Justifying The Length Of A Movie..... How Hard Is It Really? Part 1

It can often be a problem with movies especially today as they seem to get longer. While there has always been movies that stretched the length that people could stand in the beginning of cinema, the more obvious being from the 30's to the 60's like Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, and Cleopatra among others, there is always that struggle of making that time the viewer spends with the movie completely justified and with as little filler as possible. And today, most movies often fail at keeping the attention of the audience and while there are many factors that can cause this to happen, it leads one to wonder why it isn't as easy as it looks. There are three hour movies that seem to go by rather quickly and the average ninety minute affair that often has the feeling of being dragged at a snail's pace, but still there are moments in those longer movies that often feel like there could be something cut out of it. And today, if I don't bore you or seem like the amateur film critic I am in real life, I'll try and figure out how movies often feel like they are too long for their own good. Fair warning, I will only really discuss movies I am familiar with either by having watched it or researched enough beforehand.

First, let us start with the comedy genre and focus on some of the movies last year that I had the "honor" to watch. One such movie was The Internship, the Owen Wilson - Vince Vaughn vehicle about two watch salesmen who become interns at Google (if you want my thoughts on the movie itself, watch the first minute of this review {http://blip.tv/the-cinema-snob/midnight-screening-the-internship-6599654} or all of it. It pretty much sums up what my problems with it were). The movie itself is right at the cusp of being two hours long, but it feels like four. It can be said that comedies are the only genre of film where if the movie is incompetent, there is no enjoyment to be had at all. This movie is one of the prime examples of that principle. Part of this problem that is often apparent in modern comedies is the overindulgence of using improvised takes, where either what seems to be really laugh out loud funny at the time just seems like a big word salad of nonsense that just stops the flow of the movie. While I have no real problem with a reliance of dialogue to carry a film, it has to be done in the right way and the dialogue has to at least be interesting enough to keep the audience invested. With this dumb excuse of a movie, the reliance of unfunny jokes and improv as filler to fill in the bare bones plot which you realize is really idiotic not only makes the film just a chore to watch but makes the thing much longer than it needs to be.

The next movie that I have a ton of problems with and probably annoyed me to almost no end was Identity Thief, where not only the plot of the movie is completely unnecessary to begin with but it also brings up another issue with comedy films trying to make a movie longer: adding a subplot that takes up a good chunk of the story that ends up being dropped out of nowhere with no real resolution. In this movie, Jason Bateman's character tries to turn in the person who stole his identity and committed fraud with it. The idea itself could kind of work as a really black comedy but it is rather obvious from the look that it was never going to be that way, and the tone was a huge problem I had with it, as it is really stupid to make a story about making two people, one of whom nearly ruined the others' life, be on a buddy styled road trip and become friends. And then there is the subplot about how Melissa McCarthy's character owes money to a drug dealer who sends two hitmen after her, and added to that is a bounty hunter who is after her for missing a hearing. The subplot does come into play a few times, mainly with the bounty hunter almost catching her once or twice and the two groups do their best to get to her first, but for a long chunk of the movie they are not really involved with the story at hand. The main characters are not worried about them after a point, at least until the two leads get arrested for fraud (a classic example of what the fuck? questionable morals) and the hitmen catch up to them while the leads escape custody. And for a few seconds, they interact with one another again but this is short lived as the hitmen are arrested, never to be heard from again. In the end, that whole subplot served no purpose to the story or the humor so it was a completely unnecessary amount of filler put into a so called comedy to make it 111 minutes. Along with committing a terrible sin of wasting Robert Patrick and Jonathan Banks. Bringing the memory of that movie back makes me want to ignore talking about comedies now.

There is now kind of a jump with action films becoming overlong, as they try to make them at least two hours long to make fans feel like they got what they paid for. I could probably harp on the Transformers movie franchise for being completely over bloated as each film in the series so far has been around two and a half hours long and that would only be the tip of the iceberg but I feel like many people on the internet have already voiced their problems with it that it would become rather pointless to get into a tirade regarding it. But if there has to be something I could say about it that is relevant to the topic at hand, it is that the pacing is terrible. This mainly refers to the third acts of the movies, where they devolve into an hour long action scene with no break, making them become tired midway through. This is an expected problem with Michael Bay though, and I could quote a review for one his earlier films to kind of sum up how his action films work:
Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. "Armageddon" is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.  The review I just quoted I don't always agree with but this is kind of where the pacing issue really comes into play. I could point out another movie that is rather similar as it involves giant robots fighting would be Pacific Rim, that while is by no means a perfect film, is really fun and enjoyable while also being over two hours long (just barely though). I could also address how the characters in Pacific Rim, while they are kind of stock characters, at least work and aren't the scum of the earth like in Transformers but lets talk about their third acts.

