My students are insane. I want to get a class pet and am having a damn hard time figuring out what to get. They do not want anything cute and cuddly, so all forms of rodents are out. We were interested in turtles but we can’t have one because they carry diseases. Same with iguanas. So, what do my darling five-year-olds want?

A spider.

Yes, you read that correctly, they want a spider. And not just your garden variety spider, they want a Tarantula. Yes, they are insane. They even made a list of reasons why they want a spider. And I have to admit, they have some pretty decent reasons.

1. They want to pet a spider.
2. They want to feel a spider crawl up their arms.
3. They want to watch a spider weave a web.
4. They want to watch a spider burrow in the ground (which we learned tarantulas do)
5. They want to watch a spider climb the walls of the terrarium.
6. They want to watch a spider lay eggs
7. They want to watch the eggs hatch.

But the number one reason they want a spider: They want to see a girl spider eat a boy spider!

Yes, my students are insane! Hope everyone is having happy holidays.

Having always been a member of the in-crowd at school, I found it hard to relate to Napoleon, the star of Jared Hess’ debut feature film, Napoleon Dynamite. He is the ultimate nerd, the kind of kid I and all the other cool guys at school used to alternate between laughing at, beating up or just feeling sorry for due to his utter patheticness. He wears unfashionably large glasses, tucks his t-shirt into his pants, spends every free moment sketching mythical creatures, rarely communicates in more than monosyllables and always sports a face which is the definition of gormless with his eyes all but shut and mouth hanging open. But perhaps the most galling thing about Napoleon is he seems to feel no remorse for or need to remedy his pathetic state.

He happily spends his lunchtimes playing tetherball on his own and seems quite dismayed if not disgusted whenever he is shunned. He is quite certain that it is the rest of society that has the problem and not him. As well as Napoleon, we meet Pedro, the new kid at school who immediately impresses Napoleon with his teenage moustache and Deb who is equally socially inept and would be Napoleon’s potential love interest if only he wasn’t so off in his own world that he fails to notice that she likes him. The film has only minimal plot as if to emphasise the pointlessness of Napoleon’s existence. What plot there is focusses on Pedro’s attempt to be elected school president. Unlike Napoleon, Pedro is not content with being a geek and is quite sure he is meant for better things, that he will be elected school president and that he will take Summer, the most popular girl in school, to the prom. As if to prove that losers exist beyond high school we also meet Napoleon’s brother Kip who at 32 spends his days searching the internet for his soul mate and his uncle Rico who always has some get-rich-quick scheme on the go, be it Tupperware or herbal breast enlargement.

But it seems Jared Hess, the film’s director and co-writer, did not have the good fortune to be cool and feels much affinity with Napoleon and his cohorts. Rather than treat its characters with disdain, the film revels in their mundane lives and their small defeats and victories. Even I couldn’t help feel some empathy for these people, who despite their misfortunes never lose hope, become bitter or attempt to be someone they are not.

If like me you were a jock and never understood or cared to understand geeks a) what are you doing at reading a review on this website anyway and b) this isn’t the movie for you, with its pre-occupation with life’s losers, freaks and no-hopers. However, if you were always the outsider at school then you will be laughing out loud at how accurately this film recreates that life in its lead characters and how compassionately it does it.

Written in a weekend, because some loser people with authority demanded you give them what they wanted. This describes most of my essays, and also, the other first episode of Firefly — ‘The Train Job’. And while compared to my essays, it’s pretty good, compared to the rest of the series, it isn’t. Whedon and Minear had 42 minutes in which to quickly sell the entire Firefly universe to the audience, as well as quick introductions to nine different characters. They just about manage to check every box that they had to — but the result is unfortunately an episode lacking greatly in subtlety.

The crew of Serenity get a job involving a train — a ‘train job’, if you will — from a very nasty, evil, creepy man. They go to steal a bunch of Alliance supplies from a train, but then find out that the supplies were badly needed medicine. Aw. So they give it back. While the story is fleshed out by some excellent dialogue and cute set pieces — especially the thug in the engine business — it doesn’t really manage to escape from being a rather dull and morally straightforward story.

The brooding, sarcastic Mal of Serenity[ftn] has given way to funny happy comedy Mal, at the request of the studio. If Greedo was in this episode, he’d have fired first.[ftn] Later episodes would find a better balance between the two, but ‘The Train Job’ just feels a little out of place when viewed straight after its predecessor. The performances are all up to scratch, but some bits, such as the opening bar fight, feel a little forced. I find it hard to see the Mal we were introduced to in the previous story doing things this stupid. Well, not on purpose, anyhow.

