little clue as to what was going on, and the ending just kinda rewrote all the rules of the first act after declaring over and over again that the rules of the first act couldn't be rewritten.  The reason I'm being so vague is because I know there will be people reading this blog who haven't seen the film and still want to, so lemme just say that this film is all logline, no substance.

Bridesmaids -- I liked it for a good long while, laughed my ass off a couple times, but then they went and ended the film without fixing any of the problems that the main characters had when the movie started out.  That's not a film.  That's a series of carefully constructed sight-gags.

Here's a plot-map of Bridesmaids: Act One, main character is broke and demoralized, is asked to be best friend's maid of honor.  Act Two, main character flubs her duties as best friend's maid of honor, best friend doesn't like her anymore, still broke.  Act Three, best friend friend forgives main character (for no reason) so MUSIC MONTAGE!

She's still broke, and she's remoralized for no reason.  Again, that's not a film.  But it was fun seeing Melissa McCarthy poop in a sink.

Priest -- Everything that was cool in this movie was taken from other (better) movies.  Speaking of which!

Super 8 -- We get it JJ Abrams: you like Spielberg.  But even if you've managed to craft a somewhat-diverting nostalgarific homage to some of Spielberg's better sci-fis from the 70s, I'd still just rather watch some of Spielberg's better sci-fis from the 70s than this stuff.  And enough with the thuper thecret campaign promotions.  All it does is lead our expectations down the wrong road.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- Sigh.  Three tries and I'm done being civil.  These films are total crap.  Everything about them screams first draft.  Not even the special effects are all that interesting.  Add in Michael Bay's trademark misogyny and you've got one of the worst blockbusters of all time.

Captain America: The First Avenger -- Again, sigh.  A by-the-numbers superhero tale that would've been easier to like if we didn't all know that this film was just an excuse to cash in on pre-Avengers hype.  And its stubborn denial of history is more than a little insulting.

Cowboys & Aliens -- Lame-brained but very slick action movie that I could respect more if it didn't think it was "Unforgiven meets Alien."  Srsly?

A Dangerous Method -- One of the best trailers of the year yielded one of the most disappointing films.  Too bad.

--Serge

(Some of) The Best Films of 2011

I didn't see many films this year.  I blame the studio release schedule.  They save all their good movies for June, July, and December -- and late December at that.  I have yet to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Young Adult, The Adventures of Tin Tin, and War Horse, and those are just the titles released in the last two weeks.

But anyhoot.  It's not like I didn't see any great films this year, and this is the post that you're going to hear about it.  Expect a more thorough inventory in the coming months.

Green Hornet -- Not to be confused with Green Lantern (2011), which was really meh.  Green Hornet had everything going against it: a long-forgotten property getting reimagined by a stoner-comedy actor and a director famous for his surreal mind-bending romances.  It was delayed for months while scenes were reshot.  All signs point to failure, right?

I thought it was the most clever, optimistic, and unapologetically fun superhero movie I've ever seen.

Rango -- Weird, but then again that's what they were going for.  It's more thought-provoking than it is entertaining, though.  A city-born gecko makes his way to a town in the middle of the desert, where an old tortoise is keeping himself in power by ruthlessly restricting the town's water-supply. 

It's the exact plot of Chinatown (1974), see -- but with talking animals.  That's what the critics call "postmodernism."

The thing is, Chinatown is obviously the better film.  If the juxtaposition alone isn't enough to keep you interested, steer clear.  At most, Rango is the only proper way to introduce your kids to Roman Polanski.

Battle: Los Angeles -- All I'm saying is, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Limitless -- Ditto.

Thor -- My favorite standalone Avengers movie, and perhaps my favorite Marvel movie ever made, and you can keep your Captain America.  Sure, it's a bit rushed, but not since Iron Man (2008) have I seen a protagonist go from hotheaded brigand to hotheaded hero in such a satisfying way -- and Thor didn't have any of the hypocritical warhawking that Iron Man did!

Midnight in Paris -- Woody Allen has made one film a year for over four decades.  When you're that prolific, you take a lot of chances, and your films tend to be all over the quality-meter.  But Allen is a master filmmaker, and so even his bad films are at least thought-provoking.  His good films are entertaining in addition to thought-provoking.  And his masterpieces are all that and thematically rich to boot.

Midnight in Paris is all three.

What's more, this is the kind of film that could've only be made by one of the greats.  If your old roommate made a movie about chasing all the artistic greats, you'd say he was a hack.  But when Woody gorram Allen makes a movie about chasing all the artistic greats, there's something important to ponder.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- This movie would've been perfect, if only the screenwriters hadn't put so much dumb emphasis on the wants and cares of the humans.  Clarify their intentions, sure, but don't deliver some half-assed appeal to their concerns like RotPotA did.  I didn't care one lick for James Franco's character, nor could I keep straight just what his boss wanted from him, either. 

No, where RotPotA shines is when the action is all on Caesar, the intelligent ape who leads a rebellion against homo sapiens in search of freedom.  He's easily the most compelling character in the whole show, and he only has two lines in the entire film (whoops, did I spoil something?).

My hope is that the sequel, which is being written right now, will both expand and refocus the mythos onto the apes and their newfound freedom, and leave the humans to die.

Don't be Afraid of the Dark -- Horror done right.  Not necessarily groundbreaking work, but very, very effective -- and a directorial debut to boot!

The Thing -- Again, not a groundbreaking film, but the fact that any major Hollywood studio delivered a prequel to my favorite horror film of all time which left me satisfied and surprised is a pretty impressive feat.  What's more, the CGI shape-shifting effects actually got my skin crawling in several scenes.

The Debt -- The easy comparison to make is with Munich (2005), simply because of subject-matter, but then again both films present two entirely different forms of moral second-guessing.  Munich asks the broader questions with easy answers ("Should we hunt down and kill terrorists?"), and The Debt asks far more pointed questions with difficult answers ("Is success really more important than perceived success?").

I still like Munich better, though, if only because of its breakneck pace.

Melancholia -- The frontrunner for Serge's Favorite Film of the Year.  You can read the review here.

Which of these would I be happy to see nominated, come Oscar time?  I'd go with Melancholia, Midnight in Paris, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but that's only from what I've seen so far.  Stay tuned.  Coming soon will be a post of all my least favorite films of the year.

--Serge

Top 10 Films of 2010

Yes, you read that right.  No, wait, maybe you didn't.  This is a list of the top ten films of last year, the films of 2010.  The year that gave us both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Death at a Funeral remake (I mention it here because it won't be making it onto the list). 

We've all had a full year to view the films of last year and make up our minds.  I've made a few big changes to last year's list, with the inclusion of three new films, the booting of two, and the re-shuffling of everything else.

