Thoughts in my head right now
*I found a mouse in the apartment today. It ran across the dining room floor and disappeared under the heating vent. I haven't seen it again.
*I slept a long time. It's been nice having a room, thanks to Orion. I still feel displaced and need to get back to seriously apartment hunting, but have been muddled and unmotivated lately thanks to all the other things I also need to be doing.
*Such as finding a driving instructor. I thought maybe it would help me to have a lesson or two with a professional, to get back into the groove, and then I could practice at home with my very generous friends. I called AA Driving School, they will only do a package deal. I can pay $800 for 8 hours of classroom, 8 hours of road time, and a DMV test, or I can pay $200 for two hours of road time and a DMV test. I want to call the other driving schools in town first before making any decisions, I just haven't gotten to it.
*Today I am doing laundry and (hopefully) unpacking/cleaning up, so I can return Richelle's sheets/air mattress/etc to her since replacing all of that stuff last weekend.
Also: Work, and a couple of reviews. This may get kind of wall-o-texty, because I have many thoughts in my head and I feel like they are bogging me down and making me surly and muddled, which is a big contributing factor in my lack of motivation. I've been fighting off depression for a week or so now, so maybe this will help.
We'll start with the fun stuff.
I caught up on Glee recently, I don't remember when, because I haven't been watching it regularly. I watch it on Hulu and they trail five episodes, so I'll go a month at a time and then watch several.
So, I was watching and realized, hey, I'm up in the 20's episode-number-wise, and there are still a lot of things unresolved. I have said for a while now that I watch for the music more than anything, because the story gets pretty ridiculous. I have been enjoying season 4, though, because I like New-York Rachel a lot better than High-School Rachel, and some of the characters I cared less about haven't been around, leaving most of my favorites and a few new ones that are kind of fun. But I watched the finale, episode 22, and I thought, surely there's more? I had to go hit up Google to make sure, because I just couldn't believe it was a finale.
Because the story just... stopped.
There were several arcs going on - Blaine wanting to propose to Kurt to get him back, Sue leaving because of that whole gun incident, Rachel's big broadway audition, and then of course the Glee club competing in Nationals, which hasn't happened yet. All of these were left completely out to dry by the end of episode 22.
I do understand why the people behind the show decided to split this high-school year into two seasons. It helps them solve some problems, logistically. But in my searching for clues on whether this really was the last episode this season, I found all these articles and quotes and things about how the actors/etc were really excited about "all the cliffhangers" in the season finale and couldn't wait to see season 5 to see how they turned out.
Buh? Cliffhangers?
...you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
When I think of a "cliffhanger," I think of a long climb up a steep slope, and the very last push - will you make it or not? - is a question hanging in the air. Filmography-wise, that means a buildup of tension, and a single event or question left unresolved. Like TNG's Best of Both Worlds - we leave off in part 1 on Ryker saying to "Fire," but we are left wondering - Will Picard be rescued? Will the crew survive? Will the show go on with Ryker as captain? What will happen next?
Many questions, perhaps, but stemming essentially from one event, one buildup, one moment where we're left hanging.
Blaine telling his friends that he wants to propose to Kurt and then buying a ring is not a cliffhanger. We needed to see the tension - the conversations between them where Blaine probes to see what Kurt might say, the preparations for the proposal, and then maybe even the proposal itself, or at the least Blaine walking into the room where the proposal will happen moments before the event, so that next season the question is - What will Kurt say? Will Blaine actually go through with it? etc. Not just, so uh... yeah, that happened.
We might have seen Rachel's phone ringing with the number for the producers on the display. Or cut to a scene of the producers asking "Rachel Berry?" and then... leave it there. We know she's getting a call, but is it to offer her the part or to thank her for her time and let her down gently? I suppose they tried with showing her going into her final callback, but that was somewhere in the middle of the episode, and it felt like, oh, we're going to get back to this. And then we didn't.
The closest thing to a cliffhanger was probably Becky going to Figgins to say "I have something to tell you." But again, the pacing here was all off - this wasn't where the episode ended. Instead, we ended on what might have been a good resolution - goodbyes with friends just before a victory - if there hadn't been all of this other stuff left hanging.
