Entertainment – The House Always Wins

Thoughts on The Lego Movie

First things first:

That pretty much sums up my feelings about The Lego Movie. It basically did everything I hoped a Lego movie would do, and it did it well.

The basic premise of the movie is that the evil Lord Business has found an ultimate weapon and plans to freeze the entire universe to ensure that it stays well-ordered like he designed it. Emmet is the “Special”, the chosen one who can save the universe. That universe is an amalgamation of all the different Lego sets and properties, and thus full of references to older Lego lines, sly in-joke character cameos, and a whole lot of craziness. Anyway, Emmet turns out to be a less-than-suitable savioiur, and wackiness ensues.

The animation for this movie is rather beautiful—it almost seems like stop-motion at times. For the most part, everything on screen is made of Lego, from the clouds to smoke puff to the waves in the ocean. It gives it a really interesting look. Several of the other visual effects also have a sort of home-built look as well, though I don’t want to ruin those gags for you if you haven’t seen it yet. But overall, it managed to differentiate itself in an increasing crowded market of computer-animated movies, while at the same time staying absolutely true to the notion of being a Lego movie.

The voice cast was also perfectly done, including big names like Morgan Freeman and Will Ferrell and slightly-less-big-but-no-less-awesome actors such as Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, and Chris Pratt. (There were a host of famous guest star cameos, as well—again, don’t want to ruin any surprises.) Everyone stepped up to deliver a hilarious performance.

In many ways, The Lego Movie is a culmination of years of work bringing Lego to life in video games and on TV. I think the irreverent, not-too-serious feel of this movie had its beginnings in video games like Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones. The directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller rightly recognized that the Lego universe would have to be wacky and infused with humour, and they mined the toy’s rich history to extract every bit they could find.

I only really have one minor criticism. Late in the movie, there is a… twist… that is a bit inconsistent with the feel of the movie up to that point. Thankfully, it doesn’t undermine what came before as can sometimes happen in movies, and it is not completely devoid of the humour that pervades the rest of the film, but I found it a little jarring. Oddly enough, I feel that the twist may make the movie more appealing to viewers who are not inherently fans of the toys, the ridiculous humour, or the fantastical plot.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie. It was awesome. I just need to get more Lego now….

Post-Christmas in America

So, being newlyweds this year but still not living in the same country on account of the need for proper immigration channels to be followed, the wife and I decided we should at least spend our first Christmas together, together.

To that end, she flew up here to St. John’s in the midst of blizzards and storms, and spent 5 of the snowiest December days I can remember here through Christmas Day. (Her additional help in shovelling was much appreciated.) On Boxing Day, however, both of us packed and headed down to Philly to spend the remainder of the holiday break with her family.

I was greeted with this.

Phil the Dog, failing to model his bow tie collar successfully.

It took a while for him to warm up to me, since he is not very smart and forgot that we had met and played quite a lot on my previous visits. We never could get him to stay still long enough to model the bow tie I bought him, however—every time I put my camera down low enough to get a picture, he came toward the camera with his tongue ready for licking.

Anyway, we visited with all the rest of the wife’s family, ate far too much food, and went to the movies a few times, which was great—I was able to catch up on my viewing. Also, we saw Batman.

LEGO Batman. In person. Well, plastic. Sort of.

Ugh, just look at the picture.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to the upcoming Lego movie.

Anyway, while there I saw Frozen and 47 Ronin. Not surprisingly, I have thoughts on each.

Thoughts on Frozen

Disney’s Frozen has done exceptionally well for the House of Mouse, and for good reason. It is a thoroughly enjoyable movie that both feels like a classic Disney fairy tale movie while avoiding and gently skewering some of the more questionable tropes of the genre that they built.

The computer-animated visuals are fine, but rather par-for-the-course these days. While is is excellent character and visual design, I find all the 3D computer animated look largely the same. I prefer traditional 2D animation—I can think of lots more examples in that arena that simply blow my mind.