10. The A-Team: How the heck did this film not get more press?  Acclaim was so nonexistant I didn't even rent this one -- I caught it on Starz when my parents were channel-surfing.  Perhaps my low expectations are to blame, but I thought this was the best action film I've seen since Smokin' Aces (which was written and directed by the same guy, incidentally), and you can keep your Expendables. 

With that said, if you didn't like Smokin' Aces, you probably won't find much to love in The A-Team (though the fact that you don't like Smokin' Aces probably speaks to a bigger problem, like the fact that you don't like awesome movies).

9. Black Swan: This was my number-two pick last year, and, while my opinion of Arononfsky's ballerina-thriller hasn't necessarily diminished over the past twelve months, I realize with hindsight that it's not the groundbreaking masterwork I once credited it as.  It does nothing wrong, but it does nothing new.  Obsession, paranoia, mirror imagery, dopplegangers, they're all staples of this particular genre.  I appreciate its balls-to-the-wall madcap fearlessness, however, which is why my aforementioned enthusiasm for it remains undiminished.

8. The King's Speech: Yes, it's a film about a stuttering Brit fighting the Nazis with elocution-lessons, but it happens to be a really great film about a stuttering Brit fighting the Nazis with elocution-lessons.  See it for Colin Firth's swearing-session alone.

7. The Social Network: I'm getting my praise for this film out of my system now, because I believe that, despite its being so well-written and well-directed (and well-scored!), I think people are going to forget about it just as soon as Facebook disappears (give it ten years, it will be replaced). 

It was a cool experiment to unleash Aaron Sorkin's writing talents on a subject as silly as frat-house spats, but I think he creates more lasting dramas out of the subjects of politics and law, personally.  I think The Social Network works better as a comedy than as a drama.

6. Ondine: Still one of my favorite sleeper-hits of 2010 (which wasn't actually a "hit" at all).  Ondine is a film about a fisherman (Colin Farrel) who hauls up a beautiful girl in his nets one day, who refuses to reveal her identity (but she calls herself "Ondine").  Farrel's young daughter decides that Ondine might in fact be a selkie, a mythical water-woman, come to find herself a mate.  Farrel doesn't have any reason to believe his daughter's wild musings, until he fails to disprove them. 

The audience delights not only in the wait to see who or what Ondine really is, but also the romance that blossoms between her and her ship-bound savior.  It's also nice to see director Neil Jordan tackling more uplifting material than Interview with the Vampire (1994).

5. Robin Hood: Maybe it wasn't better than Gladiator (2000), but at least it wasn't totally ripping off Spartacus (1960).  Then again, maybe it was better than Gladiator.  The most resilient complaint that I've heard about this film is that it's not very historically accurate, but then again that's not a "fault" of the film so much as an interesting bit of trivia: Did you know that Robin Hood didn't actually draft the Magna Carta?  No, I didn't know that, but still, what a story! 

If you've got the choice, see the director's cut: it's got sixteen extra minutes of footage that really make the film that much better (especially the admirably-organic romance that develops between Robin and Marion, easily the best on-screen romance of the year).

4. Toy Story 3: Pixar's proper meditation on death (what Up (2009) should've been, IMHO).  It didn't make me cry so much as it made me think, not only about the acceptance of death and change, but also about how many times screenwriter Michael Arndt has seen Cool Hand Luke (1967).

My girlfriend's theory is that the gang of toys actually did die in that incinerator, and that what followed was merely a dream which transpired in their final moments -- or a vivid depiction of toy-heaven.  I'm not inclined to immediately disagree.

3. Winter's Bone: Film noir in the Appalachians, with a girl playing Sam Spade.  This film kicks subsequent ass. 

The bank is going to foreclose on an Appalachian family's home if 17-year-old Ree Dolly can't prove that her drug-addicted dead-beat dad is actually dead.  Devoid of sentimentality, Ree heads out not to uncover the truth, but simply to prove it.  A triumphant tale for truth-seekers and young people the world over.

2. Agora: In the fourth century AD, you were more likely to be killed by a follower of Christianity than converted by one, and the frequent battleground was the city of Alexandria, which housed all the knowledge of the ancient world.  Hypatia was a philosopher and scientist who was stoned to death in 415 AD by an angry mob, who considered her heliocentric views of the solar system heretical.

Ok, so that's actually the plot of Agora and not whatever wikipedia would tell you about the subject, and so it contains a fair bit of speculation, but almost nothing that the film presents is categorically untrue (they portray Hypatia as an atheist when in fact she was a pagan, but we know what they mean).

The tale is exciting, infuriating, depressing, hopeful, and of course, extremely cathartic.  Rachel Weisz breaks your heart.  Perhaps because of its sour views of fundamentalism (which it happens to call "Christianity"), it got a negligible release in the United States (it's not even available on blu-ray in this country), but it became the highest grossing film of 2009 in Spain.

1. Inception: It feels weird to place this at the top of my list, because I really believe that it's Christopher Nolan's least-important film, at least from a thematic standpoint.  He's filmed weighty studies on everything from denial to obsession to batpods, and yet all we really get from Inception is a dude who needs to pull a heist and get back to his kids. 

It also gives us a zero-g fist-fight between a gun-toting construct of the subconscious and Joseph Gordon Levitt.  Hence the aforementioned number-one spot on this list.

Picking number one was incredibly difficult.  It was a toss-up between all five top contenders, and I really think Agora is at least marginally better than Inception, but technically, Agora came out in 2009, and was only released on home video in 2010, which is how I saw it. 

I don't mind putting a technically-ineligible title on the list, but putting it at number one makes me uncomfortable, even if it's my gorram list.

For posterity, these are some of the films I saw that I liked but don't quite make the list: Shutter Island, The Runaways, How to Train Your Dragon, Biutiful, True Grit, Rabbit Hole, The Fighter, Monsters, My Soul to Take, and Salt.  If there's a title you believe belongs on the list, please let me know, because I either saw it with the wrong expectations, or didn't get around to seeing it at all.

--Serge

Animorphs #5: The Predator

I can't imagine how hard it is to write a whole book in less than a month -- even a young adult title like Animorphs. 

I imagine KA Applegate had to start writing as soon as she finished the previous entry and then finish whatever she had started at incredible speeds.

What I'm trying to say is that this installment of the Animorphs series is a bit of a disappointment, but it introduces some game-changing plot-twists, and so it cannot be ignored.

The reason it's a bit disappointing is because, at the end of the last book, we got Ax, and this is the first book where Applegate can really do something with him -- explore the implications of getting to know an alien as a friend -- and, for the most part, absolutely none of those implications are explored. 

Sure, Ax is the one who proposes this book's particular mission, but besides one diverting mall sequence wherein we learn of Ax's obsession with Cinnabuns, he's pretty ineffectual and under-developed. 

The reason for this is because this is Marco's story to tell. 

We saw this happen in book #2: it should've been about Tobias' newfound life as a red-tailed hawk, but instead, we had to wait until Tobias got to narrate a book before that arc was fully-explored.

