Top 10 Movies Ever... Except Not Really

Alex J Cavanaugh hosted this amazing top 10 movie countdown today. I'm a bit late to the party. Some unexpected things happened late last week that prevented me from even doing an almost awesome version of this. I had intended on doing this as the Top 10 moments from crappy movies (Because I accidentally gave a real top 10 countdown a few weeks ago. Don't know why), with clips of scenes and all that sort of stuff. But after spending the last several days knee deep in emergency home improvements I’m going to have to give you plan ‘B’, The top 10 movies I like that most people seem to hate.

10: Waterworld – Look, I didn’t love this movie, but I did kinda like it. The jet-ski baddies led by Dennis Hopper were a bit cheesy, but I think this movie was more the victim of its budget than what appeared on screen.

9: Green Lantern – Yes, it sucked. But it sucked awesomely. I was pulling my hair out watching this, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it anyway. I loved that the Lantern Corp begged Hal to take up the ring and use it and he refused. Then he traveled x number of lightyears later to ask their permission to use the ring… which they had been begging him to use. Not much of this movie made sense. But Awesome!

8: Transformers – Anyone besides me remember when people spoke fondly of this movie? It seems like people have turned on this franchise in a major way. I don’t know what folks expect, it’s about robots that turn into cars and planes and cassette players, then fight robot wars here on earth… they aren’t remaking Casablanca with each installment. So, there is a lot of hate for people over the age of 8 for these movies, but again… fun – even if they tend to be 45 minutes too long.

7: Matrix 2 and 3 – I know, I’m cheating. Look, the first movie was pretty great. It was an original film – they pioneered that bullet time thing, they took a pretty sci-fi concept and didn’t dumb it down (much). The humans are Duracell batteries rationale seemed very stupid to me, but with that aside, great movie…. Everyone agreed (weird that it came out around the same time as Existenz and The Thirteenth Floor, movies that had a similar concept), so the sequels came out and the Wachowski’s were given blank checks to go and create whatever their 'vision' dictated. The movies suffered for it. They were under no pressure to please anyone and I think it showed. Really long spells of exposition punctuated by really long action sequences… both of which were convoluted and unnecessarily… well, long . But despite that, I enjoyed the movies. Again, they did try to give a truly science fictional story its due. These movies were ambitious, and they barely failed in my opinion. I’d like to reward that type of risk-taking when I can. So they make my list.

6: Constantine – Actually, do people like hate this? It’s more like a movie that disappeared than people actually hated. I really like it, and it might be one of my favorites on this list. I’m a bit of a sucker for any heaven vs hell flick, rogue angels and all that sort of stuff – I liked the Prophecy movies with Christopher Walken. I even liked that one that came out a couple of years ago about the biblical apocalypse happening at that diner in the southwest.  I think this is the best of the bunch when it comes to this sort of thing though. It made me want to read the comic.

5: Electra – They took a movie that very few people liked, Daredevil, and spun off a movie from that. Wow. The hate for Electra is pretty thick. Me, I liked it. It was like an episode of a television show that I love. It was familiar, not too ambitious, and felt very episodic. I think it worked. I personally feel like so much of the hate comes from people who enjoy the source material, I’ve gotten pretty zen about that sort of thing over the years and try not to hold it against a movie that goes off course in that area – as long as it seems to work.

4: The Last Action Hero – this Auh-nuld flick followed up T2 and had some high expectations. It was about an action movie icon that got pulled straight from the movie screen into real life. I thought it was awesome. I think the gritty, ‘real’ world contrasted too much with the quippy, ‘movie’ world for most… it was a jarring change. But it was unique. Worth watching.

3: Dylan Dog – I saw this in the theater when it came out and hated it. But I kept kicking it around in my head afterwards, I think the premise got me excited enough that I eventually forgave it’s multitude of sins and started to enjoy it for what it is: a cheaply made crapfest of awesome. It’s on Netflix now, so have a few drinks to lower your critical thinking skills, lower your expectations… a lot… then enjoy.

