Uberfluff

So, today's Daily Fluff is about "That Guy."  You know, the actor that you've seen in dozens of movies, but only as a henchman, or member of mission control, or nameless soldier,  etc., etc., etc.  You're very familiar with his face, but can never quite place it to a name, so when you see him in a movie you inevitably say to yourself, "Hey, it's that guy.  You know, the one who played the terrorist who got his hand blown off in Predictable Action Flick 3."

It's not a derisive title, by the way.  I personally think it would be pretty damned cool to be a "That Guy."  And it's only fitting that I honor the King of That Guys, my personal favorite, Al Leong.  (Of course I googled his name--you think I just knew it off the top of my head.)

Although, of course, the truly geeky will probably have all manner of techinical corrections and clarifications to make.  ("Hey now, Imperial walkers were only deployed in scouting situations," and so on.  If I knew any Star Trek trivia, I'd add that, but my only knowledge of that show is that reversing the polarity apparently solves every possible technical problem.

Last night, I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.  It raised many interesting questions like: "Would anyone in real life actually be attracted to Michael Cera?"; and "I mean to the point where hot girls were actually fighting over him?"; and "Is this supposed to take place in an alternate universe where it's considered sexually attractive to be awkward and mumble a lot?"; and "Why the hell would a band want to make their concerts a big secret? Doesn't that inhibit their ticket sales a bit? Not to mention pissing off any industry folks that might have some interest in seeing them?"  Not to mention, "How is it that, in a night of driving all over creation, these people never once have a problem finding a place to park a full size van in New York City?"

To say that I didn't like the movie is an understatement.  This was like a 2 hour conversation with one of those guys who thinks that the bands someone listens to are somehow deeply revealing about one's personality.  Oh, and with a sprinkle of the "deep" life observations of twentysomethings playing high school students.  Yes, there is a moment where someone quotes obscure music lyrics and we're supposed to appreciate the sincerity and sensitivity of the moment.  And yes, there is a scene where two teenagers fool around in the Electric Ladyland studios and we get to see the girl's orgasm via the meters on the soundboard.  Does the mean, shallow girl get her comeuppance?  Do the token gay friends make lots of outrageous statements in a desperate attempt to add cutting edge humor to this bland cover of a coming-of-age comedy?  Don't make me laugh. 

And here's the truly depressing part: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist had a US box office of $31,287,493.  The average movie ticket price in 2008 was about $7.18.  That means that about 4,357,590 tickets were sold for this movie.  The movie running time is about 90 minutes.  That means that those 4 million-ish tickets represent about 6,536,385 wasted man hours in watching this movie.  That's the equivalent of 272,349 wasted days--or 746 wasted years--in cumulative time that we (as a country) spent watching this thoroughly pointless movie.  Don't tell me that's not a downer.  So there really isn't such a thing as a victimless crime. 

If there are still women out there who like to compare their circle of friends to various characters from Sex and the City, I don't want to know about it.  (Though it is interesting that the Samantha girl never minds being the group slut, while no one wants to be Miranda.)  Personally, I'm shocked that they're actually going to wring a movie sequel out of the show.  It almost feels like a time warp to watch the early episodes now--a sort of, "gee, I remember back a few years ago when women were pinning giant cloth flowers to all of their clothes."

What I find curious is the continued popularity of Sarah Jessica Parker--mostly because I have never heard a (straight) man say anything complimentary about her looks.  Personally, while I don't find her drop-dead gorgeous, she's still reasonably attractive in my view.  (My main gripe with Carrie Bradshaw is the continued insistence that she's some kind of great writer when she uses such trite and horrific puns all the time.)  But the way I hear guys talk about her, she may as well have a hump and a hairy wart on the tip of her nose.  Sometimes, I wonder if this is actually part of her appeal to women.  She is that enviably stylish friend that you can still feel confident won't outshine you, looks-wise.  Which makes it easy to like and admire her.  Or maybe she just gets to be an easily accesible fantasy--here she manages to be professionally successful and date millionaires as Carrie Bradshaw, and without ever being very talented or extraordinarily beautiful.  It's a lot easier to imagine oneself in Carrie Bradshaw's place when you don't have to account for supermodel looks.

