Poem: Self-Destruct (2010)

Self-Destruct

The air is smoke:

Oppressive, suffocating heat

That would choke the lungs of lesser men

With panic,

But we know just what to do.

We’ll drown the fire in a torrent,

And when the floods rise up,

We’re fight the water with fire –

The flames licking up every last drop

Until our feet are on dry ground

And everything is ash,

Never minding that when the new trees

Snake their way to the sky,

Their seeds will fall on volcanic rock

And be snatched away by the winds.

And as we fall

Like the Romans before us,

We’ll wonder where we went wrong.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014, PG-13)

Well, three years and eight hours later, The Hobbit finally comes to a close.  The Battle of the Five Armies has its moments.  Martin Freeman is predictably wonderful, some of the titular battle is impressive, and Galadriel being hardcore awesome is always appreciated.  However, when it comes to this movie, “needless” is the main adjective that springs to mind.

Remember the big “this just got real” cliffhanger at the end of The Desolation of Smaug?  Taken care of in about the first ten minutes.  After that, it’s all dragon fever and arguing over gold and non-canon love triangles and endless fighting and people dying prettily.  Whoever didn’t try to dissuade Peter Jackson from believing this small portion of the book warranted an entire movie, especially one that approaches two-and-a-half hours, is the cinematic definition of a good person standing by doing nothing.

I’m not denying that the battle is cool, but there’s way, way too much of it.  When half of your movie is the same continuous battle, you’re not doing it right.  Early in the fighting, it’s neat to watch the synchronized movements of the elf warriors, and Billy Connolly makes a fine dwarf general, but it’s not long before it becomes too much of the same.  It’s hurt by the fact that the dwarves we’ve been following for the first two movies don’t even join the action until halfway through the fight.  Sure, there are other people we know in the fracas, like Thranduil and Bard the bowman, but there’s not enough to connect with, and it just becomes battle sequences for the sake of them.  (Also, Tauriel is really poorly served in this movie.  If I were Evangeline Lilly, I’d be offended on behalf of my character.)

Worst of all, Bilbo is absent for much of it.  There’s a looooong segment in which he’s not onscreen at all, and when he finally starts showing up again, it’s mainly just to react to stuff.  The movie’s quality automatically increases whenever Bilbo has something to do – I really enjoy a scene he shares with Thranduil and Bard in the ramp-up to the battle, and it’s great overall to see how much he’s grown throughout the films – and devoting so much screentime to something he doesn’t take much part in makes it that much harder to invest in the action.

The Hobbit trilogy’s biggest contribution to Tolkien’s legacy?  Any school kid looking to avoid their education by watching the movie instead of reading the book will be put off by the fact that slogging through all three films would probably take longer.  Plus, any kid determined enough to watch in lieu of reading will be instantly found out when their book report contains stuff about Sauron returning, Radagast the Brown, the existence of an elf-elf-dwarf love triangle, and any number of invented or shoehorned bits.  Well done, Peter Jackson – you’ve created a strong deterrent against cheating as well as a surefire way to spot it.  Wouldn’t you rather have created a good, fun adaptation of The Hobbit instead?

Warnings

Copious amounts of battle violence.

Top Five Educational Shorts: Buster Keaton

These aren’t “educational shorts,” by the way.  They’re talking shorts made by Educational Pictures in the mid-to-late ‘30s, after Buster Keaton was fired by MGM.  Like with the Columbia shorts I already reviewed, they’re quick and cheap, but some of them are really funny and Buster is marvelous.  Here are my top picks.

The Gold Ghost (1934)

A typical Buster dandy skips town after being rejected by his girl; he settles in a ghost town, where he takes up the post of sheriff just in time for a big boom when gold is rediscovered in the area.  It’s a nice Bustery plot with some fun ghost town gags and a great final shoot-out that really lets Buster shine.

Hayseed Romance (1935)

Here, Buster moves in with a pretty girl and her short-tempered aunt, answering a want ad for a husband, but he immediately regrets it when he realizes which one placed the ad.  There’s a long bedtime sequence that’s just to die for, and Buster and the girl he likes are way too cute together.

Grand Slam Opera (1936)

This one’s probably the funniest of the bunch.  It features Buster taking part in a radio talent show (unfortunately, juggling isn’t really made for a radio audience.)  There are two incredible dances that are hilarious (and impressive!) in different ways, and the short also adapts the “Anvil Chorus” gag that Buster first performed back in his vaudeville days.  It’s still sometimes staggering how think how wonderfully funny he was.

Blue Blazes (1936)

In this short, Buster is a disaster of a fireman who’s relocated to a small-town firehouse after one too many screw-ups.  He naturally gets off to a colossally bad start, but it’s terrific to watch him eventually make good in a very Busterish fashion, and I could pull a muscle laughing at his ridiculous attempts to get into a burning building.

The Chemist (1936)

While Grand Slam Opera is funnier, this one might be my favorite of the bunch.  In it, Buster plays a hapless scientist who, having finally gotten his big break after inventing a noiseless explosive, is kidnapped by a trio of bank robbers looking to blow safes inconspicuously.  Buster is in fine resourceful form – he gets to do lots of creative quick thinking, there are some good chase scenes, and one gag features the best use of sound that I’ve seen in any Buster Keaton talkie.  Great fun all around.

Doctor Who Series 9 Wish List

It’s the time of year for wishing; why not start with Who?  It’s no secret that I have complaints about series 8, so here’s what I’d like Nick Frost/Santa to drop in my stocking next season.