With a first episode like this, some plot lines really suffer — not the least of which being that of Simon and River. In Serenity, they’re fascinating, desperate and reasonably mysterious. Out of their introductory context, Simon comes off as a little whiny, and River, debuting in hotpants and a jumper, as just a random psycho. If it weren’t for these two I wouldn’t be so vehemently opposed to the idea of having this as a first episode. But how anyone could look at this, and then look at Serenity, and say “Yes, this train job business is a much more satisfying beginning” is just beyond me. Pondering on this gives you a good example of how Fox didn’t really want what they’d paid Joss Whedon and Tim Minear to give them.

This is an average episode of television, and a lame episode of Firefly. It means well, and achieves a lot — but all its achievements hide in the background, and the viewer is unlikely to appreciate the subtle world-building underneath the simple plot and slightly cartoony characters.[ftn]

Footnotes

1. For future reference, I’m talking about the pilot episode here, and not the upcoming movie.
2. Or maybe just at the same time, but at a CGI Han. Who knows.
3. Perhaps I’m being a bit too harsh, but I won’t have the chance to properly bag any other Firefly episode.

It’s important to cite one’s references, so I shall point out that the idea for the new touch-ups on grapefruit came from Mimicking Magazines at Standardice, which had a whole bunch of interesting CSS things.

Jackson has gone to Bali, Matthew has gone to Perth. And the streets around here get busier and busier thanks to near-round-the-clock Christmas shopping at Southland. I feel I must side with Jess on this one — Bah, humbug.

That’s it, I hate Christmas. Yes, and hello to all of you too. Sorry, I was hoping to do my first blog about something fun and happy, like unicorns or bunnies, or something, but I just can’t because it’s that time of the year, and I hate it!

Why do I hate it? I’m sure most of you couldn’t care less why I do, but I’m going to write it down anyway.

1. The damn long lines. I went to the stupid store today to get presents for my family and some friends. I knew what I was getting and where in the store to get everything, so it shouldn’t have taken that long, but noooooooooo, everybody and their damn grandmother also had to be getting crap, so the place was crowded and the lines were long and all I could think of was Ellen Degeneres telling me to find my happy place and how I could easily ram a shopping cart into the legs of the old lady in front of me and make a bee line for the exit.

2. Gifts. Aaargh! Why do people have to be so damn hard to buy for? Stop dropping hints for what you want to get and then have me go out and buy it for you only for said person to have bought it for themselves the day before. Dammit! You just won’t get a present!

3. Planning Holiday activities for my kids. And those are the kids I teach; no I haven’t had any children in the last few years. Do you know how hard it is to plan activities that all can do without them being religious or offensive in some way. I swear, I am about to give up.

So, pass me some eggnog and let this damn holiday season end already! Oh and Happy Holidays everyone!

Watching Smallville the other day — yes, I’m still doing that, they don’t have patches for it or anything — I was struck by how the show has never done anything surprising ever. It often teases you, makes you think “oooh, Clark’s going to do something shocking” or somesuch, and then it takes a quick turn back into conventional-land and things go on in much the same way they did last week and will do next week.

A good show should bring you to a point where you say “They’ll never do that”, pretend to fake out of it, then damn well do it anyway. I’m getting sick of watching TV that seems like it was put together by statistics. It’s still better than reality TV, just not by much.

Speaking of the foul scourge that is Reality TV, I heard a reality TV star talking about how this new… phenomenon… was so much better than written dramas because no writer could possibly come up with the stuff that just happens naturally on reality TV. I suspect she got confused with “would want to”. If there are really people in this world who enjoy a bunch of losers — and by losers I mean the sort of people who’d agree to go on TV and eat slugs/get locked up for weeks/live on an island — doing the same old crap that we do at home, but with close-ups, then I’m saddened.

Well.

On a lighter side, my brother has gone on holidays for a week. This is very sad. Not because I’ll miss him, but because he’s taken the Xbox. So I might write more reviews this week. I’m trying to review a computer game but they’re trickier than other reviews. It might end up just like a film review with an extra section at the end saying — oh, and the person on the screen moved where I told them to. Hmmm.

As the sole contributor to this site, I see my absence is sorely felt. Well, I can’t help it people. I downloaded Half Life 2 accidentally. I didn’t mean to. I hadn’t intended to play this game. I haven’t got the time. But then I heard somewhere that it is supposed to be a reasonable game and as I haven’t played the original game I felt it would be good for my gaming education to play it a little bit and Bittorrent makes things so easy to download and iinet increased my limit to 24 GB a month and I thought a couple of GB of games would help me use it up. Having looked at the game I am upgrading Half Life 2’s status from Download Illegally to Buy With New Graphics Card. The graphics and the physics in this game are amazing. I need a better graphics card to appreciate it better. It’s like Myst but with people and shooting. I love it.