But I do wish they would just stop with the puns.  Dear God, the puns.

We did it.  We bought a Playstation 3.  We didn't want to, since there aren't many games for the P3 that aren't also available for XBox.  In fact, none of this would have happened if we hadn't first bought the crappy Blu Ray player.

There's something about having a high-def TV that gradually convinces you that you don't just want a Blu Ray player, you need one.  And once you talk yourself through the doubt and conservatism that always accompanies media switches,  there you are, in the Blu Ray aisle at Best Buy, overwhelmed by the meaningless points that they use to bulk up the "features" descriptions.  (The worst is when they allude to the design or basic controls as a feature.  I don't look at it as a bonus that my DVD player has a "play" button.  I tend to expect that.)

Anyway, we ended up with a seemingly capable Insignia Blu Ray, but when it got home, it was the worst-behaved Blu Ray player ever.  It stuttered and stalled, loaded in geological time, and clawed up the furniture.  Not to mention that it couldn't even play the new James Bond movie--not, as some might claim out of an innate sense of taste, but because its firmware was out of date, and there was no practical way to update it.

I know that some people would claim that you should try to work through these things, but watching a Blu Ray disc shouldn't be a painful experience that makes you long for VHS.  The problem we discovered, on taking it back to the store, is that unless you're willing to sell your first born, Blu Ray machines that solve the loading and easy updating problems are prohibitively expensive.  But the PS3, which of course, can play Blu Ray and has better memory and wi-fi capability than almost anything else in that price range was the obvious solution.  This is kind of a bummer, since it's a big, ungainly piece of electronics that hunkers on the entertainment center like a sad, lonely hunchback.  But at least we have something that plays Blu Ray discs that isn't in danger of being hurled out the window in frustration.

So, based on one of last week's Daily Fluffs (Friday, April 17th), there have been some scurrilous rumours afoot that I hate Footloose.  Not true at all.  I was merely pointing out some of the more  implausible moments in a film chock-full of implausability.  That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable.  (In fact, Gator calls Footloose, "Roadhouse for chicks," which is pretty damned accurate when it comes down to it.  Kevin Bacon is the outsider in the Patrick Swayze role, instead of the small town being under the control of a rich jerk, it's under the thumb of a religious jerk--played a bit too sympathetically by John Lithgow--and instead of a sexy doctor as a love interest, we get a sexy, if nutso, preacher's daughter.  Either way, both movies hit exactly the same guilty pleasure sweet spot.)

So, to make things perfectly clear, I do like Footloose in all it's goofy cheesiness.  Heck, I didn't even pick on the goofiest scene of all--where Kevin Bacon drives away from his uncle's house late at night, furious at all the injustice he's experienced, then drives to an abandoned factory, and . . . dances.  All around the factory.  And with great passion and abandon too.  I always wonder what music he's dancing to in this scene.  Sure, he has a tape player in his car, but it's pretty clear that he hasn't exactly tricked out his sound system.  And there's no way that the speakers on a classic Beetle are going to blast suffificient sound to carry through an entire grain warehouse.  So, realistically, when he's dancing around the rafters and swinging off of horizontal bars and such, he's doing so in relative silence. 

The other day, I saw Knowing, the new Nicolas Cage sci-fi thriller thing about the big list of numbers that can predict tragedies and natural disasters.  For some reason, it's being sold as if it were a new and orginal idea, when really it's just a mish-mash of recycled ideas.  Granted, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan in general, and there were a few massive holes that really bugged me.  (And in case you're not good with nuance, this means that there are spoilers coming):

--Probably my biggest gripe with these kinds of movies in general is how stingy supernatural beings are with their information.  So you're a ghost/alien/whatever with detailed information about the location and death toll of dozens of disasters over the next 50 years.  You've managed to travel across the galaxy and communicate telepathically with people to warn them.  And yet, the only way you will do so is to give them a random number puzzle to work out.  You've conquered telepathic communication and intersteller travel, and yet you can't bring yourself to just come out and say, "Hey, the world's going to end on this day in this way."  Fail, alien life forms.  Massive fail.

