100 by 30: Book 17 - DC comics' New 52

Batwoman Vol. 1 & 2, and Batman: Court of Owls, Vol. 1

As promised, in order for Graphic novels/comic books to count for this project, I need to read 3 before it counts as one novel. Today we have 3 volumes from the recent resetting of the DC comics universe. It was my understanding that this would be a way for new readers to jump in at the beginning without have to worry about decades of back story. I thought I'd test that theory by reading about one hero I knew nothing about (Batwoman) and one that I was very familiar with (Batman).

I had a vague knowledge of a lot of the member of the batman family (Batgirl, Robin(s), Nightwing, Oracle, etc..) but I had never heard of Batwoman. After reading the first two volumes of the New 52 series, I have to say, I still feel a little lost. I now know her name is Kate Kane, she was a standout at West Point before being dishonorably discharged because of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, her father was some big shot in the military, and she had a twin sister. At some point, her mother was killed and her twin sister went evil and she somehow blames her father for this. What I don't know is how she became Batwoman, and why she chose that name. What is her connection to Batman? As of right now, I have no idea. The story is based on a mystery, but I feel like I'm missing to many of the pieces to get invested in the answers. There's something about myths, and an Asian wizard guy using people's fear to create the monsters of folktales. For example, Mexican children are shown a woman who seems to be the weeping woman from a Mexican folk story. They believe it, and the woman becomes the real weeping woman (a water ghost that drowns people with her tears) We also see Bloody Mary brought to life and we get to see Killer Croc mutated into some Egyptian Crocodile God. There's also some shady government agency I've never heard of run by some guy who is just a skeleton in a suit. It's a whole lot of myth building thrown out too fast to process. It barely leaves time for us to care about Batwoman's troubled relationship with her girlfriend who is a detective for the Gotham City PD or for her cousin the sidekick who almost gets gutted at one point. I will say that there is just enough here to keep me mildly interested in where the story goes. I was also pleased that the DC writers seemed to care about trying to accurately portray a same-sex couple without sensationalizing it. It's actually pretty understated as far as comic book romances go. I think I'll give it one more volume before I give up on it.

6/10

Batman, on the other hand, is a character I know much more about. I've seen all the movies, played the two most recent (and outstanding) video games, and I've read a few of the major stories. While my familiarity with the character seemed to help a lot, I did get the sense that this is a world much easier to jump into. The plot is much more straight forward too. Batman is helping Commissioner Gordon with a case when he discovers a hidden threat on Bruce Wayne's life. The next day, he barely survives an attack by a mysterious assassin known as the Talon. He represents a secret society known as the Court of Owls. They supposedly run Gotham City from the shadows, and have been behind the death of at least one member of the Wayne Family. The story throws into question everything Batman thought he knew about Gotham. It's a much tighter story, and the artists really utilize the comic book medium to put you in Batman's disoriented state of mind. There's a section of the book, as Batman is trapped and slowly going crazy, where everything is rotated 90 degrees. It stays like this for several pages, and when you think the art has rotated right side up again, you turn the page only to realize you are know holding the book upside down and flipping the pages backwards. It was a really cool little trick that threw me off guard and added to the creepiness of the moment. The story is tight and engaging, the characters are well fleshed out, and the world is much clearer than in the Batwoman series. So far, this is turning out to be one of the best Batman stories I have ever experienced in any medium.

10/10

100 by 30 - Book 16: Tolkien Care of Business

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 2.

Book 2 of FotR covers everything from Rivendell through Frodo and Sam leaving the fellowship. It does NOT include the orc attack leading to Boromir's Death.

This is one of my favorite sections of the entire LotR story. It sets the tone for the rest of the book, and, most importantly, answers the question, "Why Hobbits?" During the Council of Elrond, we learn much more about the nature of the One Ring. It gives one the power to dominate others. This is why you cannot give the Ring to Gandalf or Elrond, or any of the other powerful characters. The Ring will use their power always toward evil, therefore, it takes great weakness to overcome great power. Frodo is the chosen one because of what he is not. He is not a leader a great people, he does not possess great strength or magical power, he has no desire for power of any kind. Because of Frodo's natural disinclinations, the One Ring has very little to work with to corrupt Frodo. He is the perfect antidote to Sauron's evil. It's kind of like giving the nuclear launch codes to a puppy. This is also why the other hobbits are allowed to join Frodo. Gandalf tells Elrond that while it may seem wise to trust in strength, we should rather trust in friendship. The decision to go against what seems to be the obvious choice is what will save Middle Earth. Turns out, you can counteract great violence and evil with love and friendship...it's a shame we keep forgetting that.

There is a lot of talk about "fate" in the LotR and in The Hobbit. It seems very obvious to me that in the case of these stories, "fate" is code for the divine. This "fate" is what turns tragedy into triumph. The Moria sequence to me is the most important series of events in the whole story. In fact, if the fellowship at not gone through Moria, the quest very likely would have failed. In Moria, Pippin throws a pebble down a well. This is what causes their presence to be noticed. While this seems to be a tragic mistake, I want to jump ahead in the story to look at what happens because of this one little act.

1. Gollum finds the Fellowship and begins to follow them. Those who know the story know how crucial Gollum is to the fate of Middle Earth

2. The Balrog is awakened and defeated. Those who have read the appendices and other writings know that there was also a war in the north that we never hear about in the LotR. The elves, dwarves, men, and Beornings join together to drive an army out of Dol Guldur and defeat an attack on Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Had Pippin not alerted the Balrog, it would be alive to lead the armies of Sauron against Rivendell, Lothlorien, and Erebor.

3. Gandalf is killed. The showdown with Gandalf and the Balrog is the coolest fight ever. Both Gandalf and the Balrog are Maiar, which is basically an equivalent to being angels/demons. His physical death allows him to return to the undying lands, where he can report Sauroman's betrayal. He is then given Sauroman's power and authority and sent back to once again aid Middle Earth.


So the choice to send Pippin with the Fellowship leads to a seemingly innocuous incident which causes the balance of power to shift to a staggering degree to the side of good. Gollum will aid in the destruction of the ring, the Balrog will not be a factor in the War in the North, and Gandalf gets a power upgrade and replaces Sauroman. If that isn't divine intervention, I don't know what is.

Anyway, book 2 has a much better pace than book 1, and the asides and meetings all seem to have much more to do with the main plot and less to do with what hobbits eat. Galadriel is even more awesome/kinda scary in the book, and we get to see much more of Boromir's slow corruption by the ring. I wish book 1 was this good.

9/10

100 by 30 book 15 - More Tolkien!

The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 by J.R.R. Tolkien

True story: The Lord of the Rings is actually 6 books, not 3. And I'm counting all 6 because I have that much to say, and because this is my fun project, and also I needed away to balance out the fact that I'm also reading the 900+ page A Dance With Dragons right now too. (side note: way less creepy sex happens in Middle Earth than in Westeros, unless you count the Very Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring, which I don't)

Anyway, Book 1 of FOTR for you movie fans out there covers the section from the beginning of the movie all the way to that part where the river turned into horses and swept away the Black Riders. It's not much time as far as the movie goes, but the film does skip a lot of stuff in order to get the plot moving along. In Fact, there is a 17 YEAR gap between Bilbo's 111th birthday party and Frodo actually leaving the shire. Because the time frame is considerably stretched out, Sam, Merry, and Pippin have much more to do with Frodo's plans. Merry and Pippin are much smarter in the book and enlist Samwise as a spy to find out what Frodo is up to so they can help him. The three friends conspire with another hobbit to aid Frodo on his journey. It was very nice to get to see Frodo's other companions treated as intelligent characters rather than just sidekicks. The other major omission from the movies is the journey through the old forest on the edge of the shire. This is where the hobbits are nearly killed by old man willow before being saved by Tom Bombadil.

When I read this book in high school, I Hated Tom Bombadil. I had already seen the first film and I wanted the book to get moving to the adventures. Instead we wait 17 years, then when we do finally hit the road, we have to take a detour with some crazy old guy in the woods who jumps and sings nonsense all day. Upon my second reading, Tom has grown on me considerably and I was more appreciative of the fact that Tom Bombadil is the oldest thing in Middle Earth, and one of the most powerful. In high school I had no time for the introduction of a character with that much power who never used it to punchkill all of the evil in Mordor. Instead he saves our heroes from Old Man Willow and the Barrow wights (a much cooler little side event) mostly through the power of silly songs. I guess I'm much more receptive to any character who has immense power and no interest in using it to do anything other than tend his forest and enjoy time with his wife. While Tom is a great literary character, he would have been impossible to include faithfully in a live action movie without losing 90% of the audience.

After the incidents in the old forest, things continue much as they did in the film for most of the rest of this book. Everything takes longer of course (if you thought there wasn't enough walking in the movies, you're in for a treat) but all the major events are the same. The biggest difference is that Arwen is not the one who finds Aragorn and company in the wilderness. Instead they are aided by Glorfindel, an elf so powerful he slew a Balrog in single combat during the first age (see The Silmarrillion or Wikipedia for details). I understand using Arwen in the movies since the books give us almost no female characters, but logically it makes much more sense for Elrond to send out the biggest baddest elves he can to find Frodo rather than send out his only child. (Nothing against Arwen, but she's never killed a balrog in single combat as far as I know)

Anyway, the book ends as Frodo passes out on the other side of the riverbank. Overall, this first book has some really great moments, and some unbearably boring moments. We start out with a great introduction to the world and then we are made to sit and wait through 30 pages of travel planning, which is less interesting than it sounds. Then we hit a spooky forest, but we have to stop and have tea and sing silly songs with some weird guy, list everything we eat and drink, sleep, dream, wake up, get ready to leave, realize it's rainy, go back inside and wait another day, then we finally leave only to get trapped in the one place Tom told you not to go....it's frustrating. Once we get to Bree, the story finally picks up momentum and really flows through the end of the first book.

