Prometheus

Well, I finally got to see Prometheus at 12:01 a.m. on Friday. The reason I just had to see it at midnight on the day of its release was because I read on Facebook that they were going to give out limited edition posters (the one above) to everyone who saw Prometheus at that time. So yeah, I saw it.

(Spoilers Below)

I admit that when the movie was over, I was kind of disappointed. The guy sitting next to me probably was too. He just said, "What the ----." (I'm pretty sure you can guess which four-letter word he used.) I mean he didn't say it in a kind of serious way. Not like an "I waited thirty-three years for a prequel to Alien and this is what I get?" way but more like an "It could have been somewhat better" way. He didn't even seem to be very old anyway.

I just told my sister that Alien was better.

After thinking about it for a bit, however, I realized that I would never have thought that Prometheus was better. I'm one of those guys for whom nostalgia is a huge factor in rating movies. I mean, a lot of people might think that J.J. Abram's Star Trek was a lot better than any of the other movies in the series but I strongly disagree. It would have to be sixth in my list:

1. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

4. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

5. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

6.Star Trek

7. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

8. Star Trek: Generations

9. Star Trek: Insurrection

I admit that I never watched First Contact or Nemesis just because after watching Generation and Insurrection I realized that I didn't like The Next Generation.

Yeah, I'm not very old but for some reason I have nostalgia for things that are much older than I am. Like Star Trek: TOS. And Alien.

I decided to watch Alien when I read a review of it on IMDb. The review said it was awesome, basically. "The Mother of All Movies." ???? Here are the last sentences from that review:

So, what else? I urge all young directors to watch this movie a zillion times, as I've already done, and take notes all along. But not in order to rip off from it, as many others have done, but to learn, learn, learn, learn, and learn how a movie should be done. 'Casablanca'? You must be joking.

Oh, I almost forget! There's a lovable cat in it.

Rating: 10

????

Oh, by the way, that was all copied straight from the review on IMDb, punctuation and all. Read the full review here.

I do agree that Casablanca is very overrated. I mean, it's just a wartime propaganda movie. It's nothing special like cartoons that parody it might make you think.

But I don't think that Alien is "The Mother of All Movies." I'm guessing that "Mother" (Hey get it? MOTHER??? Alright, I'm pretty sure that was unintentional.) in this context means "The Best." So yeah, it's not the best in my opinion. That would be Blade Runner, another Ridley Scott-directed film. But Alien is easily in my top 10.

But wait, what? The cat was lovable? That stupid cat was the reason Brett got captured by the xenomorph.

So the thing is, it's kind of unfair to compare Prometheus to Alien. After I stopped thinking of Prometheus as the prequel to Alien (yes, I know it's not the prequel but I don't feel like mentioning over and over that it's not a prequel and that it just takes place in the same universe so, just for the sake of efficiency, I'm going to call it a prequel) I realized that it wasn't all that bad of a movie. In fact, it's actually kind of good.

So Prometheus is about the crew of the Prometheus, who are on a scientific expedition that has the goal of finding the makers of humans, who they call Engineers. The main character is archeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), who is kind of like this movie's Ellen Ripley. The other major characters are her love interest, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who is also an archeologist, and the android David (Michael Fassbender). There's also an executive of the Weyland Corporation (which presumably undergoes a merger, before the events that occur in Alien, to become the Weyland-Yutani Corporation), Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and the captain of the Prometheus, Captain Janek.

So they land on this one planet that actually isn't the one that the crew of the Nostromo land on in Alien. They do find the Engineers but they appear to have been long gone. Anyone who's watched Alien can figure out that the Space Jockey from that movie is an Engineer when they find a disembodied head of an Engineer.

And throughout the movie, everyone but the main characters dies in various ways. One is attacked by this one alien that is kind of like a facehugger, one gets mutated, some get killed by this one guy who gets mutated, etc.

Now, about the dude who gets mutated. He's kind of like the Kane of this movie. And here I can explain the biggest difference between Alien and Prometheus. In Alien, all seven of the crew members have some charisma. You feel sorry for the six who get killed and happy for Ridley when she manages to blast the xenomorph out of the exhaust vents of the Narcissus. I think I only felt sorry for two of the seventeen crew members and they were the guy with the mohawk and Vickers. All the others just act kind of stupid, even though they're not scientists. I mean, really, how are you supposed to feel sorry for the guy who gets killed by the facehugger-like alien when he reaches out and touches it? When you see something like that, everyone knows that you try to avoid it.

And then there's the guy who gets mutated, yeah he's the Kane of this movie. Vickers doesn't let him back on the ship because she doesn't want anything happening to anybody else. This is, of course, like when Ripley doesn't want Lambert and Dallas to bring Kane back on the Nostromo. But in Alien, I felt pretty sorry for Kane. I mean, was anyone not glad that Ash didn't open the door and let them in? I was pretty glad when Vickers blasted Holloway (who is the guy who gets mututed) with a flamethrower and halfway kills him. I mean, he wasn't very nice to David and he was depressed and drunk and all. Not that I liked David either.

I thought all the actors were good. Now, I can't really judge acting. I never took a theater class or anything. All I can say is whether they were good or bad. So did they or did they not make me forget for a few hours that they were real people and instead make me think that they were their respective characters? So, it's the characters I disliked. Other than the guy with the mohawk and Vickers. I mean, Vickers is the only one with any common sense. I didn't think that this would turn out to be like Alien where there is a sole survivor of the ship. Near the end it became obvious that only one of the crew members would survive. Oh wait, I just remembered that David also survives. But anyway, I kind of wanted Vickers to be like Ripley and be the one to survive. But no, she gets killed when the alien ship rolls onto her. If only she ran to the side instead of in the direction it was going.