So this is Marco's turn, and what we get is a pretty episodic story which lacks thematic unity.  This might sound like a lot to ask from a young adult novel, but that's what makes Animorphs so great -- it usually delivers the goods.

Also, a big pet peeve of mine: I have no clue what the subtitle "The Predator" is referring to, but then again the Animorphs subtitles are chosen by editors, not Applegate, and most all of them are freaking inscrutable.

With all of that said, I believe Animorphs #5 would make for a better film than any of the other previous entries in the series: it showcases battle morphs, aerial morphs, insect morphs, infiltrations, battles, and even missions accomplished in human form.  Also: so much of the story is emotional, which takes the form of expositional hand-holding in the novel, but could be accomplished with some very powerful acting on screen.

Marco is ready to quit the Animorphs.  It was never his war to fight.  Everybody else had a reason.  Marco's had none.  Until now.

That's what it says on the back of the book.  Here's the spoiler: his mom is Visser One.  It's the exact same reason Jake fights (a dear member of the family is a Controller), but the stakes are much higher. 

I really like that this is the reason that Marco fights, and I really love that he doesn't want any of the other Animorphs to know about it.  I love the moment when Rachel tells Marco that she admires his calm, and Marco is so shocked by that.  I love it when Marco decides he likes Ax after Ax says something particularly hateful about Yeerks. 

I love the visceral horror communicated in the underground ant-attack.

All of these add up to a series of moments, however, and not a unified whole.  The plot is not what unifies this book -- it's Marco's cynicism, his frustration, his anger. 

Is this the stuff of books or films?  I don't know.  Maybe I'm just spoiled on masterpiece cinema. 

By and large, the best bit of the book is the last act -- when all hope is lost, and KA Applegate not only communicates that abject despair to the delight of our hearts, but also comes up with a plausible yet surprising escape to the delight of our brains.

Were I to script three, four, or five Animorph films (and I'd certainly welcome the opportunity), I wouldn't abide by this mission-of-the-week format.  It's a little different for a young-adult series, and it's probably no fair to judge the series by the standards of film, but I feel the story would benefit more from a wider scope.

In hindsight, this book isn't so much a missed opportunity as it is an opportunity to expand on Marco when I was just expecting an expansion on Ax.  Right book, wrong order?  The scene where Marco morphs a lobster is pretty awesome.

--Serge

Post-Christmas Monday Post, Short and Sweet

I prepare these posts a day in advance, and can you imagine me blogging more than five minutes on Christmas day?  Me neither. 

This week, you can expect several posts on all my favorite films of the year (and last year), and I'm resisting the urge to write one of those terribly materialistic "haul" posts.  At the very least, you should know I got all six Star Wars films on blu-ray!

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

Merry Christmas!

The Weekend Meme: Five Christmas Films That Aren't Christmas Films

Makes you think twice about leaving those cookies out overnight.

You know what we mean: the films that happen to take place during Christmas but do very little to foster the Christmas spirit.

5. Die Hard (1988) -- The best action film ever made happens to take place just before Christmas, as John McClane fights terrorists inside an LA skyscraper.  What does the Christmas setting do for the plot?  There's a "ho ho ho" joke in there somewhere.  The important thing to remember is that you never need an excuse to set your film during Christmas.

4. Gremlins (1984) -- It's a monster horror-comedy which uses its Christmas setting as the perfect excuse to tell the world's worst Christmas story.  Beyond that, you got me.  I think one of the gremlins wears a Santa hat in that bar.

3. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) -- We've long wondered whether or not this is a Halloween or a Christmas movie, and though we're definitely leaning toward Halloween, you'd have to be either the biggest humbug in the world or a young earth creationist to snub this heartwarming film around Christmas time.

2. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) -- So I haven't actually seen this movie, but here's the logline: in Norway, the original demigod Santa Claus is released from his icy underground prison, whereupon he goes on a killing spree.  I hear the movie ends with a gun-toting kid leading an army of Santa-killers, and that's an image I want stuck in my head right now.

1. Merry Christmas, Drake and Josh (2008) -- It's hard to explain exactly what's so great about this film.  It's a Nickelodeon original movie that I happened to catch the other day on tv.  Half of it, actually.  There were two kids who could only avoid jail-time if they got a group of wide-eyed kids to tell their parole officer that they had the best Christmas ever.  There are chimps with certificates of sweetness, homicidal wood-chippers, and Kimbo Slice bashing through a wall dressed in a Santa suit.  Context, shmontext.

--Serge

Greatest Week Ever for Trailers Ends with a Bang: "Prometheus" (2012)

I take it all back. Trailer-cutting is back to the master art-form it once was:


 
I just, I can't even, I mean....
 
This is one of those days where the visceral awesomeness eclipses anything anyone could possibly say about it, so I'm just gonna give you a couple more clips to watch and call it a day.
 
For all you fellow fourth-wave feminists:



There is more he-man toughness in the following clip than in the entire Expendables franchise combined:



--Serge

Holidays are Crazy, Just Ask Any Hobbit (Yes, That's My Segue)

So the holidays are crazy and I've got no time to blog today.  Here, have a trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2013) as a consolation, nearly ten years to the day after The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) hit theaters:



--Serge

Full "Dark Knight Rises" Trailer Showcases Explosions, Bane's Unintelligible Dialogue

First, the trailer:



We're all very excited, blah, blah, blah.  Here's something that goes beyond mere speculation: whether or not Bane's voice is going to be remixed in order to sound more... like human English.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

"Sources close to the movie say Warner Bros. is very aware of the sound issue. One source working on the film says he is 'scared to death' about 'the Bane problem.' And with good reason. The last Batman film, 2008’s The Dark Knight, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, and the studio doesn’t want anything to tamper with Rise’s chances for success.

"Sources also say some at Warners would like Nolan to change the sound mix, but the filmmaker, whose autonomy is well-earned (his Inception earned the studio more than $800 million and eight Oscar nominations), has informed executives that he plans only to alter the sound slightly, not to rework it completely.

"'Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down,' says one high-level exec, declining to be named. 'You’ve got to pedal faster to keep up.'"
 
Personally, I've got no problem with having to pay attention in order to understand what a character is saying.  I wouldn't mind missing half of Bane's lines if it meant keeping his voice as scary as it is now ("When Gotham's in ashes, you have my permission to die"). 
 
Seriously, that guy could order coffee and I'd wet myself.
 
I'm not big on fanboy speculation.  The only reason I bring up "the Bane problem" because having an unintelligible character really is a legitimate prduction concern.  Whether or not Bruce gets his back broken is a decision I leave up to Nolan.
 
--Serge

PS: The Dark Knight (2008) had its own fair share of unintelligible lines, and nobody seemed to mind.  In the words of Eddie Izzard, it's only 30% what you say, and 70% how you say it.

Topical Tuesdays: Another Nomenclature Battle in the History of Paleontology

My last post on a nomenclature flame-war in the history of paleontology garnered a lot of hits, so I hope you'll like this one, too. 

