Not activities for us, unfortunately. I slept all day and worked all night, and Malaya was out at Kali or family-related events Friday night and pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday. When you get right down to it, our highlight highlight was eating frozen pizza late Friday night. And really good Chinese food Monday evening, after doing the laundry. Whee.
If we had gone out though, we would have seen
V is for Vendetta. Plenty of other people have; it made $26m for the weekend, and it's getting pretty good reviews too;
75% on RT, which is unusually high for a comic book/action movie. (Not that
Vendetta is really an action movie.) It's a surprisingly high review score for this film in particular, since it's quite radical and potentially polarizing, with an obsessed vigilante bomber terrorist as the hero. True, he's fighting against an evil, totalitarian government, but the concept that a government in a modern country like the UK could be controlling and dangerous enough that it would need to be fought against and bombed is pretty radical, for some.
And while most of the critics like the film, and had no problem with the imagery or metaphor, some reviewers dislike it exactly for that aspect. Like Rush Limbaugh reviewing a Michael Moore film, they're automatically going to hate it on ideological principles that have nothing to do with the film's actual content or style. Take
this review from a self-proclaimed conservative film site. Good luck reading through the entire screed, but the reviewer basically takes every aspect of
Vendetta, compares it to something current in the US, and says liberals are idiots for thinking the world is anything at all like what they think it's like. A quote to give you a sense of the review's argumentative brilliance:
Note: like all Left-Wing fear-mongering, this films likes to erroneously equate the extreme Religious Right with mainstream Conservatism, which would be like equating NAMBLA with mainstream Liberalism.
Yes, because you see Democratic politicians just lining up to speak at child molester conventions, the way Republicans do with the AFA and Christian Coalition, and all the rest.
Furthermore, and it's a pretty easy argument to make, but I'll make it anyway: if a fictional film set in the future, in the UK, with and evil, terrorism-hyping, freedom-destroying, madly-Christian, anti-gay, lying, manipulative, totalitarian government makes you crazy since you're sure it's all about your beloved Bush Administration... that says a lot more about you and Bush than it says about
V for Vendetta. And what it says is scary.
Elsewhere, some serious reviewers have taken a similar tact, but with a lot more subtlety, of course. David Denby of the New Yorker has been pointed out by some, for
his sniffy comments. I thought he was fairly balanced on this one, or at least did a good job of hiding his pro-Bush = anti-
Vendetta sentiments. His review isn't very honest, since he cherry-picks details to harp on and does it inconsistently. (He slags the comic for being overly-radical and divorced from reality when it was written, then slags the Wacky-brothers for making the updated version too close to reality.) But at lest he doesn't spoil the film.
I've seen a lot of that lately, and I wish I'd saved the reviews, but the practice seems to be to attack a film you don't like (especially one you disagree with ideologically) with not only a negative review, but with indiscriminate use of spoilers. Perhaps the logic is that since people like to read nasty reviews, even people who don't agree with your review will take a look, and perhaps be turned off to seeing the film once they know every last twist and turn of the plot.
In that light, it's ironic that the most-enthusiastic Vendetta review I've yet seen
is this one, by some guy with a super hero-themed blog. While he's got some good stuff to say about
Vendetta, I strongly recommend that you
do not read his post, since he not only kills the fatted spoiler calf, he slings its entrails like a steam-powered trebuchet. Every major plot twist (most of which you can discern from the trailer and the TV ads) is laid bare, and plenty of minor ones too; stuff I haven't seen mentioned in any other reviews. Since you know, they don't want to ruin the film for people who haven't seen it yet.
I did get a laugh from his post though, or rather from a comment, after I stopped reading it halfway down and skipped to the end:
The word you're looking for is "spoiler". Please don't forget it in the future.
I'll give the blogger credit for replying to this comment, even though his reply guarantees I'll never read a word about upcoming book/movie on his site again.
Spoiler, shmoiler.... I presume when I read or write a review of a book or movie that there will be a discussion of the plot, unless the plot is somehow irrelevent, in which case the book or movie is probably not worth reading or seeing.