Pacing/plot: 4/10
world/character building: 9/10

total: 7/10

I've never seen: The French Connection

So, I'd heard a lot about the French Connection. Somehow I was under the impression that this was a spy thriller. It's not. It's a hard boiled cop movie starring Gene Hackman and the always underrated Roy Schieder as his partner. The movie follows the two cops as they try to stop a major drug deal. Hackman's Popeye Doyle is a complicated antihero who makes you love and hate him at the same time. Unlike many cinematic rogue cops who seem to operate on a steady diet of cliché flakes, Hackman creates a fully developed human being. He's arrogant and damaged, trying to prove himself after a hunch of his got another cop killed. The guilt causes his self destructive behavior and recklessness that leads to one of the most intense car chases ever put on film. His actions at the end of the chase hint at a cop who has lost part of his humanity and foreshadows a brutal moment later in the film. The movie is inspired by real events and contains a gritty realism (the real kind, not the Zach Snyder kind) I wasn't expecting. If fact, I think if I had had a better idea of what this movie was about I would have liked it even more. Still, this movie is one of the best cop movies I have ever seen and it is a masterpiece.

Best scene - The car chase

Best moment - Gene Hackman's wave to the bad guy. It's the most badass little wave in movie history.

8/10

100 by 30 Book 14

The Demonata Series #1: Lord Loss by Darren Shan

I'm gonna be honest here. I was looking for a short book in the young adult section to help get me caught up, and they didn't have the first book in the Cirque Du Freak series, which Darren Shan also wrote. So I ended up with this book. If you want uneven character development, sloppy storytelling, and buckets of goo, this is the book for you. Given the hype this author had gotten in the past, I was shocked at how poorly this is written.

The book starts off with a protagonist who can't figure out what's messed up about chopping up dead rats and hiding them in his sister's towel. Then something really messed up happens and our young hero ends up in a psyche ward. Not that you could blame him. The shocking violence of the events that put him there give you a lot of sympathy for him. If the book had any commitment to real emotion, he'd stay in the mental hospital for years, if not forever. But nope, his long slow recovery from seeing a horrific triple homicide takes less than six months. That sounds about right for a 15 year-old to get over seeing his family sliced to pieces and used as puppets by demons...I was going to give a spoiler alert, but this book really isn't worth your time.

Anyway, a weird rich uncle brings him to live at his mansion in the country where he does charming things like mock this kids PTSD. Then our hero (his name is Grubbs) meets some annoying sidekick type named Bill-E and they waste 130 pages of a 220 page book not telling us what the heck is going on. They don't even mention the event that brought him here that much. It's like this kid just forgot that his family was slaughtered by demons. Then these two geniuses think that Grubbs' uncle is a werewolf (he's not) and they investigate that for awhile... Long story short, Grubbs family is cursed with Lyncanthropy (werewolf desease!) and the only way to cure it is to beat the Demon master Lord Loss at 5 games of chess. Yes, even when you add demons, magic, and sword fighting, chess is still incredibly boring. This book will make you wish you got knocked out by the Chess pieces in the first Harry Potter book so you don't have to sit through this whole thing.

3/10

I've Never Seen: Chinatown

So, This whole book project is going a little slower than I anticipated, and I finished my Disney Project for the time being, so I wanted to find something else to write about in between books. I have tens of readers, and I want to start adding content at a more regular pace than I have been. So I looked at the list of classic movies I've never seen or don't remember and I thought, "yeah, that'll keep me occupied for a while."

The First movie in this ongoing series is Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

I gotta be honest, I mostly watched this because I heard that Rango basically lifted the whole plot of this movie, you know except for that whole part about sister/daughters... Anyway, this movie is pretty much a masterpiece. It's a fantastic film noir that shows Jack Nicholson at his most heroic (a low bar for a guy know for playing psychopaths, but still). It was actually really great to see him playing everything much more naturally that I am used to. It reminds me of the first time I saw the Godfather and I realized that Al Pacino and Subtlety were not mutually exclusive. We also get Faye Dunaway pre Mommy Dearest, and, painted eyebrows aside, she also gives a mostly brilliant performance. She does a fantastic job of building up the image of Noah Cross in our mind so we are picturing the worst until we meet him the first time. His genial nature throws everything off kilter until the depths of his depravity are revealed at the end of the movie. John Huston gives the kind of performance that makes you want to sleep with a gun under your pillow. If you haven't seen this yet, it is very much worth your time.

On a side note, I wanted to comment a little more on John Huston's Noah Cross. Being a child born in the 80's, my first exposure to Huston's work as an actor was his portrayal of Gandalf in the Rank and Bass Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Cartoons. It really is a whole new level of nightmare fuel to hear the voice of kindly wizard Gandalf say the things he says in Chinatown. Then you get to deal with the realization that we have a movie directed by a wanted sex offender, in which a character who is also a sex offender also happens to have the same voice as a beloved childhood character....so there's that. I guess what I'm saying is that watching Rango is a much less psychologically damaging experience, and they really do have the same basic plot. Except Rango has a dead armadillo spirit guide.

100 by 30 book 13

The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies By Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini and friends

Have you ever wanted to learn a little more about your favorite film genres and maybe get some good recommendations to add to your Netflix Cue? Maybe you'd also like that info to be delivered in witty little chapters written by a number of comedians who like movies the same way you do?

If so, then The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies is for you. It's short, sweet, and sometimes hilarious. But most importantly, it starts a great conversation about why we love the types of movies we love. Each chapter is written by a different comedian who is passionate about that genre. Jackie Kashian, Wisconsin native and Ranger of the Dork Forrest, tells us why Fantasy films are awesome. Greg Proops gives us the rundown on Private Eyes and dames in the Film Noir chapter. And Chris Mancini Acknowledges the greatness of Big Trouble in Little China in the Action/Adventure Chapter.

Each Chapter concludes with that author's personal top 10 films in the genre and their bottom 10 films...so you can send them hate mail for failing to see that greatness that is Rango. Seriously, Rango is an animated adaptation of Chinatown with a heavy dose of existentialism and mysticism disguise as a kids adventure movie. It's great and Neil T. Weakly can suck it! (or not. He's entitled to his own opinions)
The point is, if you like movies, you'll find something to like about this book. Or at least some good recommendations or reminders of classics you haven't gotten around to yet. Plus it's like $2 on the Kindle right now, so check it out.

8/10

100 by 30 book 12

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach


I love Mary Roach. She writes science books for those of us who just want to know the important stuff, you know, like whether or not it is possible to propel yourself across a space station using your own farts. (spoiler, results inconclusive) In this book we get to learn all of the fun facts about space explorations with none of the math (or smells). She covers everything from early spaceflight with test animals all the way up to the preparations for a mars expedition scheduled for around 2030. We get to learn about the numerous challenges brought about by a lack of gravity, and She even goes into the challenges of "doing it" in outer space. And while there are no confirmed reports, her investigation into how people might deal with no-gravity hanky panky does give us insight into dolphin mating practices, and why you probably won't ever get to swim with a male dolphin....

Mary Roach always finds a way to make the science fun by covering the gross, sticky, and unpleasant sides that we never get to hear about from important medical journals (you know, if we actually read them). Science is about exploring, and strange things happen in the name of discovery that many research labs aren't usually excited to tell people about. You will never hear a PR rep for space research proudly declare "Hey guys! So we did a test to see how long people can go without bathing, because water is nonexistent in space and we needed to see if the astronauts could survive in close quarters for weeks at a time with no personal hygiene and guess what? Their underwear totally rotted away! Isn't that neat!" It's the kind of this you would need to study, but not the kind of thing taxpayers will be happy to fund. I highly recommend this book, if only to read the part about the toilet camera that astronauts have to use in order to "line up their shot."

8/10

100 by 30 Book 11

Party Crashers by Stephanie Bond

So, what better way to follow up an American masterpiece than with a romantic murder mystery about a former real estate agent turned shoe saleswoman at Nieman Marcus who's boyfriend is missing. Then she crashes into handsome millionaire BECK UNDERWOOD and the sparks fly.... so it's not really masterpiece material. Well the blog is called A Scattered Approach, so it wouldn't be any fun if I only read awesome books.

So, because I know you want to know, our heroine, Jolie Goodman, makes friends with the mysterious Carlotta from the dress department who talks her into crashing a party to find info about Jolie's missing boyfriend, Gary, who stole Jolie's car. Blah blah blah, something about shoes, blah blah blah, BECK UNDERWOOD IS SOOOO HANDSOME! Blah blah blah, they crash some more parties.

Halfway through the book, someone finally dies. Jolie finds Gary dead at her former boss' party and someone put the gun in her jacket. OH NO! she's so gonna go to pris- no, wait, BECK UNDERWOOD to the rescue! he hires her a lawyer, blah blah blah, flirty flirty, SEXYTIMES! (you know, for a book romance, timing the sex scene like two pages after your lead finds her boyfriend dead didn't really set the mood) Anyway, Bad guy gets caught-SHOCKING TWIST- and Jolie gets her old job back until BECK UNDERWOOD MILLIONAIRE PHILANTHRAPIST SEX MACHINE wisks her away to Costa Rica to live happily ever after.

Oddly enough, for all it's stupidity and cliches, I found it fairly readable....I mean it passed the time on the bus...so that's something. Also, it was a free book for my Kindle, which should explain a lot.

4/10

Oh, and it's still way better than Twilight.

100 by 30 book 10 - Slaughterhouse Five

Holy cow am I falling behind! In all fairness, Bioshock Infinite wasn't going to play itself, and going to Disney World has a way of cutting back on your reading time. Anyway, let the quest continue!

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I thought it was about time that I read this American classic, and it did not dissappoint. It's like Douglas Adams if he wove eye witness accounts of American War atrocities into his genius Sci-fi comedies. This is one of those books that has so many big ideas that I don't really feel smart enough to talk about it after just one reading. But I will share what I learned anyway, then you all can fill me in on the giant themes I missed because I was laughing at his jokes about boobs and poop.

This is my first experience with Kurt Vonnegut, and I have to say, his writing style is different from anything I have ever read before. He breaks everything up into small chunks, usually not more than a paragraph or two, and it makes for very quick reading. Like eating a bag of snack food, you always want to read 'just one more'.

The book seems to be Kurt's own struggle with how to tell his experience at the fire bombing of Dresden at the end of WWII. He was in the city when American bombs killed over 130,000 Germans in one night. That's almost double the death toll from Hiroshima. I have to admit, even with a childhood of learning about WWII, I had never heard about what happened in Dresden. The magnitude of this event boggles the mind. 130,000 civilians murdered in a day. And then you realize that this pails in comparison to the total number of dead in all of WWII (about 50,000,000 soldier and civilians on all sides, including the holocaust) It's brain breaking the magnitude of evil committed in a 6 year span.