What I thought was really annoying was when Shaw wants to visit the Engineers' home planet (because the planet (or rather, satellite) that they visit is only a military base for the Engineers). Seriously? In half a minute one of the Engineers just managed to kill a few crew members and rip off David's head and she wants to go their planet? She was pretty brave. I mean, she gets a c-section without proper anesthesia and still manages to evade that same Engineer while she's recovering. Still, all the sympathy I ever had for the character was gone in the last two minutes of the movie. Or the second to last, because she's not there in the last minute.

The last minute of the movie is arguably the best. Remembering it now, I think I'll want to see the sequel in theaters. I was disappointed when no xenomorphs were showing up. It turns out that Ridley Scott already said in an interview that there wouldn't be any xenomorphs in Prometheus. Well, you do see a precursor to the xenomorph at the end: the son of Shaw. I decided to call it that because in the original, I think it was Ash who called the xenomorph on the Nostromo "Kane's son." Or maybe it's her grandson, because she gives birth to this alien that turns into a giant facehugger that attacks the Engineer that was pursuing her and inserts the egg into him.

So yeah, I'm very interested to see how the xenomorph eggs eventually end up on the planet they visit in Alien. I hear that they are making a new trilogy. I hope that in the last movie of this trilogy, they show the seven crew members of the Nostromo again. I hope that Sigourney Weaver's in that movie. Maybe she'd be too old to play a young Ripley but it would be cool to see her as someone in that future film.

Man, this review was all jumbled up, I admit. I was just using the stream-0f-consciousness technique and just tying whatever came to mind. Anyway, after all that, I think Prometheus gets 8/10 stars from me.

Can't wait to see the Blade Runner prequel.

The Sixth Post: War and Peace

Well, it's been a long time since I last typed something on here. And in case there's anybody who was waiting for all these weeks to see a post about whatever I said I'd make a post about, I'm sorry but I don't think I'll be typing about that.

I just looked at the last post and it seems that I said I'd be talking about the Big Three T.V. channels that are meant for kids, The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, and that one T.V. show called Phineas & Ferb.

I'll make it quick:

Big Three: They're all terrible. All of them. I really like Disney's movies but I've never liked the channel. And Hilary Duff's gone, gosh darn it. She was the only good thing about it (except for maybe The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, that was a pretty good show). I hear she had a kid, though. And I guess that if an actor or actress is on a Disney show for too long, they might go crazy. Nickelodeon used to be alright, pretty good actually. Spongebob is the greatest animated show of my generation but they really should just cancel it. I'd much rather just watch reruns than anything new. And Cartoon Network, oh how I despair for it. It used to be the greatest kid's channel ever. Now look what's happened to it. The only good show on it is Regular Show. I could go on this whole Juvenalian rant about how much the channel's deteriorated since its Platinum Age but I won't. Now I'm not saying that every show from that age was terrific (I hated I Am Weasel and just saw a rerun realized that I still hate it) and I'm not saying that things can't get better, but seriously, Cartoon Network is just terrible in its current state. Good thing they're playing old Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episodes again. E, E 'n' E is my second-favorite cartoon after Spongebob.

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: It was alright. It could have been a lot better, though. I mean, really. The greatest cartoon of this generation and they couldn't have thought of a better story? I was really confused about how everyone was calling Spongebob a kid. He's not a kid. Everyone knows that he's an adult. Seriously. And that part with David Hasselhoff was crazy. I'm not criticizing Hasselhoff, though. I read that he only took the role of himself because his granddaughter or someone like the show. What a nice guy, I thought. No, sir, I am criticizing the writers. Why would they make a 50-year-old guy do something like that?

Phineas & Ferb: Most overrated show on Disney ever. Because I have no life, I read reviews written by adults who are like, "Oh, it's so awesome, it's like the new Spongebob", and I'm like, "What?!?!?!" I must admit that the writers seem to know what they are doing because of the way the three story lines converge at the end. And I must admit that there is one thing that's good about the show and that's the story line with Perry the Platypus and Dr. Doofenshmirtz. But seriously, the show seems like a mix of Dexter's Laboratory (a Platinum Age Cartoon Network show) and Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy. Yeah, whatever man.

And some other things:

John Carter: Gosh darn it. The reason I started up this blog again was because of my enthusiasm for this movie and now I hear that a Disney executive resigned because it didn't make back it's budget? Man, I wanted to see the sequel but I guess they're not going to make one.

War and Peace: So I've been commencing a lot of classics lately. I just always start classics and never finish them because most of them are so boring. Now, however, I've decided that I shall finish them all or else. So I've started ones like Nostromo, The Voyage Out, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Virginian, The Count of Monte Cristo (alright, I admit that I actually started reading that over a year ago and am only about 230 pages in), and War and Peace. I guess War and Peace is alright. It's just that none of the characters are likable. They all think that they're all that when they're really just annoying, especially Anna Pavlovna. She's always like, "Oh no, Napoleon Bonaparte took over Italy and Emperor Alexander has to save Europe." Maybe they'll become less annoying over the rest of the book. And they reminded me of Stranger in a Strange Land. That book has these characters who think they're all that. I especially dislike Ben Caxton. He uses a metaphor in almost every other sentence like a total jerk. And I think that it was really pretentious of the publisher (not Heinlein, because authors usually don't have influence over marketing) to call the book "The Most Famous Science Fiction Novel Ever Written." Seriously? I don't know about everyone else but that would arguably go to something written by Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, or H.G. Wells. I know that I heard of Frankenstein, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, and The Time Machine long before I ever heard of Stranger in a Strange Land, which I'm still reading. Yeah, I don't really read very quickly and don't have much time to read and don't feel like reading when I do. It's strange.

So yeah, that's all for today.

The Fifth Post: Adventure Time vs. The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (vs. Spongebob Squarepants)

Gosh darn it - according to Yahoo! Movies, John Carter has pretty much no chance of breaking even. So it flopped. Disney actually acknowledged that fact. Man, that probably means that Disney's not going to be making any sequels anytime soon. It doesn't make any sense. A movie as awesome as John Carter flops while Avatar became the highest-grossing movie of all-time.

