So what hath The Dug and K wrought this year? "Eclipse" and "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny"

Twilight: Eclipse

A lot could be read into Stephanie Meyers' seemingly anti-introspective creation of the Twilight "Saga" with Meyers-cipher Bella Swan at the center of the mess.  And one could raise an eyebrow at what equates to a smashingly successful (financially) look into some version of an adolescent power/victim fantasy that blissfully surrenders the right to snark at what media studies classes sneer at as "adolescent male power fantasies" with this movie (are we at the dawn of the ineffectual victim fantasy genre?).

I can't imagine navigating this Mary Sue celebration of passivity and bad decision making without the power of RiffTrax and Bulleit.  Bad FX, a 22 minute plot strained out over two hours, a lack of direction more than bad direction, stale and stilted line delivery passing for acting...  it all makes for terrific fodder for the RiffTrax guys who guided us through the last two Twilight installments.

At the movie's finish, Jamie informed me that the final book (Breaking Dawn) will actually be split into two movies. When one considers how thin the plot was for Eclipse, a title which seemed to mean nothing more than "hey, that's a Moon-related word", its kind of mindboggling to imagine HALF of that plot smeared like too little cream cheese over two enormous bagels of movie


Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Were RiffTrax not to exist, its difficult to imagine why anyone would ever watch this movie, or, indeed, why this movie was made or how it was distributed.  But exist the movie does.

As near as I can tell, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny was a promotional film intended to draw people to now-defunct Pirate's World, a Florida-based amusement park which opened an unfortunate handful of years prior to Walt Disney opening the doors of Walt Disney World a few hours' drive away.  Sort of how Uncle Walt staked out network time each week with the Disney Movie of the Week, which he'd introduce and use that time to plug the parks, perhaps the drunken buccaneers running Pirate's World believed they could create a similar vehicle to success in the greater Florida area.

Unlike Disney, however, how made his bones by synching sound with 1928's Steamboat Willie, this 1972-ish movie has a complete lack of synch sound, comedy, joy, production value or common sense. Its the true rare, utter failure of vision and competence.

And so, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny follows what happens when Santa crash lands on a beach near Ft. Lauderdale and his reindeer, complete bastards all, abandon him on the beach and head home.  Santa lacks any sense of agency other than to telepathically summon neighborhood kids to make them solve his problem, which they fail to do (even after employing a guy in a gorilla suit).  Inexplicably, this leads Santa to tell the story of, as near as one can tell from the movie, a girl going to Pirate's World (which looks like a cross between a county fair and the lobby to the DMV) where she, in turn, hears the story of Thumbellina over a PA system.

Its not clear what any of this means, but the movie ends sometimes after Santa finishes telling about how the girl heard the story of Thumbellina at the DMV, the kids run off and return with the freakish and terrifying Ice Cream Bunny (a guy in a bunny suit who, in costume, drives a literal truck full of unbuckled kids down a bumpy road, occasionally swerving off the road and losing at least one kid.  I am not kidding), who saves the day by giving Santa a ride.

Loses a kid off the moving truck at:  4:35  (you can see his feet hit the ground as they go around the curve)
Almost hits dog around:  4:52
drives off the road at:  8:45
Generally freaks my shit:  duration of the video



Its a really, really good RiffTrax, and I can't recommend enough, if that sort of thing is your bag.

So...

You have your holiday traditions, we have ours. It was great seeing Dug and K, and god bless Dug-less for bringing only the finest in awfulness to my TV each and every holiday.

2010 Christmas Loot Wrap-Up

Anybody get their Red Ryder BB Gun with the compass in the stock and this thing which tells time?

Christmas has come and gone.  I haven't fully completed my present exchanges as I haven't seen my folks and brother since Christmas Eve, and I need to catch up with my Uncle, Cousin and Cousin's daughter.  We're going to do all that stuff tomorrow, I think.

Thus far, my Christmas Loot-Getting was all right on the money. 

