The Rabbit Hole

So I did poorly on a chemistry test this week. I'm not fussed about it for a number of reasons--I've done well on other tests, this is a course I'm not sure I need, I've already taken it so I'm not concerned about knowledge I don't have. What I am is confused. I figured I'd throw this out to the people I know who know stats better than I ever have, do, or will.

Our grades are computed based on "z-scores," as befits a curve (apparently) that takes into account the fact we can drop one grade. This score equals [my score]-[test average]/standard deviation. The average z-scores of the class are then ranked. This is all well and good, but what rank/score equals what grade is not specifically ever stated. They say they chart the z-score averages, presumably on a histogram, and wherever there is a "break" in the graph--meaning a significant drop in the numbers of people at a given average z-score--there will be a change in letter grade. But since you have no idea where those breaks will be until all the tests are counted, including the final...what the hell will your grade be?

This is a useless way of keeping track of how well I'm doing. Also, pardon me and my non-statistical thinking here, but how does grading people based on how much better/worse they are than their peers accurately value what they've learned? This is not a new problem I know--this is the curse of the curve--but still!

...unless you saw it in a double-feature with Robin Hood. I can't begin to explain what was wrong with Robin Hood without taking at least as long again as that movie was, and I refuse to spend that much time on it. Bad enough I sat through it once. Suffice to say, it was so not enjoyable that it literally sucked all the joy I'd gotten out of laughing at Prince of Persia with my sister and feiran. Credit where it's due: my sister got in the spirit of exaggerating lines from Prince of Persia so they were pick-up lines/innuendo. We were laughing so loud, we got shushed! At a drive-in!

Anyway, Robin Hood. Don't see it. Not only will it make your head hurt with its pretenses of historicity, it will bore you nigh unto death. It should be a crime to make a Robin Hood movie this boring. And if that's a crime, the sentence for it should be capital punishment seeing as how they squandered the talent they had in that movie. Anyone guilty of wasting Cate Blanchett's time that much ought to be stoned.

Prince of Persia, on the other hand, was as delightfully silly as it needed to be for me to enjoy it. Truth be told, I'm actually a little disappointed that it was better than I thought it would be because I wanted desperately to take the mickey out of it, and it managed to have some truly enjoyable-in-its-own-right moments. After seeing the behind-the-scenes and the trailers, I was sure it was going to be almost Spider-Man 3-level of over-the-top camp, but it was merely B-level passable. It was still overly long and needlessly convoluted. I could have done without the thousands of treks across the desert to each destination/set-piece.

On the other hand, one of the other princes--the one who wasn't an amalgam of Jake Gylenhaal and his wig--was played by the guy who was Jeff from Coupling, which was kind of distracting and hilarious all at the same time. Nice to see he's still getting work, though it's a shame he couldn't get more comedic roles. (He kills me as Jeff.) Oh well, at least he'll be Moist von Lipwig soon!

And that was my Memorial Day.

A serious article about film criticism and its decline.

vs.

ZOMG COMIC BOOK MOVIES R OVR.

The criticism of online reviewers in the first link seemed especially prescient this morning when I went from it to the second link. Of course, the problem with the io9 criticism is that the cyclical nature of genre popularity is just that: it is only popularity that waxes/wanes, not actual production. There will be some stepping off of making superhero movies, say, when a few superhero movies have failed to make big bank or have failed critically (either with fans or reviewers or both). But the movies will still be around. After Watchmen did less well than hoped, and after Wolverine was so boring even fanboys didn't bother watching the leaked movie, we are still looking at a slew of movies that were pushed into action regardless of those films failures.

This year, we get Iron Man 2. Next year, Thor and The Avengers. DC is pushing a new Superman movie and another in the Nolan Bat-films. Kick-Ass is already rumored to have a sequel in the works. It is not that we'll tire of superhero movies. We only tire of some superheroes. That's what I mean about popularity. As the Burton-Schumacher Batman franchise started to wane, Blade stepped in, as did X-Men. (The former informed upon The Matrix; the latter took a few cues from it.) Within a couple of years, we had Spider-Man. All around them were the also-rans: The Hulk, The Punisher, Fantastic Four. Then we came back to Batman again.

To the internet's credit, most of this was pointed out to the io9 OP. Perhaps we aren't all the anti-education film reactionaries that that first link assumes many of to be?