--And while we're at it, why communicate this information to weird children?  Why not try to talk to world leaders instead?  You have the technology to evacuate people and a 50 year head start, and you waste the time passing your messages on through socially maladjusted kids.

--And if you do have the ability to alter your appearance so that you look human, why not choose a friendly maternal woman to deliver your message?  Why go with the Swedish eurotrash look?  That virtually guarantees that people will be creeped out.  Or at least avoid you because they don't want to discuss Kraftwerk.

--Apparently, aliens have no respect for parental rights.  Otherwise they wouldn't keep separating young children from their parents and sending them off alone on critical missions.  If the little boy in this movie turns into a sith lord and terrorizes the galaxy, I hope the aliens realize that it's their fault.

--I'm not totally happy that the future of the human species is left to two little kids dumped on another planet.  One of whom has a hearing problem.  Is this really the best they could do?  Couldn't they at least have repopulated us with a genetic combination of Brad Pitt and Cindy Crawford? 

--Apparently, only children with trendy names are worthy of saving.  So little Caleb and Abby get to live, but little Bob and Tara are SOL.

So last night, I got to see I Love You Man.  It was a lot of fun, and I do recommend it if you've liked this group of actors and the comedies they've been churning out lately. 

The thing I noticed about this movie that I found culturally noteworthy, however, was the girlfriend.  She was probably closer to a real world girlfriend than any girl I've ever seen in a romantic comedy.  (Yes, you can argue that this is more of regular comedy or buddy comedy than a romantic comedy.  After all, it's not about the protagonist's pursuit of the girl, but about his pursuit of a best guy friend.  And it's true that the movie lightly mocks the conventions of the genre by dealing with the friend relationship in the way that romantic comedies treat the romantic relationship.  On the other hand, it does end with a wedding.)

My problem with movie girlfriends is that they are so often completely ridicuous.  (And when I say "movie girlfriends," I'm referring to movies where the guy is the main character so that we're generally seeing the action from his perspective.)  Movie girlfriends tend to be high maintenance and extremely dim so that they demand way too much from their guys, get irrationally angry over relatively insignificant things, and refuse to have the 2 minute conversation that could completely clear up the misunderstanding that fuels the entire plot.  Movie girlfriends break up with their guys because they don't want to hear the wacky and true explanation of why he came home late, smelling of perfume, and drenched in Kool-Aid.  Movie girlfriends (and wives too for that matte) inevitably complain that their superhero boyfriend/husband spends too much time saving other people's lives and not enough time listening to updates on their day.

I hate movie girlfriends.

Women are not that irrational, difficult, and stupid.  Well, not all of them anyway.  If I were married to a superhero, I would cut him a break for missing dinner.  When I suspect something has gone wrong, I'm going to ask him about it instead of taking it as a sign that he's not serious about us and breaking up with him in a melodramatic way that forces him to serenade me at my workplace to get me back.  I don't want to be serenaded.  No, not even with a boom box playing Peter Gabriel.  Especially not with a boom box playing Peter Gabriel.

This is somewhat inspired by the latest Issues with Heroes, though the problem is not exclusive to that show.  In short, it really, really annoys me when there's not a proper Hero/Villain power balance in fictional works--be they movies, TV shows, books, etc.  In other words, to have proper dramatic tension, heroes and villains have to fairly matched.  When one of them is dramatically more powerful than the other, the whole exercise becomes silly and illogical.