In tv news, channel seven has decided it’s behind with its Scrubs as we have 3 episodes this week. Firefly is also on for those who haven’t bought the DVD. If I ever own a cowboy space ship, I’ll be hiring cute staff too. In Alias, Vaughn seems to be not drowned as Shannon said and the computer guy has a parachute sewn into the lining of his jacket.

Firstly, I notice that in any reference to the substance Merry is addicted to it has simply been referred to as ‘the drug’ or ‘your drug’. I have absolutely no idea why that is — I know they use naughty words like cocaine or some such on other prime time shows. Its handy that Charlie doesn’t require utensils to get his kicks — none of those pesky hard-to-find-on-a-deserted-island sterilised needles or even flat surfaces to draw lines on, nope just a simple gobble-gobble and immediatly your eyes will glaze over. Terrific! That’s todays handy-dandy survival lesson learnt from watching Lost — if you are going to become addicted to a drug, make sure it’s one you can carry around in a glad bag in your pocket and lap up in small quantities. My only other question is of course, how did he get it on the plane?

Its also rather lucky that dear old Merry is alive and unscathed as we see in his flashback that when the plane hit that bad news air-bubble thingy that made it go splat, Merry was in the loo (drug-gobbling), without a seatbelt, and smacked himself on the roof at the sudden drop. Unharmed.

I could nitpick for hours, but then Tom would refuse to publish me, so I’ll try some reviewing…

This episode (despite my misleading introduction — the Merry stuff is relevant because Director Kendall discovers Merry’s secret in this episode) is overall a Jin and Sun-centric episode. With lots of lovely flashbacks to their wooing, wedding and it all going downhill from there. We learn that Jin is a creepy mafia-type and that Sun still loves him. Plus, she speaks English, but don’t tell Jin or he’ll do bad things to her.

The group also split in two in this episode, half going to live in the caves (the new permanent set for the show) and half staying on the beach waiting for the rescue boat, because they don’t yet realise this is prime time and they have been contracted for 22 episodes. They’ll turn around. Kate has yet to play Eve to Jack’s Adam. Unfortunately despite the inside jokes and innuendo between Jack and Kate early on in the episode, it concludes with Jack going to the caves and Kate staying on the beach. A nice rift in the possibility for that relationship. We’ll have to wait until at least the end of the season now.

I went to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason the other day. It was a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant in it. If for some reason there was a bookie following me around, offering bets on my life, he wouldn’t have touched this one. Tom likes romantic comedies with Hugh Grant in them, made by Working Title films.[ftn] And yet… The Edge of Reason was rather dull, irregularly funny, and contained an overwhelming aura of pointlessness.

As I was leaving the cinema, I found myself desperately trying to work out what it was that I enjoyed about romantic comedies. It must be something to do with the cute girl and cute guy getting together. In this film they start off together, so first you have to watch them split up, which is irritating as you know that they’ll just fix things up again in, ooooh, sixty more minutes. So it’s not so much sexual tension as sexual slack, which is a shame.

Is there something else I like about these films? The wit, of course. The Edge of Reason is a shade short on wit. There’s a bit of it, Grant gets most of it, but in general things are pretty sparse. Whole scenes go by with nothing more to keep them afloat than our supposed concern for Bridget’s well-being. Which is unfortunate as the movie invests a lot of time early on showing us how irritatingly stupid Jones is. If you though Ally McBeal was dumb, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet — though in fairness Mark Darcy has his stupid moments too.

Surprise is a big part of comedy as well, so it’s a shame this film desperately tries to use all the same jokes that the first one did.[ftn] Bridget’s bottom slamming into a camera? Check. Darcy and Cleaver getting into a fight? Check. The list goes on — or rather, it would if I could be bothered. Unfortunately, despite a series of replicated events from the first film, this movie ends up being far less. Bridget Jones’ Diary at least had a few subplots; no such beasts exist here. Bridget’s parents renew their wedding vows, but this isn’t so much a subplot as scenery. Given the touching performance Jim Broadbent gave as Bridget’s dad in the first film, it’s a shame he gets almost nothing to do here. And some of the things I would have liked more of from the first film, such as the cute integration with Bridget’s diary, and her handwriting on the screen, are completely absent.

Let me now move briefly to the subject of friends. It seems a staple of (bad) romantic comedies to have one, or many, friends who give the protagonist awful advice. This presumably comes about because the writer is desperate to work out why their theoretically sensible character would screw up their life to the point where it got funny. And so it is in this film too — why would Bridget break up with Mark? Hmmm. Let’s have the friends feed her a steady stream of bullshit. Brilliant! Even Bridget comments that her friends seem to spend all their time trying to set her up, then trying to break her up again. She’s this close to working out that she’s a character in a crummy film.