The voice work was also good. I am a fan of Kristen Bell from her, shall we say, less family-friendly work in movies like Fanboys and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but was surprised that she also sang her character’s part as well—she’s really good! Broadway star Idina Menzel’s strong singing and voice work was less surprising but no less impressive, and the film really revolved around their relationship.

Though I enjoyed Disney’s previous effort, Tangled, it felt a little too modern and Shrek-ish (which is not necessarily a bad thing, as I very much liked some of the Shrek movies) for me to reconcile its feel with that evoked by their prior classics. Frozen fits right in there among them.

The songs are catchy, too.

Thoughts on 47 Ronin

The wife is good to me. From the trailers, 47 Ronin did not look like her kind of movie—it looked like it would be a kind of terrible movie with Keanu Reeves, 80 minutes of gory, over-the-top sword fighting, and 10 minutes of plot. That would have been exactly the sort of thing I would love, but no one else was interested, so she went with me.

It turns out the trailers were completely misleading. It wasn’t a bad movie. It wasn’t brilliant, but it wasn’t bad. There were cool action sequences, but they were hardly the focus of the movie—it was actually kind of slow paced. And Keanu Reeves was not the main character—or at least not the only one. Hiroyuki Sanada as Oishi—the leader of the titular 47 ronin—was the real driving force of the movie. There were large chunks with no Reeves at all.

The story is a retelling of one of Japan’s most famous legends, about a group of samurai who avenge their master despite the personal costs. This version has hidden magic, a demon-trained half-breed warrior (Reeves), a sneaky witch, and a forbidden romance woven throughout. The action sequences are brief but interesting, and the plot and motivation of all the characters was well-explained. The pacing, however, felt… loose.

The wife said it reminded her of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and that comparison is apt. In recent years we’ve seen some really well-done epic films with tight pacing and plotting. 47 Ronin seemed like it would have blown my mind if it had come out 20 years ago, but now it’s just okay. It’s not bad, it’s actually quite interesting, but it is the sort of movie that I wish could go beyond that to be awesome, but doesn’t quite. If the premise sounds interesting to you, however, it is certainly worth seeing.

The New York Visitation

So, now that I’m done talking movies, I needed a new header so that the end of my 47 Ronin discussion would be clear. It does provide a convenient segue for next bit of blathering.

On December 30th, the wife and I took the train into New York City. We saw the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center!

Unfortunately, everyone else was there to see it, too, which made getting to the Lego Store difficult. Once we made it in, I didn’t dare stop long enough to actually get anything. (Fear not, faithful readers—on the 31st we stopped into the Christiana Mall in Delaware which had both a Lego Store and a Cinnabon.)

The reason for our visit to New York was that the mother-in-law had gotten the wife and I some tickets for Waiting for Godot, starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen. It turns out that I did not like the play very much, as there is no plot to speak of and there’s a lot of self-indulgent monologuing, but Stewart and McKellen were fantastic. They owned their parts, they played off of each other perfectly, and occasionally even cracked each other up. During the curtain call, they even did a little dance. They made that play worth watching.

The only drawback to this New York visit was that I thinked I picked up a bug somewhere that hit me on New Year’s Eve in DC. (That happened the last time I took the train to New York and then later went to DC, too…. Hmmm…..)

Thoughts on Ender’s Game and Thor: The Dark World

My exciting life continues, meaning I’ve hardly done anything this month. While there are still a couple of movies currently out that I hope to see (Disney’s Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), I already did manage to see two November movies that were much higher on my list.

Ender’s Game

I came into this movie with a degree of trepidation. While I absolutely love the book, I am—to put it mildly—less enamoured with its author these days. (A quick search on “Orson Scott Card” will give you lots of reading on why.) Ultimately I decided to go see the movie, and I’m glad I did—it is good.

A part of what made it good was the excellent cast. They aged the characters a bit, compared to the books, I think, but as a result they were able to get a number of strong young actors in key roles—Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld in particular. Balancing them out was a trifecta of excellent established actors: Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, and Viola Davis.

But what made the movie just good, and not great, was that we hardly got to know any of these great actors. The book is told deeply from Ender’s perspective, but a movie adaptation by its very nature has to focus more on the external action. All the key plot moments are there, but so many key character moments from the book are missing. Consequently, the movie feels incredibly rushed. We see moments of Ender being clever, but very little of him building relationships and earning the respect of his team.

