Book Review: The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A dull and laborious haul, even for a piece of classic literature based on a candy bar. I did appreciate the use of the terms "lackey," "antechamber" and "What the deuce?" but other than that I had a tough time staying interested. It was almost as tough to truck through as Moby-Dick or War and Peace. I can't fathom why the franchise is so popular.


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Review: Getaway

Get. Away.

That's what I kept saying to the movie, but it wouldn't budge. It just squatted there all stupidly on its big dumb screen, mocking me by refusing to obey.

How dare this silly action flick spoil the good name of the beloved 1994 Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger sexcapade, which itself was a remake of the 1974 Steve McQueen film. The title, much like everything in the movie, makes no sense, has no bearing on reality, and simply expressed the urge you feel as you longingly eye the portal below the exit sign.

Ethan Hawke stars as a racecar driver whose wife, like so many women, has been up and stolen by Jon Voight. Voight calls Ethan up, tells him that he totally dug Before Midnight and Snow Falling on Cedars, then commands him to steal an armored, camera'd-up car and race it around town at his whims. Do it or his wife dies.

Voight is rather firm about his demands most of the time, but occasionally allows a little freelancing, such as when Selena Gomez tries to carjack Ethan and ends up an unintended passenger on the miseryride. At first, Voight is all KILL HER ETHAN YOU CAN'T LEAVE NO WITNESSES!. But soon he realizes that a female lead for Hawke to vibe off of will help pass the time so he lets her stay.

Gomez tries her best, but she has a little problem in that she was bitten by a vampire at age 11, and thus, despite her biological age of 452, cannot be taken seriously as an adult actress. When Ethan locks Selena in his car, there's a distinct stranger danger vibe going on that's quite off-putting.

More video game than movie, the idiocy has Ethan, in the name of saving the woman he loves, murder dozens upon dozens of people via vehicular manslaughter. You shake your head as his tonka toy of a vehicle survives fiery wreck after fiery wreck, avoiding the cops and ramming through buildings and doing whatever because it's touched a Super Mario Bros. star and cannot be killed.

It's too bad, because this mess could have been sort of fun like Crank, The Transporter 1 through 17 or pretty much any Jason Statham movie that all happen to be exactly the same. All Getaway needed to be mediocre instead of awful was Jason Statham, half a script and one fewer 452-year-old creepy Disney demon spawn.

The real getaway here was the one the filmmakers pulled on the studio, having heisted giant paychecks for minimal work or thought. While I respect the earnest con, I am sad to have suffered 90 minutes of punishment at the hands of the execrable results. Gag away, I did.

Starring Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight and Rebecca Budig. Written by Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan. Directed by Courtney Solomon. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

5 Stupid Things People Can Go Ahead And Stop Saying

1. "Breakfast of champions." When the expression is known better than the source is, it leads morons to utter it about eating Doritos or pizza in the morning without knowing or caring where it comes from.

2. "Your tax dollars at work." Your brain cells are not at work though.

3. "If I had a nickel." If I had a hammer every time I heard someone say that, I would likely be in jail by now.

4. "Which begs the question." This has been misused so much that its misuse has become accepted usage. Even if the saying has backed its way into the realm of grammatical correctness, it still sounds moronically pretentious.

5. "___ o'clock." Beer o'clock, sex o'clock, nap o'clock, snack o'clock. How about shut the eff up o'clock?

Review: Planes

Looking like a lifeless, creativity-free cash-in on a tired franchise, Planes acts the part as well for the first hour or so. A barely-tweaked, character-for-character carbon copy of Cars, the narrative hurls itself into a bonheaded plot mechanic, then lazily skywrites its way to oblivion.

And then things get interesting.

The movie no longer sucks as it teeters into the third act. Much like Happy Feet, it ventures gleefully off to crazy town, taking on a severely dark tone. Refusing to play it safe any longer, it becomes genuinely dangerous and exciting. For the first time, it's not quite clear where things are going, and characters that seemed poorly written suddenly have some definition and edge.

There is much to hate about this movie. Far more than there is to love, in fact. But I appreciate the dangerous turn so much that the glee overtook the Dane Cook-baked misery that led up to that point. The movie works, almost in spite of itself, and though it predictably coasts toward a predictable ending, at least it manages to accomplish the task with flourish.

Still, though, I have to voice my hatred of some of the crap that came before. Ahem.

* The movie shows a televised plane race. These do not exist. How stupid.

* Just like the bizarre world of Cars, humans do not exist. They must have been all killed somehow. Cars do exist, but their only purpose is to serve as forklifts or as crowd filler in the stands.