I donno, I'm just... overall left feeling dissatisfied and annoyed that I have to wait to find out, which leads more to disinterest than any kind of excitement for the next season. Poorly done, Glee. Poorly done.
As for Now You See Me, I saw that on thursday with Orion, Zoe, and Jess. I had fun, don't get me wrong, I was entertained. But it was one of those cases where they had a good thing going, but just didn't quite do enough with it.
I liked the acting - Mark Ruffalo is AMAZING and the twist on his character was, although ridiculous, at least very well portrayed. I liked the dialogue, we did have a pretty good motif going on with the "Look closer" blah blah thing going on.
But... I have some beefs.
So this lady detective is actually doing her job and trying to catch the magicians by reading up on magic and the history of magic and famous magicians. That's smart. I liked that. But that effort was never rewarded, except maybe near the end when the Four Horseman are at their last show and she says "no, this way" and takes Dylan Rhodes around a corner and they find the cameras the Horsemen were projecting from. But then they stand there with their mouths gaping, poking at the cameras like they've never seen one before, instead of, oh I donno, *continuing to track the bad guys*.
In other words, I felt like there was really no reason for her to be there. She started out as a little bit of a foil to Rhodes, goading him now and again, partly for comedic effect and partly to keep him motivated on the case. Until her "history of magic" research leads her to this mysterious organization called "The Eye," which she thinks has something to do with the Four Horsemen and why they're doing what they're doing. Obviously! They want in The Eye! This mythical organization that you found in a dusty book, which by the way you never explained how/why you found it or why it caught your interest or what your theory is even based on. So the lack of explanation might have been a red herring, we think, because later Thaddeus Bradley smugly points out that she must been pulling the strings the whole time.
Except that she wasn't. And we saw no evidence that she was, no hints along the way that she wasn't who she said she was or that her motivations might have been anything other than what they said. Hell, she was the only one doing anything even remotely close to any real policework the whole time. But of course as soon as Bradley suggests this to Rhodes, instead of (again, doing some real policework) calling her home office to check, for instance, Rhodes just storms off to confront and accuse her and she just glares at him and they move on with their day. The movie was full of pointless scenes like this, actually.
So of course in the end her only purpose is as a romantic interest for Rhodes. Because everyone who works closely together and starts off disagreeing is destined to fall in love.
Seriously, what the hell? This is a magical detective mystery thriller. There's nothing *wrong* with romance, but it really didn't have any place in this movie, and with everything else going on, there wasn't really any excuse for trying to develop it. I mean, sure, have the characters flirt a little and when the case is wrapped up, throw a "Say, your flight home doesn't leave for a few hours, want to grab a cup of coffee?" in there.
But... let's see, after being a jackass to her the entire time they've been working together, Rhodes flies off to Paris and makes a show out of smugly confessing to being the mastermind behind everything, and bats his eyelashes and says "plz don't arrest me pretty lady" and she just shrugs and says OK and they live happily ever after.
I call bullshit.
Speaking of Rhodes being the mastermind behind everything... that was probably the one part of the actual plot of the film that I did enjoy. The twist was fairly well set-up - from Merritt's mentalism trick accusing him of daddy issues, to the bits and pieces of Lionel Shrike's story scattered throughout the movie, until you finally connect the dots between all of the heists in a showdown between Bradley and Rhodes that was *very* well-choreographed. Mark Ruffalo is seriously creepy as a revenge-bent focused evil genius. I loved that scene. I do wish that Rhodes's character, however, had been set up a bit better. We could have seen some subtle hints, such as a brief look of recognition or surprise when Dray or Bradley drop Shrike's name, or some small efforts at sabotaging the FBI's investigation disguised as personal issues.
For instance, the attitude that Rhodes had at the beginning, that this case was stupid and beneath him and he had better things to do, could have gone a long way. That could have been the act and the cover he used, for much longer, rather than after his first interview with the magicians utterly and completely changing his mind and hand-waving that character motivation as "I talked to them." What does that even mean? That they're smug and annoying and you want to see them behind bars? I thought you were a professional, I thought you do what you do because you like seeing bad guys behind bars. Yeah, these magicians humiliate you a lot throughout this film, and eventually that could have been a turning point where it became personal, but it just seemed too quick, too much on a dime, and not well-explained enough. I'm not seeing the motivations.