Edward Cope was one of the greatest paleontologists of the 19th century.  He became embroiled in a three-decade-long war with fellow paleontologist Othniel Marsh in the late 1800s.  Each man sought to discredit the other, collect more specimens, and publish more papers.  Their feud would come to be known as The Bone Wars, and if you asked either man, he'd say that the other guy started it.

It is from within this Bone War ("Fossil Feud," etc) that we have one of the greatest nomenclature battles in the history of modern science, a surprisingly dramatic tale which showcases not only an epic war of words between two intellectual combatants, but also the birth of modern American science. 

It was 1866, and most Americans outside the academic circles hadn't even heard the word "dinosaur" yet.  Dinosaurs were largely a European interest.  Only two "land saurians" had ever been discovered in America: two plant-eaters, both of which were depicted as slow-moving lizards.

But in 1866, Cope described and named America's first meat-eating dinosaur: Laelaps, after the dog in Greek mythology that never failed to catch what it pursued.  Though largely unknown today, Laelaps was the most popular dinosaur of its day.  You've probably seen this very famous painting by Charles Knight, which depicts Laelaps in dynamic combat.

Fast-forward to 1877.  Cope has since begun his feud with Marsh, and his rival is out to discredit him.  Marsh digs through an untold number of zoological journals and finds that the name "Laelaps" has previously been assigned to a spider genus. 

By the rules of zoological nomenclature, that meant the name "Laelaps" had to go.  It's an easily-corrected mistake, but Marsh gave Cope no time to correct it.  Marsh went ahead and renamed Cope's specimen Dryptosaurus (the name that it is known for today) without Cope's input.

This was, for those unfamiliar with the protocols concerning zoological nomenclature, a dick move.

There's a reason these two were never photographed together
(Cope to the left, Marsh to the right).

But Marsh should've known better than to badger a fellow paleontologist for such a simple mistake.  In that very same year, Marsh dug up the remains of what was then the largest land animal known to science: a sixty-foot-long sauropod ("long-neck") which he named Titanosaurus.

Imagine Cope's delight when he found that the name "titanosaurus" was indeed already taken by a dinosaur from India.  He was quick to point out Marsh's mistake in print.

Marsh quickly renamed the specimen Atlantosaurus in a paper which I like to imagine he wrote while turning a terrible shade of pink.  He saved some face by declaring Atlantosaurus "the largest land animal to have ever walked the earth."

Here's the thing: have you ever heard of Atlantosaurus?  Yeah, me neither.

Cope waited until Marsh's paper was published before he unveiled a new species that was even bigger than Atlantosaurus: Camarasaurus.  What's more, Atlantosaurus is known from only two vertebrae, while Camarasaurus is known from dozens of near-complete skeletons, and many scientists now believe that Atlantosaurus is not a unique species at all. 

You'd think this would clinch the fight for Cope, but there was one more hand to be dealt.  Actually, two.

You see, 1877 was a big year for the Bone Wars, and for Othniel Marsh in particular.  Marsh's "titanosaurus" mix-up was quickly forgotten when he discovered Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Brontosaurus, back to back to back, all in the same year.  Even today, these three dinosaurs are far more popular than anything that Cope ever found, and it would seem that this popularity contest was ultimately won by Marsh.

But not quite.

Both men died before the end of the 19th century, bankrupt, sick, and alone, due in large part to their own costly academic feud.  But Cope would have the last laugh.

I don't know in what year it happened, but somebody figured out in the late 20th century that the specimen of Brontosaurus that Marsh had discovered and popularized was actually an unintentional fabrication.  Marsh had actually dug up some Apatosaurus bones and, lacking a skull, slapped the head of another animal onto them: a Camarasaurus, in fact.

By the rules of zoological nomenclature, "brontosaurus" became a nomen oblitum -- a forgotten name.  That's why you won't walk into any respectable museum and find a dinosaur labelled "brontosaurus." 

I picture Cope smiling in his grave.

The Bone Wars are an infinitely fascinating subject.  If you want to know more, you can either pick up The Bonehunter's Revenge by David Rains Wallace, or just wait for me to write the screenplay.

--Serge

"Toddlers & Tiaras" is Not the Al Qaeda Recruitment Video You Think it Is

So I watched two episodes of Toddlers & Tiaras this weekend, the TLC show which chronicles the exploits of various spray-tanned toddlers as they compete in little-girl pageant shows around the nation, and perhaps you're wondering if it's worth your time, or if it proves the terrorists have won. 

You've seen the tv spots, which play up the supposed depravity of the whole endeavor, but what bothered me most about the show wasn't its depravity but rather its distinct lack thereof. 

In the end, the show's problem is that it just didn't make me feel icky. 

There are two kinds of reality shows: those that sell the (purported) talents of their subjects (Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, etc), and those that sell the depravity of their subjects (Jersey Shore, Hoarders, etc). 

I'm not saying either set makes for good television -- I'm just saying those are the types that sell.

Maybe these little-kid pageants are depraved, idk.  Did you click the hotlink?  It's footage of a three-year-old dressed as the prostitute from Pretty Woman (1990).  Is that depraved?  Maybe.  Probably.  But should we care? 

We're not talking about an outfit, we're talking about a costume.  They sell children's Michael Jackson costumes and nobody bats an eye.   Why should Julia Roberts be any different?  Nobody's suggesting an occupation for the poor kid -- they're just goofing around. 

Look at the audience: they're cracking up.  In context, this doesn't look like depravity.  It just looks silly.  But not silly enough to make me laugh.
You tune in to be incensed, and all you really feel is mild annoyance. 

Sure, most of the kids are spoiled brats, but some of them are really sweet.  Some of the parents are insane control-freaks but others are simply facilitating the genuine interests of their kids.  I was forced to play baseball as a kid for many years, and it's hard to let that slide if you're then going to get angry at allowing a little girl who loves dresses to compete in pageants.

Sure, some of what the show presents is alarming, but none of it is directly correlated to the pageants.  I think the brats are just bratty kids.  I don't think dressing up a toddler as the prostitute from Pretty Woman sends any message other than "I have bad taste in movies." 

Putting a cone bra on a little girl is only about as insane as letting a little boy go out on the town with a toy gun -- which is to say, not very -- at least in context. People whisper their concerns about pedophiles, but honestly, I don't think any pervert is holding back on his urges because a kid isn't decked out in Madonna-ware. 

I think you should watch out for pedophiles no matter what the kids are wearing.
I'm not trying to be flippant. I think the issue at stake is what we choose to grow incensed about as a culture, what we condone and what we don't. There's only so many things we can get up in arms over, and frankly, I think this should be way down on the list.

My hat is off to the poor editors, who try desperately to assemble a narrative from the footage that's dumped onto their desks, but in the end there isn't a lot to suggest or infer.  If you want to get angry at your tv, go watch the next Republican debate. 