We'll compare Dark of the Moon with Pacific Rim. With Dark of the Moon, the third act could begin sort of begin with the Autobots being supposedly dead after a BETRAYAL! by the Decepticons after they issued their rivals to be exiled from Earth. This leads to the conquest of Chicago and the remaining humans free from the tyranny to try and fight back, aided by the Autobots who somehow managed to avoid being killed off. And then the rest of the movie is just the battle, and it goes on forever. The action really does not stop as the scenes are pretty much moving from set piece A to set piece B to etc... and while they look good at times, the amount of stuff going on screen is a sensory overload that it is easy to get a headache rather easily. Now with Pacific Rim, I guess the third act could be at the start of the Hong Kong invasion of the Kaiju, as the Jaegers try to keep the city safe. This could be a near antithesis of what Transformers was doing, as the Hong Kong battle is only the start of the third act and doesn't take up the rest of the movie. Two of the Jaegers are defeated, leaving only Gypsy Danger and Striker Eureka remaining for the final assault to try and destroy the portal the kaiju are coming from. During that time, other stuff is going on to at least slow down the action, where it is the scientists who study the kaiju figuring out how they can gain access to the portal, the premature celebration followed by an immediate dispatch to finish the job, with a rather poignant scene regarding Herc and Chuck, the pilots of Eureka along with being father and son. It does surpass the generic characterization enough to make it noteworthy. And then the two remaining teams go and blow up the portal with only the Gypsy crew remaining. While Pacific Rim does have it's own problems regarding the pace as the third act is the first time any fighting happens since the first fifteen minutes of the film, it at least does a better job at making the time spent in between the fighting actually mean something.

The last paragraph might have seem a little fanboyish towards Pacific Rim as I really love the movie and for that I apologize if my opinion seemed to be favored towards one form of bias. But now the focus shall be put on the horror genre. Now for me, it is another genre that is hard to get right either due to having a good idea poorly executed or maybe even if there was no good idea and the movie was made in hopes of making a quick buck as is usually the case for most horror film sequels. That is more just a business practice in movies where the lower budget films are made in order to make enough money to fund the more ambitious productions. Before I get ahead of myself, I want to talk about how a movie with a solid concept can be brought down by bad execution along with being the type of movie we've seen before on many occasions and the easiest example of recent films would be The Purge. I actually like the idea of the film, about how for one night a year all crime is legal, and it would make a solid anthology focusing on different situations that arise during the night, either putting the attention on the victims or maybe the perpetrators. Unfortunately, the movie is nothing more than a run of the mill home invasion story, where a family is harassed by a group of people outside their house, wanting to get back someone that they were hunting. Part of the problem that makes this movie seem dragged out is the predictability of the plot, where the family struggles with whether or not to give the man back to them when it is obvious that there would be no movie if they decide to give him back. There is also the section of where the daughter's boyfriend tried to kill the father for whatever reason but it is rather hard to be invested in the family as there is a disjointed nature to how they are. The father works in home security so his home is built to the brim with security and it becomes illogical to a point on how people are able to break in in the first place. And due to the predictability of the plot, it's easy to fall into the beats of the story and even the supposed plot twist isn't all that surprising in the end. Horror films can come up with interesting concepts for movies as there can be some sort of unpredictability to what the story is, what the causes are, and other things but often it can be wasted in favor of something more simplistic.

And this shall be where part one will end. The next part will focus on dramatic movies and documentaries while trying to find more reasons why movies can feel longer than they really are. All the while, I'll try and put a more optimistic spin on it where longer movies that whose length for the most part is well deserved.

In Defense Of #1 - Superman Returns

Hello and welcome to In Defense Of (working title), a subsection of my blog where I talk about movies that many people do not enjoy for reasons but still have people who like it for reasons. And to start it off, I am going to talk about the 2006 film Superman Returns. While it had gotten some solid reviews from critics during the time of release, having Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings in the 70s (76% and 72/100, respectively) audiences have been sort of torn on it, either liking it or hating it. While the criticism has been into more of the favorable aspect of it, there are still some detractors of the movie, usually taking their hate onto the length of it and lack of action. It could be easier to say that, "Hey, at least it was better than the previous sequels" and call it a day but lets try and figure out what is good and bad about this movie. I'll also try to ignore Man of Steel as well, maybe in hopes that none of what that movie did will influence what my opinion on this is.

First, lets start with the cast and how well they did their job. I'll include some of the supporting cast towards the end of this section but this will focus on the main cast first. The main leads who played Superman and Lois Lane (Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth) I think did a decent job but of course there are some issues that are rather noticeable. One of the bigger points is the ages of both of them, though I might give Routh a pass on this due to him and Christopher Reeve being around the same age during their first appearance as Superman when comparing the two (around 25-26 for both). But still, in this movie, both of them do look a lot younger than they really should, especially since it is supposed to take place 5 years after Superman 2. The experience is kind of jarring especially with Bosworth as Lois, since in Superman Returns, she is supposed to be engaged and have a 5 year old son yet she looks like she could easily be in her early 20s. Aside from that, they both do a rather okay job in their roles and it still is kind of intriguing how similar Routh looks like Reeve but isn't like a carbon copy. Now lets go onto the main villain of the movie, Lex Luthor played by Kevin Spacey. I do have an issue with Luthor being the main villain in a Superman movie again (as he was at least involved in three of the previous four movies) and his plan being similar to the first movie but it is kind of nitpicking really since I do think that Kevin Spacey does a wonderful job and it was an example of near perfect casting. It would be easy to compare it to the way Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor in the previous films and there are some simiarities but while Hackman's portrayal was kind of campy, like a regular comic book villain, Spacey does make him rather a serious villain. It is rather over the top at times as well but that's to be expected and it makes his performance all the more enjoyable.

