Thanksgiving Weekend Movie Trifecta

This year marked the first paid Thanksgiving holiday of my life, and it was glorious.  Seriously, restaurant industry?  Screw you right in the face with a chainsaw.  You made me hate the holidays but no longer!  I still twitch when I hear Christmas music, but who doesn't these days?  Anyways, I had an amazing weekend - spent time with family, played some games, bought myself some clothes, and saw three movies in the theater.  A 4-day weekend seemed like the logical choice for catching all the movies I wanted to see but didn't have time in my normal daily life.  I started on Black Friday by promising myself I could see the new Hunger Games if I braved the hordes at Macy's for new work pants, and then on Sunday caught Frozen and Thor: The Dark World back to back.  Since these movies all fell into genres I love - Disney Musicals, Marvel Movies, and Movies With Jennifer Lawrence In Any Capacity - it was a given that I would like them all.  But here are my expanded thoughts on the three.

Thor: The Dark World

Did I say expanded thoughts?  What is there really to say about this movie?  If you like the first Thor you will like this movie.  If you hated the first one, you'll still like it.  Its a Marvel movie, in my opinion they have yet to make a bad one.  Loki finally gets to be more of an antihero, which is true to the comics, and Christopher Eccleston is great as the Dark Elf Malekith.  They really pulled out the stops naming this guy to be an obvious Bad Dude.  As far as I can tell his name means "bad friend".  This guy is Not To Be Messed With.

Instead, permit me get all nerd-righteous for a moment about how I loved the character of Loki before all the Tom Hiddleston gifs started popping up.  No really.  My very first experience with the trickster god was reading a miniseries written from Loki's POV.  Not only did the story give me all the emotions, the art is just magnificent.  But it was reading Seige and the lead-up to it that really made me fall in love with him.  I loved that Loki came back from Ragnarok as a lady and I was sad when he went back to being a dude.

***Spoilers for Seige!***
After Ragnarok (I'm fuzzy on how that happened - I'm a Marvel fangirl but there's so much to read) Thor brought Asgard back to life in the mortal world.  In a field in Oklahoma I believe.  Anyway, Loki conspires with Norman Osborn to take it down because he honestly doesn't think Asgard should be in the mortal world at all.  He's fighting for what he believes in!  Poor guy doesn't realize that he's making deals with a lunatic whose got an even bigger lunatic on a tenuous leash.  That would be the Sentry, who I think its Marvel's answer to Superman.  Except with the phenomenal cosmic powers comes THE CRAZY.  The Sentry believes he is in constant battle with his archnemesis, the Void - except the Void is just his own split personality.  Once Loki realizes how batshit his allies are he repents and uses the Norn Stones to boost the Avengers' powers because the Sentry has become the Void and things are occurring.  The Void "kills" him (hahaha Marvel, you're not as bad as DC but we all know he ain't staying dead) and the Avengers are inspired by his sacrifice to win the day.  Norman Osborn is removed as head of S.H.E.I.L.D (yep, that was a thing that happened), Steve Rogers takes over and the Superhuman Registration Act is abolished.
***End Spoilers***

In closing, to the people in the theater who left as soon as the credits started - FOOLS!  Who leaves Marvel movies at the beginning of the credits anymore??

I love comics.

Frozen

This one started out on the wrong foot for me, and not because of the content of the movie itself.  Disney is apparently trying to do what Pixar did with animated shorts and they're doing about the same job as a kid who's used to being the center of attention trying a flip off the monkey bars after another kid did it with grace and pizzazz and stole his limelight.  It is exactly as painful and awkward as that, I know this because I invented a new unit of measurement with which to scientifically express this equation of horror - the cringemitator.  I have determined that both these things have about 3.21 cringemitators of sympathetic embarrassment each.  The short is half drawn in ye olde Disney animation style and half in whiz-bang computer animation and features the systematic and repetitive beatdown and humiliation of Pegleg Pete via a gimicky switch between the two animation styles after he once again tries to kidnap Minnie for clearly nefarious purposes.  (hahaha, try reading that whole sentence in one breath!)  Clearly nefarious, you ask?  Well, and I am not making this up, Pete sees Minnie dancing on the cart and gets an eyeball boner.  An eyeball boner that wilts upon the sight of Clara playing her udder as a bagpipe.  I'm right there with you dude, my boner would scamper the hell away from that too.  If I was a parent I might be writing a stern letter.  Altogether it was dumb and an unnecessary delay to what was a solid movie.