This rushed feeling is common in adaptations from books, but I felt it all the more keenly because I wanted this movie to be amazingly awesome instead of just good. Also, they changed a few minor details (technology, locations, and timelines) that nonetheless REALLY BOTHERED ME. That is probably just my OCD speaking, however.

Apart from the cast, I feel I should also acknowledge the visual effects, which were pretty awesome. The Battle Room in particular was extremely well done.

Overall, the Ender’s Game movie is worth watching. It’s got a whole lot of talent behind it, and mainly suffers because (a) it is not the book, and (b) in recent years we’ve been getting a surprising number of science fiction and fantasy films that are edging into “great” territory. I wanted this movie to be there, but I don’t think it quite made it.

Thor: The Dark World

I thoroughly enjoyed this latest Marvel movie. (See what I did there? THOR-oughly? I crack myself up sometimes.) As with its predecessor and the other films in the Marvel cinematic universe, it is not a deep film, but it is rather ridiculously fun. It seemed formulated entirely to give the audience a chance for more banter between Thor and Loki amidst a lot of action.

Things I liked: the aforementioned banter, the return of Darcy and Selvig from the first movie, and the little touches of humour throughout (many courtesy of Darcy and Selvig). Also, the stingers during the credits. Both of them.

Things I didn’t like: it seemed awfully coincidental that Jane would stumble upon the MacGuffin that the whole movie revolved around, we saw too little of Sif and the Warriors Three (they should totally get their own spinoff), and the story meandered an awful lot to get to the point.

I don’t know if it is quite as good as the first Thor movie, but it is a solid entry into Marvel’s slate of movies. I don’t think it will disappoint fans of Thor, the Avengers, or the Marvel cinematic universe in general.

Lego Space Man For the Win!

My Halloween costume, which won the contest at work.

Thoughts on The World’s End

August has been largely uneventful. I didn’t even get out to the Regatta this year since I was working on thesis. I wrangled groomsmen into tux fittings. I bought a tux for myself. I tracked down responses to wedding invites. I think I saw a few movies, but I most definitely saw one: The World’s End.

This latest outing from director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) completes the spiritual pseudo-trilogy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, this time joined by an impressive cast that includes Martin Freeman (of Hobbit and Sherlock fame) among many others. And, like its predecessors, it is a comedy that is also surprisingly heartfelt, dark, and bleak.

The basic premise is that burnout Gary King (Pegg) manages to convince four old friends (long since grown apart) to reunite in their hometown to try and finish the legendary “Golden Mile” pub crawl that they had failed to complete in their youth. As you might imagine, this doesn’t go well.

The realization that their hometown has forgotten the “legendary” Gary King was already hitting hard when the more science fictional elements of the plot kicked into high gear, and Wright managed to deftly weave the two threads together throughout the remainder of the movie. As with Shaun and Hot Fuzz, many elements of the plot are rife with cliche and tropes of the chosen genre, and, as in those two movies, it is the parallel arc of the characters that lifts the movie above being cheap parody.

I would be hard-pressed to rank The World’s End against its predecessors or Wright’s other work (Scott Pilgrim!), but if you enjoyed them I’m pretty sure you will enjoy this one.

Various and Sundry (July 2013 Edition)

This post is rather tardier than usual, but in all honesty I’ve hardly felt like I’ve done anything other than work at my job, work on my thesis, and plan my wedding all summer.

On the up side, I’ve been making decent progress on the thesis research. This has been helped by using my vacation time from work as dedicated thesis time. Even when I went to visit the fiancee in Philly/New Jersey, I got a good 4.5 days of thesis work in while she had to work during the week.

Oh! That’s right. International travel. That is something, at least. I finally got to see some of the historic sites around Philadelphia, like Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Look! There are pictures!

We then spent some time in New Jersey while the fiancee was at work during the week. We did pop over to New York City one night. I have proof!

New York. Probably Times Square, or somewhere near there.