You can give Toddlers & Tiaras a try if you're more interested in the effects of all these influences on child development than I am, or you could watch Tom Hanks parody the whole thing:



--Serge

Sunday Innanity

So I'm back in Florida, searching the world over for a decent job before my loan repayments overtake me.  In the meantime, I blog.  This week, you can expect my latest thoughts on dinosaurs, a review of a new release, perhaps, and I'd like to start working on that Red Dead Redemption video review for you guys.

My dream is to one day turn this into a video blog, if only I can managed to assemble videos faster than one every six months.

Also: I can already say that the 1939 installment of the Year in Film will take longer than a month to complete.  I just signed up for Blockbuster Total Access just so that I could finish by the end of February.  Been a crazy six months.  Keep it here.

--Serge

"Lock Out" Promises to Be the Best Movie Ever, Delivers Best Trailer Ever on Good Faith

Lock Out (known as MS One: Maximum Security overseas) tells the story of a man wrongly-convicted of conspiracy who is tasked with rescuing the President's daughter from a maximum security prison in space and holy sh*t that's the best synopsis ever.



Why does this not yet have a domestic trailer?  I don't mean to say that the international trailer is in any way inadequate, but why have I not heard anything about this movie until today????



According to imdb.com, Lock Out releases April 20th, 2012 in the United States, but I might just fly to France on February 22nd to see it there two months early (it's co-written and produced by Luc Besson).

--Serge

5 Movies That Were Better Than the Book

Everybody loves lists.  I'm thinking they're worthy of a new weekly feature on the blog.  So check back every Friday for a new numerical run-down of some sort -- movie or media-related, of course.

5. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Perhaps you're wondering why "The Wrath of Khan" never showed up on your high school required-reading list.  That's because the novel it's based on is actually titled "Moby Dick." 

Both stories feature obsessive, sociopathic captains who are bent on carrying out suicidal revenge-plots against the man/creature they hold responsible for their terrible lots in life.  Ahab goes after a white whale.  Khan targets the Enterprise.  Fun fact: Khan never once meets Kirk face-to-face in the entire film (though they do Skype quite a bit).

Now, I don't mean to say that "Moby Dick" is a bad novel.  It's great.  Especially if you like chapter-long discussions concerning the best way to remove the head of a whale.  But Wrath of Khan is set in space, see.  And everything is better when it's set in space.  Almost.

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

As I've stated previously on this blog, I believe "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," as written by Douglas Adams, is too episodic and unfocused to ever be called a masterpiece.  I sympathize with Adams.  He was actually writing a radio show, not a novel, which is, of course, supposed to be episodic.

But what the 2005 film was able to do was condense all those loosely-connected anecdotes and boil its themes down to one hilarious, heartfelt tale of adventure, love, and sentient petunias, and I think it rocks.

Adams himself penned the first draft before he died suddenly in 2001.  Adams had said that he hoped to go back and write a happier ending to the Hitchhiker's saga one day (the fifth book ends with all the characters and all the Earths in all the parallel universe dying at once), so it looks like this film is as close to that as we'll ever get.

3. Interview with the Vampire (1994)

This movie is awesome, as regular readers know.  It forms a third of what is, in my mind, the holy trinity of vampire movies: Interview with the Vampire, Nosferatu (1922) and Blade (1998).

But where the film is a gothic horror told in all its grimy glory, the book is a whiny, plodding, angsty tome.  The same stuff happens, but with a lot less... happening.  In the film, the existential worries are a result of the action, but in the novel, the action is a result of the existential worries.

Not that I blame Anne Rice for writing an angsty novel about the demise of a vampire-child: she began writing "Interview" soon after the death of her five-year-old daughter, who died of leukemia, a cancer of the blood.

Rice subsequently wrote the first draft of the screenplay in 1993, and I can only imagine the uncredited rewrite by director Neil Jordan did wonders.

2. Pride & Prejudice (2005)

This novel sucks.  It sucks.  It just plain sucks.  It's boring, it's anticlimactic, it reads just like a diary.  I suppose there's a subtle humor at play, maybe a couple of decently-penned twists and some good conflicts of interest, but I get the impression that little is on purpose. 

The movie, on the other hand, is a different story.  It's fantastic.  Condensed, action-oriented, and it captures the actions associated with falling in love, and eschews the feelings, which are almost impossible to film anyway.

Part of the problem is simply the limits of the writing medium.  Here, read this, then go watch this, and tell me artists weren't simply waiting around for film to be invented for ten thousand years.

1. Starship Troopers (1997)

Now, I realize there are a lot of people who consider the book a masterpiece, and the film little more than melodramatic pro-Nazi nonsense, but I happen to believe the opposite.  Sort of.

The book is no doubt a landmark of sci-fi literature, but the thing is, all those satirical depictions of facism that pop up in the film weren't meant to be satirical in the original novel. 

Now, author Robert Heinlein wasn't a Nazi.  Far from it.  He hated Nazis just as much as any American who served in the US Navy from 1929 to 1934.  And he wasn't exactly Jack D Ripper, either, wanting to bomb anyone who waved an enemy flag back to the stone age.  One of his most "controversial" opinions in the 1950s was that America should pursue a nuclear weapons program (as opposed to abandoning it entirely), an opinion which garnered him lots of undue flak.

He wasn't a facist.  He was a jingoist. 

But even if I agree with some of Heinlein's defense policies, most of them are pretty far-right, and even if I agreed with all of them, I don't appreciate sitting down to read a story and being presented with a lecture instead. 

I'm not saying it's a bad book.  If there's such a thing as a science fiction political essay, then "Starship Troopers" is one of the best.  All I'm saying is that it's not an exciting story.

Wikipedia has the book listed as both a "sci-fi novel" and a "political essay."  The film, on the other hand, is a straight-up satirical action.  With bewbs.


And this.


--Serge

Merry Early Christmas

I can't blog tonight because I'm going to a three-hour Christmas pageant down in Ft. Lauderdale.  I leave you with the greatest Christmas movie ever made:



There's also a lot of great content that I posted this week, assuming space-sex is your thing.  And who's thing isn't?

--Serge

New Black List Indicates All My Scripts Must've Gotten Lost in the Mail

"Fuckbuddies" appeared on the Black List a few years ago.
It was subsequently bought and quickly re-titled.

I think the Black List is interesting, because, while it amounts to little more than a list of everyone's favorite films that no one was willing to make, it does spread the word on good material, and once you're on it, your stuff tends to sell real fast.  Perhaps it's sad that popular consensus is the deciding factor in choosing what finally gets produced, but nothing dries tears faster than money.

In other words: I'd rather have my scripts bought than put on the Black List, but the popularity is a nice consolation prize -- especially in this business.
I had a whole post written up about all this, but that really sums up everything I have to say, and I believe you shouldn't use two words to say what you can in one.

