The Lamentable Tragedy of Brett

If there's one thing this summer movie season is teaching me, it's that I can no longer be won over by flashy special effects. For a while there, I admit, I allowed myself to be dazzled by every gimmick that came along. Dinosaurs, superheroes, massive armies; every new trick bigger and better than the last. It was so very fascinating to see what technology could do, sometimes I forgot what was important. But I've finally reached my saturation point with the digital stuff, and effects just aren't enough to carry me through two hours anymore. Especially if, as in the case of X-Men: The Last Stand, I go in to the movie with high expectations.

Here's the problem with X-Men, v3.0: After directing the first two stellar X-Men films (X2 is one of my favorite action films ever), Bryan Singer defected to take the helm of Superman Returns (another summer superhero flick I have high hopes for), and Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame) stepped in to take over X-Men. And with that, bye-bye franchise. I'm not going to pick over how far the script diverges from what's been written in the comics. Plenty of fanboys have done that already, and besides, I was never that hardcore about the X-books. My problem is with Ratner's basic filmmaking techniques: horrendous dialogue, telegraphing his plot, underutilizing the lead characters, putting characters in the movie that serve no purpose... the list goes on and on. If he can't get that stuff right, it doesn't matter if he follows canon or has 8,000 groundbreaking special effects shots; he lost me after 20 minutes of ham-handed dialogue and painfully obvious plot points. If I wanted to see something that's been dumbed down for the masses, I would have saved my $8.75 and stayed home to watch Two and a Half Men. Oh well. I guess not everybody can be Wes Anderson.

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Rush: R30
X-Men: The Last Stand

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How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer

Auf Wiedersehen America

The Nats are headed for Germany. After three warmup matches against Morocco, Venezuela, and tonight's opponent Latvia, the boys are ready to wing their way to Hamburg, where they will settle in for training camp ahead of their opener against the Czechs on June 12. I can't say they looked fantastic in any of the three send-off games (other than the snazzy special-edition red jerseys they wore in tonight's match), but there were some promising signs of improvement through each game. Bobby Convey was particularly impressive over the past two games, and I still think Clint Dempsey has the potential to make some noise in the tournament. If the Yanks can keep up the kind of possession and passing we saw tonight, I feel better about their chances, but I'm still afraid they won't advance out of the first round. My heart says they lose 1-0 to the Czechs, then beat Italy 1-0 and Ghana 2-0 to take 6 points from 3 games, which should get them through. On the other hand, my head says they tie the Italians 0-0, meaning only 4 points and they miss out on advancing due to the first tiebreaker, goal differential. As a hopeful pessimist, I'd love it if they surprise me... but I won't be surprised if they don't.

The great Denver apartment search is on. What did everyone do before Craig's List?

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The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
The Codex, Douglas Preston

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The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Swingers
Rushmore

Go West

Ladies and gentlemen, all aboard for the next stop on the Idle World Tour: Denver, CO. It's with a small amount of sadness and a heapin' plate of excitement that I bid farewell to the Circle City. Other than a few people I'll be leaving behind (one young lady very much in particular), I can't say there's a lot about Indy that I'm going to miss. I tend to follow the George Costanza line of thinking... I'm goin' out on top, Jerry. I've done what I wanted to do here, I've gotten about as much as I could out of my time, and when I knew I was ready to leave, an ideal opportunity came along to take me to Denver. I can't ask for much more than that. Also, the thought of living in a city where's people's first inclination is to go outside and play is literally a breath of fresh air, especially after spending three years amongst the overweight tobacco slaves of Indy. So in just about a month, I'm off to greener pastures and higher altitudes. As some of you may remember from the very early days of this blog, I do love me some outdoorsy-type activities.

More, obviously, to come on this rather dramatic and important development.

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Jarhead
The Squid and the Whale
Art School Confidential

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How We Operate, Gomez
Decoration Day, Drive-By Truckers
Inspiration Information, Shuggie Otis

A First Time for Everything

Sometimes you try new things for the hell of it, and sometimes necessity forces you into it. Thanks to the quirks of my DVR programming, I managed to miss the season finale of The Office, leading me to download my first TV show from iTunes. It took me a little while to get into The Office. The laughs tend to come from pretty uncomfortable places, and I usually hate comedy that makes me squirm. But after a short adjustment period, I've found the humor, and now I don't miss a show. But it's not just the funny that keeps me coming back. I get serious guilty pleasure (and those of you who know me well will understand this) from rooting for Jim and Pam, and the $1.99 fee for the episode was worth it to see what happened with their big cliffhanger. I know. It's just TV. Guess I'm just a hopeless romantic after all.

