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trinityvixenOkay, everyone has July 21st already marked out on their calendars, but here's a frightening statistic just the same:
Amazon.com said first-day advance orders for [HP7] were 547 per cent higher than for its predecessor.
Hatchi-matchi! People! Breathe! There won't be enough trees to kill for that many books.
*
I watched The Brothers McMullen last night, and I'd like to know who, if anyone, recommended that to me. Because horrible things are going to happen to you when I get my hands on you. The movie was awful. In the history of my renting from Netflix, this falls at about seven to eight on a scale of one to Underworld: Evolution as to how terrible a movie it was. There's bad-because-it-thinks-it's-so-good-and-it-sucks-so-hard (Bloodrayne); there's I-don't-get-what-the-F-is-going-on-here-so-why-is-this-so-great (Suicide Club); and then there's someone-honestly-thought-this-was-a-deep-and-insightful-movie which gives us The Brothers McMullen.
I thought, for a moment, before watching it, whether this wasn't a fault of catching it so many years after the Indie movie thing had gone larger--that maybe I wasn't just reacting this way because this movie did all these things that I've seen elsewhere since (kinda like people being bored with Shakespeare and not realizing he coined all those famous lines before some English villain used it before being dispatched by Bruce Willis). I have decided, no, this movie really just thinks it's super-great fantastic, and it really isn't. Ed Burns, you have been riding the rails of "Are you actually good or just think you are?" for so long, and I think, had I seen this movie a while ago, I wouldn't have had to ever have wondered.
Three brothers--one married, one just getting out of school, and one in between. The movie plays out as there is a temptation to cheat, a new love to soothe the breakup with the old over commitmentphobia, and a love that challenges an avowed hatred of relationships, respectively. All three brothers, with the possible exception of the younger one at times are assholes. The women they end up dating, with the sort-of exception, again, of the new love interest of the youngest brother, are simpering idiots that are supposed to be so wonderful and enchanting to the titular brothers, but you'd be hardpressed to tell them apart except from the shorthand descriptions of their roles (wife, lover, flirtation, fiance, crush; or, more crudely: sap, slut, tease, Jew, girl-next-door).
This is why romantic comedies, pardon me, suck a good deal of the time--AND THIS ISN'T A ROMANTIC COMEDY! Rom-Coms have a reason to short-hand the personalities: you're displaying human foibles and exploiting the queasiness that comes from trusting and loving new people. Individualness and personality tend to get in the way of tropes like insecurity, jealousy, betrayal, and all-consuming happily-ever-afters. In an Indie film, the idea is that the characters drive the thing more than the plot does (which is a good thing because there is almost never a plot to these things, and this is true of this movie, too). So, if all your characters are JERKOFFS or NONPRESENT ENTITIES it makes it hard to watch two hours of them angsting over their nonexistent personalities in conflict.
The oldest brother is The Perfect Man(TM), by which case the writer (BURNS!!!!) means he's a faggot. Yes, that's the word bandied about, so I'm using it and expressing my INTENSE HATRED for people who use such a hateful term like that's an okay thing to call a man who likes cooking and doesn't mind doing chores--a.k.a. a man willing to do the equal partnership thing marriage is supposed to be. Of coures, he cheats when a woman who barely knows him decides that having an affair with him is somehow in her interests. As I said, she's a slut--she wants sex all around but no responsibility, no emotional attachment, and she's not affected by what her encouraging the husband to an affair will do to others.
I said "slut," and I mean "slut," not because I think having sex without wanting a full relationship is abominable, but because directly targeting a married man instead of finding a friend-with-benefits to have sex with and avoid attachment to IS slutty (and shitty). So, you have one man who's manliness is in question and who is also a trust-breaking bastard, one woman who's a whore, and then the wife who's hardly mentioned except for others to bleat about like she's some patron saint. YES, WE KNOW! CHEATING ON HER!? HOW COULD YOU!? The only times the wife was onscreen was to whine about not having children yet (::shudder::) and then the rest of the movie was devoted to the other two brothers going "You can't cheat and do that to your wife!" Do what? She told him she wouldn't divorce him, for all they know, the husband could do this every month, and all she would do is forgive him. Fuck.
Then you've got the youngest brother--the commitment-phobe who runs back to the girl he clearly isn't in love with because she's pregnant. His moral dilemma about getting her pregnant out of wedlock (did I mention the Catholic thing yet? BECAUSE ZOMG THAT IS SO IMPORTANT LIEK WOAH) and her deciding she wants an abortion is resolved in two seconds (by a miscarriage, of course, so the brother cannot possibly be in any lingering guilt thereafter) and that, along with thirty-billion Mary Sue stories is why the abuse of a woman's body and reproductive ability have become cheapened as dramatic devices, thank you so much Ed Burns. He dumps her, too, which is fantastic, for the girl going to California and having no clear plan of what to do when she gets there (another cliche: the free spirit). She spouts off some stuff about how trapped she was as a Catholic because she still wants sex and can't have any, can't have any protected, can't get an abortion etc etc etc that, yes, hasn't aged well, but was still said better many other places.