* Dane Cook does an Owen Wilson impersonation as the main character, a crop duster who decides to compete against jet fighters and such to prove to be the fastest plane on earth. I hated everything about this character until he suddenly starts calling another pompous plane out on his BS. Then I only disliked him.

Starring the voices of Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Brad Garrett. Written by Jefrey M. Howard. Directed by Klay Hall. 92 minutes. Rated G.

My Lifelong Goal Achieved

I accomplished a lifelong goal Tuesday when I discovered the name of the song at the beginning of this video, the intro to DTV, Disney Channel's 1980s response to MTV, back when MTV played music. Disney Channel was big into responding to stuff in those days, for instance creating Mousercise as a response to Jazzercise.

Anyway, that intro song was always one of my favorites, and my adoration of the tune only increased when my beloved Phoenix Suns adopted it as their pre-tip-off jingle. Nothing gets me as pumped up as that song. Not "Eye of the Tiger," not "You're the Best Around," not "We Will Rock You."

The song was an instrumental, and had no words, so I would create my own:

Get ready

Get ready

So excited that I can't hide it, 

I'm coming into,

I'm sliding into,

The danger zone.

Didn't ever think that I'd find you 

And now that I have we are walking on air.

Didn't even think that I'd find you

And now we are walking on air

Yes the air

Way up there

In the air

Oh the air

Yes the air

Oh the air

Oh the air

Woo!

Ahem.

I needed this song. And to get the song I needed to know what it was called. The closest I could get to owning it was to dig up YouTube videos like that one and listen to snippets of it. I scanned the comments, hoping someone entranced under a similar spell would have already have done the work for me and have been willing to share the results.

No luck.

I embedded the video on Facebook, begging anyone to give it a listen and see if they could deduce the song's title.

Crickets.

Google, as powerful as it is, failed me in my decades-long search for salvation. No matter how I searched, no one seemed to know the title of the song.

And then, by some miracle, I found my answer through Shazam, a smartphone app that listens to bits of music and identifies the songs from which they came. I'm pretty sure I'd tried to Shazam the song before, but had no luck. I indulged a fleeting hope that maybe somehow, some way, Shazam had updated its database enough to include my Moby-Dick of instrumental magic.

The first time I used Shazam, it came up empty. But I would not take no for an answer. I gave it another try. And my perseverence was rewarded. The sweet result the app yielded was that the song was "RPM" by Network Music Ensemble, and was part of the "After School Rock" album.

I was afraid that Shazam was toying with me, but sure enough, a click of the sample listen button confirmed the answer to be the truth. I joyfully handed Amazon 99 cents in exchange for my childhood appreciation that had festered into a lifelong obsession.

Then I listened to the song about 20 billion times in a row. sometimes just appreciating the song, other times humming along, and occasionally belting out my made-up lyrics along with the music. I was content.

And then Caesar wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

My Facebook Friending Policy

If you ask me to be Facebook friends and I add you, don't think you've accomplished anything. I am cool with accepting pretty much any person, place or thing as my "friend," because I am a shameless self-promoter who is happy to spam out links to anyone willing to be bombarded by them.

Bear in mind that although I will accept you as a friend, I will most likely not like or even read your posts. Odds are I'll hide you from my news feed because I will care little to nothing about what happens in your life. Such will be our friendship.

Although I do accept all friendships, I cheerfully destroy the relationships just as easily. Those who invite me to events and to play games usually end up not only defriended, but blocked entirely. Also, people who do things in real life to annoy me also get defriended and blocked. Because what's the good of social media if not to exact passive-aggressive revenge?

One last thing. If I can tell you are a spam porn girl, I will definitely not add you. Sorry to disappoint all of you.

Book Review: Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Starts off with silly whimsy but builds toward profound, relentlessly snarky truths about the human condition. This man loves him some horses. Fascinating Divine Comedy-style social criticism.



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Top 5 Zombie Stories That Have Not Yet Been Told

1. The Zom Bee -- In an attempt to win the Spelling Bee, a 10-year-old boy becomes a zombie who hungers for correct spelling rather than human brains in order to achieve the single-minded dedication it takes to become a champion.

2. ZomBaby -- An undead baby wreaks adorable havoc and hijinks as he gets the zombie apocalypse off to a gurgling start and manages to hit his clueless grandpa, played by Tim Allen, in the balls every 10 minutes.

3. Downton Zombie -- A struggling but proud Victorian-era family seeks to cut costs and keep up appearances by soliciting a staff of animated corpses to serve and passive-aggressively resent them.