My gift from Jamie was not a surprise.  I've needed a computer for a while, and in October I got the very laptop upon which I'm typing.  Merry Christmas to me from Jamie. 

Superman's plot to redistribute wealth?  No wonder the cape is red...

As the field of gift-giving and givers has narrowed over the years, the odd, wacky and unexplainable loot has dwindled to the point where, these days, I no longer am left looking at a nose hair trimmer or other such assorted gifts on Christmas morning wondering "how does one even write a thnk you note for this?".

Kind of sad in a way.  Those inexplicable gifts are always fun to ponder. 

Also got:

• Star Trek Movie Blu-Ray set - its the first six Trek movies with Shatner and Nimoy, plus a bonus disc
• A book:  Diary of a Lost Girl
• a gift certificate to Austin Books and Comics (I think I know how to use that)
• dog toys - and if you think, "oh that's for the dogs".  No.  Keeping dogs happy is one of my primary functions at home.  I am very pleased to find dog toys in my stocking.
• A sort of electronic pen that you can hook up to your PC that will digitally record everything you write or presumably draw.  Expect some experimentation to show up on this site in the near future.

We had also been sent to Wootstock about two months ago by The Dug, and that was a Christmas Gift. 

So, yeah, its been festive.

Non-Corpsman MattyM spent Christmas Eve with us, and it was great having him around.  A very lovely Christmas, all told. 

If you have time, write in and tell me (a) one outstanding or surprising gift and/ or (b) one "WTF?" generating gift.

Merry Christmas!

I hope you got just what you wanted!

I did.

Pretty good present each and every year

Happy Christmas Eve!

PREPARE THE MILK AND COOKIES!!!

The Big Man is coming!

This dude is totally wasted

Merry Christmas Eve, Signal Corps!

May your Christmas be jolly and bright!

Now get out there and listen for sleigh bells.

everyone in this picture needs less sugar

The Dug and I watched (and Tweeted) the Prequel to "Santa Buddies"

So, you may recall that last year The Dug, K, Jamie and myself watched and reviewed Disney's 9th or 10th installment in the Air Bud series, Santa Buddies.  No longer about a lively golden retriever who can shoot free throws (because this was an actual thing, and it was kind of neat), by the time Santa Buddies rolled around, the original Bud is out of the picture and The Buddies, his offspring, are now CGI'd little monsters who have been in space.  In Santa Buddies, they meet Santa, Santa Paws and Puppy Paws.

Read here.  Or, you know, here.

Well, today we watched Disney's Buddies-free Prequel to Santa Buddies and live-tweeted the movie.  And had a cocktail or three.

You can read our review at One Wall Cinema!

Countdown to Sleigh Bells

This Christmas, may you retain all your illusions.

Merry Christmas from The Signal Watch

This is pretty much my optimal tree lighting ceremony

Merry Christmas from all of us at The Signal Watch!

I am expecting limited posting for a few days to spend time doing Christmas-type-stuff (The Dug and K will be here in a few hours!), but I also wanted to get out ahead of the curve and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas as you head off to your respective destinations and settle in for a festive Yuletide Season.  (What is a Yule, anyway?)

I'll be honest, my idea of a good Christmas does not include being covered in mice.

Its been a fantastic year here at our house, and its been a great year getting back into the swing of things with this site.  We hope you've enjoyed our return to blogging (which, I hear, is now a dead use of technology.  I'm retro!).  

I like to think this is a season for giving, so I'll make two quick suggestions for a couple of international charities to give to this Christmas, as I know you're all good to your local charities, already (right?).

• Heifer.org
• The American Red Cross

Ms. Brooks thinks giving to charity on the holidays is a great idea

As always, at the top of my Christmas wish list is Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward All.  May that goodwill spill over all the year-round to everyone we meet in hopes of better understanding between us.

In the past few years, the Christmas Story which comes back to me again and again is that of the 1914 Christmas Truce, when German and British soldiers put down their arms and their differences and took time to remember what it was that they had, instead, in common.  Soccer, carols, battlefields and the knowledge that under other circumstances, they'd be sharing tobacco and stories, and not hurling bullets at one another across an apocalyptic landscape.