Speaking of motivations, let's go back to the Eye for a minute, and take a visit to our Four Horsemen themselves.
Four magicians who have a mixture of personal history and professional rivalry decide to work together for an entire year, pulling off risky and dangerous stunts against very powerful people, committing international crimes and stealing a LOT of money that none of them end up keeping a dime of - for what? Entrance into a mysterious mythical organization that nobody has heard of until this movie. It's clearly an obscure thing, because the french lady found it in a dusty obscure book. So it's not something you'd expect to be a lifelong goal or ambition, and it's not even clear that the Horsemen realize that this is their ultimately goal.
They're brought together by mysterious tarot cards and find blueprints for "a show," and that is all we see. Comments throughout the film from the characters allude to "the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" or the even-bigger score they're going to walk away with after passing on 5 millionish dollars.
The only hint we have that they might be doing this for this Eye thing is from the lady frenchman, and she doesn't ever explain why she thinks they might be doing it, other than a lame "well, there was this frat that used to have killer initiations, maybe this is one of those" type line. What were the benefits of being in this organization? What are they? Real magical powers? Lots of money? Fame and notoriety? Oh wait, it's a secret organization.
Speaking of fame and notoriety, that is another *possible* motivation for the Horsemen, since we saw a scene of them in New York gawking at their pictures on the big TV screens and laughing. Cool, we're famous! But they were all famous in their own rights before, to varying degrees, except for Jack Wilder, who the world now thinks is dead anyway. So what is the point of the fame if they're now going to disappear? Let me put it another way - what are they going to *do* now? They can never perform on stage again, any of them. Their livelihood is dead, and they didn't walk away from any of these heists with a single cent. We get this hokey scene of Rhodes welcoming them into the Eye and then they all disappear, and we still don't even know if it's real. Because, after all, Rhodes's motivation was supposed to be revenge. The Horsemen were his dupes, to carry out his revenge without him having to get caught. So why shouldn't we believe that they've been duped about the Eye as well? If that's even what they thought they were getting into, which I don't think it is - it sounded to me like they thought they were going to walk away with a ton of cash, in which case I'd be pretty pissed at the end to walk away with nothing, never be able to perform again, and not even know what kind of retirement package The Eye provides.
On the flip side of fame and notoriety, how *did* they get Arthur Tressler to back their show in the first place? It's pointed out that these four nobodies suddenly are bringing in huge crowds and quick sellouts for their shows, which sort of begs the question, how'd they get into Art's good graces anyway? I mean, if I was a guy with millions/billions in the bank, I probably didn't get there by taking wild chances. They somehow earned his trust, and after a year their first show is on a big stage in Vegas, which they had to pay a lot of dupes to fill the auditorium... where did they get the resources to do all of the preparation they did? Did they find a trunk full of cash in that mysterious apartment building along with the fog machines and projected blueprints? Did Rhodes make scratchy-voiced phone calls to introduce them to the right people and connect them with the right infomation?
There's just too much. Magic movies are fun not just because we're fooled, but because then we get to find out why we were fooled. We see how the tricks are done, we get the reveal at the end, the "gotcha!" that pulls away the veil and reveals the truth. But there are too many questions left unanswered here, too many tricks left unexplained except with a coverall "preparation." The characters are too flimsy, the details are lacking. I liked the concept, the tricks were flashy and fun, and the banter was witty. But it left me with a grumbly "close but no cigar" feeling of dissatisfaction at the end.
Now You See Me, but Now You Don't. As in, really - don't. Don't bother.
Before I leave off my reviewing entirely, I do have some good things to say about a few things. I've been playing Dust: An Elysian Tail, and I won't go into too many details because I don't want to spoil anything and also because I haven't finished the story yet. But I am very impressed with the construction of the game. The art is beautiful, the voice acting (oh the voice acting!) is flawless, the music is very appropriate, the tutorial is seamlessly integrated into the game, and the controls translate very comfortably and simply to the keyboard from the XBox controller. The game is not too difficult to be fun, with ways to make it challenging if you'd like, and the story is very engaging. I highly recommend it - it's available now on Steam and it's only $15. Please support Humble Hearts so he'll make more games!