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Mission Impossible III

30 Days

Hard to believe, but the World Cup begins one month from today. Bruce Arena made his roster announcement last week, but has already had to replace one of the players he chose when Frankie Hejduk tore his ACL. Chris Albright to the white courtesy phone, please. There's been a fair amount of coverage, but USA Today gets the gold star for this player-by-player breakdown of the roster. ESPN's Andrea Canales has also been busy, examining the effects of the US performance at the World Cup on MLS and profiling Landon Donovan (above).

However, the biggest pre-World Cup hype machine award goes to Gatorade, who has put together this series of clips from the US's World Cup Qualifying run set to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." More importantly, they've shelled out to get this commercial on the networks during primetime. I've seen it on ESPN during Baseball Tonight and on CBS between 9 and 10 pm as I was flipping channels, which makes me happy. There have been a number of terrific soccer commercials over the past few years, but the problem is you only ever see them during soccer broadcasts, so they end up doing nothing more than preaching to the choir. By getting these images in front of the Average American, Gatorade is doing its part to raise awareness of the Nats during the buildup to the World Cup, and for being the only soccer sponsor in the country stepping up to the plate in that regard, I'll reward them by buying more Gatorade.

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The Man Who Fell to Earth

Light Of Day

About flippin' time, George. September 12 will be a banner day for nerds and purists everywhere. Official word from Lucasfilm here.

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The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, Seu Jorge

Voice Of Dissent

It's been a while since I've posted anything political, mainly because even talking about Bush gets me so fucking angry, but I read something today that I felt needed to be shared. Somehow, I ended up on John Kerry's email list, and every week or so I'll get an email asking for money to help stop the Republicans from trampling another Constitutional Amendment, exposing another CIA agent, starting another misguided war, or whatever new form of deviousness they've come up with this week. Usually, I skim and delete. But today, I got an email about a speech that Kerry made recently in Boston. There was a link to the text of his speech, so I took a few minutes to read it, and I'm glad I did. It turned out to be the most eloquent, well-thought out, and cohesive condemnation of the Bush administration and the Iraq war that I've seen from anyone, and it made me glad to see that the Democrats might be starting to get their act together and present a viable alternative in 2008. If only they could have done that two years ago, we could have been saved a whole lot of grief. You can bet your ass if Clinton had approved exposing a CIA agent out of vindictiveness and spite, the Republicans would have impeached ol' Bill and had him tarred and feathered and on his way out of Washington faster than you can say "Tom DeLay". But for far too long after 9/11, Democrats have handled speaking out against the President with kid gloves for fear of appearing "unpatriotic", which is complete and utter bullshit. Keeping your mouth shut when a figure of authority is doing something wrong is a lot more unpatriotic than following your leaders blindly, and that's one of the subjects of Kerry's speech. Here's a sample:

America has always rejected war as an instrument of raw power or naked self-interest. We fought when we had to in order to repel grave threats or advance freedom and self-determination in concert with like-minded people everywhere. But our current leadership, for all its rhetoric of freedom and democracy, behaves as though might does make right, enabling us to discard the alliances and institutions that served us so well in the past as nothing more now than impediments to the exercise of unilateral power.

America has always been stronger when we have not only proclaimed free speech, but listened to it. Yes, in every war, there have been those who demand suppression and silencing. And although no one is being jailed today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently running our country.

Dismissing dissent is not only wrong, but dangerous when America's leadership is unwilling to admit mistakes, unwilling to engage in honest discussion of the nation's direction, and unwilling to hold itself accountable for the consequences of decisions made without genuine disclosure, or genuine debate.

Click here for the rest of the speech, entitled "Dissent". This speech really hit home for me, since I've always been bothered by people who think that if you're against the war, you don't "support the troops". Sorry, but to me, supporting the troops means not wanting them to be unneccessarily placed in harm's way with an unclear mission while dozens of them are being killed every day. But I guess that's unpatriotic.

I finally got around to posting the Chicago photos. Check them out.

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Howl's Moving Castle