The Injustice League: NBA Supervillains

Those are, I think it's safe to say, two images that have never been grouped together. So what the hell are they doing there? Well, you could have phrased that more politely, but thanks for asking.

Today we're going to learn what my three least favorite NBA teams and comic book supervillains have in common. And it's probably more than you think. Debuting exclusively on The Once and Future Blog, here is the first installment of Bruene's Bizarre Analogies: NBA Supervillains! Where I try to figure out who all the important players on these teams correspond to with, I think, some success. I tried wrote each explanation so that it could apply to either player or comic character, though I did cheat a couple of time. Well, enough preamble. Enjoy!



Team One: The Los Angeles Brotherhood of Mutants

They've been committing wide-scale villainy since the fifties. Consistently a force to be reckoned with, they've been plaguing our heroes for decades, and much more effectively than most villain teams. And they're lead by...

The Lovely Bones

Myy thoughts on/ review of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. Today I'm experimenting with the format again, which I'll keep doing. And I'm totally dispensing with writing original plot summaries, and so I shall continue to plagiarize Berardinelli from Reelviews.net, because he does a good job writing them. Today's format is, perhaps ironically, brought to you by a Sergio Leone movie that I haven't seen.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is the second movie directed by Peter Jackson since LotR, after 2005's King Kong. Based on Alice Sebold's novel (which I have not read), the film was released during prime Oscar bait territory in December 2009, but was widely panned by critics, ending up a fairly terrible 33% on RottenTomatoes. While there are some problems with RT that go beyond mere concerns of elitism, I still went into it with low expectations. Much to my surprise, I ended up really liking it, enough that I added it to my all-time top 100 (currently at spot 83). But it also has some legitimate and fairly large flaws. So before I got into a few specifics, be warned: this is one that I liked but a lot of much more knowledgeable people did not. Disclaimer over.

Mamma Mia by way of Across the Universe

Today, a review (sort of ) of Mamma Mia, but in a little different style than the last ones. I'll probably keep experimenting with these from time to time.


When you think about it, the concept behind Mamma Mia is a little strange. It's a fictitious story that is told through ABBA music, after all. But it isn't the only member of its weird little sub-genre of musical, which I'll call a One Band Musical, or OBM for short (not to be confused with the OMB, although I hear Jacob Lew has a lovely singing voice). The first OBM was probably Yellow Submarine, which featured the music of The Beatles. Which leads to the other movie I want to talk about, the prominent and somewhat polarizing 2007 film that also features The Beatles music, Across the Universe.

The 5 Levels of Serialization

No, not that kind.

Welcome to the first installment of the one-part series, 'Paul's Pet Theories'. In this one, I talk a little about the structure of tv shows.

Television is the least self-contained of any of any narrative media. If it lasts, a show can easily have twenty hour-long episodes for six or seven years, while a movie series is considered long at four installments. But the way that the showrunners choose to use this time varies wildly. Some have but one long story they want to tell. Others tell a different one every episode, while still others fall somewhere in between. This is the concept of serialization, and, in my opinion it falls into five main categories*. The essential question that I use to figure out where a show falls is this: how much will what happened last episode affect what happens in this one?

(*)Anything that reflects true reality (as opposed to reality television) is not included. I.e. sports and news.

Level 1:
These are the shows that offer the lowest barriers to entry and, as such, are quite popular on networks. A viewer can start watching in season four without having seen it before and understand perfectly what's going on. While no show is ever truly free of continuity, the members of this group try. Many cartoons, whatever their intended age group, fall here. The other most populous level 1 subgroup are the procedurals. A level one crime procedural would, for example, have a new case every week (with perhaps the occasional two-parter) with very little connection between them. We'll learn about the characters' backstories, but they will typically serve only to flesh them out and have little actual bearing on the plot. These shows always have a status quo that, some level of cast change aside, rarely changes. If Kenny can die in one episode and be back the next with no explanation, or just never dies at all unless his character is 'written out' of the show, it's level one. Reality shows, for obvious reasons, are rarely level 1, but most game shows are.

Examples:
Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, Modern Family, Saturday Night Live, Robot Chicken
Spongebob, Animaniacs
Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, MythBusters, Iron Chef
CSI (LV, NY, & Miami), Law & Order, Cold Case, Without a Trace

Drawing the Line

Over the last couple of days, it began to strike me just how much good television there is out there. Too much, really, for me to follow all that I would like. There are a dozen channels putting out original scripted content in the United States (plus BBC), including all of the various cable services. While there is a lot of crap, to be sure, most of the networks have multiple shows I am interested in, and that's not even getting into programs that have finished their run. It's too much.

In a lot of ways, we are living in a golden age of television. While the age of shows that are watched by everyone in America is over ('Seinfeld' and 'Friends' were probably the last of that breed), the rise of cable has compensated many times over. Cable shows have a number of competitive advantages over their network brethren, not the least of which is expanded potential content. Even the basic cable channels can have more mature and sophisticated material then the broadcast networks, to say nothing of the premium channels. A show that twenty years ago seemed edgy (like 'Miami Vice') now seems quaint compared to 'True Blood' or 'Dexter'.

Movie Review: Meet Joe Black

I should note that the plot summary here was lifted verbatim from reelviews.net. I don't much like summarizing, especially for bad movies. I think I deserve some credit for not making even a small pun on the director's last name. Trust me, it was a battle.

Meet Joe Black

1998

13 October 2010

Rating: 5 Bad

Meet Joe Black was the last picture directed by Martin Brest before he helmed one of the most derided films of the last decade, 2003’s Gigli. Brest has not had a job in the movie industry since, and it is not hard to see why. He somehow manages to stretch a script that might justify a two-hour movie into a three-hour mess, stretching a few promising ideas well past the point that they become tiresome. His work here could be Exhibit A in a case that studio interference is not always a bad thing.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire Review

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

More Than Second Viewing, 10 October 2010

Rating: 8 Very Good

Atlantis: The Lost Empire, despite being less then a decade old, is already quickly becoming one of Disney’s lesser-known animated pictures. When it came out in the summer of 2001, it received mediocre reviews and a lukewarm reception by viewers. Its box office, while not a catastrophe like Treasure Planet the next year, was more than a little disappointing to Disney’s executives. So the Great Mouse in the Sky decided to bury Atlantis with Disney’s other disappointments. No merchandise, no TV show, no theme park rides, no strange “Disney Vault” advertising. Atlantis, like The Black Cauldron before it and Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range after it, is already fading from pop cultural consciousness.