Issue 202

News: Definite Hiatus in Updates.
You may notice that in the past eight months, I only posted four times. One post every two months. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to do some definite changes in when I update. As I mentioned earlier, I'm currently enrolled in Columbia College Chicago. Now, my workload is even heavier than usual. Right now, I have several stories that I need to write, a big creative essay on Crime and Punishment, a presentation on Bret Easton Ellis, a full-length one act play, and an essay on art in the Weimar Republic. As a result, I have decided to put this blog on an indefinite hiatus until the semester is over, and I will most likely put it back on when school comes back in September, even if my workload will be lighter than it is now. I simply cannot update the blog with any regularity with all this happening. I apologise to all the people following my blog, all five of you. But now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to write the reviews for two films I've wanted to see.

The Adventures of Tintin: I've been a big fan of the Tintin series for years, and I've been excited to see it come out for a long time. Let me put it this way, while I was in my first semester in Fall 2008, this film was being shot. It only came out in December 2011, and I waited all that time to see it. How was it? It was pretty good. Even the motion capture looked pretty good. Spielberg fulfilled the promise to make it look like the characters were "real people, but real Herge people." And speaking of the characters, the acting is incredible. Jamie Bell's Tintin in particular is better than I could have imagined, he even manages to say the phrase "Great snakes!" with conviction I didn't know was possible. Surprisingly, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg voice Thomson and Thompson, but, despite the pair starring in one of my favourite comedies, Hot Fuzz, their performance didn't play that up too much. The plot is based on two albums, Crab with the Golden Claws, and The Secret of the Unicorn, and the script really does its hardest to streamline the two into one consolidated story, and even though it ends on a sequel hook, which I normally hate, it is justified because the sequel is definitely being made now. There were a few things I didn't really like about it: 1) Why does the model of the Unicorn catch Tintin's eye? In the original, he thinks it would be a good gift for Haddock, but since they don't meet until halfway through the movie, why? 2) The plan to steal the third model of the Unicorn is just insane: the model is displayed under bulletproof glass in direct sunlight (Just look at The Last Supper to see the impact of sunlight on valuable art), and so they hire Bianca Castafiore to perform with the ship behind her so it can shatter when she reaches a high note (while it's possible [if hard] to do this for regular glass, it really can't be done for Bulletproof glass.) This would be a miinor quibble, but considering that Herge did his damnedest to research his stories, it just seems out of place. 3) Why doesn't Bianca Castafiore sing her trademark "Jewel Aria"? Or are they saving that for the sequel?

We Need to Talk About Kevin: This book really is the story not of Kevin Khatchadourian, the school shooter, but of his mother Eva, and if you had any doubts about that reading the book, watch the movie. It's her show; Tilda Swinton stars and gives an amazing performance, and, in the scenes that are supposed to be set in the "present-day," she works so masterfully with silence that if The Artist spawns a new wave of silent films, she should definitely make a career with that. The major problem I have with the movie is its amazingly slow pacing; the first scene has what can only be called a "Ragu orgy," and, due to its relatively non-linear structure, it takes about ten minutes before anything identifiable from the novel is on screen. When I say the structure is non-linear, I mean it goes between two plots; one set in the "present-day," where Eva has to cope with her life after the loss of her family (original to the film), and the other dealing with how her son turned into a killer. While a lot of incidents were cut out, it's still fairly easy to piece the events together, although reading the book may help. The cast is pretty good, except for John C. Reilly. He's way too much of a nonentity in this film to be believable as Kevin's "favourite" parent.

Tract Review: Global Warming: Jack decides to take on Global Warming. He spends half the tract ridiculing scientists who predicted catastrophes, and then decides that they're actually right, at least in that the world is ending, but at least Jack doesn't make the mistake of setting any dates. Highlights: someone who looks like Al Gore with a pencil-thin moustache insults his TV audience; in the latest display of Jack actually being knowledgable about secular culture, the cast of Young Frankenstein causes global warming; Jack's remarks about Nostradamus show that he apparently didn't watch television in 1999 (going by the Pinky and the Brain clones in The Awful Truth, he might have been upset by the show's cancellation the previous year); polar bears and vultures coexisting peacefully; a teamster broke into the wrong protest; in the biggest "WTF" moment Jack has brought to us since "Moving on Up," he claims that climatologists pray to the Mayan gods and Gaia (represented by a Venus of Willendorf, pixellated for your protection); some people of different religions share their incoherent opinions of Christ (like he "had a devil" or "was queer"); and God is responsible for global warming because he's a sociopath with no more regard for his followers than Alexander DeLarge.

Link: Another site that dissects Chick Tracts.

And now, the next 25 in my list of life lessons.

1. Korn will never top “Daddy.”
2. If I ever do get Jeremy Irons to sing a song entitled “You're f***ing a mutant,” there will be thousands of comments asking “Is this 2008?”
3. As Gabriel Byrne has shown, plate armour is not a good contraceptive.
4. If the question is “A or B,” the answer is “Yes.”
5. Nobody makes wicker toilets.
6. God does not hate lamp.
7. Given that in its original context, it is a prelude to both mass murder and the breakup of the people getting married, there are few pieces of music less suited for being played at weddings than Wagner's Bridal Chorus.
8. Except for “And I Will Always Love You.”
9. Just because you don't believe in God doesn't mean you can't become a minister and be legally entitled to add the title Rev. to your name.
10. There is actually a dance song where one of the moves is “sleep!”
11. My name is not Mr. B. Elzebub.
12. Nobody really listens to each other, and they probably never did.
13. There is no such thing as a homeless-sexual.
14. A Day at the Races did not predict the Rwandan genocide.
15. So many great works of art could have been averted if the characters had any goddamn sense.
16. No more digging up Billy Mays' grave without bringing a Necronomicon ex Mortis.
17. Until cannibalism is made legal, veal is the next best thing.
18. Many films could be improved with the addition of a character with a talking body part.
19. If you can't make the connection between Air Force One and the Air Force, you have no business writing political thrillers.
20. Sam Shepherd learned to fly a plane for The Right Stuff, and also learned to survive while riding on the plane's roof during a supersonic flight.
21. Satan does not answer to the name “The one whose little path would make me sad.”
22. No bucket list is complete without a major societal taboo.
23. The Insane Clown Posse was more fun when they were just rapping about over-the-top sex and violence and not just being idiots.
24. For the man who is seeking the affections of the 12-year old cancer girl: I would strongly suggest you get the help you need. I'm not that messed up. At least, I hope not.
25. It is better to be a fool than to be a Lear.