Just so you know, Andrew Stanton, I thought that it was an awesome movie. Of course, that's why you leave the marketing to the people who actually studied marketing. I forget where I read it but I read somewhere that Andrew Stanton worked on a lot of the marketing. Yeah, the director should just work on directing a movie, not marketing it.

And also, I figured out why I don't like The Hunger Games. It might be unfair of me to say that because I never read the book, because I didn't want to (although my sister did make me listen to her read the first few chapters), but that's how I am. So the reason is because I couldn't really connect with the main character and this is even more of a problem since the novel is told from a first-person perspective. Because of this, you know that Katniss will win so there's less suspense. Now, I admit, I don't think that I could survive the Hunger Games. I'd probably be one of the first people to be killed, if not the first person. For this, I'd rather root for some of the other tributes, of whom the reader knows nothing and whose deaths are inevitable, as mine would be. Yeah, it's kind of strange, I admit. I am, however, looking forward to watching the movie in theaters on Friday. Not because I want to watch The Hunger Games in particular but because it's fun to see movies in theaters. If I had a choice, I'd go see John Carter again, but I made a promise to my sister that I'd go see The Hunger Games with her, in exchange for...something (I don't remember). But after watching a new trailer (the older trailers looked kind of cheesy), I think I don't really regret it as much now.

Yeah, just wanted to type about those things. The main topic of this post, however, isn't John Carter or The Hunger Games. It's the ever decreasing quality of animated T.V. shows. I'm writing this sentence that you're reading after having written the whole post and let me just warn you that this is an awesome post but I must admit that it's kind of incoherent.

You know what? The quality of kid's cartoons is unbelievably low these days. I remember back in the late '90s and the earlier years of the last decade when there were actually good cartoons. Now they all just seriously SUCK (yes, it was necessary to type that word in all caps). All of them. There are no good ones these days.

I think the reason why most of them SUCK can be, I think, explained by examining one show that was once on Cartoon Network (The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack) and one that is still running on Cartoon Network (Adventure Time).

I think I'll start with the latter.

I think there were three shows that were relatively new on Cartoon Network. In order from oldest to newest: Chowder, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, and Adventure Time. Adventure Time was probably regarded by Cartoon Network as a very important show, a hit that could get finally get them the ratings that they wanted. The two previous shows had failed. I'm going to type about Flapjack later on but here's my opinion about Chowder:

Not too long ago, I would have said that Chowder was alright. In retrospect, however, it wasn't alright. It was pretty bad. It was rarely funny. This, I think, is excusable because the show's creator, C.H. Greenblatt, worked as a writer on Spongebob Squarepants and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, two of the most hilarious cartoons ever. Some of the jokes in Chowder just seemed to have been recycled from those two shows. For example, younger kids would probably have thought that it was funny when Chowder and Schnitzel are about to be attacked by man-eating fruits and Chowder tells Schnitzel that "I [Chowder] used your [Schnitzel's] apron to unclog my [Chowder's] toilet" or something. Fans of Spongebob, however, would probably have been reminded of something from the episode Graveyard Shift: when Spongebob and Squidward think that they are about to get killed by the "Hash-Slinging Slasher", Spongebob tells Squidward that "I [Spongebob] used your [Squidward's] clarinet to unclog my [Spongebob's] toilet." See what I mean?

Anyway, back to Adventure Time. Adventure Time is just not very funny because it tries to be completely random. Because the show's writers are trying to be random, they instead make the jokes very predictable. I'm serious. Go watch an episode and you'll see what I mean. I'd give an example but it's been months since I last saw the show.

Now, Spongebob is a hilarious show. At least, it used to be. As you might have guessed, it's my favorite cartoon of all-time.

Indeed, sadly it only used to be funny. Now, I think they should just cancel the show. I don't know what its ratings are like but I'm sure that they're nowhere near as good as they were before the movie. Of course, Spongebob is probably regarded by Nickelodeon's owners as their most important property. You might say that the most important show Nickelodeon ever aired was Rocko's Modern Life or Invader Zim or The Ren & Stimpy Show or Rugrats. I personally don't know much about those shows. I've watched two episodes of the first (I barely remember them) and none of the third or fourth. I do remember watching Rugrats and hating it. You might even say that the most important show that Nickelodeon aired was The Fairly Oddparents. I used to love that show too. I might as well also mention the third cartoon of that generation, Jimmy Neutron. I liked that show a lot too. The only thing is that it took me a long time to get used to the CGI animation. I always thought that the CGI animation looked weird and wondered why they couldn't just have used traditional animation. Not that I have anything against CGI animation in general or anything. Jimmy Neutron, however, kind of looked low-budget in comparison to the CGI movies that were being made by Pixar and DreamWorks that came out while it was airing. Still, it was a lot better than any new show that is currently playing on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.

Anyway, say what you might, Spongebob is still the most important show Nickelodeon's ever aired. None of other shows that I mentioned in the last paragraph have come close to being the popular culture phenomenon that Spongebob once was. Indeed, I feel very nostalgic for the pre-movie days.

The first season was already very good. You can see that the show had a lower budget back then but some of the first season episodes (like Help Wanted, Jellyfishing, Plankton!, Pizza Delivery, Home Sweet Pineapple, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, Pickles, Hall Monitor, Jellyfish Jam, Culture Shock, F.U.N., and SB-129) are the best the show's ever had. I did want to list all of the episodes of that season that I thought were exceptional, but the list would have been way too long.

However, I think that it was during the second and third seasons that Spongebob Squarepants was at its peak. Consider those two season the Generation II or the Johto Region of the show. Like with Pokémon, the producers of the show took everything the fans liked about the first season (Generation I or Kanto) and added a lot. Both the animators and the writers perfected their respective talents. Gosh darn it, if you want to know what my favorite episodes from those seasons are just see their Wikipedia pages. All of those episodes are awesome.

The movie was okay, I guess, but I'll type about it some other time. Maybe in the next post.