Well of course. Every review has to give at least some plot detail, to ground the comments in some shared reality. But there's a huge difference between saying
Vendetta is about a mysterious vigilante fighting a corrupt and evil totalitarian regime, and telling us why he's fighting, how he meets Natalie Portman's character, what his methods are, whether he succeeds, what their relationship is, and how the entire film ends. If you can't handle a "discussion of the plot" without throwing the entire carcass on the slab, then you probably shouldn't be writing movie reviews; at least not ones without massive spoiler warnings.
Is it petty of me to now want to find out what films this guy is looking forward to, see them first, and send him stealth emails with bullet lists of every key plot point?
At any rate, Malaya and me still want to see
Vendetta, and hope we'll get the chance sometime this week. Perhaps at a matinee Wed or Fri. It's iffy though; she's been very busy with work and other things lately, and I've been working on a near-vampire schedule, getting a lot of fiction done but staying up until 8 or 9am to do it. So our overlapping awake/free time hasn't been real extensive.
We did get to see a film Monday night, but it was just a DVD. Serenity, which we enjoyed in the theaters, got for $10 used at Blockbuster, and really, really enjoyed. It was better the 2nd time, actually, since neither of us knew anything about Firefly going into the film, and therefore spent half the movie trying to figure if we liked their Old West talkin' style Western in space. The second time we knew where it was going and what was going to happen, but that just freed us up to enjoy the events and acting and dialogue. It's a damn shame that film wasn't a bigger hit, since we would love to see sequels. We might even buy the DVD of the original show, and I
never watch TV series on DVD. Or on TV, for that matter.
Elsewhere over the weekend, the college basketball tournament began. Aside from a year of slight interest in UNLV back in their Larry Johnson/Stacy Augman/National Championship prime, I've never given a damn about the collegiate game. And since my current interest in the pro game is also at an ebb, I'm paying little attention to "March Madness." I love college football, largely since it's so much more wide open and (therefore) entertaining than pro football, but college basketball seems to be almost the opposite. Like 9 of the 10 guys on the court always seem to be about 6 foot 5, the college coaches always seem to have an almost military fanaticism for control and discipline and order, and like one player in two hundred has the skill to dribble drive or break down the opposing defense. So you get endless possessions of 20 looping backwards passes before the shotclock runs down and necessitates a desperation drive/shot, followed by a mad leaping scramble of equally-tall guys fighting for the rebound. The only college games I ever have any interest in are ones with an underdog trying to pull off an upset, and even those are pretty much unwatchable, since the last minute of every college game features a minimum of 6 time outs, often called two or three in a row.
A great deal of modern sports coaching seems to be about looking like you're trying hard. Coaches all do the same thing, and all try to look intense doing it, so then even if they lose, it's CYA material. "But look how many time outs I called and how much I screamed during them? You can't fire me when I'm making such an effort!" The Phil Jackson "let them play through a bad stretch and find leadership on the court." style of coaching is just unheard of in the college ranks. And it's pretty uncommon in the pros too, for that matter. So you get overcoached teams running around in circles, all doing the same thing with players all about the same size/talent, and since I don't have any colleges I care about enough to root for (just against, in a few cases), why watch?
Especially when watching a #13 seed leading a #4 seed by 2 with :55 seconds left entails 20 minutes of TV time, of which 19 are spent watching commercials, coaches gesticulating, or illiterate 18 y/o's missing the front half of "1 and 1" free throws.
I do check the scores though, and sometimes watch a bit of the highlights on ESPN, and I enjoyed the Men's Tournament for all the upsets. None of the top seeds lost in the first two rounds, but it makes me happy when I look
at the bracket and see all of those #2 and #3 and #4 seeds going home after a round or two, tails between their legs, hopes and dreams running down their thighs.
#3 Iowa lost to #14 Northwestern State, #4 Kansas and #5 Pittsburgh both lost to #13 Bradley, #3 UNC lost to #13 George Mason, and more. This year some of the TV guys (who are obviously biased towards big name schools, since they get higher ratings) ripped the NCAA selection committee for picking a lot of #2 teams from small conferences instead of packing the tournament with the usual bunch of #3-#6 teams from big conferences. Wonder how that crow tastes?
