2011 In Review : The Films (pt 1)

 
Over all it was a bit of strange year for films, devastating US economic downturns made it the poorest box office season since 1996. A bit more of a handful managed to peek out past a crowd of clambering comic book adaptions, dueling robots and cliche-ridden rom-coms.

   Here is a brief look back at a few of our favorite films of 2011 (listed in no particular order).

A Remake, A Reboot and A Prequel: 3 films that worked despite themselves.

      When it comes to the the genres of science-fiction and horror Hollywood churns them out in xerox fashion, waits a few years and then churns out more sequels, prequels, and remakes.  2011 had a glut of these (though less than some years) in-between bouts of superhero flicks of varying degrees of success.
    Much to this writer's surprise three genre films stuck out defying the conventions of the modern recycling trend. While none best their source material, each in their own way crafts their tales with surprising results- one even headed for the Academy Awards in what could be a groundbreaking nomination, but more on that later.
     All three had respected actors, not slumming, but elevating the material to quality genre fair; smart, relevant scripts and surprisingly nifty FX. One of the batch traded in dark humor as much as bloody horror, one went for the gore and psychological nihilism and the third effortlessly thrilled while provoking a discussion about research, cruelty, animal rights, evolution and freedom. 


Check out the list and why after the jump

Jack the Giant Killer

     Bryan Singer returns (this time without sympathetic Nazis)  with a remake of the Ray Harryhausen FX classic Jack the Giant Killer . Singer directs the always captivating Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man, About A Boy, BBC's SKINS) as Jack as he tries to rescue a lost princess ( Eleanor Tomlinson)   from the rampaging Giant of the Cloud Kingdom atop the iconic bean stalk . Co-Starring Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Warwick Davis, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, Ewan Bremner and Eddie Marsan, making this Singer's "British" film. Ever since Hollywood realized fairy tales fell within the public domain and outside of Marvel and Christopher Nolan no one is getting superhero films right (DC -I'm looking you!) there have been a glut of productions for both the big and small screen. (Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Red Riding Hood)  .


Check out the first look after the jump...

It's (not just) A Man's World: defunkt Theatre takes on machismo, Mamet, and more in "Glengarry Glen Ross"

    David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winner Glengarry Glen Ross, perhaps not the first play that jumps to mind when one thinks of the Drammy award-winning work being staged at defunkt Theatre, know for such adventurous works as Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis and Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life.  But a second look at Mamet's heightened dialogue one realizes the masterful wordsmanship is as experimental and stylized as any deconstructed modern masterpiece.  However not one to simply trot out Mamet's exploration of masculine cruelty under the gun of economics, defunkt has brilliantly cast two pivotal roles, Richard "Ricky" Roma and Shelley "The  Machine " Levene with two phenomenal actresses-(Grace Carter and Lori Sue Hoffman in their return to the stage!)  It's a testament to defunkt's fearlessness and focus and not stunt casting. 

Mattachine Social- "Risers"

While Mattachine Social ready their full length proper album Our Heroes Bleed Glitter, check out the rockier track"Risers" as a teaser, with its silent-era horror film inspired video.

Avengers

We finally get a proper teaser from the LONG awaited much ballyhooed Avengers film, directed by none other than Joss Whedon (Firefly/Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Toy Story). Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain America Wasp & Ant-man, Scarlett Witch and Vision (oh wait they cut those guys, founding members be damned.....)

Anyhooooo,  Tom Hiddleston (swoon) returns as somewhat villainous alien/god of mischief Loki forcing Marvels' mighty Avengers to finally assemble.

Glee gets Sesame Street Parody

While Burt and Ernie might not be out gay Muppets (as opposed to Saddler and Waldorff who CLEARLY are) nothing is much gayer than FOX's hit musical trainwreck hit show GLEE about the lives, loves, and showtunes at McKinley High in Lima, Ohio (or rather on soundstages and in the mind of out creator Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Running With Scissors, American Horror Story). Well like sooo many amazing popular shows that are really not appropriate for toddlers like Law & Order:SVU, Twin Peaks, and True Blood GLEE gets their own parody for the diaper set on the greatest block ever, Sesame Street!


Now these are some gay Muppets.

Go Fuck Yourself Dave Franco.

I love the Franco brothers!

Go F*ck Yourself with Dave Franco from Dave Franco

Zac Efron whips it out (NSFW)

I am fairly immune to the supposed charms of one, Zac Efron. Too old to care about High School Musical and too young to be into him as jail bait, I've been aware of Efron as an "actor" for some time just in general tabloid pop culture terms and a hit or miss turn in the musical film version of Hairspray...

but......