4. Hannah and Her Dead, Rotting Sisters -- A ripe 105 years old and still intent on playing the romantic lead in his neurotically philosophical comedies, Woody Allen discovers that the only romantic foils age-appropriate for him are those who died long ago but have come back to life.

5. OK, so I give up. There have been so many damned zombie movies, TV series, comics and books that there are only four zombie stories remaining that have yet to be told, and I have listed them all already.

Top 5 Covers That Would Have Sold Even More Rolling Stones Than The Terrorist One

1. Hello Kitty. Little girls, Japanophiles and ironic hipsters would have all begged their mommies to pick up copies for them at the supermarket.

2. Your Mom. Remember back when Time Magazine named everybody on the planet its co-person of the year? Just like that, only with your mom, because everybody knows about your mom. And I mean everybody.

3. Kate Upton. It's worked for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue the last two years, so it's only a matter of time until every other magazine jumps on the trend. Scientists estimate that by 2015, all magazines will feature Kate Upton exclusively on their covers.

4. KABOOM! Just the word in bubble letters and jagged, neon bordering, 1960s Batman TV show style. That way Rolling Stone could have notified readers of its cover story, only with more class and style than a One Direction-style glamour shot of a mass killer.

5. A MAD fold-in. Because they're like two covers in one!

J.K. Rowling Ain't Nothin' But A Copycat

Watching the 1985 movie Young Sherlock Holmes, it's obvious how much J.K. Rowling swiped to create Harry Potter and the Hogwarts universe. Watson is a bespectacled doofus who looks like Harry Potter. She swapped his role for the lanky redhead, Sherlock Holmes. And she kept the girl in the movie who looks like Hermione as Hermione.

Want more? There's a punk kid with platinum blonde hair, and there's a guy named Dudley in the British boarding school Sherlock, Watson and the Hermione girl romp around solving mysteries in.

This explains why the Young Sherlock Holmes screenwriter, Chris Columbus, took out his vengeance on Rowling by ruining her books in movie form, with those two terrible adaptations he made. It's not, after all, that Columbus lost his drive after he made it big so he ended up turning into a tepid hack of a filmmaker by the point it came time to make the Potter films. He was just pissed that Rowling stole all his ideas so he thought he'd serve revenge just the way the Klingons like it -- cold.

My Favorite Scene In Breaking Bad

I am reminded of a scene in Breaking Bad that always recurs in my mind. Hal and an old friend are thinking back to their youthful days of vigor and ambition, wondering how they could have been so happy and eager despite having no money or accomplishments. 

"You know what we had?" he says, "Momentum."

That's what leads to fulfillment in life - the direction you're headed. It's all momentum. And it doesn't have to be restricted to dumb 20-year-olds. Identifying and chasing passions are what bring lasting engagement. Happiness is fleeting and nonexistent.

Book Review: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Starts slowly and drags hard in the middle but builds up into some intense psychological drama in the last couple acts. The ending is ridiculous but pretty well close to earned.



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Willy Wonka And Religion

The movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a religious parable. Hear me out. Arthur Slugworth (the stand-in for the devil), the black-suited, seemingly malevelent creepo, approaches each Golden Ticket-winning child and offers them each a bargain -- betray Willy Wonka (God) by swiping the Everlasting Gobstopper (the apple) and he will shower him with riches.

At the end of the film, Slugworth is found to be simply a lowly employee of Wonka posing as a rival. Wonka, though, being all powerful, cannot possibly have a true rival. He has simply used Slugworth to do what he loves most, which is mess with people and test their purity of heart with cruel temptations.

Slugworth represents quick-fix temptation over the long-term good. To Wonka's feigned dismay and barely restrained amusement, each child proves unworthy of inheriting the kingdom of Wonka's factory. Most agree to succumb to Slugworth's influence to spite Wonka, whose ways they don't comprehend. And each is summarily cast out.

Only by taking all of Wonka's crap without protest does Charlie prove worthy of remaining in Wonka's presence. He receives eternal riches, is lifted from poverty to wealth, and not only is accepted into Wonka's kingdom, but is deemed Wonka's successor.

Not sure what the Oompa Loompas represent. Maybe the disciples?

My Son Is The World'S Greatest Filmmaker

Here is proof.

Espanol

Do not ever go to a restaurant and insist on only using your limited Spanish, if you happen to be a native English speaker whose knowledge of Spanish stopped in eighth grade. Sure, you could conceivably say things such as "ensalada por favor," "pollo de chipotle," "arroz," "donde esta el bano" and, my favorite, "yo trabajo en un banco." Maybe you could even fool a few people. But not yourself. 