With that said, would anyone like a copy of my scripts?

The 2011 Black List Top Ten:

1. The Imitation Game by Graham Moore
Based on the true story of British mathematician Alan Turing. Turing decrypted German Morse-coded radio communications (arguably leading to the Allied victory of WWII) and poisoned himself after being criminally prosecuted for being a homosexual.

2. When the Street Lights Go On by Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe
Set in the early eighties, a town suffers after the brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.

3. Chewie by Evan Susser and Van Robichaux
A satirical behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars through the eyes of the man who played Chewbacca.

4. The Outsider by Andrew Baldwin
Set in post-WWII Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war is accepted into the yakuza.

5. Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses by Matthew Aldrich
A man goes on a crime spree with his eleven-year-old daughter.

6. In the Event of a Moon Disaster by Mike Jones
An alternate version of the APOLLO 11 mission that imagines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash-landed.

7. The Current War by Michael Mitnick
A story based on the real inventors Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

8. Maggie by John Scott 3
A family helps their eldest daughter as she comes to term with her infection, which is slowly turning her into a flesh-eating zombie.

9. The End by Aron Eli Coleite
Four people have six hours to try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event brings about the end of the world.

10. Beyond the Pale by Chad Feehan
After their father is buried, two siblings witness the town undertaker digging up the grave and taking something sending them on an investigation into his necrophilia.

The value of such a list for an aspiring writer is, I believe, in studying the art of the logline.  Which of these scripts would I read having heard just the one-sentence synopsis?  Why, the one that's most ironic, of course! 

Or whichever that presupposes an alternate version of the Apollo 11 mission that imagines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash-landed. 

You know... whichever.

I'd love to practice my logline-writing skills on this here blog, but a logline is not protected in the way that a script is, and so I'm afraid all my loglines will have to remain locked in my notes.  Rest assured, if they ever show up on the Black List, you'll know about it.

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: Everything I Know About Sex in Space



As with last week's post on space-pooping, this post will not yield much in the way of pictures


There is no official NASA policy prohibiting sex in orbit.  Though it's not exactly endorsed, either.  The long story short is that no NASA policy even acknowledges the possibility of sex (in space), but the impression both astronauts and inquiring journalists get is that if you're caught having sex in space, you'll never fly again.

What would prohibit astronauts from getting their freak on in orbit, besides the practical inhibitions, is a boy-scout-like oath they're all required to take, which states that they won't do anything that would portray the space agency in a negative or uncouth light -- a blanket sweep which effectively prohibits baby-making in space.

Why the concern?

Presumably, the whole reason NASA exists is so that mankind can spend more and more time in space, and more and more time travelling to distant parts of the universe.  A one-way trip to Mars would take an estimated nine months.  NASA hopes to build colonies there one day.  If we're going to build a permanent presence beyond our own atmosphere, sex in space had better be addressed sooner rather than later.

The matter finally seemed settled in the mid-90s, when a report came to light which detailed the sexual experimentation of several teams of astronaut spouses, who tried out a variety of "positions and techniques" in zero gravity, and listed several preferences.

As it turns out, the mission that supposedly carried out these high-altitude experiments launched a full year after the supposed "report" came to light (on the internet, no less), which summarily debunks the whole story. 

PS: the whole crew of that expedition was male.

But why shouldn't NASA start studying sex in space? 

Here's a question for future space-colonists: can you get pregnant in zero gravity?  Scientists aren't sure.  Even if sperm can swim in zero gravity (tests have proven inconclusive), no one is sure if they'd be able to navigate the falopian tube. 

If you're on a thirty-year haul to Proxima Centauri (a remote but theoretical possibility), you'll want to know.

But just because no space agency has ever experimented with space-bonking doesn't mean that no one ever has.

The author of Packing for Mars, Mary Roach, heard of a Russian-produced porn purportedly shot in zero gravity. 

How'd they purportedly manage that? 

By purportedly loading the cast and crew onto a 747 and bribing the pilot so that he would fly them on a series of parabolic arcs, which would produce weightlessness for twenty to thirty seconds every two to three minutes. 

It's the same technique that NASA uses to test all of its equipment before sending it into orbit (at a cost of $95,000 per flight, which goes to explain NASA's astronomical operating budget).  It's long been known as the "Vomit Comet," though NASA prefers "Weightless Wonder."

So anyhoot: Roach tried to track down what there was to know about that purported porn.  She couldn't find any of the actors, but the producer happily sent over the tapes (apparently, it was a trilogy of porns).  It didn't take long for Roach to learn that, rather than shooting the entire film in zero gravity, only one scene was supposed filmed weightless.

A little bit of fast-forwarding and she found the scene: two actors porking in zero gravity.

But it wasn't really zero gravity.  It didn't take an expert to see the cheap tricks employed to give the impression of weightlessness (think extremely low tech, like putting light-fixtures on the floor). 

What's more, Roach mentions that, in all of her research, she spent a lot of time observing liquids in zero gravity, and the certain liquids on display in the porn were not behaving as if they were truly weightless.  Her subsequent emails to the porn producer went unreturned.

So that's it?  Has no one ever gotten jiggy wit it in space?

The impression that I got from Roach's account is that, while certainly no one has ever gone on record as having ever played mattress rodeo amidst the final frontier, it'd be hard to believe that it's never happened.

What happens in high-Earth orbit stays in high-Earth orbit.

--Serge

PS: I don't know if my older brother is a regular reader, but if he is: happy birthday, Luke!

Science and the Silver Screen: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

I tried starting a series on Hollywood and historical accuracy about eighteen months ago and only reviewed one film.  The reason is because I don't know enough about history and I don't care enough about biopics to write a continuing series on either. 

Science, however, is another matter.  I love science, and I love science fiction.  This should be good.

So welcome to the first semi-regular installment of Science and the Silver Screen, where we discuss the levels of scientific accuracy in any given film.  There won't be any final "grade" issued, because it wouldn't be fair to make a judgment call on the accuracy of any film purporting to be fiction, but we'll at least reveal what from the film you can use in your science projects.

And first up, we have the film that was voted the greatest sci-fi film of all time by the American Film Institute: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

At first glance, the film would seem merely accurate, and not necessarily inspired.  But then you realize that the film came out in 1968, a full year before the first man set foot on the moon, and suddenly it looks a lot more impressive.  Nobody knew precisely what the lunar surface environment would be like, and nobody knew what the Earth would look like standing on its surface, but on June 20th, three dudes travelled there and the world saw that Kubrick and co. nailed it.

In fact, it was Kubrick's hyper-realistic depiction of the lunar surface that inspired the conspiracy theory that Kubrick himself faked the moon landing on behalf of the government.

Kubrick is infamous for his attention to detail.  2001 is no exception.  Apparently, when everybody sat down to make a movie about space, nobody told Kubrick that it was all gonna be fake. 

