Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Your little hopes and dreams."
¤ Usage: "Poor fellow, his little hopes and dreams have all be smashed."
¤ Origin: Quipped by a whore, or pre-op transgender man, or a sociopath, or some other lowlife who was engaged in a vicious verbal battle with another lowlife guest on the Jerry Springer show
¤ Notes: While the Jerry Springer show is generally pretty lacking in opportunities for intellectual improvement, you do tend to hear some funny jokes, of the personal insult type.  This was one of the best.  One loser was arguing with another loser, and when one said something about how she'd loved her husband, whom the other lowlife had stolen away, lowlife #1 replied, "Bitch, I don't care about your little hopes and dreams!"

You'll find it applicable to almost every situation in life.  It's the "little" that really makes it work, since that just so perfectly and cruelly diminishes whatever claim to importance the other person might previously have had. -- February 20, 2004

andom stuff up here, and a Harry Potter movie trailer discussion below.

Malaya and I saw Ladykillers Friday night, but I'm not going to write a long review about it.  I normally do, even for films that are clearly not worth the trouble, but I don't really have that much to say about this one. It stars Tom Hanks, and everyone loves him, and it's directed by the occasionally-brilliant Coen Brothers, but despite that it's not getting very good reviews. It was below a "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes all week, though as I look now it's up to 60%, with 65 out of 108 reviews positive, and 60% is their bare minimum for a fresh/recommend. There will probably be another 40 or 50 reviews added over the weekend, so it might improve or decline again.

I was somewhat put off by the reviews, since most of the negative ones say it's not very funny and full of overly-broad caricatures. I still wanted to see it though, and Malaya did as well, so off we went and caught a 5:40 show that was nearly sold out.  Matinee prices too, so we got in for $5.75 a head, rather than the usual $9.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not outstanding, not one I want to own on DVD, but it was a good time and I'm glad I went. I'd give it 3.5/4 stars, but since so much of the humor was based on surprise physical actions and events, I don't think it would hold up very well to repeated viewings.  I'm not entirely sure why so many critics don't like it, since I thought it was a very good, if silly, comedy. There was loud, constant laughter in the nearly-full theater we saw it in, at least.

Ebert didn't like it enough to recommend it, giving it a 2.5/4 star rating. His problem, as I divine it from reading his review, is that he applied too much logic to what is essentially a ridiculous, comic strip-styled movie. Every character in it is an intentionally-absurd, broadly-drawn stereotype who exists almost entirely for comedic value. If you take it seriously you'll spend the entire movie thinking, "No one would really do that.  No one acts like that." That's true, and that's one way to approach it, but it will make for a pretty disappointing movie-going experience.

I'm usually pretty nit picky and unforgiving of absurdities in film, but that's mostly in physical actions and plot developments, when they are just there to explain a crappy story or lazy direction.  If the hero is somehow able to run 50 yards in 2 seconds to avoid an explosion he should have died in, that takes me out of the movie since it's obviously impossible. But when a comedic character in a comedy does something funny that a real person wouldn't do, it's part of the comedy.  If no one ever did anything normal people don't do in film, we wouldn't laugh very much. Ebert sums up the principles pretty well.

The other crooks represent the extremes of available casting choices; all of them, like the professor, are over-the-top in a way rarely seen outside Looney Tunes. Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans) is a trash-talking hip-hop janitor at the casino; Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons) is a mustachioed explosives expert who asphyxiates a dog in an unfortunate gas mask experiment; the General (Tzi Ma) is a chain-smoker who once apparently specialized in tunnels for the Viet Cong, and Lump (Ryan Hurst) is a dimwitted muscle man who will do the hard labor.

My willingness to play along with the silly movie doesn't mean I'll accept every manner of lunatic behavior so long as it's in a comedy, but there wasn't anything in this film that I found impossible to suspend with my disbelief balloon.  The same isn't true of Ebert, who is also burdened by comparing this modern film to the original, that he and about 7 other people on earth have actually seen.  Guess what; the old one is much more subtle.  Big surprise there.

