Managing Movie Expectations

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One of the problems of living in the age of social media and hyper-connectivity is that it’s become quite difficult for me to manage my expectations of TV and movies. The longer I go before I decide to buy a ticket to a new film or commit myself to watching a new television show, the more I find the opinions of those I follow on Twitter or Facebook color my opinions of it when I finally do experience it. Try as I might, it’s nearly impossible to keep my own expectations in check when the people who’s opinions I value the most tell me “It’s the best movie of the year!” or “OMG, that was a stinker!”

I resisted seeing the mega-hit Frozen for months after its release, but the hype surrounding the film simply became so great that when I finally bought it on iTunes and watched it, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Here was a different kind of fairy tale with no central love story to speak of and a landmark song that everyone and their dog was making parodies of, but I must have missed something because I just didn’t find Frozen that fabulous. Similar experiences happened when I got to the theatre to see PIXAR’s Brave and just recently with Disney’s Big Hero 6.

I’ve been hearing for months how awesome Big Hero 6 was and truth be told, it’s a pretty good film. It’s full of heart and off-beat characters, but for all the raving I’ve seen on Twitter and the internet about it, I just didn’t go ga-ga. The story is one we’ve been told a thousand times and it’s obvious appeal to the base instinct kids have of controlling giant robots and becoming super-heroes turned me off. I also don’t personally think it’s a better animated film than The LEGO Movie which got passed over for Big Hero 6 and How to Train Your Dragon: 2 by the Academy Awards, and that is a true shame. I also don’t have kids of my own, so I think it’s fair to say many parents watch and rate these types of movies through the eyes of their children, which makes total sense.

It’s gotten to the point where I purposefully try to convince myself a movie will be bad so I’ll be pleasantly surprised when it’s not. This probably sounds silly, but most of the time it works. When the re-booted Robocop came out in theaters, I knew it couldn’t stack up to the original and convinced myself I was wasting my money going to see it. Turned out that was the right mindset because I came out of the theatre happy. Not for what the movie was but for what it wasn’t – a complete and utter train wreck.

Television shows are a bit of a different beast thankfully and my opinion of them changes and varies over long stretches of time as I watch them. Everyone was telling me that the CW’s superhero series Arrow was one of the best shows on TV, but honestly much of the first season is merely meh. I stuck with it however, and I’m glad I did because the series quickly picked up steam and has become a personal favorite of mine. Season 2 truly is great and I definitely agree with what my friends from Twitter were telling me all along. If you’ve not checked out Arrow on Netflix, give it a go, it’s pretty great.

In the end, the only person who decides if you like a particular movie or television show is you. The opinions of critics, the general public and even your close friends can only hold so much weight. The trick is learning to balance the overwhelming scale of today’s social media with those of your own likes and dislikes. There’s absolutely no question that our personal expectations color our movie and TV going expreiences. I think the trick is to recognize that fact and try and not let it stand in the way of keeping an open mind and having a good time. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself :-/

The Worf of Starfleet

I love this fan trailer for The Worf of Starfleet for a couple reasons. First, it’s just well made. It makes Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation look totally bad-ass. Second, it highlights how badly Next Generation wants to be shown in widescreen. Seeing the TV show formatted like this makes it 1000x more epic. It’s a shame the new blu ray discs of Next Generation are still formatted 4:3 for the small screen, but that’s not their fault. Next generation really was before its time. In the meantime, you can never have enough honor. Enjoy!

(hat tip @davidcaolo for the link)

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Percussive Maintenance

Anyone who can find commonality between Deep Space Nine, Hogan’s Heroes, Back to the Future and Happy Days is okay in my book. I love TV and movie supercuts and this is one of the most clever I’ve seen. Take all those times when characters fix broken equipment with a good whack and what you get is percussive perfection. Enjoy!

(via Collossal)

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Disney’s Brave Both Hits and Misses

SPOILER WARNING: This post contains pretty big spoilers for Disney’s animated adventure, Brave. If you don’t want to know key plot points, then you should ride on my friend.

The problem with high expectations is that once you have them, it’s very difficult to let them go. PIXAR has spent almost two decades building up a loyal, praise-filled fan base for their cinematic offerings, and with good reason. For years the studio consistently put out the best animated adventures with masterpieces like Finding Nemo, Toy Story and The Incredibles that pushed the limits of great cinema. Recently however, other studios have come into their own and produced some amazing animated adventures that are just as good, if not better than the best PIXAR has had to offer. Movies like Tangled, How to Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me have proven that PIXAR no longer has a lock on the genre it helped pioneer back in the 1990’s.