It's pretty clear, unless this is just a one-year anomaly, that the talent base is spread very widely and very thinly across the nation's top men's college teams. In the old days top teams had seniors playing, with very good freshmen and sophomores on the bench. Now the best teams stay the best forever because they get the best recruits, but with every guy listening to greedy agents and bolting for the pros after a year or two, the turnover is so fast that any team can catch lightning in a bottle and have a great year or two. (Before their key players go pro/graduate/flunk out, and they have no All-American recruits to replace them with.) Last year's champs, UNC, lost their top 7 players to graduation or the pros, and were playing like four freshmen half the time this season. That made their second round loss somewhat predictable, though no less enjoyable. Ahh schadenfreude, my old friend.
On the other hand, there are clearly
not 64 quality women's college basketball teams in the US. Nor would you expect there to be, without a big money pro league sucking them away at 18 and 19, and far fewer women playing high school basketball than men. The women have yet to complete their second round games, but in the first round every single #1, 2, 3, and 4 seed won, with the biggest "upset" #5 NC State falling by 10 to #12 Tulsa, a team that actually had a much better record on the season: 26-5 vs. 19-12, albeit in a smaller conference/against lesser competition.
More tellingly, the gap between best and worst is even larger. In the first round the four #1 seeds play the four #16 seeds, the four #2 seeds play the four #15 seeds, and so on. All the men's #1 and #2 seeds won their first round games, but other than UCLA's 34 point blow out over Monmouth (?), there wasn't a game decided by more than 16 points, and most of them were around 10 points. #2 Tennessee sneaked past unknown Winthrop , 63-61. (And then lost to #7 Wichita in the 2nd round, making you wonder how they got a #2 seed.)
Check out these first round scores for the women. 75-51, 102-54, 95-54, 96-27 (
really), 77-53, 72-48, etc. I guess they've got to play the games, but really, is there a need for 64 teams, when you get first round mismatches like these? How about going back to 32 and a hope for some interesting matchups before the 3rd round? Or 48, and giving the top 16 a bye while the rest of the chaff shakes itself clean?
Personally, I could care. Given how I feel about the men's game, I can't imagine I'll ever watch a women's college basketball game, no matter who's playing. But it doesn't look good for the sport when you've got blowouts of this level in your championship tournament. It's like a team from the local rec center taking on the Lakers. Although, if the amateurs just doubled Kobe the whole game, that might not be such a bad matchup.
Next weekend promises to be a lot more interesting, since we'll be spending all day Saturday and Sunday in a swimming pool. Yes, it's still cold here, but since we'll be in wetsuits and scuba gear, I doubt we'll mind.
You see, we have taking a scuba diving class for the past month, and we'll have the book portion completely finished after Wednesday night, leaving just our weekend of pool classes, and then our open water test down in Monterey. After that (if all goes well) we'll be PADI certified open water divers, free to rent equipment and explore the watery depths anywhere in the world. (So long as we don't go deeper than 60 feet, or into any wrecks or caves, or at night, etc. They have other, more expensive classes to get that sort of training, you see.)
Though we've never been yet, we certainly hope we enjoy scuba diving -- with over $700 spent thus far, each, we'd better find a way to get out and use our damn equipment again. No, it's not a real affordable hobby, and our money only went for the class fees, and then fins, snorkels (prescription for Malaya), masks, booties, gloves, dive knives, weights, weight belts, and carrying bags. We get free rentals (for our pool and open water tests) on the wetsuit, hood, BCD, and tank from the shop we're taking the classes through, which saves us $50 a pop for the rental. If we actually want to buy, we're looking at $200+ for a wetsuit, and way, way more for the breathing equipment. Cheap BCDs (the vest/jacket thing that inflates with air, along with the hoses and other parts) run over $1200, with quality ones $2000 and up, and that doesn't include the tank, air refills, and yearly tank inspections. Not to mention plane tickets to Australia, dive boat rentals, and shark-related taxidermy fees.
I'll blog more on scuba stuff next week, I suspect. So far, the biggest thing I've learned in scuba class should come as no surprise to anyone. Pretty much every single thing you've ever seen divers do in a James Bond movie... is completely bullshit.
Labels: basketball, scuba, v for vendetta