What the movie finally lacks, I think, is modesty. The original "Ladykillers" was one of a group of small, inspired comedies made at the low-rent Ealing Studios near London, where Guinness was the resident genius; his other titles from the period include "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949), "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1950) and "The Man in the White Suit" (1951). These were self-effacing films; much of their humor grew out of the contrast between nefarious schemes and low-key, almost apologetic behavior.

The Coens' "Ladykillers," on the other hand, is always wildly signaling for us to notice it. Not content to be funny, it wants to be FUNNY! Have you ever noticed that the more a comedian wears funny hats, the less funny he is? The old and new "Ladykillers" play like a contest between Buster Keaton and Soupy Sales.

Since no one reading this has seen the original, I say go see the new one and laugh a lot.  And no, it's not sublimely subtle and understated, but if it were 94% of critics would find it boring and pointless, and it would make about $7 at the box office.  As I'm sure Ebert realizes, though he's not going to point it out since it would cut into his argument.

Best email ever to the D2 site? 

Thank you very much for informing all of the Diablo II fan-boys about the title fight, and turning the "democracy into a stacked, hacked vote. You RUINED the vote. A vote that Starcraft deserved in full, instead was unrightfully stolen by Blizzard's most terrible and only mistake, the Diablo series. I can't believe it. You are so far the only person I've found to take the blame for this blasphemy.

PhiL

No, it's not the best mail ever, but it's the best in months, since I stopped writing my frequently rabble-rousing Decahedron columns and my flames dried up. It's from a Starcraft fan, and yes, I was surprised that such a creature still existed as well.  Not that D2 fans are much rarer, with their game 4 years old, compared to 6 for SC, while most games released last week are largely ignored.

Anyway, the mail was sparked by the ongoing Gamespy Title Fight series of votes, where they're matching up various video games in head to head votes. Diablo II and Starcraft were in the same bracket, and both won their early votes easily, ending up in a head to head match. Starcraft was ahead early, D2 started gaining once I posted news about it on Diabloii.net, and in the end D2 won, 10077 to 9758.

The SC guys would have been annoyed by that, but were even more infuriated since a Bliz hacks site posted a voting script that supposedly let people spam the vote for D2. The only problem, as a Gamespy guy posted on their forums, is that it didn't work since it didn't change the IP# after each vote, and Gamespy's script disallowed multiple votes from the same IP#. There's a really good joke about the irony of that script failing, when so many other D2 scripts do work, and they have ruined the game on the online realms. The joke exists, but though I cast about for it in my news post on the D2 site, I couldn't quite locate it.  Sort of like having a word on the tip of your tongue, and not quite being able to spit it out.

I don't want to go into the whole issue here, but I did want to post that email, since I love that sort of thing.

Speaking of email, there's a new addition on top of the First Time page. As the author says, it's nothing interesting, but here's to hoping he'll read enough on the site to figure out if he likes it or hates it or just doesn't care, and gets back to me once he's made a further decision.

On that front, what do you guys, who read this stuff at least semi-regularly, think a new visitor should read first to get the best feel for the site and the content I put here? Or what should they read that's good that would make them want to read more and put up with the occasional less-good stuff? Articles?  Daily blog archives?  Band Names? Reviews?  I'm curious, and I suspect you all have a better quick take on what makes this site interesting (or not) to a newcomer than I do.  Lemme know.

I could put a "read this first" recommendations list on top of the First Time page, or even do a whole new page called something like, "First time visitors read me" and on that page I'd put some background info, descriptions of what's what, reader mails, etc. The page would be intended to give a brand new visitor a very quick overview of what's going on here.  After all, there are quite a few pages of content at this point, after two years of steady blogging and feature writing.

And now for the one news item of the day.