One of the painfully few points of interest in the film is that it slides in a plot strand from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that didn’t get used in the first movie; Darcy doing something above and beyond the call of duty, but not taking credit for it. Of course, this cute little reference is sullied by its association to the Thai prison section of the film. I bet you thought getting busted for smuggling drugs and almost sentenced to life imprisonment was a horrible fate that ruins lives. Well, it can also be life-affirming, as this film shows. I wouldn’t mind so much, but the film has a shocking lack of interest in the lives of the incarcerated Thai women that Bridget meets. Perhaps I’m being a bit stodgy here, but I feel that if you’re going to drop such things in a romantic comedy, you’ve got to put a shade more depth in than just reminiscing about bad boyfriends.

When criticising this film, it’s hard to know who to address. The Edge of Reason is of course, based on a book — and from the looks of things, not a very good one. Perhaps Andrew Davies, Richard Curtis and the rest had nothing to work with. Still, I’m shocked and disappointed. Working Title haven’t served me this kind of crap before. I feel like my trust has been violated. v. v. disappointing.[ftn]

Footnotes

1. I have to put that qualifier in, as Two Weeks’ Notice was pretty lame.
2. Rather reminiscent of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
3. And you thought I had the strength to avoid a ‘v.’ joke. Alright, no you didn’t, and you were right.

I feel like I’ve seen a run of bad films lately. Going to the cinema has become a recipe for disappointment. Garden State is not a bad film — in fact, it’s damn good. But if I’m over-enthusiastic it’s probably because I’ve come from watching Hero and Bridget Jones 2, and was desperate for something interesting.

Garden State‘s strength is in its intriguing characters, which immediately separates it from the two films I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Andrew Largeman has been on Lithium since he was ten years old, and has finally come to the decision that there might not actually be anything wrong with him — sadly, he’s not seen his family for nine years, and this decision comes too late to share with his mother, who dies at the start of the film. Largeman returns from Los Angeles to attend the funeral, and finds contact with both old and new friends begins to reawaken him.

I’ve always wanted to like Natalie Portman, but over the last few years her turns in Star Wars I and II have made this a bit difficult. This film makes it easier again. Portman plays a quirky girl called Sam, who Andrew meets at the neurologist. I’m always a bit leery of American attempts at ‘quirky’ characters, as they so often end up simply stupid.[ftn] There are one or two moments where Sam looks in danger of falling into this trap, but some excellent dialogue and Portman’s acting save her from this.

Largeman’s grave digging/robbing friend Mark is perhaps a shade more interesting, via Peter Sarsgaard’s dangerous performance. There’s an underlying menace to a lot of his scenes, and yet there’s also a strong friendship shown between him and Andrew. I’m not quite sure how he managed this combination, but it goes a long way to making this film intriguing as well as funny. The other strong performance is Ian Holm’s quiet, understated Gideon Largeman. Holm pulls off an impressive American Jewish accent, and manages some dry humour and honest sadness — making a potentially unsympathetic role much more deep.

The film is written by, directed by, and stars Zach Braff of TV’s Scrubs, and he brings a lot of the crazy atmosphere of his show to this film. Of particular note is the near-perfect scene when Sam accompanies Largeman to a friend’s house after they meet. The first half of the film is packed with excellent, quirky jokes that are played with slow but perfect timing. As an actor, Zach does a good job of slowly emerging from his stupor, and achieves an endearing performance despite the strong alienation at the start. He even manages to make a few speeches that should have sounded awful play alright, due to his natural and compelling delivery.

There’s enough good things in the first half of the film to make you fall in love with it — which is lucky for the film, as the last half is occasionally quite painful. Garden State avoids most micro cliches, but runs headlong into a bunch of larger ones. I suppose you can see it coming from the premise, but Andrew’s journey out of his bland existence, and relationship with Sam, start to point you inevitably to two conclusions; either everything’s going to end up really happy, or someone’s going to die.[ftn] And while you’re desperately hoping something more interesting might happen, you lose a bit of faith every time one of the characters makes a long speech about life and death and what have you. Andrew’s first monologue, in the pool, is alright, but from there it’s down, down, down, and you’re almost expecting Aunt May to pop in and explain to everyone why we need heroes.

Ultimately this film is a shade disappointing, but I found it charming enough in the beginning to forgive its later sins. While there’s no denying Natalie Portman cries better than almost any other actor I’ve ever seen, I could have done with less of this — and Ian Holm deserved a more dynamic final scene than the passive one that he ends up with. Garden State may be corny, but it’s also interesting and funny. If you can stand a bit of cheese, you’ll like this movie — and if you don’t, just leave when it starts raining.

Footnotes

1. Dharma, for instance. Or any number of comic relief sidekicks in hollywood movies.
2. The Jackson Rule of try-hard cinema, so named after its discoverer.