Enter their latest film, Brave. The story is a familiar one – oppressed child longs to find her own destiny out from the watchful eye of her overbearing parent. The hero, in this case the flame-haired Merida, resents her mother’s attempts to turn her into a prim and proper future queen and in doing so embarks on an adventure to “change her fate”. As I watched the amazing first act of Brave, the obvious parallels to another classic Disney animated film, The Little Mermaid, quickly became apparent. Like Ariel, Merida is unhappy with her lot in life and longs to be elsewhere. Both characters are strong-willed women of action and they both enlist the help of a magical witch to help them in their quest to alter their destiny.

Unfortunately for Brave, that’s where things take a turn for the worse. In seeking the witch’s help, Merida receives a magical pastry that she is to feed, not to herself, but to her mother. It’s obvious that this pie is both powerful and dangerous, having come from a large cauldron of steaming black goo, and yet Merida thinks nothing of sneaking it back home, presenting it on a plate and having her beloved mother swallow it. Now, you may dismiss this as simply a necessary plot point, but the act itself didn’t sit well with me. Our heroine, the person we’ve just spent the entire first act getting to know and love, suddenly feels it’s perfectly okay to possibly poison her mom. Feeding the pastry to Queen Elinor isn’t an act of bravery, it’s one of cowardice. Unlike Ariel, who boldly chooses to take the risk and the danger of Ursala’s life-changing spell onto herself, Merida lays that burden upon the feet of her unsuspecting mother. When the spell first sickens and then changes her mom into a hulking grizzly bear, Merida repeats again and again that it’s “not her fault” – selfish brooding from a character we’re supposed to be rooting for. It is true that by the end of the film Merida regrets what she’s done and would never do such a thing ever again, but she should never have done it in the first place. Any time a character displays a lack of empathy for their loved ones, it makes me like them less.

Other problems in Brave include a meandering second act that basically turns into one long, predictable chase scene, a delightful, originally-written villain we only see once and a seemingly un-motivated change of heart for Queen Elinor, who out of nowhere suddenly decides it’s okay for her daughter to marry out of love instead of tradition. Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity however comes in the form of Merida’s passion and love of archery. Merida is given a bow at an early age and quickly becomes an expert markswoman. She spends her free days riding at break-neck speeds through the glenn, getting off incredible shots on horseback, and bursts into tears when her mother throws her beloved bow in the fire (another wasted opportunity for great character development – we never get to see Elinor give the rescued bow back to her daughter). Given how important archery is to our main character, it is disappointing Merida never gets to use her skills in any truly heroic fashion. The archery contest with the suitors ultimately ends in tears and doesn’t change anything. When Merida uses her bow to catch a fish for her transformed mother, a few seconds later, mom is ankle deep in the river and catching her own dinner. In the climatic finale, it isn’t a skillfully placed arrow that lands the crushing blow to the cursed Mor’du, nor do her shots even slow the animal down. I liken Brave’s ill-use of the bow to that of giving Luke his magical lightsaber and then never letting him duel Darth Vader.

Now here’s the good news. Despite all of these things, Brave is still worth seeing. The visuals are simply stunning. From our firey heroine’s amazing raven locks, to the misty woods inhabited by glowing wisps, the art direction for Brave is incredible. In my eyes, it rivals that of Finding Nemo and Wall•e and alone is worth the price of admission. Also a joy are the realization of the secondary characters like Merida’s father, King Fergus brilliantly played by Billy Connolly, the hilarious Triplets and all of the clansmen who come to compete for the hand of the fair princess. There are many moments in Brave when I laughed out loud or was in sheer awe of the beauty of what was seen on screen. I also enjoyed the Scottish settings and accents which felt surprisingly fresh for a movie of this genre.

Was Disney’s Brave good? Yes. Was it one of their all-time best? No. Is it worth seeing? Definitely yes. Would I see it again in the theater? No. I have to say I’d reach for DVD’s of The Incredibles and Wall•e before Brave, but in the end I can recommend the movie because of its sincere effort to put a fresh new face on the title “Disney Princess”. It’s obviously crafted with blood, sweat tears and love which I appreciate very very much. At the same time I wish Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and Steve Purcell (the film’s co-directors) had a clearer vision of the central character. She does things that aren’t worthy of truly great heroes and of all the characters in Brave, changes the least when the story is over. Brave is like an arrow loosed in the heat of the moment, full of promise and anticipation that doesn’t quite fly true. If you enjoy tales of adventure and PIXAR films in general, you’ll most likely love it. I just wished Brave had hit the bullseye.