Call it a miracle.  Call it an act of humanity at its finest.  Its what should be.

I hate to send you to Wikipedia, but they have a detailed synopsis of the event. 

How odd and strange, and yet... exactly what it should be that the better parts of our nature should know that we can live better with one another, no matter what we hear about those on the other side of the battlefield, or what those who have something to gain from division and anger have to tell us.  If only for one day.

Peace on Earth.  Goodwill. 

We wish you a very Merry Christmas.  Here's to you and your loved ones! 

now dash away, all!

We'll be back at blogging cruising speed after the Holiday.

Tron: Legacy - That is a whole lot of somethin'

SPOILERS

No, seriously. If you haven't seen the movie, run away now.

I didn't wait 28 years to see a sequel to Tron. I was a kid when the movie was released, and only the word-of-mouth hype machine that existed back then let me know that Star Wars would have sequels. "Franchise" wasn't thrown around a whole lot, but I was kind of aware that Jason and I liked the movie more than our peers. I was the only kid I knew with a Tron lightcycle toy and Flynn action figure and we may have been the ones most interested in chucking frisbees at each other (and you know what's a tough translation?  BMX bikes as light cycles).

Time marches on, and, of course, for most folks Tron had fallen off the cultural radar.  Nerds had been saying for years "oh, what they could do now with CG", but the original process of the movie is so little known and poorly understood, that I sort of just admired the original for what it was. I have fond memories of the summer when The Admiral waved his hand at the dinner table and pronounced "Enough.  We're not talking about Tron anymore at the dinner table."  As an adult, I now have fonder memories of Cindy Morgan in a helmet running around The Grid.

I do own the movie on DVD. It's some sort of super-collector's pack thing, meant for the hardcore Tron fan. I'm not sure I meet that description, but I did find the movie interesting on a lot of levels.

No matter what, I do not love Tron as much as some other people

Like everyone else, when I saw the first test footage for the new movie, I did that whole "hold your breath, is that what I think I'm seeing?" thing.

So did I enjoy the new Tron?   Sort of.  I mean, its an absolutely beautiful movie.  Somebody put a lot of love into that thing.  Its an immaculately realized vision of a fictional world, at least from a set-designer's point of view.

I have to believe that the final cut was either completely butchered by producers into a nonsensical mess or the producers turned in a trilogy, tried to shoot it, and lost sight of the forest for the trees once they needed to trim the running time down to a length that wouldn't test the sitting-powers of the 18-40 age bracket.

A colleague who attended the movie with me commented that he "wasn't looking for a story" when he went to see Tron, and I am hard pressed to argue that going to see Beau Garrett walk away from the camera (in 3D!) is worth the price of admission.  Or, you know, the prettier set pieces with light cycles, etc...

Essentially, the movie just doesn't make sense.  There's just not enough explanation, really, of almost everything, to hold the thing together, let alone maintain an internal logic.

Whereas the first movie was sort of an over-extended allegory for freedom and artistry versus the despotism of corporate management for software, the new movie begins exactly where that thought left off, with Encom now 30 years on and a fight for the soul of the company lost to a Jobs-like (interestingly, not a Gates-like) Chairman who has taken the OS and made it "the world's most secure" rather than the most innovative.  But it sort of totally forgets about this concept and goes for some DC Comics Earth-2 invasion thing that lacks motivation, an explanation of what will happen, or a narrative build.

A powerful argument for running Linux

This throughline of open source versus corporate greed, which is true to the first movie and completely relevant today, and would have made for a fine allegorical little story within "The Grid" as freedom overcomes tyranny, gets inexplicably shelved in the second act and a whole new problem begins for our hero.

Part of me was sort of self-aware that Steve Jobs does, in fact, sit on the board for Disney, the film's producers and distributors, and wondered if that hadn't had a chilling effect on the whole production.