In Heroes, the problem is that they've created a super-villain in Sylar who has an almost unlimited range of powers gained by killing other people with powers and stealing their abilities.  For awhile, he had an evenly matched nemesis, Peter Petrelli, who could also absorb powers from other superheroes, and without the messy requirement of sawing off the tops of their heads.  Alas, Peter lost his ability, and now Sylar is essentially unchallenged on the show in terms of superhuman ability.  This is a problem.  Not only does it mean that any limitations to Sylar's actions and choices are completely contrived (as there is no credible threat to his power), but it also denies us the possibility of a kick-ass fight between superheroes, which is quite a downer.

The imbalance can work both ways too.  Take Superman, for example.  Superman versus Lex Luthor has to be one of the dumbest match-ups in hero/villain history.  After all, Superman is . . . well, Superman.  And Lex Luthor is . . . really smart.  I mean, that's all he has going for him other than a few bumbling henchman types.  Not to mention that most of Luthor's schemes seem to revolve around real estate for some reason.  Lex Luthor has yet to have an evil plan that couldn't have been foiled by a detachment of Navy SEALs.  So why is Superman wasting his time fighting Luthor rather than rounding up terrorists or something?

I will concede that the drama can still work when one party is vastly more powerful than the other (generally the villain, since we all like the underdog), so long as the more powerful one has a giant, glaring weakness that can be exploited.  That's the essence of bringing down super-powerful villains like Sauron or Voldemort, who dwarf the good guys in abilities, but can be brought down by a regular hero who understands that weakness.  (And is willing to undergo some serious suckitude first.)  Theoretically, Superman has the giant weakness of kryptonite susceptibility, but exposing Superman to kryptonite has become little more than a cheap stunt, so it's hard to take it seriously as a flaw.  Not to mention that it's a logically goofy weakness.  He's really super-powerful, except when he stands next to a rock from his home planet, which not only makes him vulnerable, but also appears to give him a hell of a stomachache.  Fortunately for Superman, kryptonite is exceedingly rare--though Luthor appears to have a kryptonite tree in his backyard, considering how often he manages to scrounge some up for his schemes.  You'd think that Superman would make some effort to rid the world of kryptonite in his down time, but every time he encounters Luthor with some kryptonite, it's a complete surprise to him.  Maybe Superman's more glaring weakness is the lack of a short-term memory.

I'm a little late to the game, but last night I finally saw King of Kong, the documentary about the battle over the world record high score in Donkey Kong.  (If you've never heard of the movie, I'm not quite as behind as you might think, as this stirring drama all took place between about 2005 and 2007, and not--as you might have assumed given we're talking about Donkey Kong--in the Reagan era.)

What it's really about is the efforts of a nice guy named Steve Wiebe to beat (and then get recognized for beating) the record held by Billy Mitchell (whose high score stood for some 20 years or so).  Wiebe is definitely the everyman in this drama--a regular guy and high school science teacher who took up the game during a bleak period of unemployment in an off-handed quest to beat Mitchell's score.  Wiebe's problems begin when he tries to get recognition from the organization that passes for a regulating body in the world of near-antique video game scores, as it quickly becomes apparent that the group serves largely as a Billy Mitchell fan club.

If you've ever asked yourself what can be geekier than a World of Warcraft convention, the answer is clearly, "an old school arcade game competition."  It will not surprise you to hear that there are very, very, very few women there.  And yet, we hear at least 2 or 3 times about how Billy Mitchell is such a stud for having the Donkey Kong record that he can get virtually any woman he wants.  This is one of a hundred moments in the film where you will shake your head slowly and wonder whether everyone they interview is on crack.  (Point of clarification: Nowhere, at any point in history, has the line, "I have the highest score ever in Donkey Kong," been an effective way of getting women.  Least of all when you look like Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap.)

By the end of the movie, you're sharing the bemusement and frustration of Steve Wiebe's friends and family at the insular club that surrounds the competition and the cult of Billy Mitchell that seems to have infected most of the participants.  You're also praying that the guy who writes folk songs about video games will please, please not sing another one.  Watching King of Kong is not a life-changing movie by any means, but it's definitely an interesting peek at the politics and drama of a subculture that most of us didn't even know existed.