Now, work stuff in a separate post. Hurray.
*I slept a long time. It's been nice having a room, thanks to Orion. I still feel displaced and need to get back to seriously apartment hunting, but have been muddled and unmotivated lately thanks to all the other things I also need to be doing.
*Such as finding a driving instructor. I thought maybe it would help me to have a lesson or two with a professional, to get back into the groove, and then I could practice at home with my very generous friends. I called AA Driving School, they will only do a package deal. I can pay $800 for 8 hours of classroom, 8 hours of road time, and a DMV test, or I can pay $200 for two hours of road time and a DMV test. I want to call the other driving schools in town first before making any decisions, I just haven't gotten to it.
*Today I am doing laundry and (hopefully) unpacking/cleaning up, so I can return Richelle's sheets/air mattress/etc to her since replacing all of that stuff last weekend.
Also: Work, and a couple of reviews. This may get kind of wall-o-texty, because I have many thoughts in my head and I feel like they are bogging me down and making me surly and muddled, which is a big contributing factor in my lack of motivation. I've been fighting off depression for a week or so now, so maybe this will help.
We'll start with the fun stuff.
I caught up on Glee recently, I don't remember when, because I haven't been watching it regularly. I watch it on Hulu and they trail five episodes, so I'll go a month at a time and then watch several.
So, I was watching and realized, hey, I'm up in the 20's episode-number-wise, and there are still a lot of things unresolved. I have said for a while now that I watch for the music more than anything, because the story gets pretty ridiculous. I have been enjoying season 4, though, because I like New-York Rachel a lot better than High-School Rachel, and some of the characters I cared less about haven't been around, leaving most of my favorites and a few new ones that are kind of fun. But I watched the finale, episode 22, and I thought, surely there's more? I had to go hit up Google to make sure, because I just couldn't believe it was a finale.
Because the story just... stopped.
There were several arcs going on - Blaine wanting to propose to Kurt to get him back, Sue leaving because of that whole gun incident, Rachel's big broadway audition, and then of course the Glee club competing in Nationals, which hasn't happened yet. All of these were left completely out to dry by the end of episode 22.
I do understand why the people behind the show decided to split this high-school year into two seasons. It helps them solve some problems, logistically. But in my searching for clues on whether this really was the last episode this season, I found all these articles and quotes and things about how the actors/etc were really excited about "all the cliffhangers" in the season finale and couldn't wait to see season 5 to see how they turned out.
Buh? Cliffhangers?
...you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
When I think of a "cliffhanger," I think of a long climb up a steep slope, and the very last push - will you make it or not? - is a question hanging in the air. Filmography-wise, that means a buildup of tension, and a single event or question left unresolved. Like TNG's Best of Both Worlds - we leave off in part 1 on Ryker saying to "Fire," but we are left wondering - Will Picard be rescued? Will the crew survive? Will the show go on with Ryker as captain? What will happen next?
Many questions, perhaps, but stemming essentially from one event, one buildup, one moment where we're left hanging.
Blaine telling his friends that he wants to propose to Kurt and then buying a ring is not a cliffhanger. We needed to see the tension - the conversations between them where Blaine probes to see what Kurt might say, the preparations for the proposal, and then maybe even the proposal itself, or at the least Blaine walking into the room where the proposal will happen moments before the event, so that next season the question is - What will Kurt say? Will Blaine actually go through with it? etc. Not just, so uh... yeah, that happened.
We might have seen Rachel's phone ringing with the number for the producers on the display. Or cut to a scene of the producers asking "Rachel Berry?" and then... leave it there. We know she's getting a call, but is it to offer her the part or to thank her for her time and let her down gently? I suppose they tried with showing her going into her final callback, but that was somewhere in the middle of the episode, and it felt like, oh, we're going to get back to this. And then we didn't.
The closest thing to a cliffhanger was probably Becky going to Figgins to say "I have something to tell you." But again, the pacing here was all off - this wasn't where the episode ended. Instead, we ended on what might have been a good resolution - goodbyes with friends just before a victory - if there hadn't been all of this other stuff left hanging.
I donno, I'm just... overall left feeling dissatisfied and annoyed that I have to wait to find out, which leads more to disinterest than any kind of excitement for the next season. Poorly done, Glee. Poorly done.