We had decided to see a Broadway show, so we looked at what was playing at a time that was convenient (and had good reviews), and so—knowing absolutely nothing about it—went to see Once. This turned out to be an excellent—if somewhat low-key—show, but was made all the more exciting because it was starring Arthur Darvill (Rory from Doctor Who!) and the dude could sing!

Possibly even more exciting than that, we also found a Lego Store in the Jersey Gardens Outlet Mall in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There was so much Lego! I wanted to roll around naked in it, but that would be both painful and frowned upon. That outing also saw a visit to White Castle, which was okay, but not as life-alteringly transcendant as I would have hoped.

At the end of that week, we headed up to the Jersey Shore. We actually didn’t make it to the boardwalk area, so it was really rather nice. I have proof!

While down in the US I also managed to see Pacific Rim, which was super-enjoyable but not as mind-blowingly awesome as I had been hoping Guillermo del Toro could make a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. All the monster-on-robot action was great, but there was just… something missing that kept it from quite rising to the heights of his other movies like Hellboy. (Pan’s Labyrinth is head and shoulders above even that, which is why I had high hopes.)

We also took in RED 2, which was quite well executed by the charming and awesome cast, but perhaps fell a little short of generating the excitement of the first one simply because it was no longer a novel concept. As such, it didn’t feel quite as good, though it was certainly not a disappointment.

Okay, so July was actually pretty eventful. Maybe that is my excuse for being tardy.

Shameless Friend-Promotion

One of the excellent friends I made in Toronto is Kari Maaren. A bunch of cool stuff has happened to her recently that I feel compelled to share. (This is internal compulsion, not from her—she might be appalled/embarrassed that I’m doing this, if she notices.)

First of all, some of my few readers may be familiar with her because she has been writing the West of Bathurst webcomic (linked from my sidebar) for the last seven years or so. In the midst of recent server troubles which eventually saw me helping her migrate the site hosting, she/the comic got nominated for an award! Specificially, the Aurora Award, for “Best Graphic Novel – English”.

If you happened to click through on that link to the Aurora nominees, you might have noticed that her name appears a second time! (Cue dramatic music.)

Yes, she was also nominated for “Best Fan Filk”. (That’s a kind of music.) Kari writes and performs geeky songs, and has finally actually recorded some and released some of her stuff on not one but TWO albums! (Okay, so the first album, Pirate Elves in Space, is a collaboration, but it has 3 of her songs on it.) Her album Beowulf Pulled My Arm Off even got a mention on SF Signal, a popular science fiction/fantasy/horror blog.

You can listen to her stuff at those Bandcamp links, or find her YouTube channel. If you enjoy nerdy folk music—or think you might—you should definitely check out Kari’s work.

Anyway, that’s about it for my shameless friend-promotion. I will endeavour to check in again soon with another movie update—we’ve started the summer season.

Thoughts on Jack the Giant Slayer

I recently managed to convince a somewhat reluctant friend to go see Jack the Giant Slayer with me. Though that friend enjoyed herself and offered praise such as “actually an okay movie” amongst other contortions to avoid actually saying she liked it, I hold no such reservations. It was a good movie and I liked it.

I mean, the script was rather corny in parts, but it tied together a lot of the different aspects of various Jack and the Beanstalk legends in an enjoyable story. The cast was solid and suitably over-the-top when called for, and it was refreshing to see a fantasy story where the king (Ian McShane) was not corrupt or evil and the captain of the guard (Ewan McGregor) was actually competent at his job. The chemistry between Jack (Nicholas Hoult) and the Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) was believable, and I liked that neither of them was played as stupid. While the plot was set into motion by some unfortunate coincidences, it did not rely on the main characters acting like idiots to keep it going.

All of which is to say this was not a brilliant piece of filmmaking, but simply a well-done movie. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but it didn’t disappoint or dissatisfy, either, and in this day and age I consider that a major accomplishment.

Neat Idea: Gotham High

While perusing SF Signal as I am wont to do, I found a link to this post by Jeff Thomas and Celeste Green, showcasing some development work they did for DC called Gotham High—essentially Batman in high school. The project didn’t go anywhere, but they have a number of drawings that are vastly amusing.