I suppose I understand all the anthropomorphic snowman advertising attached to this movie - many boys won't go see a movie about a Queen or a Princess.  Jerkfaces.  I have it on good authority though that several little boys exist who love this movie.  And if a talking snowman is what it takes to get the little monsters into a movie where the protagonists are girls then so be it, I say.  That being said, when I saw the snowman I wasn't inclined to see Frozen at all, and only went after I heard he actually plays a pretty small role in the movie.  This is true, and even more surprisingly he's actually well written - basically he was brought to life by some stray magic and now he's obsessed with experiencing summer.  His little song, and the human characters' reactions to it is just priceless.  I haven't read the story of the Snow Queen in a really long time so I can only guess just how loose this adaptation is.  Probably pretty loose.  And you know, I don't really care.  I enjoyed it, the songs were good, and I loved Elsa's introverted Snow Queen character.  At first I was disappointed in the music, but I think I was hoping for something closer to Beauty & The Beast caliber and its definitely not that good.  But there are some charming numbers, including a ventriloquism duet between a man and his reindeer.  And after listening to the soundtrack a few times its really grown on me, and "Let It Go" is my personal anthem at the moment.  I feel bad now for hating Idina Menzel's Glee character - just watch the video and you'll see.  I got a tingly feeling in my scalp.  Sorry you had to follow that, Demi Lovato.  It was a valiant effort.  Not all of us can be divinely anointed mezzos.



One last musical note - the opening number "Frozen Heart" reminded me very much of "Fathoms Below" from The Little Mermaid.  Frozen also had a touching twist on the idea of an "act of true love" being the only thing that can break a curse, which I won't go into because I don't want to spoil it.  And for those of us who like to complain about the antiseptic nature of computer animation and long for the hand-drawn days of yore, I can assure you that the characters in Frozen are very real and distinctively their own selves.  The contrast between Elsa and Anna does a lot to help the viewer empathize with both their situations.  Its not the best Disney movie since Mulan as a reviewer I sometimes trust claimed, but it was a good movie with obvious heart and appeal for adults as well as children.  I appreciate that Disney didn't give the story a cynical undertone to try to grab the adults - I didn't stop liking straight up fairy tales when I got older.  Clearly.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I think one's enjoyment of Catching Fire is more dependent on what you expect going into it than many other movies.  For instance, my brother didn't really like it because he was expecting more action and kids murdering each other.  My words, not his.  And I wouldn't recommend going in hoping for an insightful commentary on sociopolitical inevitibilities.  Having read Catching Fire I already knew there wasn't much action in the second chapter, and the first movie didn't scream "deep insight on our societal direction" but something else.  To me, The Hunger Games is the story of what happens to a person who needs to save everyone when they are placed in a situation where that is categorically impossible.

I got that feeling quite a bit from the first movie, but its even more present to me in Catching Fire.  I'll admit I didn't read the first book, so it could very well be that Jennifer Lawrence read the character and just decided that was what the story was going to be about.  If that's the case, who are we to argue with the whims of The Immortal Golden Tide of Awesome?  We should be forever grateful to Lady Lawrence because if this movie was supposed to be some kind of relevatory glimpse on the future of our decadent and materialistic society it would be more ham-handed than the Goon and far less intelligent.  I mean, look at these mitts.

Written and illustrated by Eric Powell.

Katniss isn't a badass heroine in the way some people think of her in my opinion.  Yes she's good with a bow and she's smart but I think her real power is in her empathy.  She exits the Games and finds herself, as any normal person would, with a wicked case of PTSD.  But her fears aren't for herself, but for the people she cares about.  Its the fact that she genuinely gives a shit that makes her so attractive to the masses, and so easy to craft into a symbol.

***Line break spoiler warning for Catching Fire!***

At the end of the movie its pretty clear to me that this revolution is going to break Katniss down, mostly because of her empathy.  Her scene with Gale where he's getting all excited about fighting back is a reinforcement for that - the way she looks at him its pretty clear she's thinking that he just doesn't get it.  And he doesn't - you can't relate to an experience like the Games without having been there.  Gale's all fired up about taking back their country, but all Katniss sees is every single life that will be lost.  And she agonizes over it.  She's a great symbol, but she would make a terrible revolutionary leader because the only loss of life she can really accept is her own.  The people around her realize that and they keep the plan to get her out of the arena from her.

***Line break spoiler warning for Mockingjay!*** 

The third book pretty much nails down my above opinions, especially the resolution of the "love triangle".  Although I prefer to think of it as the "Will you both please stop having your feelings at me for one SECOND?!" subplot.  The ending wasn't happy, but it was the right ending.  She marries Peta, has a decent life with some children, but never really gets over what happened.  She and Peta help each other through the aftermath of two Hunger Games and a war.  People don't go through what she went through and get a truly happy ending.  Combine that with Katniss losing the one person she wanted to save above everyone else, and there's no "happy" for her.