The supporting cast all does a rather decent job. There is James Marsden as Richard, Perry White's nephew and Lois' fiancee who as a character was rather underdeveloped, just seeming to be nothing more than a wall between Superman and Lois. There was also Frank Langella as Perry White too, who was not in the movie that much but still did a decent job. I didn't know who Parker Posey was for a while (she played Kitty, Lex's henchwoman) but it was a rather interesting role and she seemed to fit as a decent foil to Luthor at times. Also looking up at the credits, the movie also had cameo appearances from people who were involved in the Adventures of Superman show from the fifties. Those people being Jack Larson and Noel Neill, who in Superman Returns appeared as a bartender and the elderly woman Lex Luthor married for her money respectively. Those are some rather nice touches although kind of obtuse as well for cameos.

There is now the movie itself, one of the things that I'll start off with is the plot. It starts off with Clark Kent returning from his five year voyage in search for any other surviving Kryptonians, which proved a fruitless effort. During the time, Lex got out of prison and acquired money from an elderly woman. Using that money, he goes to Superman's fortress of solitude and steals some crystals, learning later on that they can be used to create new land masses. His evil plan is similar to that from the first movie, where Lex Luthor wants to create new land that he can end up selling for a high profit at the expense of destroying part of the USA; in the first movie, it was using missiles to separate the east and west coasts from their respective spots and in this one its creating a large land mass that will cause sea levels to rise and flood out other parts of the world. There is somewhat a lack of originality in this as it is kind of a retread of the first film but that also kind of comes with the territory of having Lex as a villain in the first place. Because he is unable to fight Superman one on one, he has to rely on his smarts in order to get a plan to work. There is also kind of a similarity to Lex's endgame from Superman 2, as he sold out Lois and Superman to General Zod in order to get his hands on Australia, again for real estate money. It would be interesting to see Lex have a plan that doesn't rely on real estate gains for once in a movie.

Now for Superman, he returns to Earth and struggles with being away for the past five years. The most noticeable being the relationship with Lois Lane, as she is now engaged and has a child. She also has won a Pulitzer Prize for an article called "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman." This brings up an interesting point as to whether or not an article like that is actually true or not. I could bring up Batman as an example, as in that series, Batman acts as a protector of Gotham City from all the crime that has run rampant throughout. It may seem like a good thing but there have been discussions on whether or not he actually has worsened the crime in Gotham by his presence, inadvertently creating or bringing in super criminals who may not have come into the city if it weren't for Batman. As for myself, I have not read enough comics to attest for the truth on this but from some of the Batman movies like the '89 film, he was partially responsible for the Joker in that one. This could also be attested to Superman as well. I don't know if Lex Luthor would still be doing most of his schemes the way he does without having to worry about him, but there is also the case of General Zod, Ursa, and Non. In the events of Superman 2, Superman threw a hydrogen bomb into space in order to stop a terrorist plot and as a result, accidentally freed the three kryptonians from the Phantom Zone. There is more I could go on but I'm already getting ahead of myself. How this can relate to Superman Returns could be that (although my memory might be bad on this) but that the kryptonite that Luthor and Co. steal in this movie came from Superman's reentry to Earth. It is purely coincidental but isn't that usually the case for most of these things and the kryptonite I'll get to later.

So Superman returns to action during a scene where a flight test involving a space shuttle is disrupted due to the experiment Lex was doing with the crystals, leaving the plane in a free fall. He tries to stop the plane from crashing and to be honest, this was a really well done scene. It does serve as a way for Superman to get back into the whole superhero business and the physics that actually goes into him trying to find out how to slow the plane down makes the scene all the more suspenseful, with the wings breaking off as he tries to grab a hold of them is an example. In the previous films, which is probably due to the quality of the effects at the time, would have had him stop the plane by holding it from the wing and having it just stay in place. This is one of the problems people had with the movie though as while the actions scenes are well done and the special effects are pretty good, they are few of them in the movie itself. This does leave the movie as more of a character driven film as most of it does revolve around Clark trying to readjust to his life after all the time he has been away, which I actually like. This does have to do with the issue of Superman being nearly invincible that it would be hard to make a tense action filled movie without having villains like Zod or Doomsday to fight or having people equipped with kryptonite at all times.