Alright back to Adventure Time. Adventure Time just desperately tries to be funny, by being random. It just fails so epikly (the adverb form of "epic", in case you couldn't tell). Mathematical! Seriously? Nope, not funny. I feel as if I'm being a bit harsh. Well, that's too bad. Am I saying that I'm funnier? No, that's not what I'm saying. Not at all. I'm only saying that Adventure Time is not funny, that's all.

Now that I'm done bashing Adventure Time, I think I'll move on to The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Flapjack was the best of Cartoon Network's New Trio (that's what I'm going to call those three shows now). It wasn't hilarious. It wasn't even that funny. The 11-minute stories usually didn't make any sense (for example: in one early episode, the candy store owner is looking for the last X-marked candy wrapper. That last wrapper will finish the map that he needs to get to Candy Island. Flapjack ripped up that wrapper and gave him one that he (Flapjack) drew an X on. Peppermint Larry (the candy store owner) ended up on Pickle Island. But why did he need that wrapper? Why did it make much of a difference if it made up only a very small portion of the map?) The reason I'm saying that it's the best of the three, however, is that it had the most potential of the three. I'll explain why in the following list.

Now, here's the part of my post that you should pay close attention to if you're a Cartoon Network executive. Alright, I know that the chances that anyone, let alone a Cartoon Network executive, is reading this web log is very low but here are my two ideas for how to whip the network back into shape:

1. If you're going to import shows, import them from Japan.

I don't have anything against Canada. It's a pretty cool country, I know because I've been there. Their animated T.V. shows, however, are of pretty low quality. Just take a look at Johnny Test. It's just a clone of Dexter's Laboratory (an amazing show that Cartoon Network once aired). I mean, seriously, it's just about a kid who is used as a test subject (Get it?) for his sisters' experiments. And it's not funny, unlike DL, which was hilarious. I did like Total Drama Island and Total Drama Action quite a bit, I must admit. The only thing, though, was the artwork. Now, I hate to criticize artwork in T.V. shows, because I personally can't draw, but that was my opinion. I would have liked those shows even more if the art was as good as, maybe that in Johnny Bravo. The shows are similar in appearance (okay, not so much) but there's this Johnny Bravo is more aesthetic. Anyway, Canadian shows generally have this low-quality feel to them.

I admit that I'm not that much of a fan of anime but there are many kids who love anime. I'm not saying that Toonami should be brought back. Many anime fans loved Toonami and stopped watching Cartoon Network because of a lack of anime shows. Just bringing back Toonami won't solve anything, though, because it just won't be the same. Instead, try to import other anime. (The plural of "anime" is just "anime", right?) And I mean, other than Pokémon. That franchise is like Spongebob. It's worn out now. Some shows like Ben 10 might have tried to replace true anime shows but they just can't succeed. I did like Ben 10 but the series is just childish now. Okay, the original show was too, but less.

Get some shojo, or whatever (I don't know much about anime jargon), to attract the elusive tween girl demographic. It helped manga publishers get a foothold in Europe and then go on to publish other manga for all demographics (to the extent that manga series are now as popular as Asterix and Tintin).

2. Don't be so quick to cancel new shows.

Flapjack was expected to get high ratings. It got a lot of advertising early on. When the show failed to meet expectations, there was almost no marketing. If it wasn't for Wikipedia, I wouldn't even have known when the series finale was airing. I watched that finale and I must say that I thought that Flapjack deserved a much better final episode.

Look at how well Adventure Time is doing despite it being a horrible show. It got (and still gets) a bunch of marketing, throughout the good times and the bad times, apparently.

And now another list, just for Flapjack, in case anyone's planning to bring it back:

1. Get rid of the whale.

Bubbie wasn't at all essential to the show. Roz Ryan did a good job of voicing the character but besides taking Flapjack and K'nuckles places, what did she do? The show would have been a lot better if K'nuckles was a real adventurer. I know that the joke is that K'nuckles is a pirate who doesn't do any adventuring, but if he had his own ship...think of all the possibilities that could create. They could travel to strange lands with Bubbie, but instead of whale, if they had a ship they'd have a crew. And the crew could be funny.

2. Lower the emphasis on candy.

Seriously, I know that the main goal that Flapjack and K'nuckles have is to get to Candy Island and all that, but seriously, why all the emphasis on candy? To make it safer for kids? Remember who the target audience is. A show like Flapjack shouldn't even be directed towards kids in the first place.

3. Don't let the humor depend so much on the characters' face expressions.

Much of the humor came from the juxtaposition of the innocence of Flapjack with the grotesqueness of the other characters. Sometimes, however, the jokes that rely on the characters' appearances and face expressions can be unbearable. There's nothing wrong with a cartoon relying on visuals but the best jokes, as everyone knows, are spoken.

4. Add some female characters.

Yeah, seriously. Why not at least try to get girls to watch the show by having more women in the show? That might work out. Targeting girls with comics that had female characters worked for the European manga publishers.

Now, am I saying that Cartoon Network can be as amazing as it was during the Platinum Years, when shows like Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls (yes, I watched that show and I liked it), Grim & Evil (which went on to become The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy), Courage the Cowardly Dog, and of course Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy (which happens to be my favorite cartoon that was ever shown on CN)? (Yes, I do realize that some of those shows were aired with years in between each other but I'm still going to call the years of the late last millennium and the early this millennium the Platinum Years.)

No, but Cartoon Network has nowhere left to go from here but up (at least, I hope so).

Well, that's all for today. Next Post: The Spongebob Squarepants Movie and Cartoon Network vs. Nickelodeon vs. Disney Channel (and why Phineas and Ferb isn't the new Spongebob (besides the obvious) like some T.V. reviewers are saying).

Oh yeah, let me just say that I do know that there are problems with fonts and font sizes in this post but I don't really feel like fixing those problems. Stupid Blogger. Sorry Google.