And so, we get a tale of this horror told through the eyes of eccentric Billy Pilgrim, who became unstuck in time. He was abducted by aliens that see time as just another demension. They can bounce back and forth to different parts of their lives. In this sense, death is meaningless because they are always alive somewhere. Like I said, This book is complex. We follow Billy has he bounces back and forth throughout his life; to his time in the war, then as a prisoner of war, then to after the war, we he gets married and becomes an optomatrist, and to his times as a zoo creature on Tralfmadore. This bouncing narrative creates a stew of different philosophies, ideas, and a healthy dose of absurd humor. I wasn't kidding about the boob and poop jokes. This is the kind of masterfull work that begs to be reread and Mr. Vonnegut has the rare ability to share huge ideas in easy to read chunks that make you want to start back at the beginning and reread it right away. Unfortunately, I still have 90 books to go, so rereading will have to wait. So it goes.

10/10

Disney Movie recap/ ranking

Ok, Here it is, my personal ranking for every Disney and Pixar animated theatrical release. I figure since I went to the trouble of watching all of these, I get the right to judge them however I want on my blog read by tens of people. I've also given each movie an arbitrary award, for my own amusement. I hope you like it. I do....well, and least the movies from 43 on.


65 - Home on the Range: worst. movie. ever.

64 - Dinosaur: Best movie to cure insomnia/improve your self esteem as a writer

63 - Oliver & Company: worst animation in the whole Disney canon

62 - Bolt: Worst attempt at hip/sarcastic humor

61 - Cars 2: worst Cash Grab/worst sequel

60 - The Aristocats: Best demonstration of the hole Walt left when he died

59 - The Black Cauldron: Worst adaptation of a book

57 - Tie- Saludos Amigos/Three Caballeros: Most spanish in Disney movies

56 - Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Worst use of Michael J. Fox

55 - Make Mine Music: Worst Compilation feature

54 - The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: worst story about a toad

53 - Brother Bear: Worst use of Phil Collins

52 - Fun and Fancy Free: creepiest use of puppets

51 - A Bug's Life: Most inconsistent tone

50 - The Fox and the Hound: Most confusing message

49 - Alice in Wonderland: Best Animation in a Terrible Movie

48 - Pinochio: Biggest disappointment

47 - Treasure Planet: Best movie ruined by Martin Short

46 - Rescuers Down Under: Most unfairly maligned by me before I saw the depths of horror that is Home on the Range

45 - The Rescuers: most unpleasant looking villians, like, lose your appetite unpleasant.

44 - The Great Mouse Detective: Best mediocre movie

43 - Bambi: Best movie you forgot the second half of

42 - The Sword in the Stone: Best Wizards Duel

41 - Hercules: Best James Woods

40 - Melody Time: Most pleasant Surprise

39 - Tarzan: Best use of Phil Collins

38 - Ratatouille: Best movie I wish I liked more

37 - Pocahontas: Best movie if you can block out what comes next in your history book

36 - Dumbo: Best movie with a drunk baby elephant

35 - Peter Pan: Most evil "good" character (Tinkerbell)

34 - Mulan: Best movie I overlooked due to my hatred of Donny Osmond

33 - Chicken Little: Best homage to King Kong

32 - Sleeping Beauty: Coolest Villain/Least interesting Title Character

31 - Toy Story 2: Best Sequel

30 - Meet the Robinsons: Best Dinosaur in a hat

29 - The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Best Ride in the Magic Kingdom

28 - Lady and the Tramp: Best Reference to depressing Russian play in a movie about puppies (The Lower Depths)

27 - The Little Mermaid: Most frustratingly realistic depiction of a dumb teenager

26 - The Emperor's New Groove: Best use of hip/sarcastic humor

25 - Wreck-it Ralph: Best homage to Ed Wynn

24 - Winnie the Pooh: Best Puns/word play

23 - Robin Hood: Best use of "On Wisconsin"

22 - Fantasia 2000: Best George Gershwin sequence

21 - Fantasia: Best movie that scared me when I was little

20 - Monsters, Inc: Cutest kid

19 - Lilo & Stitch: Best combination of space aliens and child services

18 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: Scariest Vilain

17 - Brave: Most Nudity

16 - 101 Dalmations: Best scenic painting

15 - The Lion King: Best Opening Sequence

14 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Best songs to belt out in your car

13 - The Princess and the Frog: Best argument to continue making hand-drawn animated films

12 - Tangled: Best Hair

11 - Cars: Most Underrated

10 - Finding Nemo: Best Sidekick (Dory)

9 - Toy Story 3: Best Goodbye Scene

8 - The Incredibles: Best Midlife Crisis

7 - The Jungle Book: Best Bear (Baloo)

6 - Beauty and the Beast: Best Princess

5 - Wall-E: Most Genuine and Innocent Main Character

4 - Cinderella: Most often misinterpreted by spoiled brats

3 - Aladdin: Favorite Childhood movie

2 - Toy Story: Best Jokes

1 - Up: Best Movie

DMCP #65 - Brave

Ta-Dah!!! I did it! All 65 Disney/Pixar Thatrical releases. I will be writing more about the project as a whole, but let's finish by talking about Brave first.

I really like Brave. I know some people were down on it, but we got a couple of things you don't see often. First, we have a movie where both parents of our main Character are alive and well. Second, the movie is about a mother/daughter relationship, and neither of them are evil. You can tell that co-director Brenda Chapman was drawing from very personal experience. I also watched it with my own mother who happens to have a daughter known to be stubborn from time to time, and judging from the amount of crying going on, I'm assuming it resonated with mothers and daughters everywhere. It's a great tale of two people who love each other, but can't seem to stop hurting each other. We get to see through the course of the film that part of the reason they can't get along is that they are so similar. Queen Eleanor knows what it takes to run a kingdom and carries the burdens of her responsibilities while Merida sees this and is trying to run away from responsibilities that will soon be hers. It's like Merida actively doesn't want to grow up to be her mother. Can you believe that kids don't always want to be their parents when they grow up?! The movie handles this very well, and it takes a lot of poor decisions before they can mend their bond. It's really very heartfelt and sweet.

Amid this very personal tale, we get to have a lot of fun with the male characters. The leaders of the Scotish clans are brash, loud, and ridiculous. They are voiced by Billy Connolity, Craig Ferguson, Hagrid, and Dr. Owen Hunt from Grey's Anatomy. I thought it was an interesting turn where the most realistic characters were female and the men got to be walking stereotypes for a change. The men are big, dumb, and love eating and fighting and showing their butts to people. (side note, this movie has more naked man butt than Magic Mike did. Naked, pale, Scottish old Man-butt.) I like that the men are drawn overly broad because it pays off in a big way during one of Merida's big character moments. While the clans have decided to shout and threaten war with each other, Merida needs to find a way to get them to work together. She speaks about how they are a new country, whose stories are not yet legend, but whose aliances were born of friendship and fighting together to drive out their common foe. Sound familiar? It's a call to reject the partisan ideas that have driven people apart and to mend the bonds that made us great. I like that she deliver's this to broadly drawn characters because every one of them is being a ridiculous man-baby. It reminds us that no matter what side of the political spectrum we fall on, when we only focus on what divides us and refuse to seek common ground, no one is in the right and everyone is being stupid.

On a final note, this movie contains some of the most breathtaking animation I've ever seen. Pixar continues to raise the bar for what is possible with computer animation. Merida's hair alone makes the movie a must see, but we also get gorgeous Scotish countryside and thrilling action set pieces...and man-butt.

8/10

DMCP # 64 - Toy Story 3

I'm going to go ahead and assume everyone has seen all the Toy Story movies as I talk about this one. Just a heads up.

So I've seen this movie 4-5 times now, and I've even intended to write about it before now. But I kept putting it off because it was a daunting task. This movie is packed with so many different themes that you could write several books about it, which is a lot to say about an animated movie about anthropomorphic toys. Seeing as I just reported on Toy Story 2, I'm gonna start with the continued existential crisis of toys. The movie opens with a brilliant view of playtime as it is experienced by Andy and the toys, filled with action, adventure, and lots of explosions. It is breathtaking. We then get to see another montage of our heroes in their heyday, having countless adventures with Andy. It sets up the stark contrast when we cut to the present, and the few surviving toys are making one last ditch attempt at being played with. You see the desperate loneliness as Woody and his friends realize that Andy and, by extension, the world as moved on and forgotten them. We have a group of characters facing the stark reality of retirement, of being told that they have no use anymore and must adjourn to the nursing home-I mean- attic. The fears Woody struggled with in the second movie have come to pass and he is trying to rally the troops that it won't be so bad, with little success.

All of the Toy Story movies use the fleeting nature of a toys existence as a meditation on our own morality, but the theme of impending death is almost oppressive in this one. The toys are forgotten, almost thrown away, tortured and imprisoned by a sadistic bear, and nearly incinerated. I think what makes this movie so special though is that none of this is needless. The ultimate message of the movie, I believe, is one of learning to let go and move on. The toys have reached the end of their relationship with Andy, but they can see no future without him. When they decide to go to the daycare center, they are making the choice almost out of spite. They just want someone, anyone to play with them. They want to move on, but they aren't really ready yet, and Woody never will be. Some people questioned how dark the movie gets during the landfill sequence, thinking it was unnecessarily bleak. I think it was as dark as it needed to be. Woody and the toys needed to come to an acceptance over their own mortality before they could move on to a new life. It important to note that Woody chooses to get into the box to live with Bonny at the end of the movie. Woody, who spent the whole movie fighting and struggling to bring everyone back to Andy, ultimately decides to leave Andy for a better life. After facing death with his friends, he is finally able to recognize that they deserve better than a life in the attic. He sees that they have value without Andy, and makes the choice to find them a new home where they will be happy and loved again. Because Woody's devotion is so strong, it takes a life changing act for him to change his ways. The movie has to get that dark in order to earn the ending that brought so many people to tears. The toys have a wonderful new home and a new lease on life, and Andy goes to college without fear of being picked on for bringing a stuffed cowboy with him. As someone who lived in a college dorm, I can tell you, the right choice was made.

