http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 19 May 2003 14:57:25 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/19/145725.php Larry O'BrienNot since Rocky fought Mr. T has a sequel so failed to live up to the quality of the original. The original Matrix was dedicated to keeping the action, surprises, and humor coming, no matter how contradictory, illogical, or downright stupid. Matrix Reloaded is dedicated to the opposite task: establishing that the Matrix "universe" is a complete and consistent foundation on which to build an endless franchise of movies, video games, television series, and comic books. As if that weren't enough of an anchor, the Wachowski brothers are philosophizing like stoned sophomores picking on stoned freshmen: instead of riffing on the worthy theme at hand ("What if everything you knew to be real turned out to be a lie?"), they pretend that they've got an answer, but it lies somewhere beyond pretentious follow-on questions ("What is free will?"). Whoa, dudes.My single biggest disappointment in the Matrix Reloaded is the utter lack of surprises. Sure, it's revealed that Neo is an accumulated roundoff error, but where the first movie presented its absurdities in dazzling action sequences (being shot causes a stack overflow, kung fu as thread contention), Neo's origin is explicated in a scene where the antagonist can't even summon the energy to get out of a chair. And then, rather than make a joke of it, as in the original where en-Matrixed humans are referred to disparagingly as "coppertops," the dialogue just drags on ... and on ... and on ... until Neo makes a choice that is, as the antagonist accurately says, entirely predictable. I have to admit that I hoped the title "Reloaded" was a hint that the Matrix was going to get reset, with different rules for the heroes to struggle against. Instead, it's the same old, same old: the world-as-we-know-it, but if you're clued in, you can bend time, gravity, and, apparently, inertia. Unless you're Neo, in which case, you can fly, but only after making a constipated too-much-pizza face. Rather than introduce new twists to the structure of the Matrix (like the centipede with which they "bugged" Neo in the original), Reloaded introduces new autonomous computer programs as characters, all of whom have "The" as a first name (The Merovingean, The Keymaker, etc.). What these characters do, mostly, is talk. Except for The Keymaker, who makes keys. When the characters run short of hyper-pronunciated edicts, they do kung fu. Which should be reason enough to like the movie: what's not to like about trained athletes performing an intricately choreographed ballet at lightning speeds? Except that Matrix Reloaded has an early sequence that establishes, once-and-for-all, that computer animation is able to seamlessly represent a fight sequence. And once that's established, it robs all subsequent sequences of their tension - it's hard to be impressed by a roundhouse hook-kick combination when half an hour previously it was made abundantly clear that any imaginable move can be rendered by digital animators. Ironically, I'm sure there were shots of real stuntworkers, cars, and motorcycles in later scenes that I dismissed as computer-generated, but that has to be a predictable response in a movie whose very theme is that the world as we know it is computer-generated. So you'd think that it would be obvious that for the action to be meaningful it would have to largely move to "the real world" of caves and hovercraft and squid-like machines. After all, the characters would still know how to fight, they just wouldn't be able to overcome gravity and stop bullets in mid-flight. But instead, we are treated to what must be the most ludicrously over-stuffed "society" since Mad Max came upon Thunderdome. There is, I kid you not, a "Council of Elders." And, yes, a Council Chamber. And matronly Councilwomen with vertical hair and clunky jewelry who ask "Who shall heed this call of the Council?" and undoubtedly-sinister Councilmen with impeccably groomed silver beards and an unfortunate tendency to ask sinister leading questions before saying "But you'll have to forgive me. Old men have a tendency to ramble late at night." A Council of Elders. Gawd. Plug me back in to the computer-generated 1999 where I can have all the sunglasses and Ducatis I want and alter physics to suit my mood. What does the world of Zion have to offer that makes the Matrix an unthinkable choice? Amazingly, the answer proffered in Matrix Reloaded appears to be religious faith. Huh. If you had been raised in a computer simulation, don't you think you'd be a wee bit skeptical to arguments from authority? Apparently not. Apparently all you need is an occasional lava-field rave to restore your faith in Keanu. It's like the Ewok celebration but without the justification of victory. (And in other SF references, Zion is patrolled by the cargo-loaders from Aliens with the gun-arms of Robocop's ED 209 series.) As a final insult, Matrix Reloaded ends, literally, in mid-scene. So much for the hope that Matrix Reloaded (for which there's a trailer after the credits) will recover the humor and perspective of the original. Oh well, let's just hope "2 Fast, 2 Furious" knows better than to rely on French social philosophers for dialogue. Video5421@blogcritics.org Mon, 19 May 2003 14:57:25 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/26/133412.php Larry O'BrienSo far, this war has been a lesson in the dramatic limits of the media (television particularly) to accurately convey the weight of matters of life and death. The demands of the 24-hour news cycle has, over the years, created an industry that has perfected the task of making minor events seem momentous, while totally losing the ability to convey the scope and complexity of what should be important in the real-world. Our news system, which should be informing us about the world, is capable of covering Michael Moore's comments on the Oscars (Ed Harris and Martin Scorsese: For! Jon Voight and Cliff Robertson: Against! Harrison Ford: Discomforted smile! Adrian Brody: Better writing!) but falls far short of providing any insight into how the Iraqi war will play out. Meanwhile, Friday headlines read "Dow soars on hope of a quick war" and Monday headlines read "Dow crashes as pessimism sets in." Journalists refer to the bombing of Baghdad as "last night's show," ask whether we're facing a "quagmire" because the war wasn't over in 100 hours, and talk breathlessly about minor firefights in a war that may see the widespread