I am more aware that like all squeaky clean Disney teens we love it when they self-destruct (Brittany shaving her head anyone?????)   or get their phones hacked and people circulate their cock shots. I'm still meh, about him myself but feel free to enjoy naked Zack Efron after the jump

Björk-Biophilia

    For Iceland's highest profile artist the universe and science serve as the musical jumping off point for her 7th album (not counting Telegram, Selma Songs and Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack). The title Biophilia refers to the love of all living things and this scientific obsession fuels Björk's experimental approach on tracks like "Thunderbolt", which uses Tesla coils for beats. Much of the album was recorded with custom built instruments such as bespoke pipe organ that runs on an iPad and a pendulum that harnesses the earth’s gravitational pull to create bass lines that fall like gravity on "Moon". Viral love songs (Virus), atomic structures and geological crystals (Crystalline) for the context of the lyrics and if this all sounds a bit weird, well it is.


And  it's Björk.


 And it's one of the best records of the year, easily. 

BAD WOLF: " The Wedding of River Song" or GRIPES, GRIPES EVERYWHERE.

 Dear Whovians,

What’s the term for a simultaneous feeling of excitement and disappointment? I’m left with whatever it is after having stewed over what I'd write for my review of “The Wedding of River Song”. Moffat’s ability to leave the audience wanting more is not to be underestimated. So too is his ability to explore the motivation and real elements of a character, a talent I feel has been neglected for the major part of series six. Moffat has always been a writer renowned for his ability to balance multiple story elements at once, and while most times this is done as well as most would imagine it could be I feel like a major element of the current Doctor Who arc has been left unattended and overlooked. The focus of the second half of this series was the death of the Doctor. Who kills him? How and why? IAs interesting and engaging as those questions were, I felt like some other important elements were ignored. We had an excellent series halfway ender in “A Good Man Goes to War”. Plenty of fun elements introduced, including The Doctor’s effect on his travelling companions and the birth of Amy and Rory’s baby.

Upon the return of the series I expected to join the crew travelling through time and space and hunting down the captured child and the organization behind it. Instead we got a bunch of stand-alone adventure episodes in which the writing seemed incongruent and unreasonable. Instead of looking for Melody/River it seemed like they tried sweeping the storyline under the rug by saying, “Oh she’ll be okay because we know she’s River”, which is not only poor form writing wise, but it speaks very negatively of Amy and Rory’s characters and makes them look like bum parents, so much so that it nearly un-writes everything we grew to know and love from the characters introduced in series 5. As a mother is Amy Pond as strong a character as the writing would have us believe if we see her acting how we do? For god’s sake Amy had a child and lost it to a bunch of cult members who want to turn it into a killing machine. If Amy can rip time apart to get back to Rory where is that same will to reunite with her lost and very much in danger daughter? 

 The sleep of the emotionally un-attatched...

There isn’t even any attempt to explain it. We see the same Amy whine and complain about 30 years of waiting for Rory and the Doctor in “The Girl Who Waited” and while that episode was pretty amazing it still overlooked the fact that poor Rory waited two thousand years for her and the Doctor. It’s either very poor form or Moffat’s got something planned, but with the season ending on somewhat of a ‘resolution’ to the mystery of River and her origins I’m puzzled and concerned as to how they’ll bring these ideas up again and fix the huge hole left in the plot. Perhaps I’m still ragging on the story too soon and Moffat will wrap the loose ends up later, but what I expected and what I got were very different. Yes the Amy and The Doctor schtick is cute but you can’t try to make dynamic plot changes without changing the characters involved, it’s just careless.

Alternate title for the series six finale.

Now let’s talk about the things I enjoyed about the episode: The question, the Fall of the Eleventh. Exciting prophecies and story lines being set up for the next series, a very clever and satisfying hook for Moffat to tie in the longest running question in the Who universe to entice us to keep watching. Learning more about the Doctor’s origins will definitely keep me coming back every Saturday rabid with anticipation, however these hooks don’t mean much if Moffat does not address the obvious flaws. It’s tricky to predict what’ll happen but with the 50^th anniversary approaching there’s no way Moffat doesn’t have a few tricks up his sleeve. So here’s my wish list: First and foremost, a reasonable resolution to the Doctor’s conscience and to the River Song/Ponds story. To see Jack Harkness and/or Torchwood involved in the Moffat/Matt Smith story, and perhaps an appearance from a past Doctor or Doctors. Even though I’m not fully satisfied with this series’ end I have learned that with Moffat all good things come to those who wait, and wait I shall, like Amy Pond for her raggedy Doctor, and so shall you. Hopefully I’ll be back here writing reviews for the next series. In the mean time I might be popping in and out to give you the scoop this or that. Till then, have a great Fall and don't blink. 