You cannot complete any discussion of Toy Story 3 without at least mentioning Lotso. This sadistic, strawberry-scented, sociopath is one of Disney's greatest villains. He's a vision of where Woody was headed during the first movie. Although they eventually dealt with it in different ways, both Woody and Lotso were faced with the reality of being replaced, and neither of them took it well. If Woody had succeeded in knocking Buzz behind the desk in the first movie instead of out the window, we might see a world where Woody's increasing jealousy consumed him the way it does Lotso. Fortunately, Woody was given a chance to see the error of his ways and learn that he was loved all along. Lotso never had that chance. He truly loved Daisy, and, as far as he's concerned, she betrayed him and threw him to the curb. His pain went so deep that it broke him. The rest of his actions from that moment stem from his pain and fear of being alone. His fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Sunnyside daycare center where Lotso uses his twisted beliefs to enslave the entire facility. His evil has become so corrupted that even the idea of goodness causes him pain. This is why, even after Woody saves him, he still tries to have them killed. Woody's faith in Andy only further reminds Lotso of what he doesn't have and it makes him furious. Woody isn't consistent with the dark, cold world Lotso believes in, and if Woody is right, that means Lotso has been living a lie, and this is not acceptable. Therefore, Woody must die. It's the kind of twisted thinking you see in extremists of any kind. People who have developed a world view so strict and so narrow that any contradictions must be destroyed and descension crushed. What is so brilliant about Lotso's portrayal in the movie, is that we can still relate to him. We can identify with his pain, and his story becomes a cautionary tale more than just another story of a mad tyrant.

All of this happens and I haven't even mentioned that the movie is a take on a classic prison movie, complete with double crosses, an elaborate breakout plan, and the lifer who finally breaks, in this instance, he's an old fisher price play phone. It's a complete masterpiece, and Mr. Potato head gives us one of the greatest bits of physical comedy I have ever seen. The movie is equal parts touching, funny, and thrilling and it stands as one of the very best in the Pixar/Disney cannon.

10/10


On a side note. I wanted to recommend another take on this movie for anyone interested. Critic Tyler Smith of http://battleshippretension.com/ has is own podcast, "More Than One Lesson" which is an amazing podcast that discusses movies from a Christian perspective. I highly recommend checking out his episode about Toy Story 3, it's truly brilliant, no matter what your beliefs might be. So go to iTunes and check that out too.

DMCP #63 - Toy Story 2

Toy Story 2 is about the mid-life crisis of toys. Specifically, Woody has an accident that gets him put on the shelf. For a toy that doesn't age, it's a reminder that he won't necessarily last forever. He begins to have nightmares that he will be replaced, discarded and, ultimately forgotten. It is during this vulnerable time that he is stolen by Newman from Seinfeld. It turns out that Woody is actually a rare collectible toy from the 1950s. Woody suddenly finds a way out of his life of being forgotten. He can try to return to his family and make the most of the time he has left, or he can live a life behind glass in a museum, adored by many, but never being played with again. The movie plays with the ideas of how we deal with the direction life brings us, and if we should abandon it all for a chance at a glamorous, but less fulfilling life. Normally, a story about a midlife crisis involves a male character making an outrageous purchase or Kevin Spacey narrating his sad bathroom habits to us. Instead, we get a moving story of a character tempted to leave behind everything he loves because he fears his own mortality. He is worried about becoming obsolete, and his fears are compounded by the story of Jessie the cowgirl, who has already suffered this fate. Jessie's story pushes Woody to try to avoid her fate by leaving his life behind on his own terms. I think most if not all people have at least daydreamed about leaving everything behind and beginning a new life, but the movie demonstrates that this is only a hollow sort of life. Given the subject matter, this movie is relatively lacking in laughs. Buzz, Ham, Mr. Potato Head, and Rex to their best on the rescue mission, but the jokes are more cute that laugh out loud funny. All in all though, this is a pretty good movie.

7/10

100 by 30 - Book 9

Every Day is an Atheist Holiday! by Penn Jillette

Despite the title, the latest memoir by one half of Penn & Teller is more about his latest life adventures than a treatise on his lack of religion. It's funny, heartfelt, and contains the same measure of brilliance and self-deprecation that have made him such an engaging entertainer over the last 35 years. We get stories about missing his chance to meet Johnny Carson, the time some jackass tried to extort him, and his dislike of Clay Aiken on Celebrity Aprentice. He writes in a heartfelt, off the cuff sort of way, and you can see how his passions and pet peeves make him the unintentional jerk in many situations, and all for our benefit. My favorite example is the story of how he and his wife used IVF to concieve their first child. In the um *ready room*, the "inspirational images" he gets are seductive posters of three famous models/actresses, each of which he has made cry in public. The situation gets worse from there, but you can read the book for more details.

When Penn does talk about his family and atheism, he does so on a very personal level. He doesn't try to justify his beliefs to the whole world, but merely to show how they have given him a perspective and moral code to live by. In short, the universe is incredible and amazing without the presence of a deity. This world is enough. Morality is completely separate from religion. In various places, the bible condones rape, murder, slavery, abuse, geonocide, and religious intolerance. People have decided that these things are immoral without the help of a supreme being. To put it another way, when asked, "without god, what's to stop you from raping and murdering anyone you want?", He responds, "I have already raped and murdered everyone I want to, and that number is zero." For many atheists, true morality isn't refraining from causing harm because you might get caught, but refraining from harming others because it's the right thing to do. Morality is how we behave when we think no one is looking. And has far as a fear of death goes, his response is November 9, 1909. If you didn't exist then, and it doesn't scare you, then not existing 100 years from now shouldn't scare you either.

If nothing else, he does a good job of demystifying atheism for people who've never met an atheist and think they all want to just cause pain and choas wherever they go. In fact, most of the atheists I've met are exceedingly gentle, kind hearted souls. Ok, maybe not souls. But people, and good people should always be treasured, no matter what beliefs got them there. Besides, it's always good to be reminded that, no matter what your most cherished beliefs are, there is someone out there who thinks that they are the dumbest thing they have ever heard.

7/10

100 by 30 - Book 8*

Oh my an asterisk! What does it mean?! Well, I read a book, and I read a shorter one. I'll start with the short one first:

If I Ran the Dog Show by Tish Rabe - This was an Easter gift from my mother. It start the Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 & 2 as the run a dog show. Why did I get this? Because a) March was national book reading month, b) my dog is very smart (sometimes) c) Dr. Seuess + Dogs is always awesome, and d) so is my mom.
The idea was to read the book to my dog. He didn't like it very much. He couldn't eat it, snuggle it, or chase it, so he decided to see what the food lady was up to instead. Anyway, this is the actual book that counts

THE TAO OF POOH by Benjamin Hoff

This is a primer guide to Taoism as seen through the example of Winnie the Pooh. It's a fun, relatively light read, and I enjoyed it, but the conversations between the author and the characters gets a bit confused and forced at times. For those of you who don't know anything about taoism, the basic idea is to live your life by living in the present and in harmony with yourself and the world around you. In a nutshell: just be. It's about not trying to fit square pegs into round holes. The author uses Pooh as an example of the basic idea of the taoist philosophy. I really identified with the idea of learning not to struggle through life. I have learned this lesson repeatedly, but it's usually after working myself into a frenzy before I realize the answer was right in front of me, and it wasn't what I thought. It's really great advice and I'd recommend it to anyone really struggling with a problem. So if you find yourself banging your head against a wall over a situation or problem, I recommend stepping back for a bit and waiting to see if the solution comes to you. I'm not saying it works for everything, but it is how I found my wife, my job, our home, and our dog....... and my playstation. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
7/10

100 by 30 - Book 7

CANDY GIRL: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

So, remember when JUNO came out and everyone was all like, "Dude, a stripper wrote this movie!" and other people were all like, "See, strippers are people too!" Yeah, turns out that wasn't really the case. I mean, Diablo Cody did spend a year in her mid-twenties working in the sex industry, but she wasn't a lifer. As you learn in this book, she started stripping almost as a dare to herself, after 24 years of well behaved, catholic upbringing. This book reads more as a quarter-life crisis. The high point of youth is threatening to slide into the necessity of becoming a responsible adult and Diablo Cody is looking to find something wild to do while she still has the excuse of being young.

And boy does she throw her heart and soul into it. This book is funny, thoughtful, gross, and very well-written. Diablo takes us on an adventure through the darkest corners of the Twin Cities adult scene, and we willingly go along for the ride because we know she turns out all right in the end. Because she is doing this almost as a cultural experiment, we get to see all sides of this lifestyle both as participant and voyeur. She casually tells anectdotes of events that will turn your stomach, but you also see how the things that would shock someone who's never been to a strip club become positively boring and mundane once you become a part of the scene. And it doesn't come across as a coping mechanism, you really do start to understand how the business of titilation can become boring. Even to the patrons. At one point, a stripper scolds a disinterested crowd with, "Hello! I'm naked up here!" Like working in a cubical, but with more glitter and worse lighting.

I thought the book did a nice job of aknowledging some of the true awfulness ths type of work inspires, and Diablo is sure to point out the the experiences of the performers ranged from women who seem to really love the work and enjoy being successful at it, to the kinds of life experiences most associated with daytime talk shows and anything on the Lifetime network. The best thing about this book is that Diablo Cody rarely judges anyone. If she is going through her "giving peep-shows to strangers" phase, she's fairly accepting of the people she meets with much stranger disires and fantasies. By not judging the industry as a whole, you do get to see all of the moral ambiguity and complexity the world has to offer. This book is short and strikes the kind of care-free tone that will get you through the ooky bits. I would recommend it, but only if your the type of person who also likes something like South Park, because your funny bone and gag reflex will both get a workout.

8/10

DMCP # 62 - Dinosaur

Ok, I'm only gonna spend as much time on this as the screenwriters did on the script for this movie. Ooops, I'm over my time already. Quick rundown, this movie is bland with kind of cool visuals, but nothing of note in the character department. The lead character is voiced by the guy from Cutting Edge, and that should tell you everything you need to know. If you want a scarier dinosaur movie, watch Jurassic Park. If you want a better kids dinosaur movie, watch The Land Before Time. If you want to watch a better movie about dinosaurs slowly dying, watch the dinosaur part in Fantsia.