2: Mortal Combat – I don’t know if this is hated as much as forgotten, or never noticed. But this video game movie from the 90’s was the best American made kung fu movie of its time (pre-matrix). Like a few others on this list, technically, it’s stupid. Stupid characters do stupid things for stupid reasons. But, also like other movies on this list, it was awesome. It was also notable that, in an ensemble film, the clear leading man was Asian…. I can’t recall seeing that in many American movies before then (I’m being kind, I couldn’t think of any since Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon). It’s something I didn’t notice at the time, but have realized upon reflection. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, so I’m sure my memories are fuzzy, but I can’t recall if he had a love interest, I think that there was one given to Johnny Cage, which was bad, because that character had no charisma at all… I can’t actually remember though, so I should probably just stop typing about that. Also, there has been a youtube series that has revived the Mortal Combat franchise in live action. It’s truly epic.*

1: John Carter – I’m actually not sure what public opinion on this movie is, really, but I think this is the best film of the bunch. It works in all the ways an action movie should. It’s great fun, and it’s another one that’s a beauty to look at. Like Waterworld, its budget was a bigger story than the movie itself, and a series of marketing missteps that are almost worthy if their own movie, doomed this thing from right after production began. The studio did nothing to quash rumors that this had a ballooning budget and were knee deep in desperate reshoots to try to fix the story – despite the fact that the production kept to its budget (granted, it was $250 mil) and all those reshoots were planned (because Stanton, the number 2 guy at Pixar, who directed this, believed the first round of shoots were a rough draft, and reshoots were where you really get to see the movie become great – the Pixar way!) – and so it was labeled a disaster long before anyone had a chance to see it.

How badly did Disney screw John Carter? So much that a whole book was written about it. It will leave you befuddled at the perfect storm of events that conspired to make this a flop.

And there you have it…

*The recent Mortal Combat series stars Michael Jai White, who is responsible for the greatest single kung fu kick I think I’ve ever seen on film, granted, I may have been drinking heavily when I saw it, but it appeared in one of those Universal Soldier movies… it was the one that starred him.

Happy Pi Day!

Every year, around March 14, the world gathers as one to celebrate, what some consider, one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the ancient world... the discovery of the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference.

Wow. When you put it like that, it doesn't sound so great.

Regardless, it is what it is.

And if anyone has taken very much math in life, Pi pops up pretty regularly. So much so, that some folks consider it almost like a mystical thing.

It's been surmised that should we make contact with any alien civilization out there, then we'd want to show them Pi... just to prove we're not morons. The assumption being that any aliens would recognize it for what it is.

Carl Sagan, it his wonderful book, Contact (I also said this was one of my favorite movies of all time a few weeks ago), wrote it into his novel as mystical thing... going so far as to having the aliens of his book ponder on it. Because if you work it out far enough, eventually (in the book, not real life), a pattern emerges. Not just a pattern, but what looks like a message. Embedded right there in the very fabric of mathematics is a message - from God? Some math obsessed ancient aliens who wrote codes all over the universe... is it a warning? What is it?

Getting back to math though, I'm no genius, really. Please don't act too shocked about that. But, when I was in college I did enter into a few math competitions. Nothing larger than a regional sort of thing... maybe 8 or 9 institutes of higher learning would send students to compete and we'd all be given problems and told to we have figure them out.

I did okay doing those. Well enough to get shiny certificates to put on my wall and enough money in winnings to buy a textbook or two. Of course, again, that's small potatoes. More than anything, it convinces me that I'm surrounded by idiots, not that I'm smart.

The point to all that, is that in doing all that math, I couldn't help but notice that Pi didn't come up that often when working through things. 2Pi came up ALL the time... so many formula for figuring out whatever it was I was trying to do involved me using 2Pi, not Pi. I recall wishing that 2Pi was a thing.