The Fourth Post: My Top 5 Favorite Works of Fiction

Alright, I admit I don't read as much as I should. You see, I have this unusual psychological condition - oh forget it. My mom doesn't believe me. My sister doesn't believe me. And I don't expect anyone else to so I won't explain about my psychological condition.

Anyway, I used to read quite a bit back in elementary school. I used to read mainly non-fiction but my teachers told me that I should read a bit of fiction so I reluctantly read fiction. Now I don't read much of anything (the last time I finished reading an entire book was during the February of last year). I have not read a book completely for school since, I think, first grade. Yeah, I had to read this one book called How to Eat Fried Worms. I didn't really like it much, but I did read all of it. There are a lot of other books that I was required to read for school but only skimmed: Maniac Magee, A Wrinkle in Time, My Brother Sam Is Dead, Kindred, Frankenstein, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Scarlet Letter (yeah, it's a play not a book, I know), etc. I also get a lot of classics from the library and end up not reading them just because most of them are really boring. And also because I always try to read the prologue, foreword, or introduction (but only if they were written by the author; I won't read a prologue, foreword, or introduction that wasn't written by the author) and those are usually very boring.

It just takes me a long time to read a book, you see. The books that I read have to be very interesting and I have to like them from the first page. These are five books (I said "Works of Fiction" in the title because I did also read Beowulf, which is an epic poem, but I decided that I didn't really like it much anyway) that fit those two requirements and that I would recommend to anyone:

5. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

It's been a while since I last read this book so I don't remember much about it, to tell you the truth. I do remember, however, that it's about this one guy who ends up on this one island that belongs to this one scientist named Dr. Moreau, who tries to make humans out of animals. It's a bit creepy, but still interesting. I thought the ending was pretty touching. I'd recommend this to anyone, like I said above, but mainly to anyone who liked the 1979 Ridley Scott-directed movie Aliens, because it's in the sci-fi horror genre as well.

4. Holes by Louis Sachar

It may be just a children's book, but Holes is a brilliant children's book. It's the only novel that I've ever read twice. Holes is about a kid named Stanley Yelnats, who is falsely accused of stealing shoes that were going to be auctioned to raise money for a homeless shelter. He is sent to a camp where they have to dig holes in the ground to improve their character. Or is it for some other reason? I really liked how the three plots just come together throughout the novel, like a puzzle. This is the only John Newberry Award (an award for kid's books) winner I've read. I did have to read A Wrinkle in Time, like I said earlier, for an oral report in 5th grade. I never had to give that oral report, which was a good thing, because I only read the first two or three pages.

3. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote


This is the book that I finished in the February of last year. I actually heard of the movie first and I thought that the novella would be interesting. It's about a struggling writer who meets this one prostitute (or "America Geisha", which is what Capote called her), who hopes to marry one of the wealthy men with whom she socializes.


Although the movie was pretty good, I thought the book was better. Man, that can make you feel smarter, can't it? Saying that "the book was better than the book" really does make me feel smarter. I don't get a lot of chances to say it so I was kind of grateful for this opportunity. Actually, I'm just kidding. It might just be because I don't read a lot, but in my opinion, it's unfair to say that the book is always better. I mean, just because the director and/or screenwriter didn't have the same vision you did, it doesn't necessarily make the movie bad. Breakfast at Tiffany's the movie was pretty good, in my opinion. It really is nothing like the novella (the message about not knowing what you have until you've lost it isn't really there because the ending is totally changed) but it's still pretty good. Too bad it's tarnished by its portrayal of Japanese people. I would've liked it more if Mr. Yunioshi had remained an important character instead of being turned into a racist caricature.

2. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells


This book's plot is very simple. I mean, most science-fiction books are really complicated but not this one. It's just about this guy who has invented a time machine and ends up in the year 802,701 A.D., where there's a huge divide between the rich and the poor. His time machine is stolen (but none of the people of the future can use it because he took the levers that control it before he left the machine) and he has to get it back. What I especially liked about the book was its epilogue. It's just beautifully-written. I'm serious, go find The Time Machine on Gutenberg and read the epilogue. You don't need to have read the book to understand it. I think I'll just copy and paste the last sentence of the epilogue here, just because it gives me shivers whenever I read it (just so you know, "shriveled" is spelled with two "l"s in British English):

"And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man."

You know, if ever I do go to work in Hollywood (I know that isn't very likely), I would very much like to write and direct my own version of this novella. It would be awesome, I'm pretty sure.

1. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

For a long time, The Time Machine was my favorite novel of all-time. I decided, however, that Mortal Engines is. I first saw it on the top of a shelf in my middle school's library and I really liked the cover (the edition above) and thought that it would be interesting. I read it in three (maybe four) days. Never before had I read a book in only that much time. That's how awesome this book is. It's about a teenager who lives in a dystopian future, where cities devour each other. He falls out of London, along with a girl who was about to kill this one man. The rest of the book is about how they try to get back to London.

The following paragraph has some spoilers (nothing serious, though) about Mortal Engines:

You know, I never can read a whole series. I mean, I tried to read 2010: Odyssey Two, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it wasn't very interesting. Similarly, I didn't find Predator's Gold to be very interesting. I kind of wish that Philip Reeve had just ended the series with the first book (of course, that would mean there wouldn't have been a series). Of course, Mortal Engines couldn't have just ended with Tom and Hester floating away on the Jenny Haniver. Or maybe it could have. Actually, that would have been a great ending. I will try to read Predator's Gold again sometime, however.

Alright, spoiler alert over.

Anyway, I can't wait to see the movie adaptation that Peter Jackson and his company, WETA Digital, are working on. It should be awesome. I'd go see it on opening day.

So yeah, that's all for today.

The Third Post: The Adventures of Tintin (The 2011 Animated Film)

I just remembered how much I hated Blogger. I mean, it automatically switches fonts (and font sizes) sometimes and you can't insert a picture where the cursor is (the picture automatically appears at the top of the page). Sure, those are only two problems, but Blogger still annoys me.