3/10

That said, I've now watched every theatrically released Disney animated feature, and I just have a few Pixar movies left to finish the project. Woohoo!

100 by 30 - Book 6

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

This is the final book in Kristin Cashore's 7 Kingdoms trilogy. It's a young adult fantasy series that inludes the books GRACELING, FIRE, and today's entry, BITTERBLUE. Each of the 3 books follows a young female protagonist learning to grow up in the dangerous world around her. GRACELING introduces us to the world of the 7 kingdoms where some people are born with special abilities called graces. In the first book, we meet Katsa, a young girl with the grace of killing. Book two, FIRE, introduces us to a strange land beyond the 7 Kingdoms, The Dells. Instead of graces, the Dells is a land of monsters, brightly colored animals that have special power over other creatures. It is there we meet FIRE, the last human monster in the world. Why am I bringing this up? Because while the first two books give us heroines with fantastic powers, the third book gives us our first (relatively) normal heroine, Queen Bitterblue. Before I get into spoilers, just know that all three books are fantastic, and you should go read them. They're even better than the Hunger Games.

(massive spoilers ahead for Graceling and Fire!!!)

At age 18, Bitterblue is tasked with finding a way to help her kingdom recover from 35 years of atrocities committed by her father, who had the Grace of telling lies that people beleved, meaning he has the power to control anyone who hears him. He can stab your mother in front of you and tell you she just committed suicide and you will believe him. That's about the nicest thing he ever did. So the book takes place 8 years after he is gone (I won't tell you how) and Bitterblue is starting to realize that the recovery in her kingdom is not going as well as she has been led to believe. Secrets and coverups and mysteries are everywhere, and the book delves into questions of how someone copes with awakening to the realization that horrible things have been done to them, or that they have been the perpetrators of horrific acts. The main characters are complex and well thought out, and, depsite the considerable drop in bloodshed compared to the first two books, this book has a much faster pace to it. You want to know the truth as bad at Bitterblue does, and you share her horror as you find out it was even worse than you can imagine. These books remind me of a young adult version of the Game of Thrones series, but with happy endings. Just as many horrific events take place, but it is mostly alluded too here (the evicerations and rape happen away from the main story). The geography is also much easier to figure out, which means you can enjoy the story without an atlas.

There are two themes that run through all three books. The first is the presense of a well-rounded female character. We have three main characters throughout these books and all three of them are extremely complex. Bitterblue begins the story in a bit of a daze, her advisors keep her doing the most boring paperwork they can find so that she doesn't learn about the intricasies of her Kingdom. It's not a flattering start. We have an incurious woman who doesn't take much of an interest in rulling her kingdom because it's 'boring.' Through the course of the book though, we get to see her transformation into a powerful, but compassionate ruler. And while, yes, there is some romance in all three books, it's never easy or stupid. When Bitterblue develops feelings for someone, it is a hindrance to her more than some wild fulfilling of her life's wish. It's much closer to the way love actually works. Turns out, women can like a boy, but also have more important things to deal with right now, like why people keep turning up dead.

The other huge theme in all three books is the presents of an abusive and controlling father figure. In Graceling, Katsa is used as an enforcer/assassin for a tyrant king; in Fire, her father used is ability to control minds to horrific ends; and in Bitterblue, the spector of the mad king poisons everything. Each character is trying to overcome horrific emotional abuse by a father character. The scars of this abuse are so well written that it seems like the author is writing from some first hand knowledge, though that is purely speculation on my part. In my opinion, one of the most horrifying aspects of the mad king is that we see some evidence that he actually cared about his daughter, that he wanted to build a world that she could inherit and follow his example. It's twisted and evil, but is also comes from a place of tenderness, and as such, causes more pain. It's so much easier to hate the abuser when you can forget that abuse and love aren't mutually exclusive. The king is evil, he murdered his wife in front of bitterblue and there is evidence that he wanted to do horrible things to his daughter, and to see that some part of him cared for her adds a messiness to the emotions in the book that Bitterblue has to deal with. In deed, a similar relationship exists in all three books. It's a hard thing to deal with, and gives the reader much more to think about than many adult oriented novels. These books contain many layered themes that older readers will pick up on that may be missed by younger ones. It's a hard balance to find and Kristin Cashore excels at it.

So if you are looking for a some really brilliant fantasy writing, with kick ass female leads, you should really just check out this whole series.

10/10

DMCP# 61 - Fantasia 2000

Fantasia 2000 was such a breath of fresh air. The movie opens with Leopold Stokowski's opening naration from the first Fantasia. The film brings in the original animation from the opening Tocatta in D Sequence, and as the sound waterfalls through the clouds and to the ground, the animation changes into a burst of color and we see a group of colorful triangles floating like butterflies. They fly around and are chased by an ominous cloud of black "bat" triangles. It's thrilling and gorgeous and a wonderful introduction to a new Fantasia. We then meet our first in a series of celebrity cameos as Steve Martin explains the original vision for Fantasia was an ever evolving work of art, with new and old pieces changing all the time. Then we get into the pieces:

1. Toccata in D reimagined- 8/10 - I already spoke about this above, but it really is a beautiful melding of the old and new (and a refreshing change from the revolting animation in Oliver and Company)

2. Pines of Rome - 7/10 - This isn't my favorite piece, but it is still a stunning, sureal vision of the artic ocean. We get flying whales, swimming birds, and some great shots of icebergs and the northern lights

3. Rhapsody in Blue - 11/10 - This is hands down my Favorite. It starts with that long clarinet note and one line on the screen which turns into the New York City skyline in the 1930's. We get to see a day in the life of several characters across the city: A young construction worker who wants to be a musician, a man looking for work, a rich husband with an overbearing wife, and a precocious young girl who doesn't quite fit in. It's thrilling, heartfelt, and all set to an all-time American classic.

4. Steadfast Tin Soldier - 9/10 - This Hans Christian Anderson tale uses an interesting mix of what looks like hand drawn and computer animation. The story is very sweet and a great reminder that a Jack-in-the-box is creepy and probably wants to steal your girlfriend and murder you. Because that's how they roll... Jerks.

5. Carnival of the animals - 9/10 - What happens when you give a flamingo a yo-yo? About 2 minutes of slapstick genius, that's what.

6. Sorcerer's Apprentice - 10/10 - I think they brought this one back mostly for the people whose attention span would never let them get through the 2+ hours of Fantasia. That's ok, because this piece is a classic

7. pomp and circumstance - 10/10 - Noah's Ark starring Donald and Daisy duck. Donald proves once again that he is the true talent and that Mickey has been riding his coattails for the last 80 years. It's funny and clever and so well done that you forget that this song is actually quite insufferable on its own.

8. The Firebird - 7/10 - And then we end on a lower note. This is a fine little piece about a spirit of nature and her struggle against the destructive and terrible Firebird. It's not that this is bad, but the imagery brings to mind to far superior Night on Bald Mountain from the original.

Overall, this is a much shorter Fantasia, but I think this might be a better length for this type of film. Between the two films, we get enough truly stunning and visionary animation that I hope that we get another installment someday, hopefully with installments featuring the Pixar studio and Studio Ghibli.

9/10

DMCP# 60 - Oliver and Company

It's a good thing I like Billy Joel, otherwise I'd have nothing good to say about this movie. First off, this is one of the rare Disney movies where the animation is offensively bad. Like, 80's cartoons bad. I think Gem and the Holograms has better animation than this movie. Because the animation is so bad, the voice actors have no help in creating memorable characters. It's really hard to make Dom Deluise, Bette Midler, and Cheech Marin boring, but they manage it here. As for the story, it's loosely based on Oliver Twist. A kitten named Oliver is given up for adoption, but nobody wants him, he finds a family with a gang of dog thieves, they leave him in a limo during a heist gone bad, and the little girl in the limo adopts him. The dogs rescue him and their human friend, Fagin, tries to ransom Oliver to repay a debt to the mob. Little girl gets kidnapped tying to save him, dogs come to the rescue and mob guy gets hit by a subway train. Everyone lives happily ever after, now you don't have to sit through this thing. In fact, the only good part of the movie is Billy Joel's song, which they sing twice. It's hard to believe that this is the last movie before The Little Mermaid. After sitting through Black Cauldron, Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver and Company, I have such a greater apreciation for the quality of The Little Mermaid. Even if I'm not the biggest fan, it reinvented the studio and returned it to the quality deserving of the Disney name. Now I'm going to go watch Fantasia 2000 because I need to see some quality animation stat.

2/10

DMCP# 59 - Bolt

I'm saving the Toy Story sequels for last. I want to make sure that this project ends on a high note. Bolt is not a high note. Bolt is the most insufferable kind of modern cartoon. It's hip, winking, and never even comes close to hitting on an honest moment during the entire 96 min runtime. Bolt is the star of a knockoff Inspector Gadget TV show. The show within a show intro is the closest this movie comes to being entertaining, but then we get to see behind the scenes of the show. For some stupid reason, the whole show is designed to fool the dog into thinking the show is real. They go to absurd lengths, which are played for laughs, but the jokes are strained and stupid. In fact the whole movie is working way to hard to fool a dog into thinking he's a superhero. I have a dog. He can be fooled with very little effort, it's called "The fake throw" and it works every time. Anyway, blah blah blah Bolt thinks his owner has been kidnapped and runs away to save her. Then we get wacky adventures with obnoxious characters and a recurring joke about styrofoam. From sidekick to star, the whole thing is strained and painfully unfunny (except for a few brief moments from the hamster) I think the biggest problem is that the movie hinges on the audience relating to John Travolta and Miley Cyrus. I'm not saying they can't be entertaining, but when was the last time John Travolta conveyed anything honest? Correct answer: never, he has never given a performance that showed honest human emotions. This means he can't play a dog. Dog's are fundamentally incapable of dishonesty, and that's why you can't have a movie with a fake actor trying to be a dog. It sucks. And Miley Cyrus is terrible too... but you already knew that.