I'm being flippant.  Of course Kubrick knew he wasn't really going to be travelling into space to make the movie. 

But that didn't stop him from insisting that all the props in the film be built to work in space.

Now, granted, I hear that, and my bullsh*t-detector starts ticking.  An obsessive auteur is one thing, but studios don't have infinite budgets.  Kubrick couldn't have gotten gorram spaceships prepared just to make a gorram movie.  But here's what he did prepare:

Those are the full directions for a zero-gravity toilet.  You can read the whole set of instructions here (though I'll save you the suspense and tell you right now that the word "poop" doesn't show up even once).

Granted, the instructions are obviously a complete fabrication, but, if you'll remember from last week's totally-unrelated post on pooping in space, NASA hadn't even invented a zero-gravity toilet by 1968, and the toilet that they did finally design prominently features a hose attachment.

One more thing: 2001 gets most of the press, but I'm just as much a fan of its lesser-known sequel, 2010: the Year we Make Contact (1984).  In it, those mischevious black monoliths from 2001 travel to Jupiter and (spoiler alert) condense it into a star. 

This is a stroke of science fiction genius, because, long story short, Jupiter is a star -- or at least it would've been, if only its mass were larger.  In fact, Jupiter possesses almost the exact same atmospheric makeup as the sun (89% hydrogen and 10% helium, compared to 73% hydrogen and 24% helium for the Sun).  It's just not dense-enough to generate nuclear fusion.

So this post is getting long and we haven't even discussed artificial intelligence or artificial gravity, but these films are worth revisiting, and I'm certain we'll be back soon.

--Serge

Innanity Sunday

Tomorrow, I will be flying from San Diego back to Ft. Lauderdale.  Long story short: I couldn't find enough work in LA to pay for a place of my own, so I'll be staying in Florida until new opportunities arise.  Today was the deadline for finding permanent work in LA -- my six month student loan grace-period is finally up.

It looks like the immediate future will be filled with screenwriting, as much part-time work as I can manage, and a healthy dose of videogames (I haven't booted up my PS3 in three months -- and not by choice).

This week on the blog, you can expect a post on sex in space to make up for that one post on pooping in space we had last week, and I might start a new series or two in order to make up for the abysmal lack of original content last week.  T'was a rough week, both physically and mentally, and I thank you for sticking with this 'ere blog, despite the brief hiccup in content.

--Serge

New "Battleship" Trailer Utilizes Artillery as Percussion; What More Do You Need to Know?

I'll admit that this looks cool (if a bit exhausting), but haven't we seen this movie thirty times before?  You've got the robot-aliens demolishing skyscrapers (Transformers), force-fields blowing up fighter jets (Independence Day), aliens utilizing robotic suits (District 9), and a rookie hero stepping up to command a ship after its commander is killed (Star Trek).

Also, no thanks to 9/11, we all know what a crumbling building looks like, and, as far as I can tell, no studio gets it right.  Never enough dust.  Are we not supposed to feel anything when they fall?  Then why bother watching the gorram movie?

I can't help but think that, on 9/11, Hollywood watched and thought "My G-d, we've got enough B-roll to last us till rapture!"

--Serge

You're Getting Your Weekend Meme a Day Early

Howdy folks: it's been a very trying week.  Not a lot of time to blog.  I managed to write up a quaint little post on Three Amigos! (1986) yesterday which I think everyone should check out, and my post on pooping in space has gotten more views than any other post I've written in the past three months.  Thanks!

For today, rather than upload a late post, I'm going to go ahead and reblog the extraordinary efforts of others:







--Serge

I Have Three Demands: A Sociopolitical Analysis of "Three Amigos!" (1986)

Film degrees don't offer much in the way of employment, but even with the economy as it is, it's times like these that having a film degree makes it all worth it: I get to write about Three Amigos! (1986) and call it something intellectual.

The danger in making any film in one country which depicts the people of another is dishonesty, to misrepresent or marginalize the Other. 

(Already, I've overstepped my scholarly duties by implying that such a thing is bad.  There aren't supposed to be any judgment calls in classical film analysis.  I once watched a professor scold a kid for mentioning in passing how much he happened to enjoy the film we were analyzing that day.  But I've graduated now and I can make all the judgment calls I want)

Three Amigos! tells the story of three silent-era movie stars who are mistaken for real gunfighters by some rural Mexican villagers.  They are brought down to Mexico thinking that they will be paid 100,000 pesos to put on a show of their talents.  In reality, they are expected to fight off El Guapo, a ruthless Mexican thug who commands fifty men.

In all too many Hollywood productions, the situation is always the same: there's a indigenous population of Others who must enlist the aid of white American men when they are threatened by members of their own kind.  The Magnificent Seven (1960), Avatar (2009), Dances With Wolves (1990), etc.

The three examples I've provided are what I count to be poor representations of reality: white America is not necessarily the white knight it tends to think it is.  The implications are profound: indigenous ("non-white") people in American cinema are typically either ruthless killers or inept plebeians.  What finally provides their salvation is the American patriarchy.

I'd say this type of filmmaking is harmless, except it seems to have actually infiltrated American foreign policy ("Bring it on," etc., and I've heard it said that Nixon once remarked that "Patton would've wanted us to stay in Vietnam," not for any knowledge of the man, but for George C. Scott's performance of same).

So after that preamble, we come to Three Amigos!, which appears to suffer from the exact same problems that the other films do -- except I wouldn't love it so much if I thought it did.

On the surface, it hits all the same problematic plot points as the other films: uneducated ethnic villagers, besieged by another set of ethnics, rescued by the efforts of three white American men.  What's more, it would seem that Mexican men come in only two varieties: ruthless gangsters and inept benevolents. 

The most proactive member of the Mexican community, Carmen, goes out to find help for her village and winds up mistaking three movie stars for actual gunifghters.  Noble but inept nevertheless.

And then we stumble upon the film's subtleties, which ride in to save the day.

Long story short, Three Amigos! is a comedy, and its comedy goes almost as far as its postmodern self-reflexion does in redeeming its admittedly-ridiculous vision of rural Mexico. 

In one scene, Lucky Day (Steve Martin) is caught sneaking into El Guapo's compound.  With fifty guns leveled at his head, he decides it's as good a time as any to list his three demands: "One: that you stop harassing the people of Santo Poco.  Two: that the land of Mexico be redistributed equally among the people, and a proportional system of government be established, consisting of three separate but equal branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial.  And three: that the girl Carmen be returned to me unharmed."

This lays out what for me is the film's saving grace (one of many, as it were): here it is acknowledging the ridiculousness of American jingoism, the nonsense contained in the idea that America can show up in another country and demand that it spontaneously become something else. 

Thus, we have a story which is built from all the same old marginalizing stereotypes (which, coincidentally, tell a fantastically exciting story), but presented in such a way that undermines them.  And we get to laugh.

The wonders that can be accomplished with postmodernism.