So after a while, Lois and her family are taken hostage by Lex, who reveals his evil plan and it is discovered that Lois' son was conceived by Superman, which would bring up a lot of questions to Lois which makes the whole memory wipe kiss from the end of the second movie all the more worse. Superman then goes to rescue them and afterwards tries to stop the villains who have succeeded in creating their landmass using kryptonite. Superman is made weak as he comes into contact with the land and Lex's henchmen end up beating him up, leaving Lex to stab him in the back with a shard of kryptonite and throw him into the ocean, leaving him for dead. He does get saved by Richard though, so at least he serves a point in the movie after all. After being saved, Superman lifts the land mass and throws it out into space, which weakens him to the point where he free falls to the earth and is assumed dead. But in the end, he is alright and the movie ends as he is ready to continue being a superhero. There is the problem with how in the world Superman was able to survive long enough to get the landmass out of orbit due to it being filled with his number one weakness which when he first came into contact with weakened him rather easily. I guess it does serve as kind of the suspenseful climax but that does make it somewhat illogical.

Now comes the consensus of whether or not Superman Returns is a good movie that does not deserve all the hate it gets. I haven't talked about Bryan Singer and some of the stuff he was involved with prior to this film as it does sort of get into my final opinion which is: it is a rather good movie. Now it isn't a perfect movie and the lack of action does hinder it a little but I think that it is a well done character driven film involving Superman, which is kind of the only way this could have worked. Now with Bryan Singer having left production of the third X-Men movie to do this, I think that  it was the best thing he could have done even though it was kind of a bad move on his part due to leaving that series high and dry. And as of recent, the X-Men movies really have not aged well and reception has grown negative which could be due to the success of the Dark Knight trilogy and maybe Singer directing The Last Stand would not have saved that movie from being the train wreck people consider it to be. So back to Superman Returns, it has its problems but it is a better film than people give it credit for, especially compared to the other superhero films Singer directed prior.


Next On In Defense Of: Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Halloween 5 (A Movie I've Watched More Than I Should Have For No Real Reason)

There was kind of a weird time in my youth, when my grandparents still lived within driving distance and almost every weekend I would visit them. Of course it was fun as they would spoil me, like grandparents do and it always seemed like a perfect place to be at. And I could also stay up rather late on the weekends, which is always the best thing when you are young, since there were always good things on TV at those late hours. At least, there usually is and I thought so at the time. It was where I got exposed to more dumb movies and what defined my taste in movies for a while. I remember when AMC used to have late night horror movies on at the time. Although for me, the usual movies that I ended up watching that were on for some reason were the Halloween sequels, 4 and 5 to be exact. But while I could talk about 4 right now, I honestly didn't watch it that much, except for maybe the final half hour or so. So it is fair for me to say that even though it has been years since I watched either movie, I probably have watched Halloween 5 more than most movies and to be honest, even when I was a kid it wasn't particularly a favorite of mine. I mean, I liked it enough at the time to watch it when it was on but I never thought it was that great. Kind of the opposite I guess of what happened with ION and Goodfellas, which was also on all the time for some reason and I watched it when it was on, but I still like Goodfellas. My feelings towards Halloween 5 are kind of mixed though.

Now if there was anything good that came of watching that movie, it was a growing appreciation for the acting talent that was Donald Pleasence. The way he played Dr. Loomis in the film, while when compared to the original Halloween isn't as perfect, is still wonderful to watch. He does suffer from a lackluster story and script, most of the points I didn't realize until recently, but you can tell that he can become the character so easily that his appearance in the sequels might be the only reason they kept getting made. The only other actor really worth mentioning is Danielle Harris, who played Jamie in 4 and 5. She is pretty good in the movies (and I always thought so), showing a solid amount of talent in portraying the survivor role in a slasher film rather well. Otherwise, no one else was rather worth mentioning as it seemed like they were just doing their job, like anyone else could have fit into the roles and it wouldn't have lost anything.

And of course, since it is a Halloween sequel, the plot just melts down to Michael Myers kills teenagers, chases a family member, while Loomis tries to stop him. There are elements that do make it somewhat different, although maybe just making it all the more silly, like Jamie having a psychic connection to her uncle and the ending with the mysterious Man in Black (explained in the worst way in the sequel following this one). It did kind of dismiss the implied meaning of the previous movie where it was assumed that Jamie would become a killer just like Michael (an ending that might have been taken from its contemporary/rival Friday the 13th, with the ending of part 5 being similar), where she ends up in a mental institution as is a mute for most of the movie. There are some notable moments in the movie that I rather like, those being where a main character, either Loomis or Jamie, are having quiet moments with The Shape. The first one being where Loomis is trying to reason with Michael, kind of showing how he had not really given up on helping him out, still trying to save everyone he can while he still can. Of course, it doesn't work though. The second moment being where when Michael is about to kill Jamie and she calls him uncle, triggering some sort of connection with her, making it easy to see that despite that he is near pure evil, there is still some sort of humanity inside of him. He takes off his mask to show her his face and eyes (kind of a retcon I guess due to in Halloween 2 having his eyes shot out) but when she tries to touch his face, he goes into a frenzy again.