(I know this would violate Batman canon—inasmuch as one exists—but I would assume that it was intended to be a non-canonical offshoot.)

Check it out, just to look at the pictures!

Fan Expo Canada 2010

Thanks to the generosity of my good friend Jenn, last weekend I attended Fan Expo. She gave me the passes as an early Christmas/Birthday/Next Christmas present, and was in no way motivated by a desire to have company for her Fan Expo adventure or avoid thinking up other presents for me.

We met for lunch before heading over on Friday, August 27th at around 3 pm. We thought this would be an easy task, as doors had opened for Deluxe attendees like ourselves an hour earlier, but alas, the line stretched around the entire north and east sides of the building when we arrived, and before long it was wrapping around the south side of the building as well.

Two hours later we finally got in and presented our tickets, at which time we were rewarded with wristbands, and that was it. No swag bag or anything. I think I’ve been spoiled by my experiences with Ad Astra and Worldcon. I put the wristband on, not realizing that it was the sort designed not to come of without being cut, and so I was less than impressed at having to wear the damn thing when I went to the bathroom, showered, and ran errands outside of the convention centre. Jenn had been clever enough to leave hers loose so she could slip it off.

We started on the exhibition floor, which was insanely crowded. This was wear tons of booths were set up selling all the things I ever wanted. GI Joe toys, classic Transformers, endless shelves of DVDs, and comics, and Star Wars everything. And I had no money to spare. Alack! Alas! But probably for the best.

We wandered over to the celebrity signing area, and were sort of appalled at the cost of autographs. I mean, I appreciate the need for these people to make attendance worthwhile, and since the lines were quite large I guess they didn’t need to worry about demand, but still… I would have liked an Adam West autograph, or James Marsters, or Tahmoh Penikett, or Michael Dorn, but I could barely afford one, much less all of them.

I did spring for a Guild photo signed by Felicia Day and Amy Okuda, since I enjoy their work and—like many people of the male nerd persuasion—I have a somewhat mild desire to groom Felicia, albeit in a totally non-creepy way. Really. And Jenn and I split a photo opportunity with Summer Glau, scheduled for Saturday at 6 pm. After that we went and got some of Jenn’s books signed by Kelley Armstrong.

At this point, we’d been on our feet for quite a while, so we wandered the floor some more before leaving a bit early. We were rather frustrated by the poor organization for getting us in, and for controlling the flow of people.

Saturday, we arrived a bit after 11 to find a line wrapped around the building once again. Thankfully, that line was not ours, but for people looking to buy a single day pass. We were able to walk past them and in to the reentry doors with no problem. There was nothing scheduled that early that interested us, so we went straight to line up for the Tron Legacy presentation to ensure we got seats. This was, admittedly, more my interest than Jenn’s, on account of Bruce Boxleitner—Tron himself, though I better know him as Captain Sheridan from Babylon 5—being a part of the presentation.

They started letting us in early, after security confiscated all our phones and cameras, and we got some decent seats. The presentation itself was kind of exciting. It was hosted by Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson from the Space channel, and first there was one of the tie-in game developers to show off the game. Then, they brought out Tron Bruce and talked a bit before showing us the trailer and 7 minutes of footage from the movie itself—in 3D! I don’t actually care for 3D that much, but I appreciated the effort to make the presentation seem special. There was a Q&A thereafter, and then we were free!

To line up to get our stuff back, which Jenn did while I went to the can. So, line up to get in, line up to get out, all sort of poorly organized. By the time we were sorted out, it was already 1:20, so we decided to take in Tahmoh Penikett’s spotlight panel though it had already started. Apparently it had started late though, because it didn’t seem like we had missed much. He gave a pretty interesting talk about his work on Battlestar and Dollhouse, and seemed like a nice guy.

After that, I left Jenn to watch Felicia Day while I headed back up to the exhibition floor to try and get a free autograph from Boxleitner, as Babylon 5 is one of my favourite things ever. I had to line up to take the escalator, because they were controlling how many people were allowed on the exhibition floor. Rumors were circulating that even people with the 3-day pass weren’t being let in to the building because it was so crowded.