Anyway, I remembered yesterday, when I was thinking about the reception of John Carter by critics, another movie that I saw pretty recently that wasn't as well-received as I'd hoped it would be.

Anyway, I remembered yesterday, when I was thinking about the reception of John Carter by critics, another movie that I saw pretty recently that wasn't as well-received as I'd hoped it would be.

The Adventures of Tintin was liked by both critics and audiences around the world. While I did kind of expect it to happen, it was still pretty surprising how relatively poorly it was received by American critics and audiences.

Now, I hate it when people are like, "Oh, American moviegoers - of course they wouldn't know what to like. They just go see those blockbusters which don't require you to do any thinking." I go to see movies in theaters in America so I consider myself an American moviegoer. Like I said in the previous post, the best thing a movie can do for its audience is entertain it. Just because a film has a simple plot, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. If it's entertaining, then it's alright with me.

I'll admit that I didn't quite like Tintin as much as I'd hoped to. I remember walking past the shelf that contained the series in my library quite a few times and I just decided, one day, to pick up the one that seemed to me to be the most interesting. I liked science-fiction so the one that I decided to read was Explorers on the Moon. I instantly thought that it was awesome. Even though Explorers is the second part of a two-part adventure (the first part being Destination Moon) I understood the story well. Of course, the stories are pretty simple because the series was made for kids.

I later found out that Tintin is one of the bestselling comic book series of all-time. The series is really popular in Europe and former European colonies (so basically, the whole world). According to Wikipedia, the comic book series, which was written and drawn by Hergé, is the second bestselling comic book series from Europe (only the Asterix (which has an accent over the "e" in French) series has sold more copies). Asterix, which was written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (and was written by Uderzo alone after the death of Goscinny)is revered in France, as you can probably tell by the cover of the book that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first volume. Actually, I do believe that in Europe volumes are called "albums." That's kind of weird, though. I mean, the word word "album" is typically used for collections of photos and also collections of songs, at least that's what I thought. Well, whatever.

Let me digress a bit. The first Asterix volume (or album) that I read was Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. It was on the same shelf as The Adventures of Tintin and it had a similar binding. I could tell that this book and the other Asterix books, were of a different series but I decided to try it out. I didn't even get through to the end the first time around. This was mainly because of the font, which was a strange kind of cursive. I tried to read it about a year later and I didn't have a problem with the font anymore. To tell you the truth, Asterix and the Laurel Wreath is probably the only book in the series that I like.

I don't know, the jokes get way too repetitive. They just beat up Roman legionaries and centurions a billion times and that's it. There are some historical references here and there that might make you smile if you get them but there isn't anything to laugh out loud at. For example, at the end of Asterix and Cleopatra, after he and Obelix have helped Cleopatra to build a palace, Asterix says to the Egyptian queen that if her country needs any assistance with anything else, such as building a canal, the Gauls can help. This is an obvious reference to the building of the Suez Canal, of course. When I first read Explorers on the Moon, however, I thought that it was hilarious. Pretty much every character besides Tintin and Wolfe (and the workers at mission control, who are worried that the mission will end with the death of everyone on the rocket) is humorous. There's Thomson, Thompson, Professor Calculus, Snowy, and of course, Captain Haddock.

Of course, much of the humor is lost in translation and the translators for Asterix did a good job with the impossible task that they were given. The jokes in Tintin don't rely on puns as much so the humor isn't lost in the latter series.

Alright back to Tintin the movie. When I first read that it was going to be in motion capture I was disappointed. I was hoping that it would be in traditional animation. After watching the theatrical trailer, however, I was stunned. But then there was another problem: it seemed that Spielberg and Jackson had decided to combine three books in this story - The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure.

Oh well, I thought, it can't be bad. I went to the movie with my sister, who likes the series more than I do, and I thought that it was okay. I don't read a lot of books so I wasn't used to seeing how literature was translated from the pages of a book to the screen. The animation and artwork were wonderful, but there were so many problems that I could see.

Tintin had always been grounded in reality and the film just seemed too, um, cartoonish. I can still remember quite a few scenes but the most memorable were: when Captain Haddock (who I didn't imagine to have a Scottish accent) gets spun around on the propeller of an airplane, when Bianca Castafiore shatters the bulletproof glass case with her voice (I'm pretty sure that that can happen in real life, but still, it seemed somewhat cartoonish), when a tank drives through a building and drags it along a street, and the crane fight.

Still, I realized later that the movie was better than I thought it was. It's on my list of The Top 10 Animated Movies I've Seen. (I was expecting that it would be the best one I'd ever seen, though, you see.)

But I really was surprised at how the movie (technically) flopped in America. It only got $80 million on a budget of $135 million. It did pretty well overseas (in all, it grossed about $370 million) but America is where studios want it to make a lot of money.

What you might read online is just outrageous. The comic book series only has a cult following here in America so I expected that not a lot of people would not care so much for the movie when it first came out here, but still, I was expecting enthusiasm to pick up later. And when it came time for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to release the list of movies that had been nominated, Tintin wasn't even on the list for Best Animated Feature. There was some argument as to whether Tintin was an animated movie or not because it was made using motion capture. However, if people think that The Polar Express is an animated movie, then Tintin is one too. And I do believe that I saw Tintin on the list of legible movies. Not only was this snub seriously unfair, it also erased all suspense from the category.

I mean, seriously, who didn't think Rango was going to win? Rango was a tribute to the old Western movies. Of course the voters (who I assume are really old) were going to like it. It's like how Hugo was nominated for everything because it was directed by Martin Scorsese and it was a tribute to the old silent films that were made by Georges Méliès. I'll tell you the truth; I saw Rango and I didn't like it. I just didn't. I'd type more about it and the 2012 Oscars but this post is getting way too long.

Anyway, Tintin was alright. It could have been better but it was quite good.

Well, that's all for today.