***END SPOILERS***

All in all I thought the movie was better than the book, which a weird thing for me to say and have be true.  But the movie got to explore perspectives other than Katniss', and honestly I found her inner monologue to be a little bland.  In the movies her emotional guardedness is a slowly cracking dyke between her and the torrent of horror and hopelessness her situation forces on her.  In the book that doesn't come across as much, which is odd because we are inside her head.  I guess what I'm saying is that without Jennifer Lawrence these movies would be just a Battle Royale ripoff.  I cared about book Katniss because of movie Katniss - I honestly don't know if I would have finished the series if I didn't see movie Katniss first.  Sorry, author lady.

Interlude: I Hope You Like Spoilers

I'm not sure what it says about a creative endeavor when one can't decide whether its brilliant or the worst possible thing ever.  That's how I feel about both Star Trek: Into Darkness and the Dr. Who season finale.  It is very confusing.

I suppose I'm cheating on my original idea for this blergblog thing in that I'm not talking about games right now.  I suppose I could point out that neither of the intellectual properties I'm talking about have (to my knowledge) a video game tie-in that isn't rubbish.  Seriously, has there ever been a Star Trek game that didn't suck?  And how exactly would the mechanics of a Dr. Who game work?  I want to say it would have to be a point-and-click adventure game but really most Dr. Who stories involve a lot of deus ex machina and not a whole lot of logic.  Case in point is one of my very favorite episodes - "New Earth" - where the Doctor uses pouches of Kool-Aid to cure a bunch of vat-grown humans of every known disease.  Now that I think about it, that sounds very point-and-click adventure-y and I would play the hell out of that game.  Someone get on that.

By the way... SPOILERS.  Spoilers for all things.  There are going to be spoilers EVERYWHERE.  I'll separate Star Trek spoilers from Dr. Who spoilers with the caps lock but after this sentence is done I take no responsibility whatsoever.  Leave now to remain unspoiled.

**BEGIN STAR TREK SPOILERS**

Remember when it was announced that Benedict Cummerbach was going to be a villain in the new Star Trek movie who "totally wasn't Khan"?  And then the whole Internet rolled its eyes because Mr. Cummerbach already plays a super-intelligent sociopath on the BBC and who the hell else would he be cast as?  And let me get one thing out in the open right away - I really did enjoy the movie.  It was a lot of fun and there were a couple moments where I was stifling squeals of fangirl-ish joy.  The gripes I have are pretty negligible in the grand scheme of how much fun I had.

To recap, at the end of the last movie it was established that the characters we knew and loved had been set on an alternate path because of interference from Nero and Future Spock.  As far as reboot concepts go, I am actually behind this one.  The fact that a huge event (Vulcan's destruction) happened changed all the characters in subtle ways, enabling the actors to put their own stamp on their roles without completely ticking off a huge loyal fanbase.

Its pretty obvious to me that the character who's changed the most is Spock.  Which makes sense - it was his home planet that was destroyed after all.  He still struggles with his emotions, but I feel like he lets his human side show more as a way to honor the mother he lost.  I am on board with that.  I even accepted him kissing Uhura on the transporter pad.  His home was dead, you can't judge a man for needing a little comforting.  What I am not ok with is making Zachary Quinto yell "KHAAAAAAAAAN!!"  No.  I wish I could erase my memory of that moment.  It worked when the Shat did it because he is William Shatner and melodrama is what he spreads on his toast in the morning.  He eats scenery for lunch.  This is all right and proper.  That moment was an icon and trying to replicate it made me laugh uncontrollably.  I don't think that was the emotional response it was intended to inspire.

Let's talk about the scene for a moment.  I have a freakish memory for movie and television plotlines, which may be one of the reasons I'm so on the fence about this movie.  The last time I watched The Wrath of Khan was about two years ago, but I remember Spock's death scene with absolute clarity, to the point where I could probably rattle off the whole dialogue if I thought about it hard enough.  And Spock's death scene is lifted very nearly intact and re-created in "Into Darkness" with Kirk being the one who dies.  There were whole bits of dialogue from that scene in "The Wrath of Khan" that are used unaltered.  The camera shot where (originally) Kirk realizes that the ship is saved and then looks over to Spock's empty chair?  That's there-ish.  Scotty yelling about how opening the door will "Flood the whole compartment".  Yep.  The list goes on.  And I honestly don't know how to feel about it.  Is it a brilliant tribute or lazy directing?  I really can't decide. Without committing to either opinion I will say it was an interesting reversal and it made sense for Kirk's character to finally realize that being a ship captain wasn't just whizzing around space and sleeping with cat-alien twins.

But Kirk's "death" felt a little cheap to me.  In The Wrath of Khan, Spock's death felt final.  And it took a whole entire movie for him to come back.  But that can't happen here because Kirk is human - he can't mind-meld with anyone to pass along his katra and as my sister pointed out its not like the creators would actually let Captain Kirk die for real.  They wouldn't be able to make any more movies.  So I there was kind of a lack of suspense.  You knew that Kirk would live, but you didn't know exactly how.  By the way....