Last, the role Ed Burns chose for himself: this magical misanthrope who, somehow, at twenty-five is the hottest property ever and has an agent tracking him down at all times, throwing women into his path for inspiration to pull out a great bit of writing. Dude, Stephen King doesn't get that treatment, and I know for a fact no one beat down Ed Burns' door for script for this piece of shit. He rails against love, constantly encourages his brother to dump poor, suffering girlfriend he doesn't want to marry, and promptly falls in love with a woman whose main attractive feature is that she lies to him about her personal life. Other than that, nothing happens to either of them. She's an actress, she wants a part in his BEST SCRIPT EVER, but woes! He could get a better actress for the part in Hollywood (you could have gotten a better actress to play this girl in a homeless shelter, which is true to varying degrees of other characters as well). Never touched on again. She tries to walk away, doesn't, they stay together. Why? Who knows? By that point, I was praying for a taxi to hit and kill both of them.
In short: RRRAAARRRR!!! Why do people think Ed Burns is talented? Attractive? Worth anyone's time? His acting is dreadful, his direction worse than Tom Welling's, and I could spend three years talking about what's wrong with everything he thinks about men and women. I seriously don't doubt that there are a lot of confused religious people out there struggling to balance faith and human nature in their lives; I also don't doubt any of them could have written a story about it that would have been more believable than this bullshit. For one, they might actually believe in what they believe in. I gather Burns has had some Catholic upbringing so he gets what that does to other people, but he's obviously never had a crisis of faith; therefore, his attempts to show them are hollow and stupid. He thinks the rules Catholics live by are stupid and unrealistic, so he mocks them without respecting why people feel that way. It's just WRONG WRONG WRONG in the Gospel according to Ed Burns. Just like a man cleaning the house or a woman setting the terms about her own body are freakish concepts too horrible not to punish them for.
Amazon.com said first-day advance orders for [HP7] were 547 per cent higher than for its predecessor.
Hatchi-matchi! People! Breathe! There won't be enough trees to kill for that many books.
*
I watched The Brothers McMullen last night, and I'd like to know who, if anyone, recommended that to me. Because horrible things are going to happen to you when I get my hands on you. The movie was awful. In the history of my renting from Netflix, this falls at about seven to eight on a scale of one to Underworld: Evolution as to how terrible a movie it was. There's bad-because-it-thinks-it's-so-good-and-it-sucks-so-hard (Bloodrayne); there's I-don't-get-what-the-F-is-going-on-here-so-why-is-this-so-great (Suicide Club); and then there's someone-honestly-thought-this-was-a-deep-and-insightful-movie which gives us The Brothers McMullen.
I thought, for a moment, before watching it, whether this wasn't a fault of catching it so many years after the Indie movie thing had gone larger--that maybe I wasn't just reacting this way because this movie did all these things that I've seen elsewhere since (kinda like people being bored with Shakespeare and not realizing he coined all those famous lines before some English villain used it before being dispatched by Bruce Willis). I have decided, no, this movie really just thinks it's super-great fantastic, and it really isn't. Ed Burns, you have been riding the rails of "Are you actually good or just think you are?" for so long, and I think, had I seen this movie a while ago, I wouldn't have had to ever have wondered.
Three brothers--one married, one just getting out of school, and one in between. The movie plays out as there is a temptation to cheat, a new love to soothe the breakup with the old over commitmentphobia, and a love that challenges an avowed hatred of relationships, respectively. All three brothers, with the possible exception of the younger one at times are assholes. The women they end up dating, with the sort-of exception, again, of the new love interest of the youngest brother, are simpering idiots that are supposed to be so wonderful and enchanting to the titular brothers, but you'd be hardpressed to tell them apart except from the shorthand descriptions of their roles (wife, lover, flirtation, fiance, crush; or, more crudely: sap, slut, tease, Jew, girl-next-door).
This is why romantic comedies, pardon me, suck a good deal of the time--AND THIS ISN'T A ROMANTIC COMEDY! Rom-Coms have a reason to short-hand the personalities: you're displaying human foibles and exploiting the queasiness that comes from trusting and loving new people. Individualness and personality tend to get in the way of tropes like insecurity, jealousy, betrayal, and all-consuming happily-ever-afters. In an Indie film, the idea is that the characters drive the thing more than the plot does (which is a good thing because there is almost never a plot to these things, and this is true of this movie, too). So, if all your characters are JERKOFFS or NONPRESENT ENTITIES it makes it hard to watch two hours of them angsting over their nonexistent personalities in conflict.