It's hard to say if I really find it hard to realize that I've watched this movie more than I would now that I'm older and my tastes in movies have changed. I've already said that there are a few good things about the movie so there is that. It's just that as whole, and as is the case of most horror sequels, it's just not a good movie. And I don't really hold the first movie in too high of a regard, even though I do really enjoy it. For what it is, the first Halloween is a good slasher film, one that is shot really well, builds quite a bit of suspense, and doesn't explain too much which give this sense of mystery of what is going on with The Shape. The sequel, while it is okay, does ruin the first movie a little due to the twist. And I'm on the camp that the series should have become an anthology type thing like the original plan with Halloween 3 so there is that too. But my appreciation of horror films came from watch crap like Halloween 4 and 5 so maybe that isn't too bad of a deal maybe.

The Pilot of In Defense Of - Blackadder Series 1

Hello and welcome to (Working Title) In Defense Of, a blog series where I talk about movies and TV shows that people think get more hate than they deserve. Although most of the time, I will try to talk about movies that people hate yet have some people who like it or if I like it for some reason. As I am unsure of how to start the first blog post about the first movie I chose to review, I am going to discuss the first series of Blackadder. Now as a whole, the show is a classic of British TV and had a cast of some of Britain's best comic actors, but the first series even among its cast and crew, is considered to be the odd man out among the whole. And I am on the side of that it is not as good when compared to the three series that followed. It also was expensive at the time for no real reason and the price tag was one of the reasons that lead to the three year gap between series 1 and 2. Other contrasts that cause ire are the switched character traits of Edmund and Baldrick, where in later series Edmund is more of a suave, pompous yet intelligent man while Baldrick was made out to be "the idiot to end all idiots", they were more of a sniveling coward and smarter than his superiors respectively. There are many things that I could go on as to why series 1 is inferior to series 2-4, but does that mean that as a whole it should be ignored?

Let's start with the setup first. As each series takes place in a different period of time, the first series, also known as The Black Adder, takes place towards the end of the Middle Age, under the guise of a secret history that starts around the time of the Battle of Bosworth Field, only having Richard III winning the battle and Edmund accidentally assassinating him in the first episode. The show then follows the new king, Richard the IV; Edmund, who adopts the title of the Black Adder due to his greatly exaggerated tale of the battle; Lord Percy, Edmund's friend whom he belittles on a constant basis; and Edmund's squire Baldrick. The premise itself is more in tune with the show as a whole as how the series does use the time period itself for comedic effect, also giving way to use of many references to Shakespeare. It also sets up the main trio of Edmund, Percy, and Baldrick, who also have a same type of friendship in series 2, although Percy would not appear in series 3 and would then change into Captain Darling in series 4. The cast also can be pretty wonderful, with a major point awarded to Brian Blessed as Richard IV. A detraction though has to be the size of the cast. Often so, there are too many characters, where there is something going on with the main trio, Richard IV, Prince Harry, and whatever side characters come into play within the episode. This may be why the following series shortens its cast each time as it does have the bonus of giving the plots more focus.

And as with the whole, because there are a lot of characters, some of the episodes do drag or are not as funny as they could be. While that could be a difference in the type of humor they were going for, an example I could go with for a show that doesn't have a lot of laughs yet can be one of the funniest things is Fawlty Towers, as the first half of episodes can be mostly setup to the the second half jokes but at least there is some humor in that first half too. Then again, I remember hearing in a interview somewhere about how Atkinson and Curtis were trying not to be that show but I may be wrong on that part or maybe I'm thinking about Not The Nine O'Clock News and how that was trying not to be a Monty Python ripoff. That's not to say there aren't any good episodes in it, which is far from the case. The last episode of the series, The Black Seal being my favorite, is a wonderful episode but another one I like is The Archbishop, which is where I realized that a lot of the musical cues were often hilarious in the show, an example in the episode is where Richard announces that Edmund is to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. The odd music cue, with the terror on Edmund's face along with the getup he had on, especially with the weird Black Russian codpiece, makes the scene a highlight of the episode. There is also where the trio are trying to figure out how to make money by commercializing artifacts with Percy telling about how he has a real one in a finger of Jesus while Baldrick tells him otherwise is also rather funny and shows how well they work together.

There is also the aesthetic look of the show as a whole. Despite the price of the show and the effort to make everything look like it belonged in the time period, which they do well, it looked like a million bucks yet cost a million pounds. While I do applaud the look of the show, there are some aspects of the set that somehow feel off, in a way I really cannot put my finger on it. Also the quality of the film stock is kind of in question as it does feel rather cheap in a way. The locations they take place in also are really well selected but are often not utilized to their full potential. I probably won't go into full detail on that aspect due to my lack of knowledge of how such things work.