use of nerve gas near urban areas. The prospect that the Iraqi invasion would trigger a widespread general uprising against Hussein is clearly a myth, but the media is giving us no analysis of the real support for Hussein, which is the key fact that will determine how many people will die in the weeks, months, and years to come.The twenty-four hours news stations show cameras locked on targets in downtown Baghdad and, as long as fireballs aren't rising into the sky, talk about the surprisingly routine days. Oh, and several thousand bombs have been dropped elsewhere in the country. These soda straws of video fill the airwaves (some of the news stations are using 4-way split screens so that not a single detonation will be missed) but add up to nothing. A bomb hits a building in downtown Iraq and news of its burning is broadcast around the globe. Is whatever function the building served degraded? And if the reporters can't answer that (and they can't), these images are just warporn. One huge component of this is, if not particular to television, at least characteristic of TV. As far as TV is concerned, there is no history. At best, there is the current emotion of "surprise" as in "Are you surprised by the tactics used by the Fedayeen?" The Afghanistan campaign was only 18 months ago and right up until the sudden collapse of the Taliban regime, these same reporters and news stations were using the exact same rhetoric of quagmires and surprisingly slow progress. With the news cycle so compressed, all that matters is how the last 24 hours compares with the previous 24. This is a tremendous injustice to the lives of those dying in Iraq. The status quo in Iraq, the world that those carrying "No blood for oil" signs apparently wish, was the world of sanctions, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children over the past decade. The sanctions were unjust, a horrible price inflicted on civilians for Hussein's refusal to comply with his 1991 capitulation. But the deaths caused by the sanctions were not among the justifications proffered by the administration because to do so would raise the uncomfortable subject of whether the Iraqi issue is not in some way associated with US policies. Whether Iraq should have been made the focus of world attention is debatable, but what isn't debatable is that the intentions of the United States have been clear for at least a year and, with the unanimous adoption of 1441, the UN agreed. The behavior of France, to suddenly lead a group of nations that are shocked! Shocked! to discover that the US intended to use military force, is appalling. Yes, the US bullied the UN into 1441, but to pretend that 1441 is not clearly a last-chance offer to comply is a lie (http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm). But the media, unable to form long-term memories, will not remind us of any position taken more than 48 hours ago - whether it be France's vote for 1441 or Dick Cheney's assertion that "the coalition forces will be greeted as liberators....the regular army will not [put up a fight]." To do so would be to acknowledge that the world cannot be reduced to a 525 x 440 pixel live video feed. Back to you in the studio... Video4117@blogcritics.org Wed, 26 Mar 2003 13:34:12 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/20/151116.php Larry O'BrienThe latest spin on the "Coalition of the Willing" (what is this, a cheap comic book? At least if they were consistent "The Axis of Evil" would be opposed by "The Alliance of Good") is that this coalition "is larger than the Gulf War coalition." On CNN, they're all debating this as if doing serious analysis. Last night on The Daily Show, a guy from The Heritage Foundation tried that line on Jon Stewart, who instantly said something along the lines of "I'm as big a fan of Bulgaria as the next guy," but that it's obvious that the US is more isolated than it was. Not that it's surprising that Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are smarter and more insightful than 90% of what's on the air... Video3967@blogcritics.org Thu, 20 Mar 2003 15:11:16 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/22/210637.php Larry O'BrienAnyone else notice that "Joe Millionaire" sounds exactly like the famously dense David Puddy character from Seinfeld? I bust up every time he opens his mouth. Video2795@blogcritics.org Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:06:37 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/22/184017.php Larry O'BrienMichael Chabon's new book "Summerland" is a delightful read for adults, but whether kids will like it is hard to say. Chabon, currently best known for the Pulitzer-winning "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," but shortly to be "The guy who scripted Spiderman 2," crafts a tale of subtlety and delayed triumph, which are hardly qualities I recall celebrating in my pre-adolescence. Indicative of the problem is that the plot revolves around baseball, that most metaphor-laden of sports. There may have been a time when playing baseball (or rejecting it, as our hero Ethan Feld begins the book) engaged kids with society, history, and the standing-wave of innocence and competition that is the years between infancy and adolescence, but surely those times have passed?As an adult reader, of course, the fact that the plot involves a sport that one may not care for is irrelevant. We understand that passages like "From the very first pitch the Liars appeared, as the announcers on television like to say, to have 'solved' her. The Man with the Knife in His Boot led off with a slap double, stole second, took off running on a solid single by the Man with the Pole, and scored on the very next pitch" are about the predicament and not the play-by-play. Similarly, the adult reader has empathy with the hero's repeated crises of faith (saving the universe is a heavy burden) but will kids choose to stick with a boy who chickens out for 300 pages before triumphing? Unfortunately for my own enjoyment, while reading "Summerland" I happened across a critique of Restoration Hardware and I was afterwards plagued with the feeling that, as with Restoration Hardware, what I had was not a quirky original but just the end-product of an elaborate targetting of the Bohemian Bourgeois demographic. I know this is unfair to Chabon, who is a generous and gifted writer, but there you have it. Such cynical musings are, perhaps, the sort of thing for which "Summerland" is intended to be a tonic. Books2792@blogcritics.org Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:40:17 EST