 

Happy Halloween.

-ZC

BAD WOLF: "Closing Time"

Hello again Whovians,

                  The time is almost upon us and yet another episode of Doctor Who has made me break down and regenerate into the form of a crying ‘Stormageddon” and question all the theories I’ve formed about the finale. For ‘Closing Time’ we rejoin a somber Red Bowtie Doctor visiting Craig (from ‘The Lodger” in series five) on a ‘pop-in-pop-out’ visit that turns into a hilarious fan-service adventure full of dead Cybermen and amazing jokes concerning the nature of Craig and the Doctor’s relationship. Which despite all the fanfic on the internet, remains a solid and definitive friendship in canon.  Just friendship.  Sure. 

You're not fooling anyone boys.

                   A huge logistical problem I noticed in this episode: The Doctor claims that tomorrow he’s going to face his death. Anyone who’s seen the episode knows where I’m going with this. We’re being slowly lead to the series six intro episode ‘The Impossible Astronaut” in which, a Doctor claiming to be 200 years older invites the Pond-Williams family to attend his death at Lake Silencio, Utah via a few TARDIS blue envelopes. This is verified easily by the envelopes of the same color the Doctor borrows from Craig before his departure to the series finale.  This means the Series six intro was a preview of the future we were allowed to view long before it’s actual occurrence, and tells me that within this season and perhaps within Moffat’s run as head writer, that we’ve been viewing the series from a non-linear perspective.  This ALSO means that between “The God Complex” and “Closing Time” there is a span of at least 200 years for this specific Doctor. This allows for a hole in my Ganger Doctor theory from last week. I’ve been theorizing under the assumption that the story was linear which is admittedly a very big mistake for someone who writes reviews of a show about time travel.  

My bad...

                        If we've been constantly switching between immediate-post IA Doctor and near death future Doctor there is no necessity for either to be gangers, just the same old timey-wimey stuff that time travel necessitates. Meaning instead my idea that one Doctor was locked up or busy somewhere and that one was travelling around in the TARDIS, they both could exist and have different habits because one is an older version. I know it’s heavy and now I’ve begun to ramble. Either way I still feel confident that I got something right. That the Doctor has been visiting planets and destinations based on the knowledge he has of his own death and his desire to find a way to avoid it… 

 From the fanatic’s perspective of the acting this episode was great. Matt Smith has truly grown into his role as the Doctor and a loveable one at that. Even as he’s practically mourning his own death he’s laughing at toddler’s books and making silly off the cuff jokes and it all feels as genuine as saving your human friend from cyborgs below a mall really can. The mood this Saturday was melancholy and resembled that of the calm before the storm. So many things to wonder about. Why the eyepatches? How are the "The Silence" and those scary creatures they roll with still operating? What is the question that will make the Silence fall? I’m nervous, and I trust Moffat’s writing, but based on the few spoilers I have seen for “The Wedding of River Song” Things are about to take a turn for the wibbly-wobbly boys and girls. So hold on to your Stetsons and Fez’s and I’ll see you next week.

Goodbye Sweetie

-Zach C.

BAD WOLF: "The God Complex"

POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING

Hello world!

I realize It’s a bit late in the season to start reviewing episodes but let’s chalk that up to timey-wimey hang ups. My name is Zach and I’m a budding Whovian/Matt Smith enthusiast. From here on out I’ll be hopping in the TARDIS and dropping by here weekly to give you my take on the latest episode of Doctor Who and swoon my bow-tie off at the good Doctor.

Too busy reading Diggin' to China to notice the Minotaur behind them.

Today’s episode, “The God Complex” was perhaps the greatest and most telling episode of series six part two, in my humble opinion. It seems that the ever annoying and troll heavy Moffat-helmed arc is finally reaching some semblance of reason and explanation. The theme of subjective reality in series six is all at once silently present and obnoxious as every episode so far seems to touch on it. Clones, dream worlds, alternate time streams overlapping, digital realities. Not to mention the prevalent symbolism of mirrors, reflection and eyes. In “The God Complex” the Doctor and his companions become trapped in a very The Shining style space hotel where we are faced with yet another alternate reality and clues to a more silent plot point that has been bubbling under the surface since series six’s return. Or what I like to call my “Shamalan-Nolan Theory”.