Turns out, it is. Tau <-- check that link (the ratio of the radius to the circumference) is 2Pi... 6.28...(instead of 3.14). It's a movement to try to get Pi to be replaced in mathematics by Tau, which will help simplify doing math tremendously (again, follow the link if your interested).

So, I don't have any love for Pi, really. Except that I did have to study it in school, some. Regardless, I was at work a few weeks ago and it came out that I know Pi out to... I wasn't sure, but I guessed 20 digits or so. Apparently, that was met with some skepticism, which seems weird to me because, seriously, is that something anyone would really brag about? I mean, if I were in a bar with some nerdy folks that might impress somebody, but not really, because I'd guess that if you don't know it out to 50 places or so, no real Pi nerd will take you as serious about the topic.

3.14159265358979323846264338327
(I didn't take the pic either)

But...whatever. I was handed a marker and directed to a whiteboard. Where I managed to produce the hard to see string of digits to the right of the screen with three or four onlookers. I didn't bother to check to see if I was right (someone else said they did) but I counted out 29 digits before I ran out of steam. So, despite myself. I did feel a small flush of satisfaction as it managed to get some looks of impressment. After all, until the early 17th century, no one in the world had calculated Pi out as far (another time travel tip).

That feeling quickly passed as people starting asking me why I know Pi like I did. I don't have an answer for that. It just got in my head somewhere.

So happy Pi day people!

My World... Disrupted

I scheduled a post for tomorrow, not really intending to have anything up today. But I thought I would say a few words about my phone... who died this week. It was two years old.

I wasn't the best owner. I know that. I dropped you many times, I refused to let you wear protective gear that could have saved you from injury. You never complained. You never quit. I dropped you onto asphalt, concrete, hardwood, grass... I once dropped you from an upstairs floor onto the the yard below. 
But  you carried on.
Sure, you were slowing down. I could see it in the way that I had to tap the screen more than once to get you to respond. Your power button quit working. Then your front camera failed. 
Months later, I dropped you again. Only about two feet onto a bamboo floor. And you shattered. large cracks spiderwebbed their way across the back... and snaked around the front.
But  you worked. Damn you, you worked. 
Until, without warning, with my firm belief that you would go on forever, you gave up your ghost. 
I'll miss you.

There. I feel better. Can't wait to get my new phone... the next day or two is going to be really rough without one.

If I Had a Time Machine!

There was a blogfest last week about time-travel. You know, if you rec’d a box from the future what would be in it? I didn’t participate, mostly because I don’t recall seeing it before people started posting - my own fault, I can be pretty oblivious at times. But it did get me thinking. I’ve often wondered what sort of message I would send to myself if the person I am today could dispense advice to myself at pivotal times in my history. I think I’ve pretty much figured it out.

So, I'm going to pretend I can visit myself every five years, and have just long enough to get a couple of sentences out before I get pulled back. So here is plan if that ever happens:

Age 5: Burgers and Boogers are not interchangeable terms. They mean different things.

Age 10: Fart and F#¢k are not interchangeable terms. Don’t treat them as such… especially around mom.

Age 15: XXXXX isn’t such a great girl. Don’t get bent out of shape over it.

Age 20: Quit being so damned serious. And you’re not as smart as you think you are.

Age 25: Purchase stock in Apple

Age 30: Give up on getting lottery numbers from me. I'm not going to give you any.

Age 35: You know that novel you’ve been revising for the past couple of years? You’re almost done.

Age 40: Just kidding about that novel. Seriously, almost done. Also, here are those lottery numbers.

And that’s about it, any more jumps and I’d be giving advice to future versions of me. Which might be fun, except that I think any version of younger me would be disappointed in how any version of older me turned out. So any future advice would just be, “Quit being such a loser.”

IWSG - March 2013 Edition!