I should also put a word out on the opening and ending themes of the show. For the most part, if you heard one of the Blackadder opening themes, you know the main melody and as a whole it is one of my favorite TV themes. The series 1 theme when compared to the others, while being my least favorite, is still rather good. It's not like the Blackadder II version, where it starts off sounding like it is going to be an epic but instead is played on a recorder with a guitar solo occasionally in the background or even the army styled Goes Forth version, but there is this sort of bombast to it that fits the time period and works as getting one excited for what is to come, which does add a little humor to the situation as well. The ending theme is good too yet its only real comparison maybe is II's due to how they do have lyrics added that usually follow with the story of what happened in the episode. The better version out of the two is probably II's by a small margin mainly due to the minstrel type vocalizing and instrumentation, following in the footsteps of the opening theme. Also a key change doesn't hurt.

As stated earlier, the show does improve with each passing series, as the writing manages to improve. This may have to do with having Elton replace Atkinson as a main writer since it would seem to take some pressure off. There is also adding Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as cast members in the following seasons that manage to add some good humor to their characters, fully realized in Blackadder Goes Forth. The sets and quality of the show improve as well yet it goes back to the question at hand, is The Black Adder so much of an odd man out that it should be ignored as a whole when compared to Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third, and Blackadder Goes Forth? I think it depends but to be honest, I think it's worth at least one go around. It may be a far cry to what they others have to offer but that might be why it is worth checking out. There can be some admiration to be had as to where the show started\and the beginnings of how the characters interacted with one another. Also on a whole, it does have some sore of humor as with each passing descendant, Edmund Blackadder manages to be smarter yet is stuck being in lower class rank. Also there is The Black Seal, which is worth watching no matter what especially with the ending being as ridiculous and dark as it is.


Next On In Defense Of: Episode #1 - Superman Returns

Return To Oz - AKA The Last Thing That Happened to Me In High School

It has been almost three years since I graduated from high school and to be honest, besides a few friends and a class or two, I am really glad I don't have to go through it again. Although it's the having friends that I really miss even though I ended up losing a lot of friends over the years. My lone year of college did not get me any long term friends like I expected and I still don't have any really besides my ex-girlfriend anymore. It gets really boring and lonely without having anyone to really talk to these days, which is exacerbated by how it is hard for me to talk to people altogether. Just one of those ruts that might take a while before I break out of it.

 So on the subject of high school, I only was part of one extracurricular activity, mainly due to how boring study period was getting and I needed some sort of escape. That ended up being academic decathlon, which at the time I joined, was starting up at my school after not being active for quite a few years. I was a late addition as well, joining only about a week or so before the first competition. I also was filling in a hole that the team needed due to my grades being good enough to get in but being kind of an example of how much of a stereotypical underachiever I was. Well in that year and the next, we made it to regionals but never got any farther. My scores were not that great usually, (especially when it came to the speech parts, again due to my lack of social skills) but I did do decently in the writing parts so there is something to hold up.

So why am I talking about academic decathlon in what was meant to be a semi-review of Return to Oz? Well, after losing out again, the study period for ac dec ended up becoming just a regular study period with just being able to hang out with friends more freely, which I liked. And at the end of the year, where there was really not much to do cause of finals, the ac dec coach decided to have us watch the movie. To talk about him, he was a cool guy, not really the stereotypical "cool" teacher as if he was trying to be that. He was just kind of that guy who was someone students could relate to yet he did have some form of respect that you have for those in a superior role, and to be honest, one of those people I could kind of see being friends with outside of high school.

So to get back to him having us watch the movie, and as a spoiler to some of the review, with the period not being long enough to watch the entire movie, it will be obvious that I did not watch it all. I didn't get to watch any of the beginning up to Dorothy's escape from the mental hospital and stopped right before the reveal of who the girl who helped Dorothy escape really was. Never mind, I don't remember much about the plot of the movie but most of the visuals stuck with me so I don't think I could do a good review of the movie after all. There was always this sense of dread throughout the movie, a sort of darkness that I had to appreciate very much, as it was the first time I had heard of the movie and was kind of struck by how different the tone was compared to the Wizard of Oz, but that was probably to be expected due to the number of years apart the movies were separated by. The effects were really well done, as is my fascination with stop motion that is to be expected. It was really enjoyable which I kind of regret not having watched the movie since.

I don't know if I will ever get myself to watch the movie again. It almost seems like a dumb thing to say because I remember liking it and even looked up trying to get it for a short while after. Maybe it is because it holds kind of a soft place in my heart and memories as being one of the last things I ended up spending time with my close friends on. Friends I really haven't talked to in almost as long a time as that day was. Maybe it is dumb of me to hold that movie in sort of a pedestal like that for no real reason. I should get some new friends and try to make some new memories to enjoy but it just seems like one of those things that may not happen soon. Just how things go, I guess.