There's more to this argument than what I've just presented, but this is a blog, not a term paper, so let's just wrap it up with this:



--Serge

Trailer Cutting Seems to be Getting Worse

I apologize for putting up two posts in one week about the exact same topic, but the epidemic just won't die.  Below, you'll find the trailers for Cabin in the Woods (2012) and Perfect Sense (2012).

Cabin in the Woods is the long-delayed brainchild of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard.  All we knew about the project was that Whedon was co-writing and it was going to be the horror film to end all horror films, a movie that would function not only as a self-reflexive examination of the whole genre, but also serve as an incredibly scary tale on its own.

But you wouldn't know any of that from the trailer, because they've decided to market it in exactly the same way that every cheap-ass horror flick gets marketed these days.



That's right: a horror movie with a title as self-aware as The Cabin in the Woods gets a marketing campaign that basically boils down to "Look! The promise of jump-scares!"

I'm not saying every horror film trailer has to be self-aware, but when the hook is "We're going to be making fun of while simultaneously working with horror-film archetypes to deliver an engaging story," you can't deliver a trailer that makes the gorram film look like everything else.

Where's the context?  Where's the characterization?  Where are the stakes?  Where is the brilliant genre-specific subterfuge that we all know will be on display throughout the film?  The most we get along those lines is the one interesting part of the entire trailer: "We should split up."  "Yeah, good idea." 

"...Really?"

And then it's back to the mindless montage. 

Then we come to Trailer #2:



This film is about a chef and a scientist who fall in love in the middle of an epidemic which slowly robs people of their five senses, a concept which actually intrigues me more than the thought of watching a topless makeout between Ewan McGregor and Eva Green. 

Did you get any of that from the trailer?  Yeah, me neither.

It seems every genre has its own set of cringe-inducing trailer-cliches.  I smell a definitive post on the subject in the near future!

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: Everything I Know About Pooping in Space



Welcome to the Thunder-Chrome

So I just finished reading Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, and it's easily the most engrossing bit of nonfiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
 
But perhaps "pleasure" isn't the right word.  You see, as Roach points out, travelling into space forces those invovled to push the boundaries -- not only of engineering, of what's possible, but also of what's socially acceptable, of what's tolerable. 

And now that I know... I need to share. 

Everybody knows that the toilets of NASA are to be loathed (the butt of the whole program, so to speak), but what's actually so terrible about them?  Well, for one thing, NASA missions didn't even invent a toilet for their astronauts until the 1970s.  The Apollo and Gemini missions simply didn't have them.

There wasn't any room in the shuttle.  Roach says that the Apollo 13 capsule had about as much cubic feet of space for the three-man crew as a sports car.  There were no bathrooms.  They used plastic bags to dispose of solid waste. 

Are you ready to know what scenes didn't make it into the final cut of Apollo 13 (1995)?

Astronauts would hold the bags in place on their bottoms (part of their training back on Earth was to learn how to position the bags with the aid of an in-toilet camera), spread the cheeks manually (unless they figured out how to squat in zero gravity), and catch the offending matter in the bag.  This act in itself is difficult, as the first astronauts soon learned that egesta tends to curl (backwards, if you care to know) in zero gravity.

"Egesta" means exactly what you think it means.  It's the opposite of "ingesta."  You'll learn a lot of euphemisms for "poop" by the end of this post.

Escaped turds are not unknown in the history of NASA.  It's all there in the mission transcripts, which are freely available to the public thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.  At least one conversation with Houston was interrupted when the crew suddenly noticed an offending bolus hurtling across the cabin.

The crew first briefly discussed whose it might be before laughing hysterically and finally bagging it. 

Astronauts: tougher in more ways than just guts.

And that's not the end of the ordeal.  You can't just seal the bag and stow it away.  If bacteria are allowed to do their work inside the bag, it will expand and explode within a few days, due to the gasses that bacteria produce.  Astronauts had to disperse an antibacterial powder into the bag (not easy in zero gravity) and then knead it throughout the material.  If you happened to be in the middle of a docking procedure, or some other priority assignment, you had to hand it off to another crewmember to do (in what Roach calls a "true test of friendship").

And then NASA invented the zero-gravity toilet, which only made things worse.

First, there was the toilet with the spinning blades (operating just six inches below the rim) that would first chop up an astronaut's deposits and then freeze-dry the offending material to the inside walls of the bowl. 

Sounds safe and sanitary, right?  Only until you turn the blades on a second time.  The freeze-dried dung would then shatter and be dispersed throughout the cabin in a cloud of what must be called "fecal dust."

What NASA finally settled on (and, as far as I can tell, is still in use today) is a fitted suction-tube which -- you guessed it -- generates about as many problems as it solves.  The worst-case scenario is a clog in the air-filter, which must then be cleaned by -- you guessed it -- whoever used it last.

Disposing of urine, in case you're wondering, is a walk in the park compared to the multiple problems presented by the disposal of solid waste.  Urine is either deposited directly into a condom-like catheter fitted directly over the penis or, in the case of women (and the men who prefer it), a diaper.

As you might imagine, most astronauts who are launched on short-term missions simply hold it all in (we're back to solid waste now).  NASA has tried liquid and pill diets, but neither worked well.  NASA has also tried feeding its astronauts a diet rich in highly-processed foods, the effect of which is to constipate their astronauts for the duration of a mission. 

I get the impression that few complain.

Storing bowel movements after they've passed is another problem.  It's enough of a problem that one NASA scientist proposed they hydrolize solid waste back into (tasteless, perfectly sanitary) carbon and stored as edible patties. 

In a line that I desperately hope is a direct quote, and not a fabrication of Roach's, one of the astronauts present exclaimed "We're not eating shit burgers on the way back from Mars!"

See, the reason I mention any of this is because I think space-travel is important, and what to do about doody is just one of the incredible challenges that engineers and astronauts face in the trek to outer space.  It's just as daunting a problem as designing any landing-system or executing parabolic course-corrections from twenty million miles away, and yet it receives far less press.

Anyway, that's the reason I'm writing a post about poop.  Because NASA is populated by heroes, and sometimes, being a hero stinks.

One final anecdote: NASA has done well to figure out which foods are the most readily-absorbed by the body.  Animal fat and protein is one of the most readily-metabolized foods.  A ten ounce steak will produce only one ounce of solid waste, an absorption-rate of 90%.  Hard-boiled eggs have an even higher absorption-rate. 

This is why the traditional pre-launch astronaut meal is steak and eggs.  They'll be sitting in the cockpit for eight hours straight with nowhere to go, and, as Roach puts it, "you don't want to be eating FiberOne on launch-day."

The traditional Russian pre-launch breakfast, it should be noted, is not steak and eggs, but rather a one-liter enema. 

I apologize for what I just put you through, dear reader.  To make it up to you, I promise to deliver a post on sex in space for the next Topical Tuesday.

--Serge