Hey all! It's that time again. Alex J Cavanaugh has created the Insecure Writer's Support Group. It's that magical time where I get to vomit my issues onto the internet - guilt free. Thanks Alex!

I, as always, have poorly planned my post. It's funny, you'd think I'd quit being surprised every month when it's time for this. Regardless, I am taking a month off from complaining about all my issues just to say this:

It's hard to be great if you don't write anything down. So get back at it.

Brilliant!

I just found a time-travel short story online over the weekend that really made me laugh. It makes me hurt to see something done this well. I think this is deceptively clever. I tip my hat to the author.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory

Actually, I was supposed to be installing a range extender so my our wi-fi would reach out into the backyard where my wife's office is. I've tried numerous time to hook that damn thing up without success. I mean, I bought that one because it was supposed to be the easiest to install. Liars. I don't think their marketing group ever actually spoke to the development team.

Anyway, I was watching the novel writing series of lectures by Brandon Sanderson during my moments of frustration. It's the video of his BYU lectures that they've released onto the internet. I enjoy the series, as he has a way of discussing the craft in a very understandable way.



Anyway, there is a ton of these, I mean, a whole semester's worth. It's worth watching them all. Somewhere within all these, he made mention of the story I linked to above.

So I recommend watching these. Great stuff.

The Great Looper Controversy!

I think I mentioned Looper as one of my favorite movies of 2012 on more than one occasion. It was a smart, dramatic, and managed to not back away from having likable, understandable leads do horrible things, and still make us understand them. No easy task in a time-travel movie.

Well, in his recent post, Andrew Leon dared to give my beloved movie a mixed review! Actually, that wasn't my problem with his post. He had a take on some of the events of the movie that I disagreed with. Very subjective stuff. I thought it might be fun to continue to discuss here, where I can do also let my comment to his blog also serve as a post on it's own.

Be warned, spoilers follow... and this may get a bit long, and bogged down with minutia, I won't be mad if you just go about your business and ignore. This really is just me trying to come to grips with Andrew's interpretation of the movie more than anything.

Okay, for those of us who haven't seen the movie, and don't care about spoilers, here is the gist of the controversy:

Loopers are hit men who have one job - kill people that are sent from 30 years in the future, bound and with their heads covered, at a predetermined spot and moment in time.

Now, at some point, part of the deal when you are hired is that, if you are still alive in the future, you will be sent the old version of yourself to kill. Once that deed is done, you get a huge payoff and you are 'retired,' until 30 years later when you are kidnapped, bound and have your head covered, and sent back in time to be killed by your younger self.

During his review, Andrew said this:

"The whole story of Looper hinges on  the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder."

In the comments, I (and others) disputed this interpretation of that scene of the film. I responded:

"I don't think the intent was for the audience to believe Joe died when he fell from the ladder. Or if it was, I didn't get it."

To which, Andrew said:

"I'm pretty certain we were supposed to believe he died, because that's the only thing that makes the movie work. He falls and "dies" and everything starts over. Then we get back to the point the second time and the reaction is "oh, he didn't die," and we're meant to incorporate that knowledge into our new movie of the movie and forget the whole dying part so that we can follow the "new" narrative."

I think my gut reaction to that was, "If what he's saying is true, I enjoyed this movie more than I should have because I made up a scenario in my head that is better than what the director actually intended for me to think." My response? Well, you're in luck - I've pasted that below as well:

"If the director killed Young Joe at the ladder it would be beyond stupid (logically), and would lessen the movie immensely... there is no way that is what happened. If you interpreted the fall from the ladder that way I can see why it frustrated you. 
And with that, I'll drop it. I think I've said my piece.
Unless you respond with something that opens up a can or worms."