¤ They were hiring for a new Hooters in LA, and provided a changing room for the would-be waitresses to change into the ridiculous outfits they're forced to wear. And guess what?  Hidden camera.

At least 82 women were secretly videotaped naked or partly undressed while applying for jobs at a Los Angeles-area Hooters restaurant and changing into the chain's distinctive uniform, police said on Thursday.

Detectives in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina were interviewing the women, who range in age from 17 to 25, after seizing 180 video files from the personal computer of former Hooters manager Juan Aponte, police spokesman Rudy Lopez said.

"The videos were of the women changing into and out of the Hooters uniform," Lopez said, and were taken while they applied for a job at the restaurant, which is scheduled to open in April, at a trailer on the construction site.

Don't you just sort of assume that every Hooters on earth has this sort of set up?  Not to mention strip clubs, titty bars, and every other sort of "come here to see women as sex objects" business.  It seems inevitable; the spy cameras almost a natural result of the half dressed females and easy opportunity.

On the other hand, are those types of places really that much more likely to have a tech-savvy Peeping Tom on staff than a Wal-Mart or McDonalds or any other business where female employees need to change clothing before work? I'd say it's about even; there are guys dying to see women naked all over. With one key difference: places where "Hooters girls" and cheerleaders work are far more likely to employ women that men actually want to see naked.

Hooters corporate, in their eternal, Sisyphean struggle to convince someone, anyone, that they're a "family" restaurant rather than a place for guys to get drunk, eat buffalo wings and ogle women in tight white tops and orange jogging shorts, are saying all the right things.

Mike McNeil, a spokesman for Hooters, said the Atlanta-based restaurant chain was disturbed by the case.

"The restaurant chain is in no way implicated in this," McNeil said. "In our 21-year history we've never seen anything like this before and we're very concerned about it. We're doing everything we can to cooperate."

McNeil said Hooters applicants were not expected to model uniforms during job interviews, adding: "This manager was in clear violation of our written policies and then went beyond that and appears to have broken the law."

First of all, some background.  I've not yet read any of the Harry Potter books, but I plan to at some point. I almost did over Xmas, when visiting San Diego.  My mom checked them all out of the library per my pre-visit request (I actually thought she owned them and asked her to dig them out for me, when it turned out she'd just borrowed them in the past. So she went and checked all four our in preparation for my visit. Aren't moms great?) but I ended up having far less time to sit around and read than I'd thought I might, and what time I did have I put to work finishing A Storm of Swords, which I have got to write a review of at some point.

As for the Harry Potter novels, my feelings towards them have gone from disdain/disinterest to curiosity to interest.  I now want to read them, and will do so, providing they are at least borderline decent.  I still enjoy some of the better juvenile fiction I enjoyed when I was a juvenile myself, so there's no reason to shut myself off from current examples of the genre.  Especially when they are the most popular novels of our era.  I can take some lessons to boost the commercial prospects of my own writing, if nothing else.

Yes, that's the literary equivalent of my "this event sucked, but at least it's blog material" approach to real life.

My only knowledge of Harry Potter, besides what I've seen in the news, is from seeing the first two movies. I didn't think either of them sucked, but they weren't anything special, and I only went since my mom is a fan of the novels and wanted to go, so I went with her.  You know how you often do things in life that you personally didn't really want to do, and you just did since someone you want to spend time with did?  Exactly.

I'm sort of curious about #3, but since Malaya is lukewarm to the film, despite sharing my belated curiosity towards the books, I don't know if we'll actually go or not. Probably not, since she hasn't seen #1 or #2, and since she's going to read the books at some point, she won't want to spoil any of the plot points for herself in advance.

Therefore, my only knowledge of the upcoming film is from the trailer, and my only knowledge of the books are from viewing the first two movies, one time each, close to opening day.

As I understand it, the books are set one year apart, chronicling each school year, and there are going to be seven of them. We also know that Harry survives and presumably triumphs through all adversity, since Rowling has recently said she's considering writing some more books about him, in his adult years.  Talk about unwanted spoiler info there, eh?  Thanks J.K.