3/10

DMCP# 58 - Brother Bear

Down to the final 8! for those of you playing along at home, this is what we have left

Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Brave
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
Bolt
Oliver & Company
and today's movie: Brother Bear.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, this is the second worst Disney movie, only beating Chicken Little (which I quite enjoyed). The main complaint is that this movie is mild and dull. I think they missed the part where a character dies pretty tragically in the first 20 minutes, then a relative goes out for revenge, kills a character's mom and ends up sort of dressed in her dead body. So yeah, nothing to see here. This movie also is Disney's third foray into telling a story with native american characters, and I think it's their best try. The film takes place in an Inuit tribe thousands of years ago, you can tell because there are wolly mamoths. The main advantage of this is we are far removed from any of the uncomfortable culture clashes seen in Peter Pan or Pocahontas. We are allowed to just sit back and enjoyed the adventure without being constantly reminded of generations of bigotry and genocide. The movie is a nice coming of age tale in which our hero, the youngest of three brothers, is assigned his spirit animal. He gets a bear and the emotion of love, and as you can imagine, he doesn't appreciate such a weak emotion being chosen to guide his life. Naturally, we all get to learn the true power of love by the end of the movie. It's a good movie, bolstered by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as two dumb moose brothers (or Bob and Doug McKenzie to you SCTV fans) The move does drag quite a bit though, and a lot of the jokes don't work (Joaquin Phoenix is not talented comedic actor), but the worst offender is the music. The songs in this movie are terrible, Phil Collins fails to replicate his success from Tarzan and instead gives us the bad, bland Phil Collins. Basically, it sounds like muzak versions of rejected Lion King songs. It brings the movie down from what was a pretty darn good movie to a simply adequete Disney film.

6/10

DMCP #57 - WALL-E

I love WALL-E! It's probably my favorite Pixar movie not named UP. To start with, this is a movie that makes Hello Dolly seem like a deep, soul shaking film. It sounds silly, and it gets played for laughs, but WALL-E the character is carrying the last memories of our culture, and I find it really endearing that he latches on to something so sweet. Wall-E is not just the last robot on earth, he is the last sentient being on the planet, the only one left to appreciate culture. I mean, I wish he liked Singin' in the Rain, but you could do worse than a young Michael Crawford. As far as the environmental message of the movie, I really think it's beside the point. The story is about someone who is all alone finding a family and a purpose, and the side story is about human beings learning to turn off their screens and interacting with each other and the world again. I'm not saying that the environmental message isn't there, I just think it's more of a plot device than a political statement. This movie also proves that,when Pixar is on its "A" game, they can tell amazing stories with almost no dialog. This movie also features my favorite Pixar short of all time, "Presto!" It's the funniest 6 minutes of physical comedy I have ever seen. So that's it for now, this movie is amazing. Watch it.

10/10

DMCP #56 - Meet the Robinsons

For every paint by numbers fairy tale Disney gets accused of making, there's a movie that reminds you just how crazy Disney can be. Think Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland or Meet the Robinsons. I'd try to explain the plot of Meet the Robinsons, but I don't want to write that much. Instead, I'd like to start with the moral lesson I learned: evil men don't wear bowler hats, men who wear bowler hats are evil because the hat is actually a sentient mind control robot hellbent on world domination, and she has access to a time machine. . . 'cuz evil bowler hats are girls. What's that you say? Sounds like this is a weird movie? You don't know the half of it, it also contains: Singing gangster frogs, meatball cannons, a squid butler, a superhero pizza delivery guy, a T-rex, and a boy named "Goob." It's wacky and silly and lets its freak flag fly. Meet the Robinsons shows the creativity that many Disney critics forget about. This movie is a celebration of creativity, imagination, and invention. It's a film built around a motto of Walt Disney himself: "Keep Moving Forward" Keep moving forward means learning from your past, but always looking to the future, always striving to be better than you were yesterday, and to never stop believing in your dreams. On the flip side we get to see, in a very comical way, what happens to a person who refuses to move forward in any way, and blames the world for all his problems. There are some nice themes running throughout the film, but it always stays firmly on the side of silly, silly fun. I think it's an overlooked little gem in the Disney canon, one that you should totally check out.

7/10

100 by 30 - Book 5

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

It's hard to beat a really good YA fiction book. The best ones balance adventure and danger without losing a youthful sense of wonder. This is a really good book. Like many books in the genre, it involves a young, normal teenager who's life gets turned upside down when he discovers an amazing secret. Unlike any book I have read before, the story was inspired and built around a series of remarkable vintage photographs. Ransom Riggs has collected them over the years and used them to build his story about a home for refugee children. The photos are facinating, and build a wonderful sense or eerieness to the book. I also really enjoyed the background of our protagonist, Jacob Portman. Unlike typical YA main characters, Jacob comes from a family that cares for him, and is very well off. He is not abused or neglected. In fact, the main cause of contention revolves around his elderly grandfather, a surviver of the holocaust who tells strange tales of the refugee home he stayed in during WWII. Jacob's grandfather is suffering from dementia and paranoia. It's a common problem, that affects many people, and gives us a very realistic point of entry to this tale. The book is clearly the beginning of a series, ending on a cliffhanger of sorts, and I look forward to the further adventures of Jacob and his new found friends.

8/10

DMCP # 55 - Pocahontas

This is a difficult movie to talk about because the historical realities weigh so heavily on the story being told. I expected to spend the whole movie shouting at Pocahontas to let her dad kill all the white guys. What I was surprised at, was the rather intricate themes and plotting that was mixed in with some troubling representations of race. The movie, while full of flaws, does give us a very adult story for a Disney movie. First, the movie doesn't shy away from racism. Slurs, although of a family friendly nature, are thrown around casually by both sides. The movie is a parable about fear and distrust, so both sides are commiting sins of ignorance and hate. As an isolated story, it works. It's a plee for understanding and dialog over violence. I also apreciated that Jon Smith does not play the white savior role. He comes to understand and support peace, but he never leads the Native Americans against the white people and becomes the best native american ever, (ahem, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, guy from Avatar).

The songs are written by the same team that would go on to write Wicked, so they're naturally ridiculously catchy. In true Disney fashion, the sidekick characters provide some wonderful silly comedy. It turns out the raccoons and dogs make ideal adversaries.

Ultimately, the movie is somewhat crushed under the wieght of history. It's hard to forget that what you are watching is the beginning of a continent-wide genocide. The spectre of death stiffles the jokes, and puts a damper on all of John Smith and Pocahontas' talk of adventure and destiny. Her actions only postpone a war, not prevent it. It's a valiant effort by Disney. They do their best to create a family friendly parable about racism and fear of the unknown, but in this case, the characters doing the right and honorable thing only delays the enevitable. It's very hard to enjoy a movie that forshadows the American Holocaust, no matter how catchy the songs are.

6/10

100 by 30 book 4

Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela S. Choi


Soooooo, this book is interesting. It's about a Chinese American Lawyer in San Francisco. She gets paid $275/hr but still lives with her parents who make her go on dates with gross man boys. Any boy will do, as long as he's Chinese. She hates feeling like a "hello kitty" A submissive Asian woman who won't stand up for herself. Luckily, her best friend from Catholic school happens to be a very successful hymen restoration surgeon/sociopath. Things get dark fast and stay there. Except our narrator is so darkly sarcastic and apathetic that we never really feel the weight of anything that happens. Horrifying things happen with such a casual attitude that you never feel any sense of danger. It's a quick read, and more entertaining than not, but I can't say I got anything more out of this than an insight into what it might be like to have to go on oppressive blind dates with lame, useless mama's boys. Which, being a heterosexual married male with a job, isn't very helpful.
6/10

100 by 30 - Book 3

Bossypants By Tina Fey


It's clear right from the beginning, Tina Fey's biggest strength is her ability to write. Holy cow, is this a great book. Having read a few other memoirs from some of my favorite comedians, Tina Fey is the first one to write a book that my be even funnier than she is. I was constantly laughing out loud, and the book captures her voice so well that I often felt like I wasn't reading it so much as she was telling it to me. She finds a great balance between letting us see glimpses of her personal life without giving up her privacy. She's willing to point our her flaws, but writes it in such a was that you forget that she just told you about the time she was a huge jerk to someone. She's self-depricating, but is self aware enough to know that many people find her to be quite beautiful. It's a book written from someone who grew up an awkward nerdy child (she supplies the photos to prove it) who is trying to reconcile her popularity with the lingering feelings of not being good enough. And you can tell that she hates false modesty, she's very careful to discuss her fears and flaws without ever asking us to go, "oh, Tina, it's ok. WE Love you! She doesn't need our validation. Oh, and it also contains some amazing insights into feminism and women in comedy. You get a sense that when she does mess up, it's usually not from a place of negativity, but in trying fight for something she believes in: like a sketch about vintage maxi pads.

Read this book.

100 by 30 - Book 2

Book #2

Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore

This is Christopher Moore's first vampire love story book. But it's also a Christopher Moore book, so we get to learn those things you've always wondered about vampires: do they go to the bathroom? Can they read Kerouac in the dark? And what happens when your vampire girlfriend is growing distant and the cute new girl at the Safeway wants to take you out for a cup of coffee? Can you just slip a vampire in the freezer for a day so you can figure things out? We also get to spend time with one of my favorite Moore recurring characters: a homeless man who is known as the Emperor of San Francisco, and his loyal dogs, Bummer and Lazarus. The Plot? C. Thomas Flood has moved to SF from Incontinence, Indiana to become a writer. He instead finds a night time job at the Safeway, where he meets Jody. She's just been turned into a Vampire; it's kind of a big change in her life. Also, there's the problem of the vampire who made her trying to frame her for murder. It's a very silly, if uneven book. It's clearly one of Moore's earlier efforts. I'd recommend it if you like his other work, but if you are reading Christopher Moore for the first time, I'd recommend starting with either THE STUPIDEST ANGEL or THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF, CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD PAL.

100 books before I'm 30- the beginning

So my wife said to me the other day,"I want to try to read 100 books before I turn 30." I thought, "that sounds like fun!" (writer pauses here to watch his dog be extremely silly. That was adorable!) So I decided to join in on the fun. Now, by request (and since I have a fancy new ergonomic keyboard o try out)I will be reporting on my quest. But first, the ground rules.

1. Read 100 books before my 30 birthday (Sept. 2014 for me, August for my wife. I get a few extra weeks, but in my defense, I read much slower than she does.)