Now, at this point, Andrew responded and I really misunderstood what he was actually saying - I'll blame the internet for ruining my attention span -  and went a long ways towards preparing today's post before I realized I'd gone way off on a tangent. But regardless of where I was at mentally, Andrew responded with:

But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall. You only find out he didn't when we get back to the point from Old Joe's perspective. And, see, what you said makes my point. If Young Joe dies, the movie is over, and it was. Because, when he falls, we go back to field and he kills Old Joe. It was a lie that allows us to buy into the rest of the movie, because, then, we want to know what happened. Why he had the hood on the second time, which we never actually find out.

At this point, the conversation ended, so really, up until this point, I'm only covering ground that was covered yesterday. It's from here forward that new information is being given.

Now, I'm going to break down Andrew's comment into it's component parts, and discuss each one on it's own. That way I can, hopefully not forget anything important.

"But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall."

 Ok, this happens a lot in disagreements, two people see exactly the same thing and both come away seeing something different.

That said, I think the actual indicator that Andrew mentioned that points to Young Joe dying is the the screen going black. I'm not convinced that is significant, especially if the lead actor falls from his third story window thirty minutes into the movie. My expectation, as a viewer, is that he will get up, be hurt, and continue on his way. It's from years of conditioning by Die Hard movies, Lethal Weapon movies, Rambo, whatever action movie comes out in any given week. Heck, even that Schwarzenegger movie I saw in January had him fall through the roof of a building while fist-fighting a gun toting madman. The joke was Arnold is old now, so it took him a moment before he could get up and go beat up the rest of the gang. That's a full generation of conditioning I have. So, seeing a man fall from a third story fire escape onto the hood of a car in a movie like this is the equivalent of me missing a step when stepping off my front porch. Yeah, I may twinge my knee a bit, but I'm probably going to be fine.

I'm being snarky there, but my point is that I didn't believe he died. Andrew didn't believe he died, my two teenage kids didn't think he'd died. No one else I spoke with about the movie in any detail believed he died.

So, I contend that the director did NOT intend to have the audience believe Young Joe was dead at that point. Having a scene where a lead actor has an accident and the scene goes black really makes me think he's been knocked out. That is very subjective ground though. I don't like playing there. I did find this youtube video with the director/writer where he discussed many things about the movie, but the significant portion -which I should have noted the time stamp so I could have linked directly to that part - is when he mentions that the movie is not being shown linearly.



Based firstly, on my thoughts, and secondly, on what the director mentions in the video above (and I'm serious about that, as I actually think the more the director talks about the events of the movie, the more opportunity he has to undermine what I think is a pretty well conceived time-travel story), I think the events of the movie go like this:

• POV is Young Joe. He's a looper. The events unfold until he falls from ladder.
• POV shifts to Old Joe. We see what are, essentially, his memories of when he was a young man and he killed his own loop (who was hooded), we follow his path up until he arrives to meet Young Joe (without his hood, because he decided to change things, which is why he was so late when he arrived).

Now, part of Andrew's original post (which I recommend you read, because I think I've demonstrated I can quite easily spend some time misinterpreting what he says) mentions that the entire movie is invalidated by the death of Old Joe during the scene immediately following the fall from the ladder. Here is that passage:

"The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad as Next with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated."

So, I know I was supposed to get to the second part of the paragraph I quoted earlier, but I've already spent waaayyy too long on this, and I do have a job to go to in the morning, so I can't stay up all night writing this post. 

Based on my interpretation of the movie, the loop was broken. Old Joe that was killed in the field after the scene where Young Joe fell from his apartment wasn't Old Joe, it was a third version of Joe, REALLY Old Joe. His only appearance in the movie was when he was shot and killed. Because Old Joe wasn't the character that died there, he was the man pulling the trigger, the person that looks just like Young Joe, but isn't, because he's from the previous loop, it's actually Old Joe.

I know what I just wrote was convoluted - but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. I believe that was the writer/director's intent, and that's the way I believe it happened when I saw it. If I understand Andrew correctly here - never a given - and his interpretation is correct, then this is not a very good movie. It falls apart for all the reasons he says it does. 

But why would anyone make that movie? I don't believe it.