The Second Post: John Carter

Well, I just saw John Carter and, although I did say that I had high expectations for the movie, I really didn't. I mean, I thought it would be alright but not that good. The film, however, exceeded all of my expectations. It was just amazing, in my opinion.

The acting was pretty good; the special effects were stunning (of course, that's expected of all sci-fi/fantasy movies these days); and the story was thrilling. Yeah, thrilling.

Alright, to tell you the truth, I usually don't write a lot about the movie itself when I type up a review. I'd just much rather write about how the movie was received in comparison to what I thought about it.

Oh yeah, I guess I should probably tell you that this review has some spoilers. Not any real spoilers, though. This movie is kind of predictable, not that that's a bad thing.

So how's this movie been received by critics? On Rotten Tomatoes it currently has a 50% "Rotten" rating. On Metacritic it currently has a 51% rating. I'm not surprised. I know everyone has different tastes, but come on, this is a movie with no pretense of being a possible nominee for the Best Picture Academy Award. Different people look for different things in movies and what I look for is something entertaining. I think that the best thing a movie can do for its audience is entertain it. Some movies are just so pretentious. You watch them and you can tell that the writers and directors were (or are) expecting them to be nominated for Best Picture or Best Screenplay or something. (This is why I don't like Pixar anymore.)

But was John Carter entertaining? Yeah, man. It definitely was. WALL-E might have been the most pretentious movie I've watched but Andrew Stanton has done an awesome job here. What would I give this movie? I'd give this movie, um, maybe a 94%. Yeah, I think it deserves that. It easily deserves a high place on my list of The Top 25 Most-Awesome Movies Ever. Here's the list right now:

1. Blade Runner

2. Jurassic Park

3. Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark

5. The Goonies

6. Independence Day

7. John Carter

8. Alien

9. Apocalypse Now

10. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (or just Star Wars if you insist)

11. Godzilla (1998 TriStar version)

12. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

13. The Lion King

14. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

15. Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith

16. Back to the Future

17. Barbarella

18. The Mummy

19. Pokémon: The First Movie (yeah, you read right)

20. Clash of the Titans

21. Shrek 2

22. Brazil

23. Superman II

24. TRON

25. Dante's Peak

I'm not saying that these are the best movies of all-time; they're just my favorite movies of all-time. Now I know what you might be thinking: you liked Independence Day more than Alien? You liked Pokémon: The First Movie more than Brazil? Yeah, that's right.

There are some awesome explosions in Independence Day, the critics must admit. I really do like explosions. I was about to put The Matrix on the list just because of that one explosion that occurs when that one helicopter crashes into that one building. That is one awesome explosion. I don't like seriously excessive explosions, though. I did like the first Transformers movie (it's one my Top 50) but its sequels were just excessive.

Getting back to John Carter, though; I'd recommend the movie to anyone who likes science-fiction movies. The Barsoom series, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was an inspiration to many people who've created science-fiction stories. The list includes George Lucas, James Cameron, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and H.P. Lovecraft. This might, sadly, cause people to call it a rip-off of several movies.

Critics will inevitably compare the movie to Avatar. Both movies are about a male human who needs to lead alien people in a war. I thought that John Carter was a lot better than Avatar, the main reason being that the characters I was rooting for won in the end.

I don't really know what to think of Avatar. I mean, when I first saw Avatar in the December of 2009, I didn't like it. I thought, man, this movie is seriously overrated. Then, I watched it on DVD in the May (or maybe June) of 2010 and I thought that it was better than I had previously thought it was. I thought, well, this is actually alright.

What I didn't like about it on both occasions was that the humans lost. I mean, I know that you're supposed to be on the side of the Na'vi but, come on, I'm human so I kind of wanted the humans to take over Pandora. It seemed kind of strange to me how Jake just turned on his own species like that (I'm saying this all banteringly, by the way; it's just a movie, I know). I mean, the human scientists made that alien body for him. That probably took, like I don't know, millions of dollars. If anything, he kind of owed them, not the Na'vi, something. I was so disappointed at the end when Neytiri killed the colonel and the creatures of the forest all united and crushed the humans underfoot.

With John Carter, however, I was definitely on the side of the title character. I wanted him to defend the city of Helium against the army of Zodanga. I wanted him to get back to get back to Barsoom at the end. So yeah, that's why I thought John Carter was so much more awesome than Avatar.

This movie deserves way more than a 51 or 51 % rating. I know I haven't really said much about it in this review and that I've just made generalization about it, but it was amazing.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There was this one tune on the soundtrack that, whenever, it was played reminded me of Marion's Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'd know what it was if you heard it. I think that the soundtrack was the only disappointing thing about this movie. I was hoping for a memorable soundtrack but its just one of those soundtrack that doesn't really assert itself, unlike those of Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Well, that's all for today.

The First Post

Hello, how are you doing on this glorious day?

Well, I was feeling nostalgic a few hours ago. Pretty nostalgic. You see, I remembered that I had this web log. I actually shut it down (made it not inaccessible to anyone who didn't have permission to see it) a few months ago because I couldn't think of much to type about and what I did type up just wasn't that awesome. I did publish quite a few posts and I deleted them all. Before I did that, however, I copied and pasted all of them onto a word document. That document is 210 pages long and 19.441 megabytes.

I do have a website. Like, an actual website. Actual websites are so much cooler than Blogger (or WordPress) sites. The thing, though, is that I don't have a lot of time to type up a log on that website and I think it's just more convenient to do that here.

So yeah, this is the new First Post. (I used to just title posts whatever number they were. I think I'll do that again just for nostalgic reasons.)

So anyway, now that the introduction's done, here's the actual post:

Well, my pseudonym is Rick Levi and I'm a junior in high school. And...I can't really think of anything else to say because anything else I might say would probably be really boring.