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The Good, The Bad & The Timelord

Filming on series 7 of the hit scifi series, Doctor Who, has begun and Mail Online has spied the stars on set, but not in Cardiff. Matt Smith and Karen Gillian were found on the famous desert lots of Almeria. This southern spanish town has been host to over 100 western films including The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful Of Dollars. I’m always wary when scifi crosses paths with westerns, but I trust Steven Moffat to bring us a memorable adventure. How bad could it be, really?

The Mail highlights some fun pictures and gives vague details about the perils the Doctor and his trusty companion Amy Pond will be facing, but nothing that spoils the episode. If you love Doctor Who, surf over to Mail Online and check out the on-set adventures of Smith and Gillian and then set co-ordinates for the BBC this fall for the return of Doctor Who series 7. Geronimo!

Fan Raiding the Lost Ark

While browsing the Vimeo channel on Apple TV, I came across a wonderful fan film about one of my all-time favorite movies – Raiders of the Lost Ark. Created over a period of 8 months by filmmaker Jamie Benning, Raiding the Lost Ark combines radio and TV interviews, script and storyboard excerpts, trivia and more to give Raiders fans a deep insight into the film. When I pressed play I thought I would watch for a few minutes to see if I learned anything new. A few minutes turned into 30 minutes which turned into an hour and by the time I was done I had watched the entire thing, it’s just that good.

I don’t want to spoil the incredible content that Jamie has gone to great pains to produce, but one nugget stands out that I just have to share. Amazingly enough, the entire airstrip sequence where Indy plans to steal the flying wing and escape with Marion & the Ark was entirely improvised over the course of a week. The shooting script for Raiders had no details what-so-ever about this action packed sequence and so Steven Spielberg worked closely with Harrison Ford and improvised everything. Through interviews presented by Benning, we learn how this sequence came together and how much Spielberg loved filming it. This is just one of the golden, gelaming treasures unearthed in Raiding the Lost Ark. I highly recommend it.

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For the Buckaroo In You

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai is one of those films. You know the ones I mean, you either love them to death or you hate them with the passion of a 1,000 burning suns. Being the child of the 80’s I am, I fall squarely into the former category when it comes to Peter Weller’s hero, Buckaroo.

I first watched this quirky film back at R.I.T. with my good friends David, Anna, Bob & Jiffy, all of whom still share my affinity for Team Banzai and their globetrotting, save-the-day antics. I got on a Buckaroo kick a few weeks back and whipped up a Team Banzai Patch icon that was released over at The Iconfactory as a QuickPix as well as the desktop I’m making available today. If you’re a fan of Buckaroo, then head over to my Goodies page and download Team Banzai for your iPhone, Mac or PC desktop and be the envy of all your buddies. Remember, no matter where you go, there you are!

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Writing On The WALL•E

So like millions of Americans, I went to see PIXAR & Disney’s latest animated film, WALL•E this weekend. For those of you living under a rock, the film tells the tale of a brave little robot who is left to clean up the Earth after mankind dumps so much trash that he can’t live here anymore. Adventure, romance and of course humor ensue for the tiny bot with a Johnny 5 complex.

Reviews from critics and the movie-going public have been overwhelmingly favorable, and it’s easy to see why. Behind the futuristic facade of WALL•E lies basically a love story between WALL•E himself and the angelic EVE. The story also cleverly taps into an topical issue that is sure to raise the ire of some of the more conservative audience members – environmentalism.

Back in August of 2007, I wrote a post about PIXAR’s advanced PR for the film, via the Buy n Large viral website. Buy n Large is the company responsible for the vast consumerism that ultimately makes the Earth uninhabitable to the human race in the film. The message in WALL•E is clear – if things keep going the way they’re going, we won’t have a planet left to live on. This moral imperative is one of the major plot points of the film, and I’m betting it won’t be very long until we see right-wingers railing against Disney and PIXAR for “green propaganda”.

I’m willing to bet that by no later than this Wednesday, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Boortz or some other misguided blowhard will do their best to alter WALL•E’s portrayal as lovable protagonist to that of a mechanized propaganda bot intent on brainwashing your kids. Rest assured it will happen, and when it does, I’ll update this post with which offender was first to pull the trigger.

In the end, nothing these people can say will diminish the movie’s endearing success. WALL•E is nothing short of an animated masterpiece that has its heart and message in exactly the right place. There is plenty of emotion and humor to keep audience goers smiling and parents safely content. And if kids get interested in recycling or gardening, let’s just say it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

UPDATE: Here’s a tweet that illustrates what I’m talking about. It’s starting.

UPDATE II: DING! DING! We have a winner, or rather a big, fat ignorant loser… in the form of everybody’s favorite shill from CNN, Glenn Beck. Think Progress has more too boot. To quote Weird Al, “Man, I hate it when I’m right.”