2. Must read the whole book, so no scanning cookbooks or craft manuals

3. If you want to read a children's book, you must read 10 picture books for it to count as one whole book. (only 5 if you actually read it to a child) teen or young adult novels are ok.

4. For graphic novels, you must read three for it to count as 1 book.

5. No Magazines, work assignments, or home work

And have fun!

So, on to book Number 1.

#1 Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn

So this was a book I'd just gotten from the library when this whole thing started. It's not very good. I borrowed it because the Mass Effect game series contains some of the best Sci-Fi world-building and storytelling I have ever experienced. It's way cooler than Star Wars, so I was curious to see if the lead writer for the games could translate his world to the novel format. He couldn't. It reads like someone trying to include the mechanics of a video game in his story telling. I don't need game tactics advice if I'm reading a book. They're two different mediums. The story itself is a mildly interesting setup for the first game and introduces the origins of some tangential characters you'll meet later on. They run around the galaxy, they fight, stuff blows up, it ends. Don't waste you time.


Unofficially, I also finished rereading The Hobbit today. It doesn't count because I was already 3/4 of the way through the book when we started, but if I could have counted it, I would have. If you haven't read it in a while, or if you've only seen the old cartoon, you really should read it. There is so much to this book that I didn't remember, and so much that is alluded to that I want to know more about. I realized while reading it, that there is easily 3 movies worth of action happening in this story. So much happens in this book in such a short time, that I'm excited to see these moments get the time they deserve on screen. Most people think of the story ending after Smaug is killed. In many stories, the death of the dragon is the climax of the story. In the book, Smaug is dispatched in a short side-chapter and his death merely serves as the inciting incident that leads to the battle of the 5 armies. In fact, the power struggle and coruption that results when the dragon is defeated serves to gather the forces needed to save the whole north of Middle Earth from being destroyed (provded they don't kill each other first). The book starts has a delightful children's book, but by the time we reach the lonely mountain, the tone hass shifted to become a very adult story that fits in with the rest of the stories of Middle Earth. So Ignore that book above, and read The Hobbit instead.

Guns

One week ago, this nation experienced its 31st school shooting since Columbine. This time, the victims were mostly children under the age of ten. They were murdered in cold blood with an assault rifle and hand guns. Doctors and corroners could not acurately state how many times some of these children were shot. Children, at school, were shot too many times to count.

Today, the head of the national rifle association blamed movies and video games for the shooting, and called for armed police officers in EVERY school in America. I have to pause here, that last sentence is making me shake with rage....

Ok, I'm back. So Wayne LePierre thinks, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun." Well, ignoring that little bit of John Wayne nonsense, let's look at the amendment that gives us the right to have more guns than we can shake a stick at.

II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Ok, we need a well-regulated militia to protect the security of our free state. Well, surely this is in addition to the permanent standing army we've always had-



Section 8 (Powers of Congress) of the United States Constitution:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than TWO Years;


WHAT?! did I read that right? the US Constitution calls for a 2 year limit on having a free standing army. Armies, which used to be made up by calling up the state militias to form an army to defend our homeland. So, at the time the 2nd Amendment was made, we wanted to make sure that we would always have highly trained men who could be called upon to form an army in times of war. That makes sense, it's hard to defend yourself when the militias don't have guns to practice with. It also ensures that our military is always made up of volunteer citizens. If the very people who form the army love their country, and are made up of its people and not a privatized mercenery force, we will know that the army cannot be easily turned against its own citizens.

Let me slow that last bit down. One of the things I hear (and have agreed with until I grew a brain and tought about is for 5 minutes) is that we need our guns in case the goverment gets corrupted to the point that a military response is necessary to overthrough a tyrant. Now let's think about this: In the event of our country being taken over by an actual tyrant and not a freely elected leader who won the election according to our laws, (I'm talking to you Bush and Obama haters now. You may think they are evil bastards, but they both got elected fair and square.) you are asking me to believe that A) the extraordinary men and women who make up our military will freely turn against us without a second thought, and B) my best bet to take the country back is by following a bunch of weekend warriors with no real leadership stucture or coordination between units?!

Isn't that sort of the plot of Red Dawn? Wait you're right, in Red Dawn the military gets wiped out. And that's easy to do because we only have like one base in the whole world, and it's totally not locked or guarded or anything. Man! If only we had an intricate series of military installations placed all over the globe, allowing us to respond with deadly force within hours of any attack!! And it would be great if the people manning these bases were our own friends and relatives! Wait, they totally are!!

Whew! I was worried, you know, I guess I do feel safe knowing we have an army ready, willing and able to defend us. You know, I don't think I need barely trained citizens with a hero complex to have access to any weapons they want whenever they want. Such an arrangement would leave open the posibility that even dumber and more evil people would get a hold of them and murder children.

But how do we defend ourselves from bad guys on the streets? Here's where I see Wayne's point about violence in Movies and games, but not the way he thinks. I don't believe that watching an action movie makes you a violent person. I do think that watching too much violence in your entertainment can give you a warped sense of how the world works. For example, if the only images I ever see of a certain color of person are as violent psychos with a death wish, I may become wary of them. If, when I'm watching movies or playing a game, and the only bad guys I see rush at me guns blazing with no regard for their own safety, it's possible I might start to think that criminals are one demensional lunatics who exist only to kill and be killed and that they have no other motivations in life. So now I would live in a world where I think the only goal of all criminals is to murder me. I might get scared and want a gun to defend myself. And I need a gun now! I shoudn't have to have a waiting period! my family could be dead right now because you didn't give me a gun instantly!

I still don't think there is anything wrong with movies or video games, but I would advize a little moderation. Maybe don't only watch gritty action movies, and play gritty military shooters. Maybe watch a comedy once in a while, or play a silly game like plants vs. zombies. If you only watch one thing, then I think there might be cause for concern, but if you practice a little restraint once in a while or switch it up, I think you'll be just fine. I know I've killed a lot of zombies and alien hordes in my day, and last time I checked, I haven't viciously murded any children. And seeing the billions and billions of dollars spent on games and movies, I'd guess that's the case for 99.99% of humanity. Which leaves 0.01% of people who are murderous psychos. I find it laughable that media moves that number much. It's really hard to kill someone with a DVD. You still need access to a gun.


Switching gears for a minute, I wanted to share a quick story.
I was in Colorado a few years ago, and I went with a co-worker to his house to get some guns and go out to a shooting range. When his father realized I don't own any guns, he honestly asked me, "how do you defend yourself?" I thought, "defend myself from what? This is America! Millions of brave souls gave their lives so I wouldn't have to walk down the street with a gun, fearing for my life!" I don't understand how you can claim to live in a free society when you think a small arsenal is a requirement. That's insane.

Incidently, I did have a fabulous time at the shooting range. I get the appeal of shooting a real gun. It does make you feel powerful. But that power is an illusion, and a sickness. You don't control that power, it controls you. It has too. If you don't spend every second making sure the gun is safe, it can turn on you. I just read a story about a man who took is little boy with him to the gun store to sell some old guns. The store wouldn't buy them, so He brought them back out. The rifle went in the back of the truck, and he went to put the hand gun in the glove compartment when it discharged. He'd left a bullet in the chamber and now his son was dead. His son. Dead. Not by some mass-shooter, not by a violent criminal. By his loving father. This story broke my heart. From what I read, he sounded like a great dad, who loved his son, who wanted to share a love and respect for firearms with him. I can't imagine the anguish he feels, and I can't believe he wouldn't trade every gun he ever owned to get his boy back.

We don't need handguns, or military assault rifles in our society. Their continued existence and endless proliferation haven't made us any safer. For you hunters out there, keep your guns. I think it's great that we have a country large enough that we can still go out into the wilderness and hunt our food. But I don't think you need to have any gun that holds more than six shots. If you can't kill your prey in six shots, you don't deserve to eat it. I feel the same way about home defense. I haven't read too many stories about roving gangs of murderers prowling the United States, and I'm willing to bet, most people who break into a house, would rather not die. I'd say, you should be able to scare them off with a warning shot 99.9999% of the time. If that doesn't work, you've still got 5 shots to defend your home, or accidently murder a family member coming home late. The later seems far more likely. Guns aren't a deterrent to violence, they are an instrument of it. Their reason for being is to maim and kill. They serve no other purpose and it's time to say enough is enough. Get the guns off the streets, amend the 2nd amendment. We don't need militias anymore. We've proven again and again that we cannot handle the responsibility.

DMCP #53 & 54 - Emperor's New Groove, and Home on the Range

Double dose today my friends, up First, THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE.

I really like Emperor's New Groove.
It's not much of a movie by Disney standards, but it's filled with siliness and is a fun little ride. David Spade, John Goodman, and Eartha Kitt are all having a good time, but Partrick Warburton steals the movie as Kronk. In Fact, the whole movie takes it's cue from him. While the stakes are technically life and death, you never for an instant think anyone will come to any harm. They characters seem acutely aware that they are in a cartoon and aren't in any real danger. My favorite example of this is during the final fight scene when we get this gem of dialogue, "Hey, uh, I've been turned into a cow. Can I go home?" This is pure light-weight entertainment, in a nice way, like a good bag of chips.

7/10

HOME ON THE RANGE

This is the worst movie I have ever seen, and I've seen DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS PEOPLE. It's 75 minutes of pure torture. I just rewatched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended edition, and this felt twice as long. I take back every nice thing I ever said about Cuba Gooding Jr. He deserves to be in Daddy Day Camp. This movie is so bad I started to actively hate Judi Dench. Dame Judi Dench!!!

To spare those of you who haven't endured this rancid turd, it's about three cows trying to save their farm from foreclosure by collecting the bounty on a cattle thief, and cattle thief who steals cattle by, I shit you not, Yodeling. THE BAD GUY'S SECRET WEAPON IS YODELING!!!! Who authorized this!? Oh, and Cuba Gooding Jr plays a horse who, I guess is supposed to be a comedic character a la Donkey in Shrek, but is actually a third rate Chris Tucker. This movie is offensively substandard, far worse than any of Disney's straight to DVD sequels. I cannot find the words to express just how badly I want to scrub the inside of my brain with a toothbrush until the memory is gone. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

No Score, I don't know numbers small enough.