Alright, there really is only one reason, I must admit, that I decided to start up this blog again - this movie:

I saw the teaser poster for John Carter earlier this year and I did think that the logo (the logo that's on the lower right corner of this poster) looked kind of cool. Then a trailer came out and I saw it but I didn't really like it. I mean, there were these weird green aliens in a coliseum, this one dude who kills a giant beast, airships, and other stuff you normally see in science-fiction movies. The coliseum scene and the Battle of Geonosis from Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones, in particular, came to mind. I did do a little research about John Carter (on Wikipedia, of course) and I found out that the movie was based on the first novel of an 11-part book series. It was interesting to find out that the series (A Princess of Mars being the first (and the one that this movie is based on) having been serialized in 1912 and published in novel form in 1917) was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan of the Apes.

So, I knew that the movie wasn't a rip-off of Star Wars or Avatar, but I still didn't care much about it. A few days ago, however, my sister reminded me of the movie and told me that it actually influenced Star Wars. I decided to look up the trailer again and I found a different one. I liked the second trailer a lot more. It explained more about the story and it had better music and all that.

And also, something that's kind of unrelated - it reminded me of Superman. In the trailer (and the first one, too) John Carter has this ability to jump really high. This reminded me of Superman because in the original comics (not that I read the comics. Who reads superhero comics now anyways?) Superman can't fly but can only jump really high. And according to this one Cracked article, Superman is a rip-off of this one character called Hugo Danner from a book entitled Gladiator. And Gladiator was published in 1930, quite a while after the first Barsoom novel.

So yeah, I also looked on the Wikipedia page again and this time read it in greater depth. I found out that not only did the books serve as inspiration for Star Wars and Avatar, but that the also influenced some of the greatest writers of science fiction like Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein (I've never actually read anything by Bradbury but have read 2001: A Space Odyssey and am currently reading Stranger in a Strange Land).

So I suddenly had a lot more respect for the movie. And also a lot more interest, perhaps even excitement. And so, I'm going to go see it tomorrow in theaters. It seemed like more of a movie to rent, at first, but now I have high expectations for this blockbuster. I sure do hope that John Carter is better than TRON: Legacy.

The thing about TRON: Legacy is that I was stunned by it when saw it in IMAX 3-D. It had flaws, of course, but I didn't care. I was willing to ignore those flaws because the special effects were just awesome. After watching TR2N at home on DVD, however, I realized just how bad the story was. I was pretty glad that I had watched it in theaters because that is the only way to watch it. My sister had asked me if I wanted to go see Tangled instead but I refused. Now, I was old enough to know that Disney fairy tales are for everyone, not just little girls, but I just wanted to go see TR2N so much more. I'm so glad that I refused.

Tangled was a pretty good movie. It wasn't as good as the '80s and '90s Disney movies, but it was good. The animation was excellent. The movie came out in 2010 and its digital artwork still looks superior to the animation in the upcoming Pixar movie Brave. If you must know, I am somewhat anti-Pixar now. After Ratatouille (their last good movie, in my opinion), they started getting more and more pretentious. I mean that WALL-E was really boring and really unsubtle with its political message and UP tried too hard to manipulate the viewers' emotions. And the whole concept of Cars and Cars 2 just seemed kind of boorish, if you know what I mean. And what I don't like about Brave is its emphasis on the gender of its main character.

I just dislike it when it's made such a big deal that a female character is strong. Its alright in Mulan, because that is an awesome movie, but it seems that there's a prominent strong female character everywhere now. You know who the best example of a strong female character is? So obvious I shouldn't even have to tell you: Ellen Ripley (portrayed by Sigourney Weaver) from Alien. I mean, it's not made such a big deal that she's female. She could be male and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. You get what I'm saying?

Another reason I'm already prejudiced against Brave is because it seems like How to Train Your Dragon and Mulan put together. Those are two awesome movies, man. The animation in How to Train Your Dragon (which came out in 2010, like Tangled) also looks better than the animation in Brave. (Notice here, I'm using the word "animation" to mean "digital artwork" not "the way that the characters and various objects move across the screen." Yeah, just telling you. I mean, most people these days use the word to mean "digital artwork" but I don't think that that's an accepted definition. I'm just using the word because then I don't have to type as many letters.)

Sorry for getting so off track but I do that a lot. Anyway, I just hope that John Carter is better than Tron: Legacy. As I said, I've got high expectations for it. (And, yes, I do know that it was directed by Andrew Stanton, the director of WALL-E. But he also directed Finding Nemo, which is a good movie and probably my third favorite Pixar movie after Monster's Inc. and Ratatouille.) I'm expecting it to be third on my list of the coolest movies I'm going to watch this year:

1. Prometheus

2. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

3. John Carter

4. The Hunger Games

These are the four movies that I know I'm going to watch this year. I can't wait for the first three. I'm even excited for The Hobbit, which is strange because I thought that The Lord of the Rings was a boring trilogy. It's a seriously well-made movie, just really boring that's all.

And one other thing - I don't care at all for The Dark Knight Rises. I just don't, in case anyone wants to know.

I also have pretty much no enthusiasm for The Hunger Games but I did make a promise a long time ago to my sister that I'd go watch it with her. I forget why, there was a specific reason. I'm already unfairly prejudiced against the movie. And for no real reason. I'm like that one guy in that one episode of Parks and Recreation (which is an awesome show by the way) who refuses to vote for Leslie for no real reason and then Leslie and Ben take him bowling and he still doesn't want to vote for Leslie. Oh well, I guess THG might be alright. Everyone I know has already read all three of the books by now.

Did I tell you that I'm a hipster when it comes to literature? I mean, I don't read much anyway but when I do read, I try to read classics. The problem, however, is that pretty much all of the classics I've tried reading are really boring. But I'm a hipster because I don't read mainstream YA novels. I don't think I'm cooler than everyone else for not doing so and I'm not intending to sound like a jerk, it's just that the premise of The Hunger Games simply doesn't interest me. However, I do plan to read at least the first book someday so that I can fairly criticize it.

Well, that's all for today.