Anyway, the first book takes place when Harry is 11, I believe. In the movie he looked about that age, as did the rest of the cast of kids in his grade. The second movie is a year later, when he's 12.  He looked a bit older then, perhaps 13 or 14, and the other kids, who were cast based on how they looked 2 years earlier (in pre-production for the first film) were all over the place. His friend Ron Weasely still looked 11, the girl Hermoine looked about 12 some of the time, and 16 other times.  Only her frumpy hair, baby face, and all-encompassing robes kept her from looking way too old for the part. The bad guy kid, Draco Malfoy, looked about Harry's age, and was therefore a good foil for him.

Now we're up to movie 3, and while it takes place a year later in the book fiction, it's actually being released two years later in real life. Thus the actors who looked appropriately 11 for the first movie are all over the place in actual age, and apparent age.

If there's any actor they should have replaced in #3 for reasons of appearance, it's got to be him.  Fortunately, Harry and Hermoine look older than they are also, so they can sort of pass for Draco's classmates.  Plus him looking so much older and larger also works since he's the bad guy, and it lets him loom over them and look like a big bully.  Yet they're all supposed to be the same age in the books, and Draco looked as young or younger than Harry in the last movie, so it would be a bit jarring if you only watched the movies, right in a row, expecting a logical year at a time progression.

He's apparently out of the 4th movie, since it's not listed on his IMDB page, though there's no listing for Draco at all on the current Harry Potter 4 page, so perhaps the character isn't even in that one? If he is, I think Tom here is gone, since he'll look like a teacher in another year.

Since they're apparently going with the same Harry, Ron, and Hermoine in movie #4, when they should all look 14 (and actually look 16-18) the whole thing might actually work out.  They'll have to replace them for movie #5, and quite possibly replace those new actors come for movies 6 and 7 since Rowling is apparently having trouble stopping spending money for long enough to write the last two books, and they might not be made for years yet.  But anyway, come movie 5 and new actors (with the possible exception of Ron, since he might be pulling a Gary Coleman), they'll be 15ish, and the long tradition of kids that age on TV and in movies is to cast adults. Everyone on the various teen shows on TV always look like they're about 20, and while that's silly, it works well enough.  Adults identify with them okay while pretending they're younger, and kids all want to be older than they are so they enjoy kids their age who look mature. It's the whole "Seventeen magazine is targeted at 12 year old girls" phenomena. So yeah, Harry and the rest of them will probably look like they're T.A.s from Oxford during the last 3 films, but we're all used to that sort of age inaccuracy in teens on film by now.

It's got to be really hard to cast kids for a teen-aged movie role, since between the time you audition and film and edit and then film some call backs, they can grow a foot and age 5 years.  You can cast this perfect group of 13 year olds, and by the time you film the movie one of them looks like he's been held back about four grades.  So imagine the difficulty they had in casting Harry Potter, and trying to plan on the same actors in several movies in a row, over a period of years. You can see the problem with the kid playing Draco, since they started with a 12 y/o who looked it, while hiring 10 y/os for the other roles, and then 4 years later the 12 y/o is pushing 17 and looks like he's in college.

It will be weird when people in the future view the films, especially if they watch all 7 in a row.  The kids will all look age appropriate in the first two movies, and then suddenly half of them are way too old in #3 and #4, before you get all different actors of varying "teen-adult" ages in #5-7.

I wonder high school teachers or other people who are actually around the same teens several years in a row feel about this?  I hardly remember from when I was that age since it all seemed so relative, but I don't suppose it's at all unusual for some kid to go home one year looking young for his age, and return after the summer half a foot taller and looking like his older brother.  Perhaps to teachers or adults with kids of their own the apparent age disparity between the kids in Harry Potter is nothing, since they've seen it themselves and are used to how quickly kids can change?  If any of you fall into that group, do let me know.

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