As for Now You See Me, I saw that on thursday with Orion, Zoe, and Jess. I had fun, don't get me wrong, I was entertained. But it was one of those cases where they had a good thing going, but just didn't quite do enough with it.
I liked the acting - Mark Ruffalo is AMAZING and the twist on his character was, although ridiculous, at least very well portrayed. I liked the dialogue, we did have a pretty good motif going on with the "Look closer" blah blah thing going on.
But... I have some beefs.
So this lady detective is actually doing her job and trying to catch the magicians by reading up on magic and the history of magic and famous magicians. That's smart. I liked that. But that effort was never rewarded, except maybe near the end when the Four Horseman are at their last show and she says "no, this way" and takes Dylan Rhodes around a corner and they find the cameras the Horsemen were projecting from. But then they stand there with their mouths gaping, poking at the cameras like they've never seen one before, instead of, oh I donno, *continuing to track the bad guys*.
In other words, I felt like there was really no reason for her to be there. She started out as a little bit of a foil to Rhodes, goading him now and again, partly for comedic effect and partly to keep him motivated on the case. Until her "history of magic" research leads her to this mysterious organization called "The Eye," which she thinks has something to do with the Four Horsemen and why they're doing what they're doing. Obviously! They want in The Eye! This mythical organization that you found in a dusty book, which by the way you never explained how/why you found it or why it caught your interest or what your theory is even based on. So the lack of explanation might have been a red herring, we think, because later Thaddeus Bradley smugly points out that she must been pulling the strings the whole time.
Except that she wasn't. And we saw no evidence that she was, no hints along the way that she wasn't who she said she was or that her motivations might have been anything other than what they said. Hell, she was the only one doing anything even remotely close to any real policework the whole time. But of course as soon as Bradley suggests this to Rhodes, instead of (again, doing some real policework) calling her home office to check, for instance, Rhodes just storms off to confront and accuse her and she just glares at him and they move on with their day. The movie was full of pointless scenes like this, actually.
So of course in the end her only purpose is as a romantic interest for Rhodes. Because everyone who works closely together and starts off disagreeing is destined to fall in love.
Seriously, what the hell? This is a magical detective mystery thriller. There's nothing *wrong* with romance, but it really didn't have any place in this movie, and with everything else going on, there wasn't really any excuse for trying to develop it. I mean, sure, have the characters flirt a little and when the case is wrapped up, throw a "Say, your flight home doesn't leave for a few hours, want to grab a cup of coffee?" in there.
But... let's see, after being a jackass to her the entire time they've been working together, Rhodes flies off to Paris and makes a show out of smugly confessing to being the mastermind behind everything, and bats his eyelashes and says "plz don't arrest me pretty lady" and she just shrugs and says OK and they live happily ever after.
I call bullshit.
Speaking of Rhodes being the mastermind behind everything... that was probably the one part of the actual plot of the film that I did enjoy. The twist was fairly well set-up - from Merritt's mentalism trick accusing him of daddy issues, to the bits and pieces of Lionel Shrike's story scattered throughout the movie, until you finally connect the dots between all of the heists in a showdown between Bradley and Rhodes that was *very* well-choreographed. Mark Ruffalo is seriously creepy as a revenge-bent focused evil genius. I loved that scene. I do wish that Rhodes's character, however, had been set up a bit better. We could have seen some subtle hints, such as a brief look of recognition or surprise when Dray or Bradley drop Shrike's name, or some small efforts at sabotaging the FBI's investigation disguised as personal issues.
For instance, the attitude that Rhodes had at the beginning, that this case was stupid and beneath him and he had better things to do, could have gone a long way. That could have been the act and the cover he used, for much longer, rather than after his first interview with the magicians utterly and completely changing his mind and hand-waving that character motivation as "I talked to them." What does that even mean? That they're smug and annoying and you want to see them behind bars? I thought you were a professional, I thought you do what you do because you like seeing bad guys behind bars. Yeah, these magicians humiliate you a lot throughout this film, and eventually that could have been a turning point where it became personal, but it just seemed too quick, too much on a dime, and not well-explained enough. I'm not seeing the motivations.