Doctor-Clara Friendship

This is item one – it’s so important that the Doctor and his companion(s) are in a good place, and for much of series 8, I just didn’t see that.  The good news is that I’m heartened after seeing the reworked Doctor-Clara relationship in “Last Christmas.”  Let’s keep that up; it’s fine if they bicker and are strong-willed with each other, but the love has to be the foundation.  (I’m also still open to a second companion, provided it’s not just a hot male brought in to be paired with Clara.)

Doctor-Clara Balance

After her minimal impact in series 7, it was nice to see Clara taking a more active role in the adventures this season, but it doesn’t – repeat, does not – have to be at the expense of the Doctor.  I don’t want to see him disappearing for huge swathes of time, and I don’t want to see him sidelined for the end-of-episode victories.  This is a show with only two main characters.  They can both afford to be strong, clever, brave, etc.  They can work as a team to solve problems and save planets, both can save each other, and we can see more than just one person’s perspective.

TARDIS Excitement!

Now, I’m not saying the part-time companion business has to stop, but it’s no fun to watch a companion who only squeezes in the whole time-and-space thing when it fits her schedule.  When the Doctor follows his companion around her flat trying to convince her to go on an incredible adventure with him, it’s depressing, and when she basically replies, “Yeah, maybe l8r, k bye,” it’s aggravating.  I’d like to see a Clara who’s invested in her life on the TARDIS.

Doctor Personality Ratio

This is a nitpick since, really, series 8 didn’t do too badly in this regard.  I know that the Doctor will have unpleasant moments, as he should, because no one’s perfect, but the colossal rudeness we see in, say, “The Caretaker” should never overwhelm a significant chunk of an episode.  Keep him cantankerous, keep him brusque, keep giving us glimpses of those hearts, and keep “distastefully dickish” to a minimum.  Maintain that ratio, and I will love Twelve forever.

That Face!

The “I’ve seen that face before” remarks in “Deep Breath” excited me tremendously.  I’m super-curious to find out why the Doctor has Caecillius’s face (and John Frobisher’s, for that matter, but I’ll let that one go if need be – aside from the fact that Torchwood is a separate program, Frobisher’s actions are far from family friendly.)  Whether that entails going back to Pompeii or whatever, let’s start exploring it now.  I don’t want the whole thing wrapped up in a drive-by single line in Twelve’s final episode.

Favorite Characters: Rich Hardbeck (Skins (U.K.))

As with most of my favorite characters on Skins, I like Rich because he’s such a mess.  Though, over the course of Gen 3, he gets his act together better than plenty of characters on that show, it’s his flaws that are most appealing.  As he teeters on the brink, you root for him to get it right.

At the outset, Rich is a terrific example of a textbook metalhead.  He’s got the leather, the chains, and the oppressive soundtrack to fit the tropes, and he even has cushy suburban parents to chafe against.  Every day, he meets the world with squared shoulders, prepared for the insults that will be tossed his way for being on the fringes.  He doesn’t mind it – he marches to a Rage Against the Machine beat, and he’s proud to be different.  The rub, of course, is that he’s only different within a very specific box.  He looks exactly like a metalhead; a single glance at him, and you know precisely what he’s about.  He talks about “never compromising,” about not being one of the mindless, homogenous masses, but everything about him is so carefully crafted to be a good metalhead.  He wears a shower cap to make sure his long hair looks sufficiently unwashed, and he takes his crisply-folded T-shirts out of his dresser only to crumple them into wrinkly balls. 

Additionally, he sneers just as much at the mainstream kids as they do at him.  It’s understandable – even ignoring the fact that preferred music is such an enormous, defining thing for a teenager, it’s natural to belittle people who make you feel small.  They can’t hurt you if you don’t care what they think.  However, this makes him quick to judge them, quick to write them off as frivolous, shallow, and conformist (and, obviously, as having horrible taste in music.)  When one of the popular crowd, sweet, friendly Grace, offers to help him out with a problem, he tells her she represents everything he despises and is too busy giving her attitude to realize what a great girl is.  He mocks her ignorance of metal even as he boasts his own ignorance of her music of choice:  ballet/classical, another genre outside the mainstream.

I love this storyline, because it gives Rich such an atypical plot for a character of his type.  Normally, teenagers on the fringes are plainly drawn as the victims, the plucky rebels tilting at the windmills of the vicious in-crowd.  The popular kids either remain antagonists, or they learn how cool and unique and special-snowflaky the outsiders are, opening their eyes to the greater possibilities outside their narrow boxes.  However, the fact that Rich is an insensitive little punk with a chip on his shoulder means that he gets to grow and mature.  He gets to change.  Now, he doesn’t start buying his clothes at trendy stores or listening to pop music or anything, because in the end, his story isn’t about the surface stuff on which it opens.  It’s about realizing that people are more complicated than their labels, and when he intentionally closes himself off, he can miss out on something wonderful.

As Rich lowers his walls, just a bit, we see how much more there is to him than the paint-by-the-numbers archetype.  He’s insecure, he’s clever, he’s surprisingly thoughtful when he wants to be, he’s a loyal friend, and when his limits are tested in season 6, he proves that he can push back.  When the dust settles at the end of this generation, I think he comes out the most mature of them all.  He’s the one who’s learned his lessons best, who’s been sharpened by adversity and, despite inevitable backslides into snap judgments and us vs. them posturing, who’s kept inching his way forward in terms of growth.  And after seeing where he started, you can’t help but feel proud of him.