Dr. McCoy saves him with a tribble.  And Khan's magic blood.  In case you thought there weren't enough spoilers already.  So, did I enjoy the movie?  Yes, yes I did.  But I feel confused and a little bit guilty for enjoying it.  There were more than a few genuinely awesome moments, but I really feel like it could have been better.  And the "KHAAAAN!" thing.  As the 10th Doctor would say - stop.  No, just... don't do that.

**END STAR TREK SPOILERS, BEGIN DR. WHO SPOILERS**

You may call me the Mistress of Segue.

The current season of Dr. Who has been an exercise in disappointment for me.  It took me forever to accept Matt Smith as the Doctor, but eventually I did because A Doctor is eternally better than No Doctor.  And there are some genuinely amazing bits about the 11th Doctor's run.  The reason I fell in love with Dr. Who was because it embraces whimsy and optimism so whole-heartedly that there could be an episode where the Doctor saves the universe with a kettle and a bit of string (see what I did there?) and you would be so starry-eyed and in love that you wouldn't care that it didn't make a lick of sense.  The starry-eyed optimism is not present for me in this season, but the not-making-sense has definitely stuck around.  In short, this season has been promises crushed by disappointment every step of the way.

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"!!!  How could that ever possibly suck?  By being boring.  Which is what it was.

"Journey to the Center of the TARDIS"!!!  No, there is no way this could be bad.  Finding out what was in the TARDIS this whole time?  And yet, it was not good.

Neil Gaiman is writing another episode?!?  About Cybermen??!  Be still my thumping heart, surely this will save the Doctor from this horrendous pit of mediocrity.

Cue the sobbing.  Other than a few good moments, Neil Gaiman has written something that I did not like.    My heart is broken into a trillion tiny pieces.

So I didn't have very high hopes for the season finale.  And while I would like to say that it blew my mind and my faith is restored, that would not be the truth.  Let's bullet-point this nonsense.

1)  The villain.  I had to look up The Great Intelligence because I was certain that someone who had so much enmity for the Doctor that he was willing to destroy himself to kill the Doctor couldn't be just a side character.  Who was this Great Intelligence and why was he so upset?  Turns out the Great Intelligence has met the Doctor exactly twice.  Once in the Christmas special of this year and once back in 1968-era Who.  And he was willing to burn up his own existence for the satisfaction of foiling the Doctor over and over again?

2) The Impossible Girl.  The explanation behind Clara was so neat I could practically see the bow wrapped around it.  And while I kind of liked the sequences where they inserted her into old footage from the 60's and 70's in the end I felt let down.  It felt like everything was explained but nothing was explained.  The inside of the Doctor's timestream is a ruined planet?  The Doctor doesn't have a corpse (he's had loads of bodies), his remains are a hole in time?  Does Clara get out of his timestream?  Did he just jump into his own corpse?  The non-sense-making has reached a critical mass at this point.

3)  John Hurt.  Don't get me wrong, John Hurt is an amazing actor.  But his aesthetic in the finale illustrated something I didn't want to have to admit.  The whimsy and optimism and sense of wonder is going away.  John Hurt as the Doctor looks sad and tired and run down and his tragedy appears to be catching up with him.  That's not the Doctor I want.  I'm not even asking for Tilda Swinton, though that would be amazing.  Please let me have the illogical optimism.

4) River Song.  What was going on with her in this episode?  Was she a ghost, was she still living in the Library?  Nobody can see her but the door can hear her saying the Doctor's name?  I'm going to go on record here and say I really don't like her as a character.  "Forest of the Dead" was such a good episode and the part where the Doctor says that time can be rewritten and she says "Not those times.  Not one line.  Don't you dare." is simply heart-wrenching.  But when she comes back in the 11th Doctor's run nearly every time she opens her mouth I want to throw her off a cliff.  The smug smiling and the "Spoilers" and the "Hello Sweetie" and the guns... AGH I can't even.

All that being said, there were some moments I did appreciate.  Jenny saying in a panic "Ma'am I think I've been murdered" choked me up, and Strax is just the best thing in the world.  The Whispermen were incredibly scary as well.  Stephen Moffat comes up with some of the most amazing monsters I have ever seen, I'll give him that.  But that's just not enough.  This is really more vitriolic than I originally intended but that is because I love Dr. Who so much and it is seriously hurting my soul to see it so bland and mediocre.  I only have one thing to say about the 50th Anniversary special... Please, David Tennant, bring your glorious sticky-uppey hair back and save this thing that I love.  And don't be the meta-crisis Doctor.