Do not refuse to speak in English, or act offended if someone tries to speak English to you. And by no means should you fill in your lack of knowledge of your adopted language by making up whatever words you didn't know.

If you disobey my instructions until the restaurant brought in a genuine Spanish speaker to communicate with you, you should most definitely not act offended and indignant that the Spanish speaker does not recognize your made-up words.

Review: Man of Steel

Man of Steel packs enough ambition and imaginative touches to do its hero proud. It's a hero, by the way, that it never does name, and I will pay tribute to that restraint by playing along with that ultra-cool pretentiousness and refuse to name him here as well.

Here is a movie that dispenses with all the ample cheese that comes with the hero and his too-many decades of baggage. Gone are the red underwear and gaudy red boots worn on the outside of his tights. Instead is a navy blue catsuit that looks like it was designed by Under Armor or Nike. The cape is still there, but it sort of has to be. I like that the suit only makes an appearance when it absolutely has to, and that much of the film is about Clark Kent, rather than his alter ego. And I like even more that Kent is a scruffy-haired drifter. There is also some cool stuff about his time as a crazy and terrifying kid.

However, Batman Begins this is not. Instead of having the guts to focus on the development of the hero, it goes nutso by bringing in an alien invasion, the Phantom Zone, General Zod and all sorts of other crazy that should have long since been written out of DC continuity. Worse, the hero is very much a reckless idiot when it comes to the set-piece battles, thinking noting of toppling skyscrapers and slaughtering thousands of innocents as he chases down the bad guy.

I love this movie as much as I hate it, and I feel both emotions pretty equally. For every human moment that lends authenticity to such an otherworldly and ridiculous character, there's an equal measure of nonsensical bombast that plague just about every cinematic superhero yarn.

What I'm left with more than anything are questions. Why couldn't the hero have just rescued people, stopped crimes and asserted himself as a force for good and hope for us groundlings? Why did he have to slaughter so many of us and kill the rest of us? Why did we need to see the hero hang out in the Fortress of fricking Solitude talking with a computer program of his dead dad?

There are so many moments in the movie that absolutely work, though. Which is why this is such a tough film to digest and decide whether to hate or love. It ends on a perfect note that matches the finale of Batman Begins. The character stuff, except for an unnecessarily falsely heroic moment with Costner as Pa Kent, all hits hard, and gives the movie a fighting shot at developing into a bonafide franchise rather than another aborted reboot.

I like this movie in spite of itself, I guess. At the very least I have to hand it to the film that it's not as awful as its 2006 predecessor. I will look, up in the sky, with hope the next time a film in the series comes around. Rather than dread.

Starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner. Written by David S. Goyer, based on a character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Directed by Zack Snyder. Rated PG-13. 143 minutes. 

Review: Before Midnight

Any romance with a happy ending is false. Bliss between lovers is only a prelude to inevitable clashes, distrust and apathy that will eventually erode the affair to nothingness. That's true even for the most breathless of fictional love stories, concocted in the masterful Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004).

Before Midnight, which is hopefully only a middle chapter in a series that will continue to check in as a time capsule every nine years, is fearless for the way it ruthlessly devours the sweetness and sentiment in the films that came before. Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, whose characters met for a sweet yet fleeting one-night stand in the first movie, then a complicated -- but just as precious -- rendezvous in the follow-up, now sacrifice their adorable love to the unforgiving altar of time and changing personalities.

Once again the movie is just about all dialogue, mostly with Hawke and Delpy talking. The trend of darkening, more severe subject matter that started in the second film continues here. The romance that remains is less about attempts at stoking blossoming flames of love than it is about feeding whithering embers of burned-out passion.

The relationship, stunted because it covered so much ground in its two days separated by nearly a decade, has now run its course and is left wheezing and hunched over. Instead of tantalizing each other by swapping thoughts and emotions that draw them closer together the more they learn about one another, they sling barbs harvested from knowing each other all too well. Each ups the stakes with threats that are either implied or direct, upping the passive-aggressive ante to higher, more punishing levels.

Hawke and Delpy are almost too convincing in their performances, seething with contempt. They jump on each others' thoughts, hammer on insecurities and prey on festering wounds. Watching the movie, you almost feel like children watching your parents argue. You long for a truce because you can't fathom the pain of them separating. After all, if these crazy kids-turned-middle-agers can't make it, who can?

