Arts and Crafts reviews

Okay, I have a big list of topics I've been wanting to blog about. Many of them are reviews of books and movies I've read/seen this summer. But I know that I'm never going to actually get to blogging about all of these things, so it's time to start summarizing. In brief (spoilers included):

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Don't worry about how the sword gets into the hat. It's magic. The book should be 300 pages shorter and it would be awesome. As it is, we'll have to make due with the fact that it will probably make the best of the movies. In the hands of a semi-competent director who knows how to film a terse action scene, the scene in Godric's Hallow, the flight from Malfoy Mansion, and the heist from Gringott's will be fantastic, and the Battle of Hogwarts should be one of the most exciting action scenes of all time. Except, of course, for the ridiculous finale, where Harry plays the reverse-cliche bad guy by disclosing how he's going to win the fight against Voldemort even as it happens.

At least it's good to get back to the classic Harry Potter formula of 'bunch of stuff happens, then Dumbledore comes back and explains some stuff that would have allowed it to happen in 1/5th the time had we only known then what we know now!'

The Simpsons Movie: See it. Seriously. Log off the computer, get in your car, go to the theater and see it. It's like they strung 3 very good, classic Simpsons episodes back-to-back, only with better animation.

Now, that said, it's not really as good as those classic episodes. For one thing, most of the best episodes are the ones that focus on one of the minor characters (Ralph loves Lisa, Apu travels to the Himalayas to get his store back, or even one-time characters like Hank Scorpio.) But, they didn't seem to be willing to make the decision to quite arbitrarily insert one of the minor characters into the movie, so instead they create Russ Cargill, who sounds eerily like the aforementioned Scorpio, only much less crazy or interesting. So we are stuck with several classic Simpsons cliches, like 'Lisa loves someone exotic', 'Homer is a lazy oaf who messes everything up', and 'Marge loses her patience with Homer, only to later accept him back.'

But still, for my complaints, I loved all the self-referential moments (such as the wrecked ambulance at Springfield Gorge) and the appearance in the background of all the minor characters. Definitely worth the 20-year wait, hopefully it will inspire them to make some more. So go see it.

The Bourne Ultimatum: Why? Why, dear god, Why? That's all I can ask about this movie. I don't get it. I understood it after the first movie. There was this illegal government program which trained people to become killers and then they, you know, killed people. Bourne presumably volunteered and, in the process of his training, they destroyed his memory.

So why is he still 'looking for answers'? Because they are unwilling to just make a movie of him running around and doing badass shit without a skeletal plot to justify it? I'm reminded here of an absolutely brilliant idea Faithful Reader D.C. has explained to me in the past; we need 'violence porn'. Just like porn movies are nothing but a neverending series of sex scenes, with a laughable plot tying them together, we need something similar, only with amazingly cool scenes of violence instead. Like 300, only either half as long, or lacking all the ridiculous scenes with the wife back in Sparta, trying to raise an army.

Or, like the quite incredible fight scenes in The Bourne Ultimatum, without Julia Stiles, about whom the nicest thing that can be said is she barely appears in the movie. And without silly scenes of explanation about something that was pretty well-understood 2 movies ago. It's probably worth seeing entirely for the chase and fight scene that takes place across Tunis. It's one of the best-filmed fight scenes I've ever watched. But the movie could be so much better if they didn't have to waste all this time trying to justify its existence. Kids, say it with me: violence porn.

The Assault on Reason: Al Gore's book, which some consider a primer for a possible presidential bid. It's funny, I haven't really read anything lately about how he's keeping his options open for a run. I think that even a late entrant would have to get into the race by September, so I'm guessing that the fact that nobody's talking about it (whereas people are still talking about Newt's possible entrance) means that we will have to keep living in the sad universe where there never was a President Gore.

Anyhow, I can't really recommend the book. It has some interesting history. In particular, I appreciate that he does such a good job explaining the rise of the modern media, and how it became so much of a monopsony. In fact, he explains how the very idea of radio and TV, the way that they are completely one-way forms of communication, made it almost inevitable that they would come to be dominated by a few major players.

But the political portions of the book, those I don't have nearly as much use for. In every situation, he takes the least-favorable view of Bush, the Republicans, etc. And while there are plenty of good outlets for least-favorable interpretations, I guess I had higher expectations for Gore. He is many things, but he never really struck me as a polemicist, he's really not all that good at it.

Okay, I'm sure there are more things I should be reviewing, but I'll have to get around to it later...