Now...  In watching the original Tron, I never took the adventure in the movie literally, not even as a kid.  I assumed it was sort of a metaphor for what was happening within the computer, and I don't think I'm necessarily wrong about that reading.  I could understand a "program" was being tested "inside the grid" to see if it held muster as it was absorbed into the MCP.  But Tron: Legacy makes it very clear: No, seriously, there's a whole civilization of nano-things living inside your computer, like sexy, glowing sea-monkeys.

That, in some ways, sort of makes the movie a whole lot... dumber. I mean, that might have played in 1982, but when you're walking around with a phone in your pocket with more computing power than the entire system that got the Eagle to the moon...  well...  It's like telling me my TV is really a bunch of different elves putting on plays behind a magical mirror.

this is living in your Apple IIe

As an allegory, I could assume that some thought wento every decision that was made about "well, X actually means Y, so when a lightcycle falls off a wall, its going to de-rez..."

Under this model we could understand if a "program" needed "more power to run" and water was power, or accessing the users was actually Allan taking advantage of a hack in the MCP.  But then to see Flynn sitting around in the new movie eating asparagus?*  It poses so many questions...

What I found curiously irksome was that the world of the movie deals in physics as we know them on Earth (which the first movie suggested didn't really apply in Computer Land).  Part of the magic of the first Tron was seeing "oh, when a lightcycle crashes, here it just sort of... ends."  And, yes, of course a digital light cycle turns at 90 degree angles, and of course the landscape is made of hastily rendered polygons....  So during T:L, I knew the producers had kind of missed the point when they showed the Recognizers (the sort of arch-shaped ships from the first film) using thrust.  I don't want to see gears turning wheels in Tron.  That's missing the point, it would seem.  If you have a cargo loader, why isn't it a representation of a loader, just sleekly moving along a track?  Why the need to build in mechanical efficiencies?  Especially in a world we're told was built to be "perfect"?

The physics of a stall for airplanes can get pretty complicated, but there's a scene were the engines stall during a climb in a dogfight, and it felt so... weird.  Does the thing have an engine?  Does it not compensate for the digital winds?  I...  It just asked so many more questions than it answered, and somehow having these glowing jets behave like common aircraft just didn't work.

But, again, one would also assume computer programs don't eat asparagus (let alone all the parts of agriculture that would have to occur to have fresh aparagus in Tron land), and there the program was... at dinner.  Dinner?  I....

The movie also dodges some complications modern technology would bring into the equation.  Flynn's make-believe world seemingly does not have internet access (and Flynn's disappearance seems to predate Tim Berners-Lee getting other people to get onboard with this whole crazy hypertext idea), let alone massive global networks, all of which would have been interesting concepts.

The villains plot, of course, makes no sense and seems to lack in motivation.  And you kind of wonder why anyone would stop him.  If the program has the ability to learn (and he does, that's demonstrated), let him go nuts and go out to the real world on his own. Help him out!   (A) It would have to be pretty interesting to see what would happen, and (B) he's not going to get too far toward a nefarious plan before the practicalities of living in the real world would slow him down.

He's sort of the Professor Chaos of movie villains, but Kevin Flynn is terrified of the guy.

Our antagonist

There are, of course, all kinds of other practical issues that come up in the movie when you consider that it hangs on the fact that it doesn't pay any attention to computing past 1985.  It also doesn't bother to explain how any of this was programmed/ built into existence, all of which would have been nice, but seem to have been killed during the editing process.**

I have to assume dangling plot threads around the titular Tron, the actual Encom Corporation, and the iffy promises of  the first act will get sorted out in Tron II: 2.  Maybe.  If they spent an hour just dealing with the issues set up in this movie, I think I'd be happy.  As it stands, right now I'm a little baffled.

Oh, the kid who plays Sam Flynn is fine, I guess.  He walks with a weird trundle that's, like, super obvious thanks to the circuit lines, and he sort of had "angry" as his full range, but...  He's also given some clunky lines that Jamie described as "a little Jake Lloyd", so, you know, your mileage is going to vary.