What keeps the movie from being a depressing fireball of angst is that despite all the hurt, and the raw, unnerving dread of the clashes, hope still flowers. Director Richard Linklater could have forced the sentiment by inserting flashbacks of the previous movies, but he instead makes the flashbacks all verbal -- letting the actors paint their memories with expressions and descriptions. Those who haven't seen the earlier films will not be lost, but won't get nearly as much out of the nuances and shades as those who know and love those movies.

Before Sunset remains my favorite of the trilogy, but there's a heft and strength to Before Midnight that outweighs the first two films combined. It's a brutal parade of heartbreak and mind-rake that leaves you curled up and wound up in a ball, covering your eyes but peeking through parted fingers.

Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Written by Hawke, Delpy and Richard Linklater, based on characters created by Linklater and Kim Krizan. Directed by Linklater. 109 minutes. Rated R.

Top 5 Reasons The Xbox One Will Suck (But I Will Still Buy One Like An Idiot)

5. No backward compatibility. You know those thousands of dollars you've spent on games the last 8 years? Go ahead and get rid of all of them because they won't work with the new system. But at least all those downloads you crammed into your 320gb hard drive will move right on over, yeah? Um, no. Those are dead to the Xbox One as well.

4. It pretty much always has to be connected to the internet. You know what's not always connected to the internet? The internet! Especially if you have Comcast, which goes down as often as records go right round. So now when I lose online access for two days in a row for no reason I'll no longer get to play any Xbox One games.

3. It makes it a pain in the rear to lend or give games to others. It lets you transfer ownership of games, but only after jumping through hoops. The paranoia to the design of this demented DRM restriction is of the Michael Douglas Falling Down variety. Sickening.

2. It costs $500 frikkin dollars. Seriously. Seriously? Seriously. For that price it should also distill its own vodka and pour me White Russians.

1. Seriously, it costs $500 dollars even though it's screwing you over in so many ways. Sure, it may be the lazy way out to use this reason twice, but I am really, really pissed about the price. But not pissed enough not to hand over the money.

The 5 Most Disgusting Vegetables

5. Green olives from Walmart with pimento stuck inside them. There are reasons factory machines see fit to impale these abominations with spicy enemas. It's not only to add some semblance of flavor to the wretched vacuums that abhor taste buds, but to punish the fruit-family rejects for their obstinance.

4. Iceberg lettuce. Lettuce leaves in general are big, stupid and unwieldy, and exists just to take up space and disappoint. Iceberg is the most disgusting of its ilk. Every bit as flavorful and easy to skewer with a fork as its namesake. This is the lettuce that sunk the Titanic.

3. Peas. The Exorcist ruined whatever goodwill this pathetic, puny, Martian alien-skin-colored attrocity ever wielded. The movie scene provded once and for all that peas were the preferred food of the eternally damned. They lurk behind carrots, hiding their mediocrity like pudgy little Hardys around so many Laurels.

2. Radishes. I've never eaten Old Spice deoderant, but I imagine it tastes very much like radish. Blending the texture of an apple with the taste of, well, Old Spice deoderant, the radish's raison d'etre is to disappoint and punish.

1. Every type of squash (tie). Why anyone would ever intentionally eat any type of squash baffles me. Not only do its different varieties taste like urine from various species of rodents when eaten raw, they taste even more sickenly disgusting when cooked. Only with cheese slathered all over them are squash slices somewhat tolerable.

Top 5 Reasons The Spurs Are A Stupid And Boring Team

5. Manu Ginobli is a flopper who could draw a fake charge by acting as though he were run over by a Mack truck if a butterfly dropped a microscopic fraction of butterfly poop a mile away from him.

4. There is nothing other to do in San Antonio, sportswise, than worship the stupid, boring Spurs, so everyone in the town takes pride in the team's constant success and thus behaves as entitled jerks who don't know what it's like to give away all your good players for no reason and suck for years, as the Suns do.

3. Their colors, black and silver, are derived from pencil coloring. The black is from hard pencil writing and the silver is from light. Both are sorely in need of a good erasing.

2. Tony Parker and Tim Duncan are good players, but have no flash or style. They play basketball like accountants crunch numbers. They take as much joy in winning as a middle school bus driver does in dropping off the day's last batch of ingrateful tweens so she can go spend half her day's pay at IHOP in a meal she will regret as soon as she exits the restaurant.

1. They walk the ball up the court every time, have no flow or rhythm to their offense, yet bore the opposition into letting them score every other possession or so. San Antonio wins solely because teams cannot stand to be on the court with them so they just roll their eyes and check their texts until the clock expiers.