The oldest brother is The Perfect Man(TM), by which case the writer (BURNS!!!!) means he's a faggot. Yes, that's the word bandied about, so I'm using it and expressing my INTENSE HATRED for people who use such a hateful term like that's an okay thing to call a man who likes cooking and doesn't mind doing chores--a.k.a. a man willing to do the equal partnership thing marriage is supposed to be. Of coures, he cheats when a woman who barely knows him decides that having an affair with him is somehow in her interests. As I said, she's a slut--she wants sex all around but no responsibility, no emotional attachment, and she's not affected by what her encouraging the husband to an affair will do to others.
I said "slut," and I mean "slut," not because I think having sex without wanting a full relationship is abominable, but because directly targeting a married man instead of finding a friend-with-benefits to have sex with and avoid attachment to IS slutty (and shitty). So, you have one man who's manliness is in question and who is also a trust-breaking bastard, one woman who's a whore, and then the wife who's hardly mentioned except for others to bleat about like she's some patron saint. YES, WE KNOW! CHEATING ON HER!? HOW COULD YOU!? The only times the wife was onscreen was to whine about not having children yet (::shudder::) and then the rest of the movie was devoted to the other two brothers going "You can't cheat and do that to your wife!" Do what? She told him she wouldn't divorce him, for all they know, the husband could do this every month, and all she would do is forgive him. Fuck.
Then you've got the youngest brother--the commitment-phobe who runs back to the girl he clearly isn't in love with because she's pregnant. His moral dilemma about getting her pregnant out of wedlock (did I mention the Catholic thing yet? BECAUSE ZOMG THAT IS SO IMPORTANT LIEK WOAH) and her deciding she wants an abortion is resolved in two seconds (by a miscarriage, of course, so the brother cannot possibly be in any lingering guilt thereafter) and that, along with thirty-billion Mary Sue stories is why the abuse of a woman's body and reproductive ability have become cheapened as dramatic devices, thank you so much Ed Burns. He dumps her, too, which is fantastic, for the girl going to California and having no clear plan of what to do when she gets there (another cliche: the free spirit). She spouts off some stuff about how trapped she was as a Catholic because she still wants sex and can't have any, can't have any protected, can't get an abortion etc etc etc that, yes, hasn't aged well, but was still said better many other places.
Last, the role Ed Burns chose for himself: this magical misanthrope who, somehow, at twenty-five is the hottest property ever and has an agent tracking him down at all times, throwing women into his path for inspiration to pull out a great bit of writing. Dude, Stephen King doesn't get that treatment, and I know for a fact no one beat down Ed Burns' door for script for this piece of shit. He rails against love, constantly encourages his brother to dump poor, suffering girlfriend he doesn't want to marry, and promptly falls in love with a woman whose main attractive feature is that she lies to him about her personal life. Other than that, nothing happens to either of them. She's an actress, she wants a part in his BEST SCRIPT EVER, but woes! He could get a better actress for the part in Hollywood (you could have gotten a better actress to play this girl in a homeless shelter, which is true to varying degrees of other characters as well). Never touched on again. She tries to walk away, doesn't, they stay together. Why? Who knows? By that point, I was praying for a taxi to hit and kill both of them.
In short: RRRAAARRRR!!! Why do people think Ed Burns is talented? Attractive? Worth anyone's time? His acting is dreadful, his direction worse than Tom Welling's, and I could spend three years talking about what's wrong with everything he thinks about men and women. I seriously don't doubt that there are a lot of confused religious people out there struggling to balance faith and human nature in their lives; I also don't doubt any of them could have written a story about it that would have been more believable than this bullshit. For one, they might actually believe in what they believe in. I gather Burns has had some Catholic upbringing so he gets what that does to other people, but he's obviously never had a crisis of faith; therefore, his attempts to show them are hollow and stupid. He thinks the rules Catholics live by are stupid and unrealistic, so he mocks them without respecting why people feel that way. It's just WRONG WRONG WRONG in the Gospel according to Ed Burns. Just like a man cleaning the house or a woman setting the terms about her own body are freakish concepts too horrible not to punish them for.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 05:59 pm (UTC)I wonder, though, whether people who had sane, sensible, responsible, and faithful adult role models grow up to go to Hollywood. Maybe people exposed to normal, well-adjusted adults grow up like us - vaguely responsible people who go to school, get jobs, pay taxes, and have vaguely functional relationships. Maybe the kind of people who Hollywood appeals to really do believe that normal, stable people don't exist because they've never been exposed to them, and so are convinced that anyone who is not a "free spirit" is a hypocritical asshole drowning in his own mundaneness.