Because, really, this is the Jeff Bridges show much more than a showcase for the kid.

I got a little short changed on my Boxleitner, and I'm a little confused why they didn't try to do more with what they had there (and that is clearly not Boxleitner in the Tron gimp suit for much of the movie).  And no Yuri?  Bad form, Tron movie.

All of this said, its a very pretty movie, and I think if the first Tron didn't weigh so heavily on the mind, it would be fairly easy to see how people could buy into this (they seemed to not even blink at the ridiculous plot holes The Matrix, so....).  I recommend seeing it in 3D on the big screen, because it is that kind of movie.  But also know, its not exactly going to astound you at every turn.

The visuals are relentless and almost always fascinating.  There's some neat little bits in there that manage to show rather than tell, and I think anyone could appreciate what they were at least trying to do with the skyscapes, wide open gamegrid, the crazy outfits and toy-friendly world of the whole thing. And as I think a lot of that takes a front seat, you know, you might get something out of that.  I did.

But expect for it to feel like the first act.

*Asparagus? 
**why Kevin Flynn had to die if Clu died made no sense whatsoever and needed at least a phoney-baloney explanation

Stay Up Late or Interrupted Sleep? Lunar Eclipse Tonight!

I think I'm just going to stay up late, but this evening will see a total lunar eclipse around 12:30 AM Central time.

I plan to see this as a sign that the gods are angry with us, and use this as an excuse to smite the non-believers.

For more info on the Eclipse, check out the Star Date website.

Coen Bros.

Somebody asked which Coen Bros. movies I had seen and not seen, and which one I did not like.

Good questions.

I am mostly just "in" when it comes to the Coen Bros. I stumbled across Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona around the ages of 14 and 16, and it was my first understanding of anything resembling auteur-ship.

At the end of the day, I think these guys are at their best when they work in the crime mega-genre, which is more or less where they work most of the time. And of late, since Big Lebwoski, I kind of keep my mouth shut about their movies for a day or so, because I want to wait for the movie to sort itself out a little more in my head. Most certainly Blood Simple is noir, and Miller's Crossing is pure American gangster picture. I'd argue that the Coen's played with noir with Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and that's where they're excelling. They've dropped some of the post-Sam Raimi early career eccentricities for more nuanced story-telling, and I don't mind the switch.

I, initially, didn't really groove to The Big Lebowski, but a week later, I feel like I'd given it time to marinate, and the whole "it's classic noir, just with a completely detached protagonist" joke the Coens were laying down finally really caught on the gears.

Similarly, the more I think about A Serious Man, the more I like that movie, too (and I read it as sort of a modern, Minnesota-based Book of Job).

Anyway, here's a fairly complete list, omitting movies where I think the Coens were only loosely involved as executive producers.

I should note: The two Coen Bros. movies I did not see came out when I lived in Arizona. The cinemas in Chandler absolutely would not have carried a Coen Bros. movie. It was a lot of Hillary Duff, Disney movies, whatever... but that's part of how I missed them. Also, again, when movies come out at Christmas, its very hard for me to get out to see them.

At the theatrical release, neither The Ladykillers nor Intolerable Cruelty were terribly loved either by reviews or word of mouth, and I just never bothered.

True Grit - plan to see it

2009 A Serious Man - seen it

2008 Burn After Reading - seen it

2007 No Country for Old Men - seen it

2004 The Ladykillers - did not see it

2003 Bad Santa - only producers on this, but I finally saw this last Christmas, and its really good

2003 Intolerable Cruelty - did not see it

2001 The Man Who Wasn't There - this is the one I didn't like, but I saw it

2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? - seen it

1998 The Big Lebowski - seen it

1996 Fargo - who didn't see it?

1994 The Hudsucker Proxy - saw it for my 19th birthday in college

1991 Barton Fink - seen it

1990 Miller's Crossin - seen it

1987 Raising Arizona - seen it

1984 Blood Simple - seen it