Thursday, March 24, 2011

Look At My Briefs -- 3/24/11

Spring has sprung, as they say, unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere but, as we in the North know, those people don't matter and no more thought should be given to them. But I kid you Southerners. I kid because I love. To show you my love, here is another edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

I'm sort of, kind of, almost really looking forward to seeing Sucker Punch. I hate to get hopes and expectations up but articles like this one have been doing just that. Oh, I don't care too much that director Zach Snyder works so closely with his wife. It's statements like this one that have peaked my interest.
"It's pretty fearless," said Oscar Isaac, who plays the villain Blue in a beard and eyeshadow. "In the sense that he is unashamedly putting everything that he thinks is cool, every idea that he's been wanting to see in a film — he puts it up there and does it very boldly."
Snyder has done the impossible. He's taken two famous graphic novels, both of which had a reputation of being unfilmable, and made them into two pretty good movies with remarkable visual imagination that were also quite profitable. This means he now has the power to do what he wants. It also means he's about due for an epic failure that everyone knew was coming but no one had the guts to stop him. Hopefully, that will be his next movie and my weekend won't be ruined when I see Sucker Punch.

Speaking of Zach Snyder, I'm still opposed to a new Superman movie and even more so now that Viggo Mortensen won't be playing Zod. Still, I just got done singing Snyder's praises and describing him as a guy who's pulled off unlikely feats so maybe...for the next part, please refer to the above paragraph when I talked about hating to raise my hopes and expectations.

And since I've raised the subject, here's something else that's unfilmable. This is obvious to anyone who ever read the book as well as anyone who ever saw the two failed attempts to bring it to the screen. Since Zach Snyder, the guy who films the unfilmable, isn't involved, the only reaction to the news of the project's apparent death is GOOD!

Who will be the one to stop this madness?

So, Captain America. He was never my favorite superhero. Thinking back, I wouldn't say he was even in the top ten. If I was short on money and had to choose which comic book to skip that week, he was always the one I'd choose. Well, him and Iron Man. The good news here is that I loved the movie adaptation of Iron Man so I see no reason not to raise my hopes and expectations to previously unimaginable heights and assume that the new Captain America movie coming out this summer will be the greatest movie ever in the history of anything.

I generally shy away from tributes to deceased movie stars so I'll let what people like Roger Ebert and many others have written about Elizabeth Taylor's death stand without my added voice. I will point out how events like this always bring out the worst in what were already really awful people. People like National Review's Mona Charen who decided the best way to pay tribute to Dame Elizabeth was to call her fat and then claim her lifestyle was proof and vindication of Mona Charen's beliefs and worldview. Luckily, I don't think I have to explain, at least not to you all, how absotively stupid it looks to hold up a woman who was divorced multiple times as evidence of the sheer wonderful awesomeness of marriage. I can only assume she's trying to lay the groundwork now to excuse the possible candidacy of Newt Gingrich who is currently on his third marriage.

One of the absolute worst of all the contest/reality shows out there is Dancing With The Stars, the show in which washed up athletes, slutty reality show stars and actors whose current level of fame is about on the same level as the cast of Riptide* come together to shake their good stuff to the delight of the sad, sick thing called the majority of the television audience. Thus, I take it as a sign of hope that this year's ratings, at least for the premiere, were down 20% from last year. Thanks a lot, America. Take the rest of the week off.

*Google it.

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