After visiting the Pure Pwnage booth to say hi to the guys (who have a Gemini nomination, by the way), I got to the Tron booth a bit after 2 pm. He was scheduled to be there at 2:30, and I thought I was in luck—there was hardly anyone there! Then I asked, as was told the line was around the back of the booth. And across the aisle. And around the back of the Marvel comics booth, and along one side.

On the upside, from my spot in the line, I had a good view of the Hasbro booth, which had some pretty sweet Star Wars displays, and I could watch the Marvel preview videos. Eventually, Jenn showed up and joined me, flitting in and out to keep me and herself entertained. As we neared the front of the line, she decided she was in the line, too, and so we both got free Tron Legacy posters signed by Bruce Boxleitner. Sadly, he didn’t have time to personalize them, but I’m not complaining about free.

We figured the James Marsters session would be full, so we sought out food instead. (We later found out we could have gotten in—oh well.) Food turned out to be another lengthy lineup. And then we went to line up for the Summer Glau discussion session. She seemed quite shy, but had a few good stories to tell from being on set for her various science fictional shows and movies.

Guess what? After that we went to line up AGAIN for our photo op. The line went all the way down one hallway and across another, and continued to grow behind us. But our line was dwarfed by the Stan Lee line, which I don’t think was pre-paid like ours. And once the line started moving, they were able to process us quite quickly. Our photo op was at 6 pm, and we were done by 6:30. I look forward to seeing the resulting photo.

And that was the end of that.

Sunday morning we met at 11 (after I had a Cinnabon for breakfast). This time there was a significant line of people with armbands waiting to get in, so Jenn and I took a spot in the shade and waited for the end of the line to reach us. (It is possible that we may have filled in a large gap instead, but I fell no guilt about that.

We decided to stay away from the exhibition floor, and went on the spur of the moment to a Space panel with Ajay Fry, Teddy Wilson, and Natasha Eloi, along with two surprise guests: David Blue from Stargate Universe and Ryan Robbins from Sanctuary. They were quite funny playing off each other, had incredibly hard questions for their giveaways, and ended the event with David Blue signing Ryan Robbins’ ass. It was an unexpectedly fun time.

From there, we went to see William Shatner speak, and not in just as he was starting. He was in the largest panel room, so we were able to get seats, albeit far from the front. Shatner was… funny. Really funny. He had tons of funny and interesting stories to tell, poked fun at his cohosts and the audience, and worked the crowd well. This was also an unexpected delight. However, I was not crazy enough to try for an autograph after the fact.

From there we switched rooms to see Sendil Ramamurthy of Heroes fame/infamy. He played Mohinder on that show, one of my favouite characters of the first season, who the writers made progressively more ridiculous as the series wore on. He had a lot of interesting observations about his time on the show, and working as an Indian actor in general.

After his show, we were pushed out of the room to line up to come back in for the Michael Dorn panel. I went to this mostly out of curiosity, to see just how geeky a Star Trek panel could be. It was pretty geeky, but Dorn worked the crowd well, was happy to play to his Star Trek fans and discuss Worf in detail, and had funny stories to tell from the set and the things he’s managed to do as a result of his fame—specifically, riding in a lot of military aircraft.

By this point is was 4 pm, and our day was winding down. Jenn left at this point to do some other shopping, and I wandered the exhibition floor one last time before heading home.

Overall, it was a fun experience wrapped in boredom and frustration. It had an extremely commercial vibe about it, unlike Ad Astra or Worldcon or other book-oriented events, and all our 3-day pass guaranteed was getting to the exhibition floor—everything else we had to pay extra for or line up for. As a result, there were a number of panels that we missed because we were lining up for something we wanted more. I’m not sure I’d go back again, unless one of the following comes to pass: a) they have a guest that was a must-see for me, b) they seriously improve their crowd control and access issues so I don’t spend half my time in lines, or c) I have a ton of money to blow on the exhibitors. If I can optimize the fun stuff though, then maybe….