You unbreakable bastard.

The possibility of a duplicate Doctor was introduced in “The Almost People” and almost immediately debunked as the episode closes with the building collapsing and the clone Doctor erupting into marshmallow-fluff. But who’s to say another wasn’t created? All the Doctor had to do was touch it once for it to copy him, it's probable that it could happen again. This episode’s Doctor dresses differently; he also eats apples, a food he expressed a great distaste for in his premiere episode, “The Eleventh Hour”. The shot of his shoes, which was used frequently in the clone episode to help the audience tell the Doctors apart, is also used quite a bit this week, which seemed ominous enough. In my opinion, Moffat is teasing us with what could potentially be huge hints at what I’ve been fearing all along. That the Doctor and possibly the companions we’re viewing since series six’s return are not genuine. (I.E. The Shamalan-Nolan Theory).

Just remember that I called it when the series finale rolls around.

As far as the acting goes almost the entire cast was on their A-game. The fabulous Matt Smith delivers a performance akin to his predecessor David Tennant and with a rivaling swagger and a similar charm. Due in part to the writing for this episode by Toby Whithouse (“The Vampires of Venice”) that allowed for a heartfelt delivery in which the Doctor is the most meta of superheroes by being the furthest thing from one. Rita, a guest character played by Amara Karen (also Rita in The Darjeeling Limited) played a spectacularly lovable character but fell victim to the same fate as many other of the Doctor’s one episode crushes. Arthur Darvill as always is brilliant as Rory Williams, but it was Karen Gillian who disappointed me the most. Perhaps I’m just getting bored of her, and based on the script of the episode so too, perhaps, is the Doctor. Two points each this week for our leading men and none for Gretchen Wieners, er- Karen Gillian.

Why should the Last Centurion get to stomp around while the rest of us
try not to get smooshed by his big, stupid feet??

 That's all for now fellow Whovians; see you next week!
-Zach C

Overzealous?

When explaining polyamory to people who may not have heard of it before or to people who don't understand how it works, I'm afraid it is all too easy to fall into that trap that plagues members of all groups of humans.  That trap involves the logic of "my brand of X is better than your brand of X."  Substitute anything for X--clothing, cars, politics, religions, even types of relationships.  I think it is human nature to think that whatever group you may be in is exceptional over other groups.  So, in explaining what polyamory is and how it works, it is very easy for me to come across as a person who thinks her brand of relationship is better than yours.

This phenomenon is alive and well in poly groups, too.   I see it all the time.  Poly people scoffing at jealous people, putting down the idea of monogamy as being impractical, and for all intents and purposes acting superior.  I've seen monogamists do the same about polyamorists and open relationships, too.

If I ever get like that, please smack me upside my head. It is not my intent to say monogamy is bad or that monogamy is not a viable relationship style or that monogamy stinks.  Those things may be for me, but I respect other people's rights to live their lives in whatever manner suits them.

However, when I go on and on about polyamory in a good way and how monogamy can be so unfulfilling in comparison and talk about all the problems with it, it makes it seem like I am decidedly anti-monogamous and extremely biased. 

Honestly, my goal is not to convert all the masses to polyamory.  Monogamy works for many people.  If people like being monogamous and they want to remain so, I say go to.  Have fun!  Don't let me discourage you.  I respect your right to choose whatever relationship style works for you. 

But I get excited about telling people about polyamory, simple because so many people haven't heard of it.  I hadn't heard of it six plus years ago.  I know that there are people out there for whom monogamy doesn't work. They are unhappy with their lives because they don't know of any other way.  I feel like trying to tell them that there are other ways is being helpful.  I've talked to some people who said that once they realized poly existed, it was like a light bulb went off in their heads!  I want to help poly-oriented people find that light bulb.   And I want to educate monogamous people who find the idea of polyamory horrific, that there really isn't anything horrible about it at all. 

So yeah, I'll likely write more about polyamory.  I'll try really really hard, I promise, not to bash monogamy.  Because I don't think it's bad.  For myself, I just like poly better.

I Love You, Keith Olbermann

It speaks for itself, really.