DMCP #52-65 Lilo & Stitch

Today I will be talking about Lilo & Stitch based on the novel "Push" by Saphire. This could be the darkest setup ever for a Disney movie. "Hey, what if we make a movie about a little orphan girl in Hawaii who is clinically depressed, has ADHD and is constantly getting in fights with her older sister, who is trying to raise her. Oh, then her sister can get in trouble with social services, and they we'll have the little girl make friends with a disneyfied xenomorph, and they'll cause so much mayhem, her sister will lose her job and their house can blow up! The kids'll love it!"
Given the basic premise, it's amazing that this movie works so well. Mixing Sci-Fi with a high stakes domestic drama should be a disaster, but somehow, it works. The movie uses a strange sense of humor that blends everything together. When Lilo is attempting to punish her friends with voodoo dolls, it somehow makes sense that her best friend should be a genetically engineered creature of distruction.

The story of Lilo and her sister Nani is a very honest look at a broken family that has been through unimaginable tradgedy. You get to see two people trying to find a way to make things work while feeling crushed by the reality of their situation. It is in these moments of honesty that we get some of the best scenes in the movie.

As a total contrast, we get to see goofy alien creatures attempt to recapture the escaped Stitch. The fish our of water alien duo add a nice dash of silliness and also causes Stitch to stay with Lilo to evade capture. It works more often than not, but it is the weakest part of the film. In fact, apart from Stitch, most of the Alien characters are very generic and boring, thankfully we only see them in the prologue and at the end of the movie. One other charcter that needs to be recognized is Ving Rhames as the social worker, Cobra Bubbles. Ridiculous name aside, he doe a great job of not letting the social worker be a villain. He is actually looking out for the best interests of Lilo and Nani, and given the events of the movie, you can't really blame him for his actions.

The core of the movie revolves around the idea of 'Ohana. As we are told throughout the movie, 'Ohana, means family; and that no one gets left behind or forgotten. It is really a beautiful sentiment that the movie drives home. The central message is that families aren't always happy or perfect, but they should always stick together. As Stitch points out at the end of the movie, "This is my family. I Found it. It's little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good." It's a great message for Disney to send out, and one that is repeated over and over again in their films. It's what makes people love these movies so much. They always try to tell you that outsiders are valuable and as deserving of love as anyone else, and that a family can take many shapes. They maybe little and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good

8.5/10

DMCP - Wreck-It Ralph

It's been awhile, so let's get right to it.

If you haven't seen Wreck-It Ralph yet, go. Right now. It's a great film and loaded with enough eye candy to give you a tooth ache.

The story is about the existential crisis that Ralph has after spending 30 years doing a job no one respects. What do you do when you provide a crucial service that makes everyone hate you? Ralph represents anyone who's ever felt that their job has kept them from gaining respect in their community. Garbagemen, customer service reps, census workers, tax collectors, etc. If you've held a job like this, you can understand Ralph's depression. To the other characters in his game, he is an untouchable, a worthless oaf. It is only when he leaves on a desparate mission to become a hero that the other characters see his value.

In one of the worlds Ralph travels to, we get to meet Vanelopee Von Schweetz, an outcast in her own game for being a glitch. Like Ralph, Everyone sees her as a mistake to be ignored or bullied. Ralph forms a friendship with Vanelopee and tries to help her prove her worth, and learns what it means to be a hero in the process.

Without getting into spoilers, the movie also does a nice job dealing with effects of letting yourself be consumed by jealousy over another's success. This Character goes to sadistic extremes to stay relevent, denying others their opportunity for success. It's quite the cautionary tale when you see just how much distruction and pain this jealousy causes.

But enough about the serious stuff. This movie is also gorgeous. The various game worlds are rendered beatifully, especially Sugar Rush. If you've never played a video game, or if you've been playing them your whole life, I defy you to come out of this movie not wishing this was a real game. This Candyland meets MarioKart world is the setting for the best action sequences and visual delights in the movie. In the words of Tina Fey, "I want to go to there."

For Video game fans, we get to see games treated with respect. So often, video games are portrayed as little more than toys for kids and losers. In Wreck-It Ralph, you instead get to see games as exciting, immersive worlds worth spending time in. The movie celebrates the history of games with cameos of characters we've known for over 30 years. Older gamers will recognize the characters they grew up with, while younger gamers will recognize some of these characters as the corporate mascots they have become.

Kudos goes to John C. Reily as Ralph and Sarah Silverman as Vanelopee. They have created fully demensional characters that you can't help but fall in love with. I also want to give props to Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly!) for doing an amazing homage to Ed Wynn as the crazy ruler of the Surgar Rush kingdom. It's awesome.

So go see Wreck-It Ralph.
9/10

Big Trouble in Little China - John Carpenter's Masterpiece

So, those of you who've known me for awhile may be aware that Big Trouble in Little China is one of my favorite movies of all time. I've probably seen it over 50 times easily, and I don't understand why this isn't the John Carpenter movie everyone talks about instead of Halloween. It's brilliant. Allow me to Explain.


1. Best portrayals of Asian- Americans in 80's cinema? - In the same decade that Sixteen Candles gave us Long Duck Dong, John Carpenter gave us a movie that, while certainly having fun with Chinese Mythology, also gives us a much better view of Asians than we'd previously seen. Yes, there's chinese magic and Kung Fu. The film is very clearly aiming for B-movie siliness (The director's commentary with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell confirms this)but, within that context we get Characters like Uncle Chu and Eddie. They both work at Wang Chi's Restaurant, and niether of them knows kung fu or magic. Eddie is an everyman. He's easy going, shy around the ladies, and is the kind of guy you'd love to be friends with. Uncle Chu is a grandfatherly type who knows the old chinese legends the same way any other elderly relative might know the folk stories of their culture.

The movie also has a lot of fun directly challenging stereotypes. Most of the Asian Actors speak perfect English, know how to drive, and are sexual beings. Egg Shen is a very capable bus driver (he successfully dodges the Pork Chop Express as it barrels at him going the wrong way on a one way street). The movie's plot revolves around Wang Chi's quest to rescue his fiancee. Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the hero and romantic lead of the story. He's the one who gets the girl in the end, and gets to make out with her. Quick, How many American movies can you name where the hero is an Asian Male who wins the love of his girl and they get to kiss at the end and live happily ever after? I can't think of any.

2. Kurt Russell's Jack Burton - This is my Favorite Kurt Russell performance of all time. He is the Star of the movie, but not the hero. He is setup in the prologue scene with Victor Wong to be a great man, then we quickly cut to a dirty truck driver, sloppily eating a sandwich as he pontificates about his greatness over his CB radio. This is 1986, the time of Rambo and Schwarzenegger and Indiana Jones. Jack Burton is a schlub. He's dirty, gross, rude, and has the casual arrogance and racism of an 80's All-American male. He fails to do a single thing right in the whole movie until the very end. And even then, his lone act of competence was "all in the reflexes." Jack's presence in the film serves at every turn to elevate the dignity and reality of the other Characters. His failures serve to contrast the lives the Asian Characters. Uncle Chu is a Chef, Eddie is a Matre D', Wang owns his own restaurant, and Egg Shen is a bus driver who also happens to own a whole block of real estate in San Francisco's China Town. These are very successful people, living out the American dream, and Jack Burton is just along for the ride. The humor in the movie is in his failure to understand that he is not in control. He assumes he should know what's going on. He's a white male in America. How could he be out of his depth? But he is. His one positive trait is his loyalty to his friend Wang Chi. When he's not trying deal with the magic and silliness of the movie, Jack treats Wang as his equal, and the movie doesn't draw attention to it. They are friends, they respect each other, and not much is said about it. It's the casualness of this friendship that really stands out when you look at other buddy friendships involving asian characters. Usually, the American (Chris Tucker, Owen Wilson, or whoever else is playing oposite Jackie Chan) has to grow to respect the Asian Character throughout the course of the film, and the Asian actor (usually Jackie Chan) is playing a variation on the noble savage stereotype. Not so here, Wang is already a successful, charming American bussiness owner when we meet him, and Jack is his sidekick. Wang likes Jack for his boistrous, outspoken nature, and Jack admires Wang's success. The race of the characters only matter because of the plot.

3. The plot. This movie is a great example of building a crazy story from the simplest beginning. Jack drives into Chinatown to make a delivery and stays for a night of gambling. Wang Chi, nervous about picking his fiancee up at the airport, joins the party. In the morning, Jack has won big and Wang wants to make a double or nothing bet and loses. Jack, ever the classy guy, gives wang a lift to the airport so he can make sure he gets his money. Then there's a kidnapping, kung fu battles, magic, mystical warriors, ghosts, monsters, and a young Kim Catrall. It goes to so many crazy places, but always maintains a sense of fun. I can't understand watching this movie without a smile on your face. The fights are awesomely staged and shot. (James Lew, the fight choreographer, would go on to work with pretty much every martial arts star ever) The alley way stand off between the Wing Kong and Chang Sings followed by the Arrival of the Three Storms is still one of my favorite actions scenes. It's a combination of martial arts and back alley brawling, all shot in a way that you can clearly follow the action, and the Three Storms have my vote for best villain entrance. I'd try to describe it, but it sounds way less cool in print.

4. Cast and Characters - First of all, this cast is amazing. If you love action movies, especially martial arts movies, you will spend about every five minutes going, "Hey, it's that guy! From that thing!" It's a who's who of Asian Character actors, stunt men and choreographers. James Hong, Victor Wong, James Lew, Donald Li, Chao Li Chi, Al Leoung, and many others. James Hong in particular gives an inspired performance as the villain Lo Pan. Hong effortlessly shifts from creepy to crazy to funny all while maintaining the integrety of the character. His fight with Egg Shen is the most WTF moment in the film, in a good way. It's just Awesome.

5. WTF? Lastly, this movie is filled with WTF moments that showcase just how much fun the movie is. Eyeball Monsters, Videogame battles, exploding men, and Kate Burton delivering my favorite line of ridiculous exposition ever with a straight face. "You mean THE David Lo Pan, the chairman of the national orient bank and the owner of the Wing Cong import export trading company? But who's so reclusive, that nobody's even laid eyes on the guy in years?!" Yes, that David Lo Pan.


Thanks for reading. Now I have room in my brain for a new post.