A Love Letter To Robert Smith and Company - Why The Cure is my favorite band

I never really started listening to The Cure all that much, only really being familiar with the songs that would get any airplay on the radio like Just Like Heaven, Love Song, and Friday, I'm In Love, at least until around my senior year in high school when I started watching South Park again and was taking AP English. Of course I watched the Mecha-Streisand episode which did feature Robert Smith in somewhat a significant role and at the end, as he is walking away into the sunrise (or sunset, I'm not sure), Kyle shouts to him that Disintegration was the best album ever. Looking it up, Smith himself said that it was one of the proudest moments because all of the younger people in his family thought he was a pretty cool person. And with that, I ended up buying the album from a local electronics store and started listening to it. It felt like one of those moments where something that you didn't know was missing in your life until you found it. Each song felt like a breath of fresh air compared to what I was listening to at the time, which was mostly metal and rock music, and each song seemed to flow into one another at a perfect pace. The orchestration of each instrument felt so wonderful that even to this day, I still find something new in songs that I can give another reason to fall in love with it all over again. As to where the AP English coming into play, it was where I was introduced to The Stranger by Albert Camus, which was the inspiration for Killing an Arab. Up to this point, I really did not like English class at all and really did not care much for working at it at all. Although I'n not saying that I got the book when I read it, because I didn't understand it for a while but it ended up getting me more involved in trying to understand writing and made me want to learn more about different works like movies, books and especially music.

I probably listened to Disintegration as a whole maybe at least once a week during my lone year at college, studying things that I ended up realizing that I was wasting my time on. And during that time, I got really depressed, probably severe depression at times to the point where I thought about killing myself on a regular basis, feeling as if I was failing myself and everyone I knew due to me not having any clue what I was doing, that maybe I went to the wrong school, that I was never going to find out what I was meant to do with my life. And for lack of a better phrase, The Cure saved my life. Sure there was Disintegration still being blared on the sound system continuously and the songs began to echo my feelings, especially Prayers For Rain and Homesick, but I was also getting into Seventeen Seconds and The Head on the Door albums, the former feeling more like a more sparse, stripped down experiment of what they would end up perfecting years later. The most obvious song I could talk about with that album would be A Forest, which seemed to me to be about being trapped in a loop with no means of escape in the foreseeable future. That too was also a song that I played frequently due to it having some sort of similarity to what I was going through as I was not only struggling through school, there was also a breakup there, all my new friends kind of just ignoring me for the most part, and other personal things that I would probably spare you from, it just felt like my depression was never going to leave me (and to be honest, I don't think I've gotten any better).

And then there has been the past two years where I have been trying to get my life sorted out and not really doing that much of a good job at it either.It took about a year for me to finally get a job, which has ended up being a part time one where I work mainly six hours a week and don't get paid that much so I guess the situation could be a lot worse. I was in a relationship that lasted until about maybe two weeks ago and that is something that I regret all too well despite knowing that it was probably doomed to fail from the start. And for the most part, I have been alone. None of my old friends really want to hang out with me and I haven't been able to make any new ones, mainly due to me having trouble being social. I lost interest in a lot of things, where I couldn't really get a reaction out of anything and all my feelings just seemed to be gone. And just looking up things that I really wish I hadn't still some days and struggle with he thoughts of my own mortality and stuff like that. Almost nothing I learned on subjects that coincide with that could console me at all, to where I felt like I was having anxiety attacks on a normal basis. The problems have gotten lesser but I still suffer from them. Sorry about the tangent but there were some things that have helped me at least find some sort of happiness in my life.

And here comes for the most part the two albums that have consumed my life for the past few months, Faith and Pornography. These albums seem to me to be both echo feelings of depression, although two different kinds of it. Faith being the gray, drab, just emptiness kind of depression that usually seems to be the mood I'm in for the most part. Each song seems to build onto that feeling of dread and maybe is one of the more autobiographical albums that The Cure have done. There were moments in songs like All Cats Are Grey, Faith, and Doubt that just make you feel the pain and torment that Rob was probably going through at that period in time and maybe his views on the world are shown in the lyrics as well. And then there is Pornography, an album that could only come from a suicidal man who finds solace in LSD, where the depression has hit a more violent, aggressive stage where it's just self loathing and hatred. If you need a perfect example of what I'm talking about, just listen to Cold. And yet, they probably helped me get through my feelings better than most things I tried. Because it was about someone who was dealing with the same issues at around the same point in life.

Maybe what I have written for most of this has been nothing more than just an autobiographical tale and not really a tribute to my favorite band, but maybe that's why it should be. It's what they got me through the past few years, how their music has not only brought me salvation but is also catchy and rather insightful. It may not mean much to the band and I don't consider myself to be the biggest Cure fan in the world but I love them more that I could ever say.

The Evils of Mediocrity - The Spoken Word of a Failed Writer

I started my first novel, the story about a grim reaper who falls in love with a waitress in what I guess was probably going to be downtown Milwaukee, during my senior year of high school. I got about thirty pages into it, getting all preachy about religion and the concept of love as being a mechanism to just fill a hole in life, as the perspective was meant to be switched to the waitress, whose story of trying to stay in love with the said reaper converted into human, and I just couldn't figure out a way how to write a female character any good, even if she was more similar to me than I realized at the time (or maybe because of that reason). Along that subject, I had written a lot of poetry at the time, some of which was good but most of it was melodramatic bs most of it revolving around the love lost of a girl I knew once and dated for a few months but ended up losing her number when she moved away and that's all that ended up of that. Most of it also focused on the feeling of despair and hopelessness, the feelings that kind of keep growing when I was growing up. I did not consider myself that social even when I had a group of friends and was in a few groups in school, so that may have contributed to my inability to write dialogue, which I do think is what drives most of my work.... or at least I try to do so.