Speaking of motivations, let's go back to the Eye for a minute, and take a visit to our Four Horsemen themselves.
Four magicians who have a mixture of personal history and professional rivalry decide to work together for an entire year, pulling off risky and dangerous stunts against very powerful people, committing international crimes and stealing a LOT of money that none of them end up keeping a dime of - for what? Entrance into a mysterious mythical organization that nobody has heard of until this movie. It's clearly an obscure thing, because the french lady found it in a dusty obscure book. So it's not something you'd expect to be a lifelong goal or ambition, and it's not even clear that the Horsemen realize that this is their ultimately goal.
They're brought together by mysterious tarot cards and find blueprints for "a show," and that is all we see. Comments throughout the film from the characters allude to "the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" or the even-bigger score they're going to walk away with after passing on 5 millionish dollars.
The only hint we have that they might be doing this for this Eye thing is from the lady frenchman, and she doesn't ever explain why she thinks they might be doing it, other than a lame "well, there was this frat that used to have killer initiations, maybe this is one of those" type line. What were the benefits of being in this organization? What are they? Real magical powers? Lots of money? Fame and notoriety? Oh wait, it's a secret organization.
Speaking of fame and notoriety, that is another *possible* motivation for the Horsemen, since we saw a scene of them in New York gawking at their pictures on the big TV screens and laughing. Cool, we're famous! But they were all famous in their own rights before, to varying degrees, except for Jack Wilder, who the world now thinks is dead anyway. So what is the point of the fame if they're now going to disappear? Let me put it another way - what are they going to *do* now? They can never perform on stage again, any of them. Their livelihood is dead, and they didn't walk away from any of these heists with a single cent. We get this hokey scene of Rhodes welcoming them into the Eye and then they all disappear, and we still don't even know if it's real. Because, after all, Rhodes's motivation was supposed to be revenge. The Horsemen were his dupes, to carry out his revenge without him having to get caught. So why shouldn't we believe that they've been duped about the Eye as well? If that's even what they thought they were getting into, which I don't think it is - it sounded to me like they thought they were going to walk away with a ton of cash, in which case I'd be pretty pissed at the end to walk away with nothing, never be able to perform again, and not even know what kind of retirement package The Eye provides.
On the flip side of fame and notoriety, how *did* they get Arthur Tressler to back their show in the first place? It's pointed out that these four nobodies suddenly are bringing in huge crowds and quick sellouts for their shows, which sort of begs the question, how'd they get into Art's good graces anyway? I mean, if I was a guy with millions/billions in the bank, I probably didn't get there by taking wild chances. They somehow earned his trust, and after a year their first show is on a big stage in Vegas, which they had to pay a lot of dupes to fill the auditorium... where did they get the resources to do all of the preparation they did? Did they find a trunk full of cash in that mysterious apartment building along with the fog machines and projected blueprints? Did Rhodes make scratchy-voiced phone calls to introduce them to the right people and connect them with the right infomation?
There's just too much. Magic movies are fun not just because we're fooled, but because then we get to find out why we were fooled. We see how the tricks are done, we get the reveal at the end, the "gotcha!" that pulls away the veil and reveals the truth. But there are too many questions left unanswered here, too many tricks left unexplained except with a coverall "preparation." The characters are too flimsy, the details are lacking. I liked the concept, the tricks were flashy and fun, and the banter was witty. But it left me with a grumbly "close but no cigar" feeling of dissatisfaction at the end.
Now You See Me, but Now You Don't. As in, really - don't. Don't bother.
Before I leave off my reviewing entirely, I do have some good things to say about a few things. I've been playing Dust: An Elysian Tail, and I won't go into too many details because I don't want to spoil anything and also because I haven't finished the story yet. But I am very impressed with the construction of the game. The art is beautiful, the voice acting (oh the voice acting!) is flawless, the music is very appropriate, the tutorial is seamlessly integrated into the game, and the controls translate very comfortably and simply to the keyboard from the XBox controller. The game is not too difficult to be fun, with ways to make it challenging if you'd like, and the story is very engaging. I highly recommend it - it's available now on Steam and it's only $15. Please support Humble Hearts so he'll make more games!
Now, work stuff in a separate post. Hurray.