Or something. Dunno. This always bugs me, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:08 pm (UTC)Preaching to the choir, sister. I'm on the sane(ish), responsible types, and I resent being considered boring because I don't get off on skivving off my duties or my work just to amuse myself. I liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I really disliked that Kate Winslet's character was so beloved by everyone because she was effectively schizophrenic and those people are dangerous, not heart-breaking.
Women who are sensible being depicted as boring = THEY!
I wonder, though, whether people who had sane, sensible, responsible, and faithful adult role models grow up to go to Hollywood.
You might have hit the proverbial nail with the similar hammer there. I wonder if Hollywood can't understand that people who button down and work hard aren't also capable of consuming passions that don't necessarily have to destroy their lives to be let out. Maybe it just doesn't make for good drama to have a well-rounded character in a movie. TV shows, maybe, but not movies.
And it bugs me, too. You're not alone.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:47 pm (UTC)But there are plenty of other ones out there. The Muse, Sweet November.
I wonder if Hollywood can't understand that people who button down and work hard aren't also capable of consuming passions that don't necessarily have to destroy their lives to be let out.
Why should they? Look at the relationships of most of the celebrities. Who do they have to compare with?
Unfortunately, given how media-saturated our culture is, I wonder how much this influences against people living stable lives. Now, I agree that 1950s shows were unrealistically Pollyanna-ish. But I feel like the media has swung way too far the other way. Maybe at one point, it was anti-establishment to portray surburbia as soulless, working a corporate job as mind-numbing, families as dysfunctional. But at this point, pretty much all movies, especially artsy ones, assume this, and seem to imply that anyone who might want a steady job and a faithful spouse is inherently hypocritical and must be either hiding a dark secret or hopelessly numb. It's a shame that there are so few examples of sensible people behaving well or strong marriages between equals or responsibility being considered a virtue.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:25 pm (UTC)Never saw those, thank God, but I know the kind you mean. Last good romantic-type movie I saw? The Lake House. If you want a story with people who are solidly grounded yet open to the special and the magical, that was a good one. But I haven't seen many a romance story of late that I find compelling or not inclined to shout at the idiots running around in it: "Don't you have jobs? Shouldn't you be working? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?"
It's a shame that there are so few examples of sensible people behaving well or strong marriages between equals or responsibility being considered a virtue.
The Incredibles? I mean, I know the mom is a stay-at-home, but that's a great example of the virtues of teamwork, trust, and love. Funny that, in order to sell it, it has to be guised as a "kids' movie."
But I share your anger over the portrayal of suburbia. Some people might seem flakey or shallow or even soulless, but just like all groups of people, there're plenty who are not, who leave very passionate lives and who--shocker!--move to the suburbs to raise bouncey, boistrous families (hello! ::raises hand::) in a place where there are larger spaces for said families to spread out.
There's also a misconception about people who work "soulless" jobs. My dad has probably one the of the most boring-sounding jobs ever, but he thrives on it. And he spend most of his days working, this is also true. However, when he's home and family gets together, there's no mistaking how much fun he's having and how much he loves us. I fail to see how that should be a sign that he's "numb" (given his commute and work, I would be, so I think it's even better he's not).
Being anti-establishment doesn't really help. Working to fix the establishment, while less glamorous, should be the standard.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:14 pm (UTC)But see, there's my point. At this point, it isn't actually anti-establishment. Because all this is apparently what all of Hollywood believes. So it's not risky or edgy or rebellious - it's hackneyed and trite.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:28 pm (UTC)And, since they've moved up the Oscars again, I haven't seen any of the movies again, so I'm not interested. At least when they were in late March there was a chance some of the films were out on video.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:35 pm (UTC)And countless other movies, seriously.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:14 pm (UTC)"Amazon started things off with two breathless press releases that tout amazing statistics based on no actual numbers. The first hailed that in seven hours of taking pre-orders, they sold twice as many copies as in "the entire first day" for Half-Blood Prince.
But then came the second release, noting sales for "the entire first day" were 547 percent higher than for Half-Blood Prince--a percentage so darn specific you might think it would translate into an actual published number. But you would be wrong. Amazon sold 1.5 million pre-orders for Half-Blood Prince."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:36 pm (UTC)but thats music
and they failed as a band (kinda)...and they did not even have enough money for gas to get home, so as a desperate measure they changed their sign for their concent to try to get people to buy tickets....so this little Canadian family act changed their sign from "Brothers McMillian" to read "Barenaked Ladies"....
and the rest is history....
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:51 pm (UTC)Ironically i never put two and two together till typed that to you, i was like hey isnt that J's last name???
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:52 pm (UTC)actually if you look back there is another version of the CD "Gordan" where it has all of them on the cover instead of the ball that is on there now from before the one brother quit
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 11:46 pm (UTC)I feel old
::cries::