The second novel I tried to start was sort of a quazi-ripoff of Shin Megami Tensei II combined with Bloodsong (or the Volsunga Saga, if you want to get more technical about it) about this couple in a sort of 1980s style post-apocalypse (kind of like the downtown of A Boy and His Dog if they picked the 80s as their perfect society) who kind of just start off liking each other due to one odd interaction and end up becoming close, yet one of them ends up being killed off in the middle of the story. And almost right after, the other wakes up the next morning as if he did not exist. I guess an obvious similarity is to the concept of Adam and Eve (primarily taken from the SMTII plot as well) yet it also became in the idea process, about the whole kind of absurdity of  trying to make "the perfect couple" yet its never given a clear idea why the idea exists. With that one, I kind of just got started and got maybe 10-15 pages in and again, it ends up being where I can't write a female character again. I guess there is a pattern here with my stories being about female characters and cause I never really talked to girls, I don't know how to write them.

And as for my most recent idea, a psychological drama about a girl who investigates her friend's disappearance and becomes distraught as the real world she uncovers, it comes back to that same problem. I even had an ending to the story that I thought would kind of fit with the absurdist tone of the novel, where she ends up getting killed by someone completely unrelated to the disappearance. If any comparison could be drawn for what I was going for, it was probably Twin Peaks. It does take place in somewhat of a similar town... ish but i always thought that it would take place in New Mexico, the town that seems perfect yet is full of some weird, crazy characters, and there is kind of a relationship between the main character Rosaline and the lead investigator of the case which echos somewhat the relationship between Dale and Audrey but I considered the cop to be more of a guy who has done this before but is still kind of inexperienced to the failures. And then I found this fucking movie about a similar idea that ends almost the same way and I almost give up the idea for a while at least as a novel. Then I thought maybe I could do it as a movie yet still write the novel as kind of a backbone to the future script.

I've had other ideas come and go but these were the three ideas that I thought would be the best I could do at the time. I still love them even though the first one is kind of a young adult novel trying to be something more since it deals a lot with really dark subjects and it ends with the main characters dying (another common plot line in my stories, go figure). I am starting to think though that I will never finish these stories ever, that maybe they're too ambitious and high concept for me to make as character driven stories that I cannot do at all that well. But maybe there is that slight glimmer of hope that maybe I can at least do something productive with my writing. And that is my short stories. Again, they're all mainly character driven yet maybe it is the constraints of having to tell a story in a limited amount of time and space that makes it easier to finish. And possibly makes them work I am kind of proud of.

Like Maritza-Pan, which is pretty much just a story about a teenage boy who has an affair with an older woman. There is actually a lot that is going on in it and I'm still surprised I wrote it. One comment I got on it was that I should write things like that. That it was actually good. It was probably the best thing that has ever happened to me, just some random commenter liking a short story of mine. There are other stories, one about a bunch of kids fighting against a bear, which I finished, and another one I haven't gotten to about two brothers trapped in a cave while one of them is dying, that do make me wish I could write better. Maybe there is a somewhat talented writer inside of me. If I will ever be able to uncover it from the deep, viscous shell of a being that is myself is unknown. Or whether it was just a flash in the pan inspiration and I am nothing better than mediocre is a possibility as well. I wonder if I will ever be able to get the opportunity to see the answer to that ever. There is something about being around people, or looking up to people who you know are great at what they do and they inspire you to do the same thing. And yet there is something that also can come out of that in a negative way. And that is the feeling of knowing that you will never be as good as them, not even compared in the same papers that discuss and compare the contemporaries you aspire to be with. Where it seems to come easy to them, despite the knowledge that they did have to work at it. There is only so much work you can put into something, maybe comparing a marble statue to a plastic imitator, before you realize that it just isn't going to be the same.

So should I just give up trying to write, as there is no way I can see in the near future that I will be able to finish any of it? Maybe, maybe not. I may never be labeled among the great writers of any period, not that I even bother to try, but if I can at least figure out my own voice, maybe that's good enough. Until I can find that one spark of genius, I have to dig through a long pile of mediocrity to get there. Let's hope that I live long enough to finish digging.

Hello and welcome to Blank Tape Memories.

This blog is meant to be just a random discussion piece revolving around multiple subjects, be it film, music, books, and other writings. I don't consider myself to be that much of an intellectual but i am willing to give this a shot and see how things go.

I am thinking that the way this blog will work is that if I find something I think should be worth discussing, I'll try and post something but for the most part, I'm going to try and get some audience interaction where if someone else has a good idea for a discussion, I'll voice my opinion.

So.... on with the show I guess.